In Portland

Hey... in Portland now. We are staying at The Mark Spencer Hotel. This is an old building, right in the midst of a bunch of gay bars. They charge something like $8 a day for internet access, but thankfully the ACE Hotel right across the street is broadcasting free WIFI. Stupid Mark Spencer Hotel!

We had dinner at Harvey's Brew Pup tonight. Good Orange Chicken. Then we check out some of the local gay bars. They were quite at first. Of course Joe and I found the local gay strip bar, Silverados. It's actually a really nice bar. Across the street is the Eagle, which actually feels like a Leather bar (unlike the Mpls Eagle), but it was empty for most of the night. Before I left the Eagle, three drunk guys came in. They were actually pretty hot (one guy, Mikey, is this short muscular guy with BIG hands). Mikey and his pall Scott started dancing on the bar for some reason (I think they had just come from Silverados) and taking off their shirts. Then Scott fell off the bar. OUCH! He was ok, just shaken up. They left and I headed back over to Silversados to check on Joe. There was this one lean dancer who was covered in really great ink. I was really enjoying watching him dance.

Now we're back at the hotel on our borrowed WIFI. Time to crash so we can go sight seeing tomorrow. G'night.

Lazy in Portland

So far today we've just been taking it easy. As I mentioned earlier, we had lunch at blue, and then we shopped at Powells bookstore, which is a wonderful place! I bought all of the Artemis Fowl books that I was missing, in hard cover first editions, for really cheap. Now I just need to get them home. Having Powells back home would be a dangerous thing indeed!

I also stopped at a home audio/video store to ask them about how to transfer HD video around the house. THe guy suggested I use Baluns, which convert component video into CAT5. I would need one on each end. When I get home I'll do more research on these. I think the big question is whether I can do home networking over the CAT5 at the same time as using it for HD.

I also asked him what he would recommend for a central AV/Network/Phone hub. He mentioned something called Leviton, which I'll need to spend more time reviewing.

Damon had a phone interview at 3:30 or 4pm, which he expect would last and hour or more, so we haven't gone out to see to much of Portland yet. I think Joe and I are just going to hop on a streetcar and look around for a while.

Shangaied

We just scheduled a tour of the "Portland Underground," aka "Shanhai Tunnels," for tomorrow night. I think this looks really cool. And it isn't just the normal tour, its the ghost tour!