I have developed a patch for the iPhone MobileTerminal that enables the beginning of proper event processing.

Part of the problem was a lot of trial and error, involving two major realizations:
1) iPhone apps don't get orientation-changed events unless they're launched from the GUI
2) Figuring out where in the __GSEvent structure the eventType parameter is.

This patch introduces a number of problems into MobileTerminal, namely causing it to not exit properly, causing it to exit on iPhone sleep, and causes it to (intentionally, because it's only temporary debug code) leak memory when printing event alerts.

I'm back, and am at my parent's house now until sometime Saturday afternoon. Luggage is (hopefully) in St. Louis, because American Airlines is too lame to move luggage from one aircraft to another with a 20 minute layover. I'll condense trip into one post instead of the seven I was originally going to do, but in short, it was mostly lots of fun. Except for the eating too much, but I may have walked off all the extra desserts.

Now I get to switch back from Alaska time to DC time in two days (4 hours... ack!).

Wandered through downtown Seattle on Thursday, but due to the weather threatning to "shower" for most of the day (and then actually commencing a light rain around 2 pm), we didn't actually do a whole lot.

Seattle has a whole bunch of pig sculptures, along the same lines as the Terp sculptures that are around Silver Spring, and the Elephant/donkeys that were in DC. I didn't get a picture of it, but the best one I saw was a bobble-head.

We went up the space needle and, though it's a tourist trap, we got a pretty nice view of downtown Seattle and the surrounding area, and I took a few pictures of seaplanes taking off from the lake.

The space needle has a rotating restaurant at the top, but it's so incredibly exorbitantly priced that it's not worth eating there, even for the novelty factor.

We rode the Seattle Monorail to and from the Space Needle. From the speedometer, it reached 45 mph, but the odometer goes up to 80. Hopefully, they never actually drive it that fast...

Afterwards, we want back to Pike Place Market and got lunch, then wandered around in the rain a bit. We were going to go on a tour of the old Seattle underground ruins from a big earthquake long ago, except that the tour was sold out and they were only running them every two hours.

We went back to the Seattle Museum of Art, where they have a bunch of Fort Taruses hanging from the ceiling with lights sticking out. We couldn't get into the actual exhibits without paying, though, even though the signage implied that you could get to some parts of the gallery without paying. Oh well. Not that it really mattered; we were too tired from the travel on Wednesday and the running around the city earlier in the day to really enjoy an art museum, so we just went back to the hotel.

Thanks to my car troubles, arterich gave me a ride up to my parent's house. Our Eberron game Tuesday night ran a bit longer than we were expecting, so we didn't get up there until shortly after midnight.

Got up at 3:30 am to get a shower and have breakfast before leaving for the airport at 4:20 so we'd have ample time for the 6:45 flight to Seattle via Dallas. We got there to find a long line and massive disorganization and confusion at the ticket counter because American Airline's online check-in system was broken, so no one could check in prior to getting to the airport. And, there were only four people at the ticket counter, so it took quite awhile to make it through the line. It also didn't help that one of the attendants was shouting things like "Anyone behind that woman is LATE!" and "All flights from Dallas are CANCELLED!"

Eventually, we got our tickets and made it through security to the terminal and sat down and waited for the flight to be boarded. it wound up being a short wait, because of the ticket counter delays. It was at this point that we discovered that my Dad's watch was running slow. Which is a good thing, because he was already somewhat anxious about getting to the flight on-time as we were winding through security, and it's likely he'd have been bouncing off the wall if he actually knew what time it was.

The flight from BWI to DFW was uneventful, but I was somewhat surprised that American didn't offer any free food at all to the non-first class passengers. There were free sodas, but a bag of chips, a cookie, or a bag of trail mix was $3. I caught up on sleep on this leg of the flight and just listened to my iPod.

We had about an hour and a half of layover at DFW, which, for some reason, my Dad seemed to think was only half an hour, so he was in a frantic rush to get to the terminal. We grabbed "lunch" at an horrendously overpriced TGI Friday's to-go, took the tram the long way around the airport instead of walking to the terminal by taking the advice of the person we asked, and then waited for an hour at the terminal for boarding the (delayed 10 minutes) flight.

The TVs at the terminal were showing the news entertainment, and revolved mostly around a police chase in LA causing a four-car accident, the massive wildfire at Lake Tahoe, and Paris Hilton's upcoming interview on Larry King Live. They also ran a quote from Obama, who reportedly said something to the effect of "I won't comment on Hillary Clinton's qualifications, but I believe that only her husband is capable of picking up the job on day one." Gotta love those politicians.

The 3.5 hour flight from DFW to Seatac was uneventful. I mostly continued working on the backplot for the D&D campaign I'm working on.

We waited around awhile for the luggage to show up, and it looks like I got lucky that it showed up at all. When I needed to actually use suitcases, I've been using really old suitcases my parents had long ago (before the advent of wheels, telescoping handles, and shoulder straps). One of them developed a gouge in the lid; the other lost its handle — with the tracking information on it — so I'm lucky I got that suitcase at all, and the both, I'm realizing just now, lost the identification cards we attached to the handles.

We got checked into the hotel in Seatac. We're not even there for half an hour and my Dad's already made arrangements for us to take a tour with one of the local tour operators. They must have already been on their way to pick other people up and we just lucked out, because the tour van got there about 15 minutes later.

The tour, conducted by a retired Seattle firefighter named Tom, was relatively interesting, and certainly entertaining. My Mom later commented that the city itself was relatively clean; we didn't actually notice any litter anywhere (save for under the sewer grates, which had thousands upon thousands of cigarette butts).

The second or third stop on the tour was the Pike Place Market, which is the oldest continually-operated public farmer's market in the US. The street level was primarily occupied by a number of different fishmongers and seafood venders, local produce vendors, and flower arrangement shops with huge bouqets of very pretty flowers.

Later, we stopped at Commodore Park, which included the Ballard Locks which connect Lakes Washington and Union to the Puget Sound, and an adjacent salmon fish ladder. The fish ladder was pretty neat, since it was designed such that you could view the steps both from above and from the side. We saw a great many salmon, but the good show of fish jumping six feet out of the water apparently isn't until later in the summer when a different variety of salmon returns to spawn.

We returned back to our hotel after five hours of touring around and went to eat dinner at a local place, Dave's Diner. The "help wanted" sign should have set off warning bells, but I guess we were too hungry to think about it. The food itself was great — I had a teriyaki hamburger (hamburger + pineapple ring + teriyaki sauce) — but i don't think I've ever seen such slow service before. After that back to the hotel for sleep — barring a couple of short naps, I'd been up 22 hours.

Quick update for those who weren't already aware; last Sunday was something of an interesting day. I'm still not sure whether it turned out to my advantage or not.

On my way to grysar's party on Sunday (and practically in his backyard, too), I managed to crash into an SUV while trying to turn around. The airbag actually hit me this time, because I was leaning forward a little, so I got kind of beat up - but I think most of it's because the airbag ripped my sunglasses off. As of Tuesday, they're not sure whether or not my car is a total loss. Hopefully, it's repairable; that'll be much cheaper.

arterich stopped by the accident scene to help out; turns out he hadn't gotten to the party yet, but was only half a mile away. So, an hour later, we finally got to Greg's party. Yay!

I had originally asked Omar if I could get a ride back to my place, since he was travelling roughly in that direction, but I wound up getting a ride back to my house from Andrew and Monica, since they offered, and it let me stay at the party longer.

Good thing too. Monica had never been to my place before, so I gave the tour, and found that a small water leak in one of the pipes in the basement caused the ceiling to collapse! In all likelyhood, if I hadn't been down there to show the house, I'd not likely have noticed the problem until after I got back from the trip, and if I did notice it, it would have been Tuesday evening during the Eberron game, and the water problem would have been much worse.

I got the pipe patched up Monday morning with some assistance from my parents, and the floor is cleaned up now, so I just need to get the ceiling replaced.

Since my air conditioning isn't working properly, Omar also volunteered to put his dehumidifier in my basement to help with drying out the carpet, which as of Tuesday night, was still pretty damp.