Grand Coulee Dam Trip

Update on 12/24 - finally updated the photos. They have come out really well!
Here's one of the sunset - http://tinyurl.com/ArnabPicsSunsetGC. And another one of the highway along the hauntingly beautiful landscape - http://tinyurl.com/ArnabHighwayGC.

View the full smugmug gallery: http://tinyurl.com/ArnabAlbumGC

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My Maa is here for a month. Reached here this week.

This weekend we (Maa, Ujwala and me) are off to Grand Coulee Dam - the biggest concrete dam in North America - generates about 6500 Mega Watts - the highest for any dam in the world.

The drive from Seattle is beautiful - it passes through the Seattle hills/lakes, the Snoqualmie area (water falls, snow-capped mountains and passes), beautiful farm-lands and then on to the arid eastern Washinton area. The route follows the Columbia river and there are some really amazing viewpoints over the gorges along the way. There is a sound and laser show on the dam every evening from 8:30 PM (May-September) - the lasers use the dam as the screen! It is supposedly the largest such sound and light show in the world! The Columbia rivers history is depicted - so all that this weekend.

and the trip weather looks good: weatherbonk link

iPhone 2.1 upgrade crashes!

Now I seriously didn't expect this from Apple. I was so-waiting for the 2.1 update to iPhone - and iTunes couldn't install it or me! :-)

and look at the awesome error message!

Go Apple!


Update after fighting for 20 min or so:
I did a restart of Windows and iTunes - still got the same error.

iTunes documentation says I might need to upgrade my iTunes. So I go and click Check for latest version - and hey I am already on the latest one (iTunes 8).

Then I tried to upgrade iPhone to 2.1 again - and this time it worked. I have to agree to one of my colleagues - is Apple going the Microsoft way???

Mariners vs Yankees at Safeco field

Went to the Mariners game vs the Yankees last night. Was at Safeco Field, right next to my office.

It was a win-win for me any way, cause I love the Yankees and cause of the NY connection; and of course Mariners are from Seattle! Mariners don't win often (and this season had not won any yet) - however they command a lot of local support.

Matter of fact, A-Rod was getting booed big time (A-Rod used to play at the start of his career with the Mariners). I was on the handful side of the Yankees supporters, with a Yanks t-shirt and all...

And guess what - Mariners won 3-1... Their yound pitcher Morrow was awesome... read more here.

On the whole - loved it. The atmosphere was awesome... and so was the view of Seattle as a backdrop against the ballpark - with the sunset and everything.

Here are a couple of pics, one before sunset and one at night...

Bumbershoot'08

Bumbershoot is Seattle's Arts and Music festival. It takes place during the Labor Day weekend (September first weekend usually) every year at the Seattle Center.

Me and Ujwala had gone for day-2, last Sunday... Quite a few shows on. We saw School of Rock (Paul Green) - really amazing how great kids are! School kids rocking with electric guitars, drums and amazing powerful vocals. Loved it!

Heard Paramore from the sidelines and saw a few other things as well.

The other highlight was Offspring - I always wanted to go to one of their concerts. It was fast and good! They even called the fest much bigger than Bumbershoot - it was "BumberSHIT" :-)

Here's a pic from the Offspring concert...