I think I found the ideal job. My friend Greg and I went to the open house for NOAA’s Portland office. I saw weather geeks and river geeks in their native environment, working with loads of measured data and complex software used for visualization and analysis. It was GREAT. I asked one of the guys about river and stream levels and admitted I liked watching the levels even though I never get out fishing. I told him I was a geek. He said, “We’re all geeks here.”

The reason we got there was because I had Greg drive to Best Buy in Beaverton so I could get some cheap CDs (Fatboy Slim and Cake). He saw a $999 Samsung HDTV with an HD tuner he wanted to buy, but they didn’t have one. So it was off to the Best Buy near the Portland airport to see if they had one. Luckily, we took a random route thanks to my directions and went by the NOAA office, and they had a big “OPEN HOUSE,” sign out front. We set it all up at Greg’s house and, unfortunately, we didn’t get a good HD signal.

Sure the heck beats finding white supremacist hate literature on your front lawn (which I also did today.)