Rough Winter

Ken Hinckley — Tue, 13 May 2008 02:35:00 GMT

I spent the weekend at Snoqualmie pass. Winter has certainly not yet relinquished its grip on the Cascade Crest. Here's some of the sights done AlpineInker style.

Here's a car that someone left parked for the winter. That probably wasn't a good idea. It's been crushed like an empty can of cheap beer. When this much snow piles up, it pancakes down - hard as concrete and twice as heavy.

Despite what these pictures suggest, quite a bit of the snow has melted. I could not see any daylight at all out my shattered kitchen window the last time I was there. The bottom of that window is about 15 feet above grade level. We lost a window on the north side of the house too. First time that ever happened...

It's been a rough winter in the Alpental valley.

Winter 2007-2008
Date of First Measurable snowfall 10/19/07
October snowfall           2
November snowfall      24
December snowfall    180
January snowfall        149
February snowfall        90
March snowfall          101
April snowfall              61
May snowfall               1
              Total         608

That's 50 FEET of snow kiddos!

Even the highway web-cams have suffered! "I fought an avalanche and the avalanche won. This camera was so badly damaged we can't repair it until this summer."

Mother's day was no exception. More snow.

Here's my wife taking the twins for a walk. Today they learned a new word: Snow!

Rule #1: No parking. Rule #2: NO PARKING!

This is, or rather was, my kitchen window...

...But there's no place I'd rather be.

Pile It On!

Ken Hinckley — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:09:00 GMT

Well, InkSeine is finally out the door, and you can install it here. The Microsoft Research web site also has posted a feature story about InkSeine.

We're getting a ton of helpful feedback, particularly in the GottaBeMobile forums thread for InkSeine. Keep it coming! It is really helpful to us to see what parts of the application people get excited about, or frustrated with.

My inbox is also quickly piling up with layer upon layer of comments, questions, and ideas. Feedback is accumulating fast and deep, and I like it that way!

In fact, Mother Nature has provided me with a perfect analogy for this situation:

What is that, you might ask? Well, that is all that's left of my poor cabin. That snow berm on the peak of the roof is about 12-15 feet high. It has been a very wild, stormy winter on the Cascade Crest. In a previous post, I reported 234 inches of snow in 40 days. Well, after brief respite in January, another 90 inches fell in six days. And then another 95 inches piled on top of that.

These non-stop storms led to the best excuse I have ever seen for a webcam not functioning correctly:

So there you have it. I want my InkSeine Inbox to feel just like that-- with ideas, reflections, questions, and complaints about what we could do better -- all piling up as much as possible!

But if you get an out-of-office message from me that looks like this error message, then you'll know all those great emails floating down from the sky have finally avalanched out of control on me!

The AlpineInker : InkSeine, Alpine

Rough Winter

Pile It On!