Henry Rose

I owned a condo in Fremont for about two years and made a healthy profit on it.  Or at least what I thought was a healthy profit, I bought it for about $120k and sold it for about $185k.  Not too shabby for a kid that’s a whole lot better at programming computers than he is at selling houses.

But after reading this article on the Zillow Blog about how Donald Trump sold his house for an $58.5 Million dollar profit I just don’t feel as cool. By the way, it’s not considered procrastinating if it’s your employer’s corporate blog.

I may never have the Donald’s hair and I may never own a helicopter, but some day I would like to have a house on the beach.  Of course if I’m lucky, mine will be something more like this house for sale on Lake Wenatchee.

Well i suppose i ought qualify that. Sucia Island is my second favorite major island in the San Juans … i guess that narrows it down quite a bit more.

Saturday morning my Father, my friend Andrew and I loaded on the Dorothy Rose for a fantastic one night trip out to Sucia. We left Cap Sante Marina at roughly 11:00 on Saturday and took about 5 hours to motor north and into Echo Bay.  The trip north along Lummi Island is stunningly beautiful.  Lummi rises much more steeply from the water than the other islands in the San Juans and the misty afternoon made it feel like we were in a truly magical land.

Upon setting the anchor in Echo Bay, Andrew and I took to the shore for a walk to the north eastern corner of the island. After a spirited hour of walking we’d gone to the end and back leaving us quite ready for our dinner.

Back on the boat we enjoyed some delicious steaks that were supposedly cut from cows raised with the highest of social and environmental standards. The steaks were accompanied by some delicious rolls from La Vie En Rose bakery in Anacortes and a great bottle of Shiraz that we’d picked up at Compass Wines.

The trip home found us in sunshine and a healthy 20kt breeze.  Naturally the breeze was right on our bow so we spent much of the day close hauled, rail under even with a first reef on.   Such conditions make for exciting sailing, but they also make for excellent napping in the leeward bunks.

Later in the afternoon the wind calmed to 5-10kts and I was able to enjoy a nap on deck under full sail, quite a treat in June.

Sucia is a wonderful destination for a number of reasons. Anchorages are plentiful and one can always find a place in large Echo Bay.  There are several smaller nooks that hold fewer boats but provide truly excellent scenery.

Shoreside one can enjoy a variety of trails all over the sizeable island.

My first big SEO victory came today when SEO Guru  Peter Quinlan pointed out that I know rank at #1 for the term “henry rose”.

If you care even slightly about seo you can check it out and some other stuff about how websites work over at Mechanical Turducken.

I should also mention that i’m legitmately sorry for pushing my tweets on to this blog. It was a sad attempt at keeping this thing fresh. I know Pete was getting a double dose of boring and self indulgent Twitter action, and that blows.

Deep in my heart I actually think I’m a pretty good writer.  Sure i spit a lot of crap out on to the internet, but when pressed I think I can actually write quite effectively.

Of course if one never writes, ones writing will suffer. It’s possible I’ve spent too much time in the last three years focusing on not forgetting how to ride a bike (despite the old adage that you can’t) and not enough time polishing the old brain.

If I were to make some bold proclamation about how I am going to start blogging regularly now to better my writing and keep the old brain functioning my dear readers would surely cry out that they’ve heard such promises before and are not convinced.

I think part of my problem has always been that I want to blog about the technical stuff that I do, but I’m terrified of getting something wrong and getting called out on it.  Of course that’s the wrong approach, I ought to throw my thoughts out to the Internet and embrace any feedback i get. Right.

Over the last few months <a href=”http://www.marketingmason.com/blog/”>Peter</a>, the SEO manager at Zillow, has been teaching me a bit about SEO. It’s a fascinating game that can bring in big money if you’re good and you’ve got no morals.  Anyway all this talk of SEO has inspired me to write more frequently for frequent updates make google smile upon you.

One of the things i’ve been playing with is this website.  By no skill of my own I currently rank #2 when you type in “Henry Rose”.  My great success is the tagline that google shows “Henry Rose is a man who enjoys a turducken Sandwich. Of course this is just a meta description tag, but still exciting to me as it’s my first success in manipulating the GOOG.

To cut to the chase i made another boring and self indulgent blog (exactly what this world needs).  This one i’m only going to write about the internet on. The idea is to give tips for those just getting started as their the ones that can use my knowledge the most.

I ask any readers with a technical bent to call me out on my bullshit over on my new blog about how websites work. And if anybody has something they’d like to contribute (a shocking concept i know) let me know. I’d happily give you an account.

box carnage in my head.

Blue sky at uw graduation. Also, flask in hand.

nobody cones

hipsters hipsters everywhere, I think I’ll have a drink.

Tap the Rockies. @clango are you coming to snoop? I’ve still got your ticket.