Thomas's space

i know i haven’t posted in a while, and i have plenty to post, but i had to put this up:

after just checking out the root (one way i get outside of my msft/seattle bubble), i saw an article about a boy named derrion albert.

so i checked it out.

and, now i’m pissed, sad, and hurt at the same time.

i’m not at a point emotionally where i can say or comment on this incident. but, i want to do my part to make sure that people see and hear about this. please y’all: this stuff is real. do what you can to make a difference by praying and influencing the lives of those around you.

family dinner
scene: monday evening; elevator in my apartment building after letting in daniel, his parents (dave and ruth), and yasmin; my neighbor robert steps into elevator as well
robert: hey, is this your family, friends?
me: ummm…. yeah (with simultaneous thoughtful expression). yeah it is. this is my seattle family

so, after living in seattle for a year and eating countless meals at the seidels and andresens, i finally invited them all over for a meal at my place; i figure i can feed them once ;-). i baked some chicken breasts (with optional and recommended sweet baby ray’s hickory and brown sugar bbq sauce) and made my granny’s fried corn; dave (yasmin’s husband) made some broccoli and tempeh.
we ate, talked, laughed, shared; after spending time with both families, it was the first time i got them all together, and it was good times. they’ve had a significant impact on my adjustment to the seattle area and culture; my experience here would be dramatically different otherwise. i thank God for them

and, speaking of family, my momma ‘nem (mom, grandmama, aunt yvette, aunt brenda) are flying up to visit at the end of august. i’m excited! they will be my first real “visitors” since i’ve moved. and, my family family will get to meet my seattle family :-)

one year anniversary!
today (tuesday) is my one year anniversary at microsoft! it’s amazing that i’ve been on the IE team and been a part of IE8 release candidate, shipping IE8, and shipping Win7. and, i work on a great team with great people; i brought cookies in to celebrate, and quite a few dropped by my office to congratulate me. good times y’all.

and… my name is published
then, one of my co-workers saw me in the hallway and was like “hey, your name is mentioned in one of the w3c specs”. and, i checked it out, and he was right: me, one of the testers, and one of the program managers from IE are listed in acknowledgments for the cssom-view spec. i don’t know about y’all, but that’s hot.

well, so far, i’m doing a better job of keeping the blog up-to-date. i’m moving this weekend to another (much cheaper) apartment, so hit me up on the cell if you don’t see me online. holla!

so, ya boy went for his first real hike yesterday with some fellow microsofties (big shoutout to josh for putting it together!).

we went from this:

to this:
 

as you can see, the view is it’s a 8 mile round-trip hike, with an elevation of 4000 ft. so, it was rather steep at some points of the hike. the weather wasn’t that bad; it was a little cloudy in the morning, but the sun came out more later in the day. still, there are plenty of trees, tall trees that provided plenty of shade:

well, i ain’t got much to say about the hike, other than it was a fun experience (that i will definitely do again) and cool to meet some other folk. i hope the pictures do more of the talkin. otherwise, just hollatchboi :-)

i know, i know: it’s been a minute since i last posted. in fact, it’s been over two months :-/ but, here goes…

why i got the windows down?
because seattle in the summer time is spectacular. there are days upon days of sunshine without a cloud in the sky, views of the mountains (esp mt. rainier!), and no humidity. so, i been ridin with my windows down…
kinda like my boy thi’sl (reppin the S-T-L!!!!):
  

seattle rock’n’roll half-marathon
so, i ran the seattle rock’n’roll half-marathon at the end of june. my mentor from my first inroads internship at anheuser-busch, jeff bockhorn, flew up with his wife and another couple from da lou to run the full marathon. this was my first half-marathon and by far the biggest race i ran in: there were 25k people who ran the half or full marathon. jeff and i ran the first 9 miles together until the full marathon course split from the half. it was good times :-)
my hamstring, quads, and knees were killin me at the end of the race, but it felt good at the end to say that i ran a half marathon. i think i ran more in that race than i drive on a typical day.
anyway, i ended up finishing much faster than my expected time. my goal was 1:50:00, but i ran a 1:46:46! now, i’m amped and want to run another to run an even faster time. my results are posted here (my bib number was 5237 if it doesn't show up).
after the race, jeff, joanne, and i set out to be tourists. we went to snoqualmie falls, which is a waterfall out east of seattle towards the cascade mountains. that was my first time there and my first time seeing a waterfall. good times.
afterwards, we headed back to seattle to have lunch at skycity, the restaurant at the top of the space needle (jeff’s treat!). the restaurant rotates so that you get an entire view of the city during the meal. i went when i came for my msft interview back in nov ‘07, but the view was overcast that day. but, this time, the view was awesome. one of my pics are above.

checkin out local seattle christian hip-hop artists
i miss my people in stl: nethra denise, born2di, mikeREAL; and some other ppl that i know of but don’t know personally: j.r., rio, j’son, jae, thi’sl. so, i been tryna see what artists are here in the northwest. i got a chance to hear two bruhs a couple of weeks ago: jazz digga and willie will. i don’t know too much behind their names, but there songs are hot!

win7
windows 7 is lookin real good and (imho) the best operating system ever. for all the vista haters out there (myself included), give win7 a chance. not just because i got some code in it :-P but because it looks good and works good. i’m running it on my laptop even as i blog right now and it’s just great. i think it’s supposed to hit the stores in october (although i saw amazon has some pre-order deals goin on).

mrs. seidel’s cinnamon rolls
so, the past few days, i’ve been kickin it with the seidels. and, i just so happen to be there friday evening when she was preparing her cinnamon rolls to bake the next morning. she made a big pan of them, but, she also made me a small to-go container (actually, two of ‘em :-) to bake on my own. so, saturday morning, i baked mine and it was a glorious morning, glorious enough for me to blog about it. if y’all could’ve seen how much butter and cinnamon she slapped in them cinnamon rolls (pause, while i wipe the drool from my lips)…

well, that’s a piece of what’s been goin on with me. i keep sayin this, but i’m gonna do better to post more often (as in, more than 2 months at a time). i’d love to hear from y’all. holla!