Adventures of a Discoverer

This was a new experience for me in the United States: I had seen friends' bands playing in Brazil, but this was the first time that I saw a band composed of friends of mine presenting a live concert here in the US. The Bad Hombres, a band made from former colleagues from Microsoft, made a one night only presentation at the Rendezvous in Seattle (a small concert venue which I hadn't been before, so another first!) and played a bunch of cool music, including a lot of hits from the 80's (since there were a lot of 80's kids in the crowd). This event brought together a bunch of old Brazilian friends, so this was a wonderful occasion indeed. As a bonus, it was the first time that I saw live someone playing the  keytar . This was really a night to remember. 

Yesterday I spent a great day hiking at the Maury Island Marine Park. Maury Island is yet another island in the Puget Sound, which is connected by a narrow isthmus to the larger Vashon Island, and that last one is accessible by ferry, making it easy to get to. The park was created where a gravel mine used to be, and you can still see some remnants of the old infrastructure. The day was cold but very sunny, with intense blue skies, that gave us amazing views of the waters and of Mt Rainier in the distance. We had an interesting soundtrack for the hike: nearby, there were a number of sea lions basking under the sun (unfortunately, we couldn't get close) and they were sounding their excitement. Some people were walking their dogs and interestingly enough, when the dogs barked, the sea lions would respond. This is a beautiful trail that you can make as long or as short as you want, so I recommend it to everybody.

This last Sunday (11/19/2023) night, I had the opportunity of watching a live concert of one of the bands that started this whole Grunge thing: Mudhoney. As you may imagine, the band was formed in Seattle around the 80's, and pioneered the kind of sound that later would be labeled as Grunge. In fact, a number of the more famous bands that came later, such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam, stated that they were inspired by what Mudhoney was doing. Differently than those bands, though, Mudhoney remained a small independent band and never had the kind of globe spanning success that those rock bands reached. All those years later they continue to perform in (almost) their original formation, and they continue to put out the kind of noisy loud sound that characterized that music style. Mudhoney and many of the other Grunge bands had their start at the old Crocodile in Seattle, so it was just proper that this concert was at the new (and improved) Crocodile. The crowd was wild, so much so that th

In a previous trip with the family, we stopped by a fruit store next to I-90, close to Thorp, WA. In addition to some very good strawberries and cherries, we saw something quite curious: a package containing a corncob which you could put in the microwave to make popcorn. So, popcorn in the cob. We decided to try it out! Unfortunately, I have to say that the results were not great. What we thought was the label turned out to be a bag, in which you insert the cob and then put the bag in the microwave. We let it stay in the microwave until the precise time indicated in the instructions, but the result was uneven at best: some kernels had not popped, so kernels popped but remained attached to the cob, some popped but apparently for a little bit too long and they were somewhat burned. The not many kernels that popped right didn't have the right texture and consistency you expect from popcorn, plus there was no butter flavor nor salt. So, as I said, not great. If you see this product som

AI seems to be all the rage these days: companies are trying to put "AI" into everything. Coca-Cola thought that it could get into it too, so... it released a new flavor of Coke "co-created with Artificial Intelligence". I tried it and... it tastes just like regular Coke, perhaps with some subtle different smell, but in the end it's a fizzy sugary drink just the same. I think that the biggest contribution of AI in this was telling the company to write "co-created with Artificial Intelligence" on the can.