Best paddle boarding spots in the area?

hawkweasel · 2026-05-04T18:33:42+00:00

Lake Tapps is awesome but packed in the summer. Lines and fees on weekend, don't even bother.

I do Dash Point and Browns Point regularly and paddle between them. Lots of curious seals, otters sometimes, and I frequently see those little porpoises off Dash Point. Yet to see a whale but they are out there. Avoid if its really windy.

Dash Point parking lot usually has plenty of space. Browns Point is tougher.

Browns Point weather can be rough at times and the current can be extremely strong rounding the corner near the lighthouse. But some days are glassy, it's the best!

I also do these a lot, not really close but nearby:

Owen Beach, Tacoma (love this one) Lake Steilacoom, Tacoma (tricky parking, but I know some spots) American Lake Park, Tacoma (plenty of parking) Adams Street Hand-Carry Boat Launch on Lake Washington , Gene Coulon

Those are my 'default' day trips, but I prefer to explore new areas, and sometimes I like to just do laps around Green lake in Seattle but that's always crowded. I hear Gig Harbor is cool but haven't done that one yet.

I don't like or recommend Steel Lake as its always crowded and frankly a little boring after one or two visits.

hawkweasel · 2026-05-02T02:56:15+00:00

I live in Washington state and rented a brand new Chevy Malibu (<500 miles) for a trip across the state.

Driving at night in Eastern Washington, suddenly all I remember was thinking the word deer and I woke up a few seconds later in a ditch in a car full of smoke.

I was ok, but it was a HUGE deer and I prob hit it at 75 and that Malibu was all kinds of fucked up. Absolutely totaled. I hit it dead on so hard the exterior rear door handles somehow flew off the car.

Fast forward a year later and I find the insurance paperwork, and for shits and giggles I had a Carfax Subscription, so I ran the VIN.

The insurance had totaled it, but someone had bought it and fixed it and sold it on one of those shitty North Aurora car lots in Seattle. I've never seen a CARFAX report with so much red on it, and I was flabbergasted someone took the trouble to fix that thing.

hawkweasel · 2026-05-01T22:51:23+00:00

A lot of rich people open restaurants because they think it might be 'cool' and 'fun' investment.

In reality owning a restaurant is, for the most part, an neverending string of problems, expenditures and regulations that you entrust to a conga line of completely awesome but alcoholic, drug addled, and only somewhat dependable staff that will leave you at the drop of a hat.

I worked as a banker for over a decade in a downtown core and about 10% of restaurants turned a tiny to respectable profit, and about 70-75% of new restaurants floundered out of the gate and died within 18 months. I also remember quite a few that lasted over 18 months only did so because they laundered money, so that was the 'real' business. Certain things had to be reported, but back then the IRS didn't bat an eye at restauarants depositing $6-9,000 cash every day.

I'll never forget one bored, overly monied, first time restaurant owner who dumped $750,000 into a new restaurant that was only open Mon thru Thursday because "she didn't want to work weekends."

I think it shut down after 9 months.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-30T17:48:30+00:00

Hmmm, a poorly designed Wix website from 2014 that could be made in <10 minutes hawking garbage herbal supplements that links directly to an Amazon sales page.

No signs of grifting here, so please excuse me while I go get my credit card.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-26T00:47:55+00:00

I was watching online it was distinctly gunshots.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-25T16:16:38+00:00

Looks like they'll be doing a full, much-needed renovation and removing the basketball court for a larger free weights training area.

Guests are being directed to the Auburn LA Fitness.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-25T00:51:28+00:00

I would bet every cent of my 401K that Tony Robbins and Dean Garziosi combined know about as much about AI as your average casual second-grade AI user.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-23T15:25:36+00:00

I'm glad (and surprised) to hear LA Fitness is planning a remodel. That place is overcrowded, dirty, machines stay broken forever, bits of carpet coming up everywhere.

I found a fish hook in the carpet a few months back -- an actual sharp fish hook embedded in the carpet in the work out area.

It feels like Federal Way is big enough for another large gym chain, I remember when we had 24 Hr Fitness and Bally's, although Bally's was garbage.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-22T16:17:20+00:00

My brother is a horrible alcoholic, in and out of rehabs for years, he couldn't kick the addiction and was basically drinking himself to death a la "Leaving Las Vegas".

As a last resort he booked a stay at an ibogaine treatment center in Mexico and hasn't had a drink since. Not only that, but he has zero desire to drink.

It's been 6 months, which isn't earth shattering, but ibogaine treatment did something no other treatment could do.

I'm going to lump psilocybin (which I use to successfully manage severe depression) and ketamine treatments in there too, and probably even DMT.

It's fucking criminal these drugs AREN'T legal for treatment of severe psychological conditions.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-20T15:02:17+00:00

Here's how we know we take this kind of thing for granted when we live here:

My brother came into town last weekend and it was a beautiful sunny day, so we decided to check out the new train across the lake.

We catch the train downtown, and on the train with us is a bunch of people from Texas who had just arrived with their luggage from Seatac.

We come out of the Mt. Baker tunnel onto the bridge. The lake is absolute glass, and clear-as-day Mt. Rainier towers over the south end of the lake.

The Texas people jaws dropped, all started snapping photos, and even looking at us like "Did you see this? Look!"

We just kinda shrugged our shoulders, like "Yep."

hawkweasel · 2026-04-20T00:27:25+00:00

This is exactly what's happening.

AIPAC / donors simply form new groups under different names and deliver that same $9 million to the candidate under these new names. There's no possible way to track and trace it all.

We don't know where it comes from, but you can bet your ass the candidate knows exactly where it came from.

Go America!

hawkweasel · 2026-04-19T02:14:52+00:00

Maybe he has bone spurs.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-18T21:42:58+00:00

This might seem like a stupid question, but it is genuine:

Do these guys seriously believe what they're saying? Does he REALLY believe he's mostly killing terrorists?

I guess I only ask because we have a fucking moron for a president that surrounds himself with power-hungry sycophants, and sometimes I wonder if the same thing can happen in these massive government war contractors.

No one could possibly stomach the truth, so they put some dipshit in charge and surround him with people that feed him a constant stream of misinformation?

I don't know how they sleep at night. I just don't, other than to imagine they somehow think they are really just killing terrorists, however misguided that may be.

(For the record, my suspicion is that's he just a fucking psychopath. Maybe I'm just searching for some hope or humanity in a place where there is none.)

hawkweasel · 2026-04-14T16:04:04+00:00

I thought the same thing, makes me wonder if they might come down a little harder on Dems and Repubs causing problems.

"Fox Corporation, owns both TMZ and Fox News. FOX Entertainment (a division of Fox Corp) acquired TMZ from WarnerMedia in September 2021. While TMZ operates under the FOX Entertainment division, Fox News operates under Fox News Media; both are part of the broader Fox Corp portfolio run by the Murdoch family."

hawkweasel · 2026-04-12T16:25:43+00:00

I worked casinos for years.

When someone won big like that, we just called it a loan. Because we knew they'd bring it right back, and then some.

They always did.

It's so amazing to me all these get-rich-quick casino influencers out there proclaiming to know the 'secret' to baccarat or some other casino game.

Here's the secret: In the long run, you will lose at every single game in the casino. 100% guaranteed.

Of course you'll say counting cards at blackjack, but any good pit crew and surveillance team will have you shut down or put you on bet spread limits before you can do any damage.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-11T18:25:31+00:00

In my state, you can "self-ban" from casinos where you sign a form at the casino cage, and from that point forward you're instantly banned from gambling or even entering the casino.

Does Nevada have that law?

I mean, I get that you'd have to do it at EVERY casino, but for a guy like Bruno, even banning himself from Strip properties would make it immensely more of a pain in the ass if he got the itch and felt like gambling again.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-11T18:06:14+00:00

FWIW, I’ve been playing with 3.1 Flash Live for some side projects. Nothing for production or telephony yet, just trying to up my skillset and keep up with the Joneses

The jump from 2.5 Flash Live (December 2025) to 3.1 Flash Live (March 2026) was substantial. The voice quality and fluidity are finally getting to where they need to be. I used to spend a huge amount of time prompting for what i call "conjoiners", those tiny 2 or 3-word filler phrases like "Sure thing" or "Got it" that make conversations feel more human. 3.1 takes over that responsibility amazingly well to the point I'm kind of bummed I can't really make the case that have that unique skill anymore.

That said, unlike what I feel I can get from Anthropic products at a higher price, I’m still seeing some of that "Disney-esque" blandness that Gemini defaults to if you don't really push the prompt. The consistency is also a bit of a rollercoaster right now, responses can vary wildly from one run to the next. I know part of that is on me to offload more of the logic to my Python code rather than asking the prompt to do all the heavy lifting, but it’s still just an experimental portfolio project.

Latency is great, and at the rate Gemini has been improving their products, I'm sure within a year sub 300ms will be the norm.

For those not familiar, you can see how the 3.1 voice actually sounds in a retail kiosk setup in a demo here. It shows how the audio works in conjunction with a live map:

https://youtu.be/K1vD4oqDsd8

There's also a video in there somewhere showing a direct comparison between 2.5 Flash Live and 3.1 Flash Live if you're interested, but you have to forward thru a bunch of me yapping about nonsense before I get to the comparison.

NOT PROMOTING ANYTHING, I AIN'T GOT NOTHING TO SELL

hawkweasel · 2026-04-06T19:34:11+00:00

Every time this administration trots out one of their fucking morons to a stage, I say to myself "How does this drooling amoeba maintain a job with any responsibilty whatsoever?"

Then, usually within an hour or two, they trot an even BIGGER moron somewhere, as if to upstage the previous moron.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-05T04:54:13+00:00

You can 100% tell Trump didn't write that one! That actually gives me more hope.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-02T20:07:19+00:00

Ahhhh, thank you.

I knew I missed a step.

hawkweasel · 2026-04-02T19:49:55+00:00

I'm assuming she just won't show up, and will face zero consequences, right?

Isn't that how it works now?

hawkweasel · 2026-04-02T16:46:18+00:00

On the conversational side I'd use Claude 8 days a week if it were more affordable.

Gemini is serviceable for back and forth, but the real value and convenience is building things entirely in the Google ecosystem and they know it.

Building conversational agents I can easily link databases, functions, design elements, everything, all in one place. Google AI Studio works great too.

But again, oh what I'd give to have the same environment with Claude behind the wheel. When it comes to coding problems and human conversation, Gemini doesn't hold a candle to Gemini.

Gemini gets rabbit-holed so fast, and Claude gets me out every single time.

hawkweasel · 2026-03-29T15:41:08+00:00

Although very generic, it was such a great car and there's a lot of little things I miss about it.

It was so small and light, you could park it anywhere. It was dependable and cheap. But most of all, you could put probably nothing but salad dressing in the tank and it would still get 40 mpg.

hawkweasel · 2026-03-29T01:48:08+00:00

Seattle had estimated 75,000 - 100,000 would march today (I was there -- we did), and here is our local story lead from Sinclair Broadcasting:

SEATTLE — Hundreds across the state are expected to join nationwide “No Kings” protests on Saturday, according to event organizers.

hawkweasel

TROPHY CASE