slashdot.gov

I woke up a little early this morning and grabbed the Seattle Times off the front porch. We're still getting a daily paper -- there's something very comforting about early morning, a cup of coffee and real paper to leaf through.

Susan Gilmore of the Times wrote a little piece about the upcoming selection of the Washington State quarter. While my coin collecting has always been limited to the peanut butter jar of daily spare pocket change, I've enjoyed seeing the rollout of the various state quarters over the past few years and was interested in seeing what Washington might come up with.

In the article, Susan also included a link where you could go vote on your favorite -- http://www.governor.wa.gov/quarter. Democracy in action, baby!

Unfortunately, apparently nobody told the people running the site that this article was going to show up today and it immediately fell over under the pressure. Slashdotted by a physical newspaper.

And no, I don't really have a favorite among the three options. Each has their problems:

• state outline with collection of "Washington stuff" -- boo-oo-o-r-ing! Very generic.
• Mt. Rainier with jumping salmon -- nice composition but also very expected.
• NW American art orca -- I really wanted to like this one. My dad's been carving NW coast art for many years now and our house is filled with his work. Possibly because of this, I have some fairly strong opinions on what I like in the genre and this dancing whale is a little too Barney-esque for me.

So it's a toss-up between #2 and #3. Hopefully I'll make a decision before the state IT staff can convince their poor little servers to wake back up.