On the advice of the ever-helpful Chuck Goolsbee of Digital Forest (a great ISP and co-location facility, by the way), I headed up I-5 to the West Seattle Bridge and over to Harbor Avenue to check out Salty’s on Alki Beach. Chuck also recommended Ray’s Boathouse, but I’ve gone there the last two times I was in town. Not to say I don’t like Ray’s–quite the contrary. Just wanted to try something new.

Salty’s bills themselves as the “Best View of Seattle in Seattle®” and I have to say, it was pretty awesome. The weather was almost hot and way too sunny for rainy Seattle, so sunglasses were the name of the game on the outdoor patio today (they even would bring you some if you wanted).

I always feel stupid not ordering seafood in a coastal town, but Walleye is the only fish I really love and I get pretty damn good Walleye in Minnesota. This menu item caught my eye, however:

“Land and Sea”
4-ounce Filet, Red Wine Demi-Glace, Crispy Fried Onions, 4-ounce Salmon or Halibut, Champagne Beurre Blanc, Lemon Caper Relish, Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, House Vegetables

Expensive, but I worked right through lunch installing servers, so it was totally worth it in my mind. If I hadn’t been so hot sitting in the sun, I would have tried one of their signature desserts too–the white chocolate mousse cake sounded especially good.

Good excuse to go back again, though, right?

Part of the reason I haven’t been posting much lately is the project I completed today. In anticipation of the new Los Angeles school, I decided some of our server equipment at work needed to be repositioned and reconfigured. It sounded like a good idea at the time (and I think will be long-term), but it took a lot of planning to pull off.

In a nutshell, I moved two servers from St. Paul to Seattle, pulled a large network storage device out of Seattle to be sent back to Minnesota, reconfigured the remaining St. Paul server to match what I need to do for the new Los Angeles server and upgraded memory across the board.

Kudos to my favorite Minnesota airline, who not only were on time with great in-flight service, but also managed to get all my gear to Seattle in one piece. I panicked on Sunday night when the Anvil case I planned to use fit the two servers fine, but weighed more than 100 pounds (Sun Country’s stated limit).

My anxiety over getting the stuff to Seattle caused me to get very little sleep Saturday night and I woke up before my 5am alarm. I removed one server from the case and took it to the airport counter and asked if I could carry it on. The helpful agent didn’t think it would fit in the overhead, but she said to just put it back in the case and check it as oversized (for a $40 charge). I told her it had to be over 100 pounds and she said, “we don’t have scales here.”

Poor, poor ground workers…

Also have to give props to National Car Rental and their agent in Seattle who found the car with the biggest trunk and helped load that big, honkin’ case in there. I just love the National Emerald Aisle service–one less stressful thing in the travel world is something worth celebrating.