Most excellent 4th of July weekend.
This past weekend we stuck around town and hung out with friends. Friday we helped Gillian replace a few panes of glass in her new house. Great work out and felt good to help out a friend. Great karma points. On Saturday we got up early (but not too early) to hit the farmers market (It’s berry season!) and Portland Art Museum. The farmers market was PACKED and the museum closed. 
We did take care of a few smaller items on the list.
In the afternoon we headed over to Jeff and Jessica’s for a good old american 4th of July party. Grill fired up, beer on ice, and neighborhood fireworks exploding all around. Ryan surprised us all by coming back to Oregon for a few days to sync with Sonia before they both head back to Burkina Faso for the rest of their Peace Corp service. Great to see them both together! To celebrate being an american Pete baked an apple pie with bacon lattice topping. Pure Genius and SO good!
On Sunday we took a walk around the neighborhood and made blueberry cornmeal pancakes on the back yard grill. Great weekend.
It’s not all business
I spent the latter half of June on the road for work. Half a week in SF Bay area for a Research Press event and then a full week at University of Illinois UC for a week long training/marketing event. Between meetings and travel I was able to connect with Mary Ann, Elroy, Cynthia and Daniel in San Jose, Cindy in Palo Alto, Stacy & Keith in Berkeley, and Seb & Lori in Livermore. Thank you for the great accommodations over the weekend.
The Game Master and his lovely wife
A few months ago I had this weird idea to have a keep Portland weird road rally photo scavenger hunt. I can up with a list of clues for 47 places (25 for the kids version) and formed 5 teams to spend the day going to the strangest places in Portland. Evenyone had a grand time and took a lot of amazing photos. We all rendezvous back at the Vasteeg’s for burger, dogs, beer and wine. Great time had by all. Check out all the crazy photos.
Aaron, Keith and Randy enjoy the big catch!
Summer has arrived in Oregon and I’ve been planning to get out on the river with some buddies since May. I was finally able to organize a trip with Keith and Randy. We spent June 5th on the Deschutes trying to take advantage of the Salmon Fly and Stone Fly hatches. We then spent the morning of the 6th on the Crooked River. I was able to land a few fine trout and not so fine white fish. After lunch we headed up into the Ochoco Mountains for Morell Mushrooms. We found a few patches including one as big as my fist. The bonus of fishing with such great guys was they there are also amazing chefs. We all ate like kings all weekend. Check out all the shots from the trip.
Northwest Adventures to Vancouver BC
We had a busy weekend last weekend. First with a fun dinner friday night at our place (German beer and great sausages) with Gillian, Brett, Jeff and Jessica.
Then on Saturday we headed up to Vancouver BC to hang with
Jere, Kristen and the boy who spent a few days in Vancouver BC before their Alaskan Cruise. We did a lot in the two days we spent together. Their little guy hung in there as we toured The Capilano Suspension Bridge, took the tram up to the top of Grouse Mountain (where we saw a lumber jack competition) and then roamed the vast Van Dusen Gardens (the little guy loved the labyrinth). Great meals at Thai Palace, Chinese Food in China Town and Cafe Crepe. And of course no trip to Vancouver BC is compete without a trip to Fluevog Shoes.
Great food with good friends
May is our month of great food and wine. We’ve been busy enjoying time with Csaba & Amy, Lev & Marti, Janna & Mark, Fred & Michael, and Jeff& Jesscia…. and it’s only the 10th day of the month.
Sound & Control in The Lounge
We’ve been enjoying The Lounge for a few months now and continue to make tweaks and modifications to the whole system. Before I talk about optimization I thought that you might want to read about the sounds system and the amazing remote that ties it all together.
The amplifier/receiver was a key element in the system but not as complicate to select as some of the other elements. I narrowed it down to the Sony STR-DG820, Onkyo TX-SR606 and the Yamaha RX-V663. They were all well rated by Consumer Reports and other online reviews. The Yamaha was rated best. From CR, “The Sony and Yamaha both had 7.1-channel receivers have built-in decoding for the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio high-resolution surround-sound formats found on Blu-ray movies. They also support Dolby Digital and DTS, used on DVDs and HDTV programs. Common features include auto-calibration circuitry (plus microphones) for setting speaker levels in your room. The Yamaha can send a second audio source to another room, is XM and Sirius ready, and has 7.1-channel analog audio inputs.” An additional consideration was that I needed to include was that I needed to upscale a SD progressive scan output to 720P. The Yahmaha seemed like the best bet but if I needed trim a few dollars the Onkyo would be a good fall back. In the end I went with Yamaha.
Speakers were much more challenge in making the right decisions. In doing my basic research I found that good 5.1 channel system were not always good at basic 2 channel playback. My first short list of speakers included Harman Kardon HKTS 15, Polk Audio RM705, Energy RC-Micro 5.1, Mirage Nanosat® 5.1, Mirage Nanosat Prestige 5, Mirage OMNI S8 Powered subwoofer, Energy Take Classic 5.1 Speaker System, and Klipsch Cinema 8 System. I also put the
Aperion Intimus 4B Harmony SD on the list since it’s a local company that many of my friends have bought and enjoyed. I have a pair of the Aperion in-wall in the kitchen and love them. I really wanted small bookshelf speaker for FR, FL, RR, & RL with a great dynamic sounds, tight highs and a solid full range center speaker. I figured that if these 5 were rock solid the sub would just make it sound even fuller. After further research I narrowed things down to the Aperion, Mirage and Energy.
The next step was to pick out some music that I knew REALLY well and go listen to the systems. I grabbed Sting’s “Bring On The Night” live CD, his “Noting Like The Sun” and “December” by George Winston since I listened to all of these on a regular basis in college. I also brought along Ironman for some multi-layer 5.1 music, dialog and action scenes. My first stop on the listening tour was Aperion Audio. I check out the Intimus 4B Harmony SD. It was great in 5.1 but real thin in 2 channel especially with the live “Bring On The Night” and the higher end register of George Winston’s piano. In 5.1 they made Ironman come alive but need all 5 and I did not feel that there was much head room if I really needed to make things punch. Their tower system were amazing but to big for what I needed and my budget did not really allow for the almost $2,000 system.
I then headed off to Magnolia Hi-Fi at Best Buy. I listened to the Energy and Mirage system and started to warm up to the Energy Take Classic 5.1 and the Mirage Nanosat Prestige 5. But I did was not able to hear all the system that were on my list at Magnolia so I headed out to Home Video Library to check out the Kilpsch and other systems. While there I also listened to the NHT Absolute Zero with the NHT Absolute Center and NHT Classic Ten. I was very impressed that the NHT system could deliver an amazing range in such a small package. They had the best high end for George’s piano and really sounded full in 2 channel mode. It was almost a slam dunk but I’m not an impulse buyer so I had to head home to do my research. The Absolute Zero combines a 5.25″ woofer and 1″ aluminum dome tweeter with a frequency response of 71Hz-20kHz and a sensitivity of 86dB. I read tones of NHT review and determined that I could get better sound reproduction for more money but for what my requirements were these speakers were the best bet. My ears LOVE them.
A good friend of mine had recommend that I pick up a Logitech Harmony universal remote to tie the whole system together. At first I was skeptical, I had used programable remotes in the past and found them more cumbersome than having a dedicated remote for each piece of consumer electronics. But with the HDTV, DVD, CD, AMP, Mac and lights all having their own remote it seamed like the table was filling up quickly. So when I was ready to buy the amp and speakers I had them throw in a Logitech Harmony 890 with a RF extender for about 1/3 the retail price as part of the negotiation. Everything is negotiable when your spending over $1000 on gear.
To say that the Harmony is a universal remote is not a complete accurate statement. I think of it more as an activity based remote, and here is the key. With one button you tell your system what you want to do and the Harmony resets each of your component’s configuration for that activity. For example if you want to watch a DVD it turns on the DVD, HDTV, AMP and changes the HDTV and AMP to the correct configuration and input setting. One button switches from Live HDTV to a DVD in less than a second. In addition it has backlit display for your most frequently accessed command. For me it was the IR light adjustments and 2 to 5.1 channel switching. Put simply once I got the Harmony properly configured it turned out to be one of the best parts of the whole system.
But getting the Harmony configured was not as easy as just telling it what components I owned. Configuration requires installing software on your computer (PC or Mac) and then typing in all the model numbers. You then tell the software what actives you want to set up and what setting you want to use for each component. It took about 45 min to get the first configuration set up and then downloaded via USB to the remote. It was then a few cycles of trial and error to tweak the configuration. For example when I went to power down the system the first time it turned off the lights as well and I was sitting in the dark. Other issues were with using the repeater and determining which components worked best with the signal coming from the wand or the repeater. I’ve probably transferred about eight different configuration to the Harmony and am now VERY satisfied with the tool. But it took much longer than I anticipated and the software was not as intuitive as I would have hoped.
Paparazzi for the little guys 1st birthday!!!
Jessica and I had a great weekend with friends and I must say that it was all pretty well documented. It started off with giving blood at the red cross. I’ve been giving regularly for as long as I’ve been able. I talked Jeff into joining in a few weeks ago and yesterday Jessica, his wife joined us. So Jessica, my wife tagged, along and the four of us were then going to head out to breakfast after the tap. Well it seems that a little more food is required BEFORE you give so Jessica was hit hard by the give and Jeff and her decided to head home after the give. Jessica and I tried to hit Screen Door for a couples breakfast but the line was HUGE so we head over to J&M cafe for a nice meal to start the day. Jessica did some prep work for her Jewelry Show at the Guild Craft Show on April 24-16 (You should all go! It’s free!) and I met with Alison for a massage. I guess I’ve been over doing it with work and working out and my neck is tight. She did a great job and I’m on the road to feeling better after a few rough nights having issues sleeping. We then headed over to Cynthia and Martin’s for the little guys birthday Party (here is a shot of the paparazzi). We were hoping to join Jonathan for his birthday later that evening but we were pretty wiped after a long day of actives. This morning I got up early and headed over to Meriwether’s to join Jody and Erika for Sunday Brunch. Good thing we met at 9:30. The Easter Family after church was big. The food was great and it was fun catchup up with the ladies. I think that the rest of the day is going to be catching up on paperwork and the long list of important but not urgent things that I need to do. And there is always a few home media experiments to take care of 
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Lazy Sunday in Portland, Oregon
Jessica and I enjoyed a relaxing sunday morning on a mild sunny day in Portland. We walked from the cultural district, across the Hawthorn bridge to the east bank esplanade. From there we crossed the Willamette river on the Burnside bridge. Swung by a crouded voodoo donut, then saturday market, along the west side river front to Hotel 50 for a drink and a snack and then up to the Portland Art Museum to enjoy the La volupté du goût show of French rococo paintings.
On the top of the world in Vail, CO
I spent the past weekend skiing my brains out with my Father and his buddies. We all met up in Vail on Friday night. Got up early on Saturday and spent the day looking for fresh snow and groomed trails at Vail. The day was mostly overcast with light snow. We ended the day at Pepi’s sitting out side drinking bear in what felt like we were sitting in a snow globe that had just been shaken up. Marshall took us up to a great irish pub at The Lodge & Spa at Cordillera. The Saturday and Sunday we skied sunny days at Beaver Creek. SPF 70 all the way. Great runs all day. We ended both days with live outdoor music at McCoy’s in Beaver Creek Village soaking in the ambiance. Great to spend time with Dad, Captain Marshall and The Milk-inator.
Thanks to Marshall and his family for the great accommodations at the family estate.
