I started my new job at Amazon three weeks ago, working on Elastic Compute Cloud.
In order to help learn the product I’ve just moved my blog (and a few other things) over to an EC2 instance. The instance is in the new US West region and is using the new Boot from EBS feature. I’ve also created a large EBS image for backing up files from my Macbook. Both of these EBS images can easily be backed up to S3 via the snapshot feature and, most importantly, it is very easy to restore from a snapshots to a new running instance (so many backup mechanisms handle restore poorly).
Long story short: the stuff I’m going to be working on is pretty neat.
For those of you not on Facebook, the following gallery of images from our Montana trip should be viewable:
I bought a 2010 Subaru Forester 2.5X Premium yesterday. I wish the color was a bit darker but I wanted to stick with the model with manual transmission.
It is nice to have a car with functioning windows and doors! And all the other nice features that newer cars have.
A quick picture from our porch this morning:
Our wedding was a week ago. August 1st. That should be easy to remember.
We whispered our vows to each other during the ceremony because we are both too shy to say them in front of a group. I joked that we’d post them on our blogs later. Not sure I’m ready to do that. I barely even remember saying them.
The gist of my vows was what an amazing woman Shanti is and how lucky I am to get to spend the rest of my life with her. She’s so beautiful and smart and yet also so tough and adventurous and resourceful. There doesn’t seem to be anything that she can’t do if she sets her mind to it. I was certain that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Shanti shortly after meeting her.
I couldn’t imagine a better wedding for us. The setting was beautiful and the ceremony was very natural. I never once felt like we were doing something just because we should. We simply spent the weekend doing things we love.
Our friends and family are what really made the wedding work. Thank you Joe for officiating the ceremony. Thank you Nathan and Brian for taking such amazing photographs. Thank you Becky for the beautiful cake. Thank you Andrew and Abby for preparing the food. Thank you Jen, Jennifer, Mom, Carol, Wyatt, and Stacey for the nice words during the ceremony. And thank you to everyone for helping out and putting up with the long drive and the hot weather!
I’m selling my 8″ Dobsonian telescope. I’ll probably be asking about $150 and might make it $100 if any friends are interested. It is a great telescope if you have an SUV to haul it around in. It’s about 4 feet tall and the base is very bulky. That’s the downside of a telescope that gathers that much light for that price. I’ll just be using a set of 15×70 binoculars for the 2-3 times a year that I actually look at stars (worked great last weekend).
I’ll probably sell my 15″ Macbook Pro. I just bought one of the new aluminum Macbooks and really don’t need two machines (rather, my iPhone has become my second machine).
Also selling my car (in order to buy a new/newer one). I will probably sell my motorcycle, too. I didn’t ride for a couple years and really felt like getting back into it. But I just don’t ride it enough. Part of that is the bike (not as fun as I thought it would be) and part of that is simply having a million other things to do.
My new favorite iPhone app is Lose It. You start by putting in your current weight and your target weight and how many pounds per week you’d like to lose. Then it shows you how many calories you can eat per day and has a nice interface for adding your calorie intake (food) and any calories you burn over the baseline (exercise). There is a weekly view that makes it easy to go over a bit on Saturday due to a dinner party but then make up for it with a Sunday run.
If I remember correctly, the app is even free.
My only complaint is with its food database. Every time I search for something I end up getting lots of fast/processed/packaged/frozen options. And the entries often seem to be too low. But it is fairly easy to simply increase the portions to account for that.
The Georgetown Ballroom is our first choice for the wedding reception/party venue. I stopped in recently when SANCA had an event there. Very nice space. It would definitely be big enough even if we invited everyone we knew. And the location might allow for interesting possibilities of meeting up early, splitting up into groups to go get food (I’m thinking we’ll just do appetizers/snacks), and then coming back to drink. The only questions are availability and price.
E*TRADE seems to be the latest company to employ the “charge a periodic fee and make closing an account painful” business model. Their site claims that they currently don’t support closing accounts online, though they expect “to offer this service in the future”. But a web search returns all sorts of information about how people have closed their accounts online. Presumably this was before they were awakened to the power of this new business model.
Actually, it is surprising how many people out there are unhappy with E*TRADE.
Update: Turns out E*TRADE has an office in downtown Seattle. It was surprisingly easy to close my account. In fact, they didn’t even ask for any form of ID, which is strange.
We went on a nice hike yesterday. We gained over 2000 feet in elevation and ate lunch on the rocks next to a small lake. The total time was about 5 hours, so about 4 hours and 20 minutes of hiking time. I think the elevation was about 4500 feet. There were still a few patches of snow on the trail.
When we got back I looked up how many calories I burned. Despite being exhausted, I was surprised to find that I burned between 2500 and 3000.
I’ve been tracking my calories closely for a few months and it has helped me lose 14 pounds, but I’ve been stuck at my current weight for more than a month. My eating habits are pretty good but I haven’t exercised much in the past 9 month. Adding up the calories I consume and the calories it should take to sustain my weight shows clearly that my metabolism is a bit slow due to the lack of physical activity.
Besides feeling great last night because of the exercise, I was excited to find out how helpful a hike like that could be towards losing weight. The hike basically erased an entire day’s worth of calories. I should lose approximately 2/3 of a pound for every day like that.
I’m definitely going to go on more long hikes in the future.
I use Jungle Disk to do offsite backups. The product is pretty cool, despite the fact that I’ve had to work around issues a few times.
However, last time I upgraded and changed my backup configuration it decided that my backups were going to go through Jungle Disk and they were going to charge me for storing my files. I have no recollection of ever selecting any such option or feature. I still had to put in my Amazon S3 keys and pick a bucket name.
I think I got signed up for their Jungle Disk Plus feature, though when I go to their site and check my account, it claims I’m not actually signed up for that service.
The charges seem to be the same as what Amazon charges, so it isn’t really a matter of money. It is just annoying to have someone inject themselves into your monthly budget without any (obvious) notice.
