Stephen and I drove out to his home town of Jamesville to check on his family’s properties there. It’s about 3/4 of the way from Raleigh to OBX. Classic old town America.
After we visited his parcels, we hit the Roanoke, and saw fish jumping, a great blue heron, a kingfisher, turtles among the natural lily pads (beautiful), what looked to be a copperhead fall from a tree and take a gentle upstream swim, and a pack of turkey vultures enjoying a catfish head on the shore, ha. A beautiful natural river.
This hot mess is a lot of chaotic fun, just don’t expect anything to be Olympic-level quality. Vroom vroom!
Rules: Watch all the qualifiers. Once the final 12 are named, each contestant ranks them first to last. Upon show completion, each contestant gets 12 points for each player, minus the number of slots you were “off”; e.g., 12 points if you picked the winner as the winner, and 1 point if you picked the winner as the loser.
RACERS
Dan picks: 1. Joao 2. Atsushi 3. Brittany 4. Alex 5. Corrina 6. Sara 7. Diego 8. Fielding 9. Faruk 10. Axel 11. Alexandre 12. Jordan
Mike picks: 1 Joao 2 Diego 3 Brittany 4 Atsushi 5 Faruk 6 Jordan 7 Sara 8 Axel 9 Fielding 10 Alex 11 Corinna 12 Alexandre
SCOREBOARD
Eliminated
Alexandre
Faruk
Fielding
Jordan
Sara
Brittany
Alex
Corrina
Joao
Atsushi
Axel
Diego
Dan score
11
21
31
40
50
58
68
79.5
88
99
103
109
Mike score
12
18
29
38
49
57
65
71.5
80
91
97
106
DANNO WINS!!
He gets a website with user authentication, done by Mike.
Pick 1 keeper and 2 losers. Gain a point for each loser that leaves the show. Lose a point for each keeper that leaves the show.
You can pick anyone you want at the start of each show.
In the future, as agreed, if rules emerge, then we may update rules as agreed before the start of the episode.
If Mike wins, Dan endures an hour of Blender pair programming hell. If Dan wins, Mike sets him up a quick website with authentication.
UPDATE: Mike is a pussy who got tired of endless entrails of wasted animals and bailed out. Sorry, these “world class chefs” are Julia Child era dinosaurs.
APE-RONS Bri Baker, Dallas, Texas, Cocktail Server Dorian Hunter, Cartersville, Ga., Creeler Fred Chang, Redondo Beach, Calif., Revenue Analyst Jamie Hough, Charleston, S.C., Fisherman Micah Yaroch, Grand Rapids, Mich., Kitchen Porter Nick DiGiovanni, Barrington, R.I., College Student Noah Sims, Epworth, Ga., Septic Systems Foreman Renee Rice, Ada, Okla., Receptionist Sam Haaz, Philadelphia, Pa., Attorney Sarah Faherty, San Diego, Calif., Former Army Interrogator Shari Mukherjee, Rochester, Minn., Stay-at-Home Mom Subha Ramiah, West Nyack, N.Y., R&D Director Wuta Onda, Bronx, N.Y., English Teacher
APE-ROFFS Deanna Colón, Simi Valley, Calif., Vocal Coach (3) Kenny Palazzolo, Boston, Mass., Carpenter (3) Kimberly White, New York, N.Y., Shoe Designer (5) Evan Tesiny, Brooklyn, N.Y., Sales Coordinator (7) Liz Linn, Durand, Mich., Events Consultant (9) Michael Silverstein, Pittsburgh, Pa., Real Estate Flipper (9) Keturah King, London, England, Freelance Writer (11)
I love the bracing cold, nothing feels better than warming up afterwards. We made great use of that this weekend, with quick trips to Float 60, karate, the new location of the Chicago Diner, Southloop Market, Pot Belly, and lots of warmup time with Beat Sabre, Rummicube and Roblocks. Thanks you two for being such smashing hosts. <3
Cara Christian and I spent a week on the beach this year. My cousin Mark Sowa recommended Oak Island and Cara found us the perfect spot, from the thousands available. The beach starts at the south end of the NC outer banks beaches, and tracks pretty much straight west from there.
We checked all the boxes of a perfect sea-soaked getaway, from skim boarding and boogie boarding and frisbee and paddle ball on the beautiful wide beach right outside our door, with a huge tented umbrella as our base, to surf shops for sunscreen and board shorts and skim boards, from sun burning to bronzing and browning, to recuperation on a perfectly shaded second-story-balcony view over the dunes and grasses to the beach and nightly sunsets, to a breakfast at Old Bridge with all the locals, to Italian dinners at Castucci’s, to endless breakfasts lunches and dinners from the trunkload of groceries we brought in, to tons of multiplayer Beeswarm Simulator and Gary’s Mod (Christian you rock!), to a spontaneous adventure to Bald Head Island that turned into an amazing DOT ferry ride to an incredible natural maritime forest tour via golfcard (where we stopped to see a family of small deer cross our path, including a curious fawn, before they disappeared into the reeds…) to a 5-story run up to the top of the oldest lighthouse in NC, to fresh Raleigh-roasted Larry’s Beans and locally-roasted The Rooster and The Hen french presses, to Frosty’s frozen goodness, to the healthy and local goodness we found at Inergy, to the best tacos and burritos ever at Kai-Joe’s, to a boat tour of the Atlantic and the Cape Fear River and the Intracoastal Waterway and all its sights, ending with the most beautiful sunset. Blissful.
2018 World Cup wasn’t all that since the USA didn’t even qualify, and no one’s favorites seemed to have made it to the final, but it didn’t stop us from having a banging party. :-) Thanks everybody for making the trek to hang out – especially Rei and Julian riding out on the China Bus.
Paty my kind coworker called that a family of geese were in distress and I met her to see what we could do. The poor little goslings were too small to get up the curb next to where they were hatched. We got some tape and rocks and made it a bit better for them. Such cute little ones! But don’t get too close or dad will have a word with you. By the end we found that the most wonderful kid working in the Mexican restaurant was their guardian angel and brought them food and water regularly. The wildlife officer came and said there was no need for him to intervene, even though the dad looked like he had a sprained leg everyone agreed their best chance was to carry on. And that they did.
Big break time! I took the weekend in Chicago for my birthday, a nice long Friday through Tuesday weekend.  On the plane ride out I saw the biggest tablet I’ve ever seen. Envy….
Christian and I had so much fun creating and destroying universes in the Universe Simulator, shooting planets at each other and colliding galaxies.   Just watch this guy lose his mind and you’ll have an idea of the fun. (Now I have it in VR too, unbelievable…)
Cara and I always have a beautiful time, just existing in the short time and space we have together. She found us a fantastic eatery, David Bowie approves. Heading out with Christian and Christina, we found a whole world of Chinese lantern art, some of it huge. We mostly own whatever city we are in, through walking.
On the plane ride home, I sat next to Melvin, who played football and trades stocks. He saw me coding AbetterTrader, and told me about his system and his “mentor”, Tim. They really have a good thing going – and they live in Raleigh, I’ll have to meet up with them soon.
Cara and I love the NCMA Park and have walked it many times, but this last weekend we made a new discovery hidden within: the Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky. Basically a huge vertical camera, a pinhole in the roof lets the sun and stars shine through to the floor and walls of the small yurt-like stone hut. We went in the middle of a blazing sunny day, and were rewarded with brilliant laser-like sunbeams. Which we of course used to comic effect. So fun.