I'll gladly be taking the rest of the week off work, to spend some time with a friend visiting from Germany, Florian. He's the lead programmer on Admin Mod for Half Life, a server add-on for people who run Half Life and HL-Mod (anyone ever heard of CounterStrike?) game servers. I used to be the documentation and PR guy on the project back in the day, but a good guy names Dave has pretty much assumed the documentation role and does a great job with it, and PR is not exactly necessary anymore . So, I pretty much just hang out these days. We will be spending some time seeing the sites and cooking on the grill at least once, before heading up to Seattle to visit with Alfred, who originally wrote Admin Mod and now works at Valve Software, the company that created Half Life. He's been pretty busy lately. It will be the first time the three of us have met up in one place at the same time.

It's going to be a good week.

Here are some great ideas people have given for things to do while Florian is here. I think we will pick and choose a few items from this list and a couple other ideas that were passed along:

• The Gorge and Multnomah Falls, then
• Hop over the bridge while out that way and eat at Skamania Lodge.
• Drive him up the Clackamas River to Ripplebrook ranger station so he can see what the Cascade Range looks like.
• McMenamins
• Do an Oregon winery tour through Newberg, McMinnville etc.
• Take him up to Timberline Lodge so he can see Mt Hood and the lodge has great eating.
• The giant sturgeon at Bonneville Dam.
• Visit Tillamook and take a tour of the ice creamery.
• Drive south down I-5 and go to the coast at Florence (hwy 126) and drive up 101 to Newport. 101 goes along the ocean most of the way and the views are awesome.
• Then take him Salmon fishing on a day charter out of Newport.
• End of the Oregon Trail museum in Oregon City.
• Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville.
• Silver Falls State Park (east of Salem).
• With kids, AC Gilbert Museum in Salem and Enchanted Forest in Salem.
• Portland Chinese Garden
• Powell's Books
• Harvey's Comedy Club
• OMSI