Author: Tristan Pipo

An update for a neglected blog

I keep forgetting I have this blog and I need to spend more time writing on it. I don’t know why I don’t make it more of a priority. I have my iPad and could write on that or I could use my iPhone and write quick little posts. But I tend to enjoy more of a long form style. But writing long form takes more time. Which is not something I want to do when I am on a computer all day at work.

I bought a new domain for this site you can use if you would like http://tristanp.com I also have http://tristan.pipo.me which I thought could be new domain names if I ever want to migrate.

I really miss the whole community around blogging and people coming to my site. I guess that happens when you are an adult and work the 9-5 and have stuff to do. But I will do my best to write more about that soon. But just wanted to check in with everyone and wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.

Something you didn’t know.

When I was living on Bainbridge Island and commuting back and forth across the ferry everyday I was one tired dude. I would need to be on the 6:20am ferry out of Bainbridge to get to Seattle by 7am and walk 2 miles to work everyday. Then 2 miles after work when I got off at 5pm to be on the 6:30pm ferry out of Seattle. I was not getting much sleep and when I had to walk the few blocks uphill from the Ferry i would need to get psyched up. Having my iPod with me I would get motivated to walk up the hill by playing the Superman Theme. The wonderful piece composed by John Williams. If you have not heard you are living in cave. YouTube link is below.

I loved superman as a child. I had superman pajamas with the cape that attached with velcro. I would spin around the room constantly. Climb up on chairs and jump off with the hopes that I would be able to fly. When I didn’t have on superman pajamas it was towels or blankets as makeshift capes.

But being 23-26 I couldn’t put on a cape and just dart off the ferry with commuters. I had to move at a brisk pace while being beyond exhausted. John Williams composed a brilliant piece of music that inspired me.

It got me home and thank you for taking the time to read a little bit about me.

10 Year High School Reunion – Part 2 (The Event)

Ahh to be back and refreshed. Another beautiful Seattle day. Kinda like the day of the reunion. So I sit around and wait at the ferry. Meet up with my lovely company for the evening and I send out some texts to get a status check on everyone. Seems like everyone bailed for catching the 3pm boat out of Seattle to Bremerton.

So sitting on the ferry I am derping around on my iPad. The ferry begins to leave the dock and the doors are open allowing for a nice breeze to come into the cabin. It hits the back of my head and I get an amazing chill. I hear two women sitting behind me say “It just got cold in here I wonder where it’s coming from” I wanted to laugh because I had just said “Man that breeze feels amazing” I guess they don’t pay attention. Then one them started to play on their phone. It was making all kinds of beeping sounds. A woman sitting another bench back looks up at me because I am on my iPad and says “Is that you making all that noise?” I said no my iPad is on silent it’s the women behind me making all the noise. She went “Ohhhh” This woman didn’t seem to take shit from anyone and she said she told some girls dancing one time to knock it off. Silence is golden. She got up and moved a few minutes later. It always drives me nuts when people have alerts on their phone turned on. I keep mine on vibrate and don’t even bother with custom ring tones for anyone.

So we dock and hit up starbucks and then walk around Bremerton to find the hotel. Wanting to feel like a pimp for this I got the highest end room possible on the Bremerton waterfront. Shockingly this was only $170 for the night. Go Bremerton Marriott. Check in take a shower and get dressed for the evening. While we are hanging out waiting for Darin to get back from his afternoon with Kacey. We ponder where to go for a meal. Since Anthony’s is right there on the Bremerton waterfront we hit up the Happy Hour. The service was great for getting drinks and the meal was pretty darn good. The coolest part about this restaurant was the fact they have a TV above the urinal. So you are using the bathroom and you can watch TV. After this we take some pictures with Darin’s crazy camera and then head over to the reunion.

It was kinda cool to walk and start seeing people I knew and many faces that I didn’t. There was some food going around but I really wasn’t going to have any of it. I went and found an empty side of the room and people just started walking up saying. “Hello” and “How are you” got a few what have you been up to. But I was mostly trying to make conversation with everyone else. Ask about life the past 10 years. Most of the stories involved people working or having children. I didn’t hear anything like “Oh I went to India for 5 years and found a new way to build wells for local villages” But maybe I ask a bit too much. But would have been cool to hear. But basically everyone has been doing the same thing I had been doing. Trying to stabilize themselves.

It was interesting to observe the crowd I pretty much just spoke to the people I knew in high school but hadn’t seen since then. Which was pretty cool caught and so forth. But the night went on and tried to walk around and speak with everyone. But I really wasn’t feeling most of it. Had some drinks and noticed that everyone just kinda grew back into place. Everyone was doing the same thing I was doing. Just talking with the people they talked to in high school. I don’t regret going at all and had a really good time.

One of the best parts of the evening was when we left the building and went down the street and found a pizza place that left out all of the outdoor seating. Took a seat with a few buddies and chatted everyone up that went walking by. Got some kudos for putting together the site. We also got invited to some redneck bar to go have some drinks. But I was pretty tired fitbit said I logged over 13,000 steps that day which is pretty awesome. When everyone seemed to have vanished went back to the hotel and passed out and woke up early got some breakfast. Hopped on the Bremerton ferry back to Seattle on a lovely seattle drizzly day.

I apologize that this took so long to get published. I had forgotten to hit the publish button. But it’s out there now and I hope all is well with everyone.

 

 

10 Year High School Reunion – Part 1 (The Day)

Hello to my ignored blog readers. I always seem to find that I want to blog more but lack the time to do so. So I thought I would bust out my bluetooth keyboard and my iPad while sitting here during my lunch in the courtyard here at work. It’s partly cloudy and figured it would be a good scenario so lets hope I can get this out before lunch is over.

So last Saturday (July 30th) I went to my 10 year high school reunion. I couldn’t believe it’s been 10 years since I last walked out of the doors of my high school. In high school I really wasn’t much of anything. I was the nerdy kid who was friendly that it seemed like everyone knew existed but didn’t really know. I wasn’t the best student and by far from the worst. I was just Tristan Pipo the kid like every other finding a path in life.

Many months ago I got a Facebook request to join a group for the 10 year high school reunion that started out in an interesting fashion. It appeared that nobody had any real plan for this thing and nobody was exactly sure who was going to take charge. So there was a great deal of time spend wondering where and when. It seemed that almost every day there was a new message asking “Where is this going to be held and when.”

I did some things to try and help out a bit. I posted the video of the slideshow from when we were all seniors. Since it was one of the first videos I had used when I began the great conversion process of making all the old home movies into digital copies. Since YouTube doesn’t allow for long form videos. I got a Vimeo Pro account and posted it on the website. That was pretty cool to see that video again.

So lurking around the group on Facebook somebody mentioned that there should be a non Facebook page for this. So I used one of my free domain tokens I have collected over the years and bought a domain name and setup a wordpress blog similar to this one you are reading now. I put all of the details on the site and built some maps and all of that fun stuff for everyone to use. We will need to find a new purpose for the site. Right now I am working on collecting all of the pictures from the night.

So before the reunion happened I decided I need to look like a god damn pimp for this thing. I was thinking people are going to be asking what I have been doing all this time. So I had to get my facts in order since some people are fact checkers. Finished High School. Moved to Indiana for a girl. Went to school. Came back because girl broke it off. Worked in Grocery Store. Got internship. Life = Good. But needed some clothes to make sure life is good. So I went and got some dress shoes. Which is hard when you wear size 17-18 shoes. Some designer jeans a dress shirt and a sport coat. Felt kinda pimp.

So planning and clothing was taken care of. At this point needed to get a Hotel since this was in Bremerton. That wasn’t a big deal looked up on Kayak what Hotels are in the area. Did a comparison with Yelp. Found the hotel with the highest ratings. My buddy asked if he could stay with us. Got the largest hotel room the place had to offer. It was a 2 bedroom 1 bath suite it was kinda nice. Thanks to the Marriott in Bremerton for giving us a cool place to chill.

So the day of the reunion comes and it was a rather packed day. I get up at 6:30 and shower and get ready. Get dressed and hop on the bus to downtown. Downtown was rather busy at 7:30am because of the preparation for the Seafair parade. If you are not from Seattle Seafair is the yearly summer event when everyone seems to have a great deal of pride about the city. Then you wish you had a friend with a really bitching boat to go watch the Hydroplanes the weekend after the parade while the Blue Angels do their thing.

So I get downtown and head down to the Bus Tunnel to go down to meet Darin at the airport. I get there early and figure I got some time. Go fill up my water bottle hit up the restroom. Check my phone “Plane landed 10 minutes early” get a text “Hey I’m here. Meet you at 69 coins.” So I walk over to the restaurant which is really called 13 Coins and I wait outside. I see him walk up and give that weird Bro hug action. So we proceed into the restaurant and they tried to give us this dark hole in the wall seat. I wonder what inspires hostesses to that kinda thing. Why would anyone want that seat when you have a dozen plus booths open and ready to be consumed in. We catch up and talk about tonight and I order a steak and eggs he gets a sausage omelet. I have been trying to make an active effort to like eggs. Since I enjoy them in Phad Thai and things like fried rice I have been trying breakfasts with scrambled eggs. So far I have been doing okay. So we finish breakfast and hop on the light rail.

We get to Seattle and begin to think “Bwa ha ha the world is ours to command!” I look at him “So what do you want to do?” he says “I don’t know” last time Darin was in town we didn’t get to do a whole lot since it was raining and rather miserable. So this time we had to do all the things.

So we go check out Pike Place and everything that the town has to offer. When we look at the clock and decide that we need to get him to the ferry so that he can go see a friend of his. If you remember many years ago I talked about our friend Kacey and hanging out with her. I had to wait in Seattle for some people so we get him on the ferry and then I go walk over to Ivars and walk into the bar and hang out for the hour that I have. I am enjoying a Manhattan and get a text that I need to get over to the ferry. I do so and stop by the McDonalds to get a $1 Unsweetened Ice Tea.

For some reason I feel like this is a good place to stop on the brief summary of the day. I feel like this post has lost it’s humor as it’s just now a general outline of the day. I will write a 2nd post that describes the lovely evening that follows. Thanks for reading.

Post #1057 – Social Networking

Having been around the internet a few times and seeing things come and go I have made a few observations about social networks. This first major site I ever joined up on was MySpace in 2002 or 2003 I can’t exactly recall. But since the beginning of the site I thought it was doomed to fail. It was slow and cumbersome and it put the major design elements at the hands of the user. Which for me took the site back to the days of the mid 90’s when glitter and background music was the “cool” thing to do. But if you wanted to connect with people it was the place to be. It seemed like a place to sell yourself online and I was never a huge fan of that platform.

I opted to setup my own site because I figured that would be where things would be going. So the first domain name I ever purchased was xmdude.com and I used blogger as the blogging platform. Because I thought XM satellite radio was the most amazing thing on earth. Mainly because I was in Indiana and well the radio and music variety was rather limited. I then moved to Sirius satellite radio and got rather bored with that after I moved back to Seattle. So I got tristanpipo.com. Lately I have been debating moving away from tristanpipo.com to pipo.me or something like tristan.pipo.me as a domain name. But save that debate for a future post.

But lately I have felt like blogging isn’t really my style I like the short little quips that I can post on twitter from my iPhone or iPad. I enjoy the interaction from twitter and reading about a whole group of strangers. I have some friends that I know on there in real life and always enjoy that experience. I feel like twitter is a hive mind of people that I want to follow. Since I prefer twitter I have it update the other social network platform that is the king of the world at the moment Facebook.

Facebook does okay but I feel like there is so much garbage to dig out of. I find myself blocking every app under the sun so I don’t get flooded with the annoyances of people playing the pointless games. If you have an obligation to a farm in the computer I think your mind isn’t in the right place to push the human race forward. But people are kinda either in the Facebook camp or the Twitter bandwagon.

I feel like the intelligence level on twitter is a great deal higher. For some reason people view it as being more complicated then Facebook. When I see it as just the opposite. Twitter you sign up and all you get is a text box for 140 characters to say whatever. You can mention people in a response and follow people for the latest news. You can either be totally private or not and it’s settings screen is rather simple.

Facebook on the other hand is a giant complicated mess. Have you gone to look at the privacy settings? There are so many things you need to configure on there it’s a rather large pain in the ass and then you have all the clutter all over the page and updates and so forth. But to each their own.

There is a new trend lately “Checking In” at locations which is something I tried for a while. The services I used are Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp. I find these to be annoying getting updates as to what people are doing. The main thought I have when people use these services. Oh so and so is out and broadcasting it to the world. Other people can see this and they are not as honest as myself. I hope that person doesn’t get robbed. Or the other thing I tend to observe “Hey! Hey! Look at me! I am pumping gas or I am buying this” nobody really cares so I don’t bother. Why not check in somewhere cool? I would prefer to see things like “I just got into a fight with a ninja unicorn in Las Vegas at the top of the Luxor here is a picture” but sadly it’s people pumping gas or having dinner.

I guess in the end it’s all about feeling like we are all important. We all are important in different ways but I think posting about how we are doing mediocre things is kinda lame. Probably just like this blog post is rather lame. But if you would like to follow my random encounters with life as they happen you can check me out on twitter.

http://twitter.com/tristanpipo

Or if you would like to see all my social networking links they are in the sidebar or at http://about.me/tristanpipo

Thanks for reading

 

2 Weeks with the iPad

I have been a proud owner of the new iPad 2 for two weeks now. I must say this is one incredible device. I never owned the iPad 1 because I felt it was lacking in a few features and by the time they got enabled in software last November. So I figured might as well wait for the 2nd generation iPad. I am glad I did the device is thinner lighter and same battery life as the previous iPad. It has 2 cameras and it’s a complete complement to my already Mac life.

When I first saw the iPad I didn’t really understand the point as it seemed like a large iPod Touch. But after using it you find that it isn’t really as applications are designed around the larger screen real estate. For an example I use this app called Deliveries to keep track of my Amazon.com orders and just see where things are in the world or when I should be expecting them.

iPhone

iPad

The larger screen makes for a much more functional app from the get go I can see all the details at once instead of having to tap into each delivery like I do on the iPhone. This is just one benefit in one app as many others have different and great features when used on the iPad. I am shocked that Facebook doesn’t have a native iPad app. I had to go find an alternative for $1.99.

I would rather pay for an app then be forced to look at Ads. But I must say if you want a device that you can use while watching TV to control your TV the iPad is one killer device. If you have any questions please let me know and I will be happy to answer them.

Some Tech Updates

I started actually looking at the site tonight and noticed that every single twitter weekly update gets logged into the “blog” category. I could see how that could get annoying if you just want to filter on actual real blog posts so I am working on cleaning up the database to put these updates into a “twitter” category .

There are several of these to do and I I will see if I can find a way to automate this using phpMyAdmin but who knows will probably just edit it all by hand as I have time.

I will need to write Jury Duty Day 2 as that was a rather interesting day as I had to go into an actual court room. Good times will work on that soon.

Removal of Podcasts

Hey Everyone! It’s been a few years since I have taken the time to record a podcast. I ran a google search on my name and found that they had been linked to on a number of external sites. So I opted to remove them all from the site. They are backed up safely and perhaps someday they shall return. Perhaps I shall get back into podcasting sometime in the future.

But only time will tell. Right now the time is telling me to go to bed. I shall be updating soon.

-Tristan

Jury Duty 2011 – Day 1

Back in 2007 I got asked to come in for Jury Duty when I was living on Bainbridge Island. I wrote a recap of the entire experience and got asked if I could revise it for the Kitsap County paper the Bremerton Sun. Now known as the Kitsap Sun which was probably one of my favorite experiences of this blog. Sadly that article is gone from the website but it was a fun experience. If you would like to view the recap you can find it here.

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My first jury duty experience was in the lovely but odd town of Port Orchard, WA. It has been rather different then Seattle. First of all in Kitsap they had a selection of like 40 people maybe. In Seattle you sit in a room that extends for what seems like forever. Here is a picture.

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So in Kitsap everyone was in the pool. In Seattle everyone gathers in this room and nobody has been selected for anything. So my first day you are required to check in my 8am. This didn’t really seem to have a point since people kept flowing in all the way up until 9:00 or so. Then a judge came in and spoke to us about what Jury Duty involved. He also read a letter from a juror that talked about how he wanted to kill himself after being on a jury for a period of time. That really didn’t seem like a good way to start off the day.

After that experience we had to watch a video about Jury Duty. I would hate to be the person that has to edit or produce those kind of videos. Because there is no way to make that kind of thing interesting. So after that point we had to wait.

Then we had to wait some more.

Then we got a 15 minute break from waiting. During that break we had to wait.

Then we waited until 11:30 and told we had 2hrs for lunch. I spent my lunch walking over to the Columbia Tower and pondering how to keep my sanity with all this waiting. I went to this place called “Sub Shop” had a Turkey Cranberry. It really wasn’t what I was expecting.

If you want the best turkey sandwich in the world I highly recommend you get into some form of transportation. Arrive in Poulsbo, WA and go to central market. Go right up to the Deli and get a Turkey Cranberry sandwich. It will change your sandwich world. My best friend Preston turned me onto it. The only woman that I had ever said  “I love you” without being romantically involved with was one that bought me this sandwich. If you want to get on my best possible side this sandwich will do it.

The turkey cranberry sandwich I had today at the Sub Shop was not even close to that sandwich. It wasn’t even worthy to have the same name. But that all doesn’t really matter as that killed an hour for lunch. So I had freedom for another hour. But I felt like a bit of a tool sitting alone in the Columbia tower. I think I shall attempt to try something else tomorrow when I go back.

So back on the story. I go back to the jury room to wait. So it’s 12:45 and sitting around waiting. <<There was going to be a story here about the woman that sat down across from me. But I don’t know how to present it in a nice non judgmental way.>>

So at the beginning of this whole thing they told us the days went from 8:00am-4:30pm so I decided to try and take a nap. This didn’t work out so well as it’s not really a room that is setup for comfort. So we waited.

Waited some more and then at 3:00pm they announced that they needed a pool of 50 jurors for a particular judge. So they started reading off names and I was like I hope I don’t get this one as there is 90 minutes left in my day. But they get to the high 30’s and I think I am free. Nope not at all I get called ##. Shoot.

So we get to fill out a “bio” card and I trade that in for a laminated piece of paper with a # on it. So with the other groups they gave them a card and you sit around and wait. 3:30 rolls around and still waiting they announce they don’t have time and anyone with a number can go home for the day but come back tomorrow.

So I was like sweet and booked the hell out of there. Found where the bus picks up and headed home. We shall see what tomorrow holds.