The Stretch of Vitality | Peter Lyons

SF Climbing and Coding

2012-01-30T22:57:46.373Z

Tuesday and Wednesday last week I spent at the NodeSummit conference. They ran a shuttle from SoMa near my room, which was convenient. I met a lot of JS coders and did some good networking with companies using node.js and many bay area companies. Tuesday after a long day at the conference I went home to rest and then had a nice dinner at Basil on Folsom St. The portions were small but it was really flavorful. Wednesday night I worked on a coding assignment that was the first step of a job interview, and then I had dinner at Triptych, which had some mixed reviews on yelp but I really liked it.

Thursday morning I slept in and slowly walked over to Mission Cliffs for some climbing, stopping for a quick slice of pizza and some unsuccessful coffee shop wifi hunting along the way. I met up with Shannon, another companion found on OKCupid who turned out to be not entirely a stranger either. I think some of the people I know in SF are pretty well connected, so I guess I should stop being surprised by these things, but anyway, it's nice to meet someone that is a friend of a friend. So Shannon and I climbed on the very tall walls at Mission Cliffs, which was really fun, and then we had some pho at a restaurant across the street and chatted about Burning Man, SF, etc.

After that I headed back to SoMa and met up with another company that is doing some cool node.js open source work and went out for drinks with them. I snuck off from there to another OKC meeting (3 in 6 days!) at a bar on Folsom.

Friday morning I stopped briefly at Epicenter Cafe which is supposedly frequented by startup employees and then headed to another SoMa office for a series of in-person interviews. (Details in a future post perhaps). After that I met up again with Tess and we spent the remainder of the afternoon lazing around in Dolores Park and peoplewatching. Soon enough it was time for me to catch the BART to the airport. Walking to the BART we were stopped by two early 20s girls walking their bikes. They apparently run a local fashion video blog and wanted to film us (meaning: Tess) for it. It was pretty amusing. I take a full 0.2% credit for that and the other 99.8% goes to Tess.

Overall it was a super fun and productive visit. It basically alternated awesome work related things with awesome social things and I'm sure I'll have fond memories of this particular trip for a while.

San Francisco Walkabout

2012-01-24T19:33:23.088Z

Had a great day in San Francisco yesterday. In the morning I walked around SoMa a bit and grabbed a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. I stopped briefly at Sightglass coffee just to check it out and code offline a bit. Then I checked back in at home before heading out to meet Tess.

I found Tess on OKCupid and arranged to explore the city a bit as she has just recently moved to the city. As we coordinated the meeting, I started to think maybe I had met her at Burning Man this past summer. It turns out that yes, she was in the Boston Burning Man community and spent some time at Automatic Subconscious. She was on crutches at that time and I remember her telling her story a bit. Heading to the burn on crutches is a pretty bold move.

So we met at the Powell St BART station and started out on a long venture. We headed north and went through the chinatown gate and walked through chinatown. Yesterday was apparently the start of Chinese new year and folks were throwing snap fireworks onto the ground. I am always fascinated by the unfamiliar herbs and groceries they have packaged up in front of the stores.

Then we wondered north along Montgomery and up some great stairs here and there, eventually hitting Coit Tower. Then down the Filbert Steps listening to parrots squaking. We went out to the Embarcadero and walked all along Fisherman's Warf. We stopped for some seafood lunch and Tess fed some seagulls off her feet.

Then we hit Ghirardelli Square briefly and then walked south along Polk St all the way back past Market. We stopped in a bunch of book shops, thrift stores, and Paxton Gate when we switched over to Valencia and headed through the Mission. We had tapas at Esperpento and rested a bit after about 5.5 hours of walkabout.

After dinner I walked another long walk to a bar called Bottom of the Hill for a pre-Node-Summit live NodeUp podcast and open bar party. I was quickly pretty exhausted so I walked north to SoMa and crashed into bed.

San Francisco getting started

2012-01-23T05:44:26.462Z

I flew out to San Francisco today. It's mostly a business trip for the Node Summit conference, but I have a few days before and after for fun. San Francisco is one of my favorite cities to visit, partly because I have some friends and family here. I have finally figured out the RTD situation in Louisville and have a good airport thing happening. I can park at the park-n-ride in Louisville for $1 per day and take the bus express to DIA for $13 one way. When you factor in the time saved parking, it's actually faster. The only glitch can be the schedule for the return trip, which is only one per hour, can be crowded (important to get on at the west terminal or risk your seat), and they don't run late hours.

I ran across John DeGoes on the plane out here but he was trapped in headphone land. Lots of passengers were fixated on the NFL playoff game they were showing for free as an apology for the 2-hour delayed takeoff. It's rainy here which is a bummer but still pretty mild temperature. I took BART to my Airbnb room, which is quite nice. The owner is also a programmer who has done a bunch of node.js programming.

After finding my room and briefly settling in I headed out on the MUNI to Ed's neighborhood Cole Valley. We had delicious sushi at Hama Ko. There is no sign on it and it is literally a ma and pa shop, but the food is great. Ed eats here a lot. We discussed the fact that just a few years ago both of us were extremely picky eaters, and now I ordered the "sushi combination" selected by the chef without batting an eye and loved it. Yet another thing that gets better with age.

After our sushi feast we went to the new ice cream bar around the corner for classic american soda shop feel and ice cream. I then enjoyed another MUNI ride back and walk around my neighborhood. My host Vishal has just given me some recommendations. I've also managed to set up several social outings via OK Cupid while I'm here, the first of which is tomorrow afternoon, so more news to come from those.

All photos from this trip are here

Yet another whirlwind weekend in progress

2012-01-15T01:26:40.000Z

Don't have time for a proper post. I should be in the shower getting ready for aerial fabric rehearsal, but wanted to throw a few notes up here. Yesterday at work dojo4 had a yummy lunch an The Pinyon restaurant across the way from our office. It was a geekfest in there, with coders from Foraker, OpenSpace, Dojo4, and Marty Haight all eating there. Had a nice pint of Joe's Pale Ale with a burger (their lunch special) before heading back to the dojo for more coding.

After work I shopped around for restaurants a bit and ended up at Antica Roma for some polletto diavola and a draft Peroni. Then it was lugging gear into Shug's Shack for an Afronauts gig. After load in and sound check I went around the corner to get a banana nutella crepe. Yum. The Afronauts performance featured a great opening band called Mono Verde from Denver. We had a blast up there and the audience was really grooving. I didn't finally crash out in bed until nearly 3am. We gotta work on starting earlier at Shug's (we hit around 11pm) to accommodate our slightly older crowd.

Now I'm off to get a costume for our February aerial fabric show and then to today's fabric workout/rehearsal. Lots more planned for today and tomorrow as well so maybe a follow-up post tomorrow evening. Calendar is pretty much packed with goodness clear through to February at this point.

Epic Weekend

2012-01-09T12:59:24.000Z

This weekend was freaking epic. I was off work Friday so I worked on a redesign for my web site. I headed into the office around 4pm since we were planning to have an office bar outing. But, as sometimes happens on Friday, a bunch of folks who work at nearby companies had come over with beer to hang out, so the office was full and the Mountain Sun growlers were pouring. After hanging out a while I headed down to Arvada for a Turtle Dove show at the 12-Volt Tavern (classic dive bar). We played pretty well as we have been rehearsing a lot. There was a fun band called Left Foot Green after us as well.

Saturday was aerial fabric workout and rehearsal for our show in February. After that I met up with Julia for yummy lunch at Pizzeria da Lupo. Then I did some coding at the dojo before going across the alley to the Laughing Goat Coffeehouse for an Afronauts show. Boulder Weekly interviewed our founder and bassist Eric Keeney this week, and that got us a lot of publicity, so the goat was standing room only. We hurried through our elaborate setup routine. When we started to play I scanned the crowd. Not a single conversation. All eyes and ears focused intently on the band. The first few songs were particularly groovy and it set the band into a good move and a good groove. We played two sets and folks were enjoying it and cheering. We overflowed the tip jar after the first set. I was really pleased with it and I think we're going to be on a great trajectory for the Spring.

Today after lunch with Julia at Casa Alegre (which I had been wanting to try) I spent the afternoon at Atlas Purveyors working on the web site redesign. I chatted with Alyssa (former dojo4 designer) a bit then headed to The Spot to boulder. I'm planning to do some climbing when I go to San Francisco in two weeks, so I intend to try to get my climbing chops into shape a bit before then. The aerial fabric I think has kept up my strength and endurance pretty well. I climbed for about 90 minutes and got up some 4- spots, which is about where I was before my hiatus. So that's a good sign.

I was intending to do some more work on the web site tonight but as soon as I got home my energy dropped like a rock. So I sat on the couch and watched Portlandia and removed the nail polish that has been embarrassingly chipped for way too long. Now I'm completely beat and ready to crash.

I'm really looking forward to my upcoming San Francisco trip. I've got an AirBnb room booked and will be attending the Node Summit conference.

Create Beauty, Don’t Avoid Ugliness

2011-12-27T12:38:05.000Z

Cal Newport's blog Study Hacks has been a fascination of mine for a while. He's consistently insightful. I've also been having an interesting conversation with Stephen the other saxophonist in The Afronauts, mostly via exchanging links and comments on Facebook, having to do with talent, practicing, advancement, etc. Cal's post entitled Flow is the Opiate of the Mediocre: Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player brings up a point I always tried to convey to my saxophone students about an internal sound concept. It's so important to hear the exact tone you want to produce before you start to play and work to make it happen acoustically as opposed to just blowing into the saxophone, hearing what comes out, and trying to adjust from there to polish it.

Exercise due to clumsiness

2011-12-23T12:57:49.000Z

Just a quick note that the post before this was was post #200! W00tz!

Today was a weird but fun day. Last night I went to bed on time, meaning a full eight hours before the alarm goes off at 6:25am. Of course, I usually sleep more like 6.5 hours so I woke up a few times in the wee hours and finally gave up on further sleep around 5:30am. That meant I was coding away by 6:20 which was pretty good. We had over a foot of snow last night so I stayed home and coded in my pajamas all day. I spent about an hour shoveling snow around lunchtime. I signed off work around 5:30pm, ate some broccoli, and took a nap. Then I went to my exercise room in the basement and did a pretty good home Tabata workout with 36 individual sets. I then had to venture to the Walgreens around the corner to pick up a few things. There was a big snow drift across the entire end of my driveway from the combination of the garbage trucks and the plow. I almost got the car stuck in the street right at the end of my driveway (I can hear another engine throttling on my street now as I type). I had to get a shovel, dig out a big, go back into the driveway, and then back out really fast to clear the snow drift.

When I got to Walgreens my car door wouldn't lock, but I didn't think much of it and went in anyway. I've got a wireless car key thing that allows me to leave the key in my pocket and still operate the doors and ignition. I just figured it was flaky. I grabbed some stuff in Walgreens and headed back to the car. It wouldn't start and the dash displayed the "key missing" warning icon. Crap. The key was no longer in my pajama pants pocket. Unlock my normal everyday pants, these pockets have no zippers and thus are prone to things falling out. Crap. I went back into the Walgreens and searched there. Nope. I searched the ground around the car. Nope. I looked in the car on the seat. Nope. My thought was they must have fallen out while I was shoveling and are probably sitting in a snow bank at the end of my driveway. My house is only 10 blocks away or so, so I just decided to jog home and get my spare keys. I was still feeling pretty good after the Tabata intervals. It was kind of fun jogging around in the snow at night like one of the kooky Colorado locals. I grabbed the spare and searched around the snow bank but didn't find the original key. So I jogged back to Walgreens and retrieved my car.

Looking around some more when I got home, I eventually found the original set of keys had fallen in the space between the seat and the center console. It's not the first time, and it's really annoying because that space is large enough for keys and pens and stuff to fall into but not large enough to fit your hand in to fish them out. Grr.

So I got a lot more exercise today with the shoveling and jogging than I was planning, which leads me to my prediction. I think tomorrow morning there's a chance I will weigh in at my lowest adult weight. Current record is 137.2 pounds and this morning I was 138.4. I've found a pretty sustainable pattern where I eat healthy slow-carb meals Monday through Friday (except lunch Monday which is provided by Dojo4 and always off-diet) and then eat whatever Friday evening and the weekend, sometimes defining "whatever" as seriously bingey things like half a domino's pizza and an entire order of cinnastix. I have a 3 or 4 pound swing each week between true minimum and up a few pounds.

Saturday I fly home for some much-anticipated family time over the holidays.

Update Dec 23, 6:30am: Yup. Record low weight this morning. 136.6

Optimal Thanksgiving?

2011-11-26T11:49:46.000Z

I just got back from a fun and delicious Thanksgiving at Cousin Dr. Annie's house in Kansas City, Missouri. The schedule aspect of it was great. Elise, Lynn, and I left from my house yesterday morning at 7am, hopped on a 9am flight, and were at Annie and Ryan's house before lunch. We flew back this afternoon, departing at 1pm and arriving home before 3pm local time. Now I have a full 2.5 day weekend at home ahead of me, which I am thrilled about. Also, the Kansas City airport is very easy. It's about thirty feet from the curb to the security line and another fifty feet after that to the gate.

Thanksgiving itself was great. We had a light salad for lunch and then went out for a walk around the neighborhood parks. It was the warmest Thanksgiving I can remember. After that we took a long nap and then it was time to make ready for the feast. Annie cooked up a beautiful turkey and all the trimmings including two different stuffing recipes. I was in the zone. I had four helpings followed by three slices of pie and absolutely no overeating discomfort. I'm not sure how I did it, but maybe the diet I've been on the past few weeks has built up a caloric debt or something. Anyway, I was an easy winner in the eat-a-ridiculous-insane-quantity-of-food contest. I felt fat, dumb, happy, and sated all evening and all night long.

The big news we got is that Annie and Ryan are expecting their first child! Hurray. We were all so happy for them and Lynn was really grateful to be there to hear the news face to face. After dinner we played two fun board games: Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride, both of which I enjoyed. Their house is really charming and they seem very happy together there.

Tomorrow night is an Afronauts gig at Shug's in downtown Boulder which should be big fun. In other music news, I sold my Eigenharp. Although I still think it has great potential, looking objectively back at the last 8 months or so I have barely touched it. Not enough time with work, 2 bands, and aerials to spend on the Eigenharp, so off it went in the box it arrived in to another sax playing web developer in Ohio. Oh and Sunday night Turtle Dove Rock played at the Dickens Opera House in Longmont. It was a fun gig and a good performance, but the sound check was pretty rough. We'd really like to get in there on a Friday night next time.

Advanced Beginner

2011-11-20T09:38:57.000Z

OK, it's been a few weeks since I posted. On Halloween I went to a games night in Lafayette. The people there are more into games to me, to put it mildly. I think a bunch of them may be interesting folks, but I don't think I have enough enthusiasm for board games to go back. We'll see. I had breakfast at the new Snooze Restaurant in Boulder with Uncle Eddie, Elise, and Brenda. They have a pretty fierce pancake menu including a "sampler plate" kind of thing that is awesome. The Afronauts played at The Dickens Opera house in Longmont on November 5th and it was a fun show. It's great to play that room because they actually have proper theater wings and a green room. It's a big room with good sound and lighting. Tomorrow night Turtle Dove Rock will be there for our guitarist Matt's birthday jam, which should be fun.

Last Thursday my friend A.J. from the CHAOS hiking group led a short full moon pot luck hike out to the rock quarry above Chautauqua. I had a major Jonesing for some outdoor time, so it was just what I needed. CHAOS events can be quirky. This time there was some guy there who lives in the area but does not hike regularly. He had a cotton sweatshirt on with no jacket and new doc marten style boots that didn't fit and caused him to slip on the ice a bunch. He brightly suggested they add handrails on an exposed section. You don't hike much, I guess? I asked.

Last Friday I ate at Boulder Cork with Brenda and two of her friends. We had the "First Bite Boulder" prix fixe menu, which was way too much food, but still fun. Tonight we're hitting Empire Lounge in Louisville.

This past Monday I went to House of Genius "Neighborhood" at the Microsoft Bing office downtown. Sadly, the topics were not things I could help with so it ended up being frustrating and not productive. However, it meant I didn't embark on my return bike commute until after 9pm. It was pleasant riding with very few other people on the path and cars on the road.

The Afronauts played a good show last night with two other great bands: Mono Verde and Atomga Groove Alliance. We'd love to play with them both again. They were all large ensembles with great dancing grooves. The venue was a quirky community space called Unit E Gallery. It was not well marked and the entrance was up a back exterior set of stairs so it had a nice private party type of vibe. We stayed pretty late dancing to Atomga Groove Alliance.

My Aerial Fabric classes are progressing nicely. I've moved up to the "Advanced Beginner" class and am already learning some more involved tricks. I'm really enjoying it and I'm going to both of the weekly open workout sessions, so I'm getting 3 sessions in each week and hopefully what I'm learning and repeating through practice will stick. There's a student performance in February and I might try to have something together by then. I think I have myself a new hobby going pretty strong now.

Commuting by bike occasionally has been interesting. Little by little I'm tweaking my gear to make it incrementally better one step at a time. Friday I aimed to get fenders and a rack at Community Cycles, but ended up with just a rear fender, a front fender that won't fit my bike, and a rack that won't fit my bike. So far I've had two bad experiences there out of two attempts, but I'm not giving up hope yet. I also mounted my mirror in a better place on my helmet and mounted my handlebar headlight on my helmet as well (black electrical tape FTW!). Weather for next week looks good, so we'll see if things are working better.

Work recently has been interesting. I'm learning more Ruby on Rails stuff and the new asset pipeline. I am not very fulfilled with the work we've had to do recently, so I've been trying to do most of my routine (shower, etc) at night so I can get up early and work on personal coding projects for 90 minutes or so each morning. Leaving the house closer to 9am makes the bike commute a lot warmer, as well. That rhythm has been pretty good though so it might be pretty workable for a while.

OK, off to some yumminess at Empire Lounge.

The Afronauts in Denver tomorrow

2011-11-18T11:00:21.000Z

Check out this rave review of The Afronauts. We're playing tomorrow night at Unit E Gallery in Denver at 11pm. Find us on Facebook for details.

Aerials, M4, Halloween Blitz

2011-10-31T09:27:48.000Z

Things have been going full steam ahead for the past two weeks. Aerial Fabric classes are progressing nicely and I'm learning to do some easy tricks. There's a low student/teacher ratio so I'm getting a lot of attention and time on the fabric. The last open workout I worked a lot on my "Christ Hang" and "Crucifix" poses as well as the egg beater wrap.

Two Fridays ago The Afronauts played the Laughing Goat Coffeehouse again. We had two new guest percussionists each play a set with us. Overall it was a fun gig and we were pretty well-rehearsed going into it. We played a new song "Addis Black Widow" for the first time and although it veered and lurched, it never came completely off the rails.

Two Saturdays ago was the March Fourth Marching Band show at the Gothic in Englewood. Logan and Brenda came with me. It was an absolute blast. Folks were hanging out along the bars on the street in costume and having a good time. M4 was fantastic as usual. If I thought I had a shot at joining that band, I'd seriously consider moving to Portland. They are wicked fun. Their dance/stilt/acrobatics component has gotten a lot stronger this year as well. I think the Gothic is my favorite venue in the Denver metro area. It has a great mix of good sized open dance floor, several tiers of table seating, spacious balconies, and a second upstairs bar. It's usually not filled to capacity and is overall pleasant. We danced around a bit and asked Logan questions about the details of their equipment. As soon as we arrived he went and walked across the front row, undoubtedly noting the make and model of every amplifier, effects pedal, or misc piece of audio gear. When the bass player moved toward the front of the stage at one point, Logan noted that he was using flat-wound strings. He's an encyclopedia of music trivia. Definitely a fun night.

This past weekend has been jam-packed. Friday I worked until around 6pm and then headed to Trident Cafe for Corey's photo exhibit opening. Then I met up with Brenda for dinner at Trattoria on Pearl. I headed home pretty exhausted from a packed week around 9:00pm. But this was only a brief pause. I rested for 30 minutes and then got dressed to head into Denver for a Fantastic Hosts dance party. The theme was "Forbidden Planet" (outer space) so I wore my 70s zip-front one-piece jumpsuit which works well enough as a space uniform of some sort. Spike up the mohawk and call it a costume. So out the door I went. I arrived around 11pm I think. The venue was good with 3 separate rooms for deejays. The main room upstairs which was always so crowded you couldn't dance and then two different basement rooms which were much less crowded. Everyone was fully decked out in great costumes. I ran into most of the folks I've met at Aerial Fabric so far and had fun chatting with them a bit. Here's a photo from the event. The Pan on stilts and the women in red with black wings are aerialists from my studio. I danced and wondered around until quarter to 2 and was in bed by 2:30am.

But not long there. Up again at 6:30 am to dress for a road trip down to Manitou Springs with Brenda for the Emma Crawford Coffin Races which is their odd mountain town festival analogous to Nederland's Frozen Dead Guy Days. We stopped at our local Lamar's donut shop for some sugary road fuel and then made awesome time down to Colorado Springs. Brenda showed me around her old town and we drove by the house she owns there. Then we headed to Manitou and visited her friends Lorien and Nigel. They have a gorgeous home there that they have been beautifully remodeling (that's polite conversation for "totally pimping out") over the past four years. It's decked out with lots of windows, a huge billiards room, several large decks, outdoor hot tub, conservatory, spiral stairs to the master suite, etc. We had mimosas and fresh fruit. We were joined by another couple and then walked a couple of miles in to town for the coffin races. We missed the parade, which was a shame, but we did catch all of the races.

After the races we had fun in the arcade playing some old dime arcade games. Brenda trounced me in Pac-man, which was humiliating, but I redeemed myself with Ms. Pac-man. Then we grabbed a quick snack before meeting up again with the crew at a wine bar. Brenda ordered a fancy pumkin drink with whipped cream. After a little chatting it was time to walk back to the house. I had to be back in Boulder for Uncle Bill's birthday dinner at The Kitchen. I had my occasional hankering for beef the past few weeks so I ordered the Colorado skirt steak. It was pretty tasty but honestly the fries and homemade ketchup seemed even better. After that I went back to Louisville and hung out with Brenda some more, working up our Guitar Hero game.

Today I got a late start and grabbed a breakfast quesadilla at Paul's Coffee. It was good, but the goddamn teenage counter staff (again) couldn't seem to hold down the complexities of the "1. order 2. pay 3. actually give customer the food" sequence. I ran some quick errands then drove up to Longmont for a Halloween jam party at Matt's farm. It was the Stedfast group of punk rock teenagers and the Turtle Dove group of 30-something rock wannabes, and our respective cohorts. It was a gorgeous warm day. Stedfast played a set of their hilarious punk rock covers, including the shortest song I've ever heard (approx 13 seconds). The Byron and Logan did some of their mostly-original drums/bass jammies under the name "Gort vs Goom". Then Turtle Dove played our set. Here are some photos and videos.

A small bit of technical note: I've started using Flickr to manage my photos. My home-grown photo management system has served me well for the past decade, but I've grown tired of maintaining it and futzing too much with EXIF metadata and JSON files, so up to Flickr it goes.

Man, I'm pretty beat now though. I need to start penciling in some down time after work Friday before diving in to weekend mode.

Primus

2011-10-18T12:25:50.000Z

Caught my first Primus show tonight at the Ogden. The first set they played a bunch of the old tunes, which was great for me since I never got to see them during their original heyday. Second set they played the new album, using some old Popeye cartoons as intermission. Man, those Popeye cartoons are not that far off from Itchy and Scratchy. Anyway, it was a fun show. I can never figure out when I'm supposed to arrive at these things. Sometimes I show up at 9pm and there's like three opening acts before the headliners start at 12:30am. This time the tickets said 8:30. I arrive about 8:50 and they were already playing. I guess since it's a Monday night they didn't want to play super late. Anyway, I snagged a totally pimp parking spot right on the corner of Ogden and Colfax with a tight parallel parking slot but I spotted it, pulled a U-ey, and nestled in there on the first try. Even better, after the show the car in front of me had changed and the new guy left plenty of room so I could just zoom right out. For whatever reason the whole parking thing was particularly satisfying. Otherwise the show was crowded but I eventually made my way to a decent enough spot where I could usually see the musicians and not just be staring into the back of some dude's neck. The lighting and video display was well done. I'm looking forward to March Fourth Marching Band on Saturday.

Aerial Fabric, gigging at Shug's

2011-10-17T00:21:31.000Z

So this week on Tuesday I started a beginning Aerial Fabric class at Aircat. I took a class last winter, but I've forgotten it all by now. The class only has two students which means I get lots of teacher attention and as much fabric time as my arms can handle. I went to the open workout sessions on Thursday and Saturday as well. It's pretty darn fun and I think I'll really enjoy it. It's a nice reversal of the male/female ratio in my work life, too. So far I've learned some basic warm-ups like pulling taffy, eggs, Christ hang, 1-2-3-4, the basic climb, the basic wrap, a hip key, and a trick called a twirly whirl. There are some former figure skaters there and they do a lot of fast spinning. That's not for me. I get motion sick if I spin too much, so I'm trying to stick to the non-spinny gymnastic type stuff.

Overall it was a pretty busy week. Our client at work is launching their first alpha, but we were ready for it. Turtle Dove is trying to get the mixing done on the recording session we did a few months ago, and we rehearsed some new songs on Tuesday night. Wednesday after work Corey and I rode over to the Next Big Sound office for Unreasonable Drinks. After an hour or so I pedaled home in the dark. It was my first after-dark commute home and I definitely need some brighter lights. It was a big bright full moon though, which helped. I picked up some better lights Thursday night and hopefully next time will be better. Otherwise I'll stick to the bus at night, but we'll see. Then we had Afronauts rehearsal Wednesday night polishing up some new tunes for our gigs this month.

The Afronauts played The Shack at Shug's Friday night. It's one of the better venues in Boulder and it was a fun show. The band was wearing all white and-or white costumes. We had an opening band called Stoned Wallabies who were a lot of fun. Folks were dancing and having a good time. They loved Stephen's big "Zombie" feature. It looks like we're going to be playing Shug's monthly, which is fantastic. We got a nice review here as well.

Saturday was another open workout at Aircat and some errand running. Then I met up with Michale and we shopped for some groceries to make some yummy Octobery soup. We cooked up a delicious soup with veggies and chicken/apple sausage. Then she trimmed up my mohawk to make it narrower and we dyed it red. It's more punk now and less almost-punk.

Lots of music happening this week, too. I'm going to see Primus tomorrow night. I've never seen them before, although I've seen Les Claypool twice. It should be fun. We'll have another Afronauts gig at the Laughing Goat Coffeehouse Friday, and then on Saturday March Fourth Marching Band is playing at the Gothic Theater on Saturday , which I'm sure will be a blast.

ÜberBoulder Friday

2011-10-09T00:05:01.000Z

Yesterday was pretty deeply entrenched in my new lifestyle. I got up at 6:30am and blazed out into the 40 degree fall air on my bike ride to work. I have new smooth high-pressure tires on my mountain bike now, so with the front shock locked out, it's a pretty good commuter bike. It's 10.4 miles to work, the first stretch in the bike lane along Baseline Road and then most of the in-Boulder part of it is on the Boulder Creek Path. 8:30am at my office (A.K.A "The Dojo") we had yoga class. It's free and open to the community. After yoga I got changed and activated my mohawk. Then my coworker Garett and I pedaled a few blocks west on Pearl St to a client office for a meeting. Then back to the Dojo for coding the rest of the day. I was having fun with some MongoDB map/reduce and group queries. For lunch I had my baby spinach salad with chicken, garbanzo beans, raisins, sliced almonds, and Newman's Own Low Fat Sesame Ginger dressing. It's yummy. Coding in the afternoon is punctuated by tastes of Chocolove Almonds and Sea Salt in Dark Chocolate, my current addiction.

I wrapped up work at 5pm, TXTed Elise, who happened to be a block and a half away at Mountain Sun, so I joined her, Leslie (her schoolmate, not her mom), and Ray for a pint of Blackberry Wheat, a grilled cheese, and some nachos. After that I had some time to kill in Boulder before a show so I rode up to the movie theater and watched Contagion. Enjoyable but nothing special. After that I got in touch with Brenda who I was to meet at a show. We ended up driving together back to Louisville so she could take care of her dog and then back to Boulder to hear Gora Gora Orkestar at Shug's in downtown Boulder. It was a fun show and we stayed for all three sets. They have a pretty broad mix now of world music brass band stuff including Balkan, Mariachi, New Orleans, Funk, and Klezmer. The crowd was very Boulder. The dude with the full camping pack. The old yogi dude with a two foot long white beard. The goofy CU students. The parents of the CU students. The 30-something tech hipsters. The wealthy middle aged businessmen with very young girlfriends. The 20-something girls twirling poi.

After that we went to Brenda's office to deal with some fallout from the big party they had in their office that evening, and then headed home. Yup, that's pretty much a slice of my new lifestyle these days.

Great but busy Thursday

2011-10-01T21:39:32.000Z

Thursday I worked at my new job at Dojo4 all day, then headed to BRC for the last of my group fitness level 2 "Cry in the Dojo" classes. I am going to let my BRC membership expire for a while and do some exercise at home. I'm also going to take some Aerial Fabric classes next month. I left fitness class early to have time for a quick shower and to grab food on my way to the Open Space Store office where Robert Reich was doing a little pre-BDNT coaching session. BDNT is the Boulder Denver New Tech monthly meetup that I enjoy and have been helping them coordinate mentors for the presenters. We did some coaching but I had to leave early to get to my Afronauts gig. I stopped at the Park and Ride in Superior and picked up Travis and Alice and then we motored into downtown Denver. We were gigging at the Summit Music Hall Beer Garden event. The band before us was called the "Polkanauts" by sheer coincidence. And they even had the orange nasa coveralls on, which I had suggested for the Afronauts a while back, but my suggestion was rejected, and that turned out to be a good thing.

It was a really fun venue from the band's perspective. Night big stage high off the ground. Good lights. Smoke machines. Plenty of microphones. Also, the green room was fantastic. However, the crowd was much thinner than I was hoping for. It was still 50 or so people, but the venue can hold 400 or so. We played two short sets with a set break in between. Overall the performance was good and we had a lot of the audience up and dancing for a good chunk of it. By the time I got home it had been a very long day indeed. Friday I had a large iced mocha and was buzzing and tapping my foot pretty much all day, but it did the trick and was yummy.

A peek into my use of Rhapsody

2011-09-26T05:17:21.000Z

So I have been messing with Spotify today and trying to export my Rhapsody library into Spotify. In the process, I was able to generate a list of albums I've added to my Rhapsody library ordered by date added. It's a neat glimpse into what I have been exploring around for the past 4 years of so. Incidentally for you music buyers out there, this is over 900 albums, which would be approximately $9,000 to buy as MP3s. This cost me $720 for 4 years of rhapsody access. I'm looking forward to the sharing/social features of spotify.

One Hot Minute,Red Hot Chili Peppers
Live Charity Improvs Album (US Tour 2010),Imogen Heap
Beautiful Love,Jay Clayton/Fred Hersch
Byrd In Flight,Donald Byrd
Coolin' Off,Galactic
Cry!-Tender,Yusef Lateef
Don't Try This At Home,Michael Brecker
Faces,Earth, Wind & Fire
Filles De Kilimanjaro,Miles Davis
Good Gracious (EP),Lou Donaldson
I Started Out As A Child,Bill Cosby
Leapin' And Lopin',Sonny Clark
Letting Off The Happiness,Bright Eyes
Living Space,John Coltrane
Meditations,John Coltrane
One More Once,Michel Camilo
Rendezvous,Michel Camilo
Sun Ship,John Coltrane
Three Quartets,Chick Corea
Tidal,Fiona Apple
Triology,Kenny Garrett
Voyage (EP),Chick Corea/Steve Kujala
White Gardenia,Johnny Griffin With Strings...
World Clique,Deee-Lite
You Are All Diseased,George Carlin
A Caddy For Daddy (EP),Hank Mobley
Bang! Zoom,Bobby McFerrin
Big Train,Wynton Marsalis
Black Hope,Kenny Garrett
Disco Forever (Box Set),Dimitri From Paris
Eddie Murphy (Explicit),Eddie Murphy
Funky Good Time,The JB Horns feat. Pee Wee, Fred, and Maceo
Joshua Redman,Joshua Redman
Koyaanisqatsi (Score),Philip Glass
Man-Child (EP),Herbie Hancock
Medicine Music,Bobby McFerrin
Monk's Blues,Thelonious Monk
More Blues And The Abstract Truth,Oliver Nelson
Mystical Sh*t/Fluting On The Hump (Explicit),King Missile
Natty Dread,Charlie Hunter Quartet
New Directions,New Directions
New Train,Paul Pena
No Cure For Cancer (Explicit),Denis Leary
No Room For Squares,Hank Mobley
Our Thing (EP),Joe Henderson
Page One (EP),Joe Henderson
Play (EP),Bobby McFerrin
Possibilities,Jon Gordon
Protection,Massive Attack
Return Of The Candyman,Charlie Hunter & Pound for Pound
Rhyme & Reason,Ted Nash Double Quartet
Simply Said,Kenny Garrett
Songbook,Kenny Garrett
Songs From The Wood,Jethro Tull
Sound Pieces,Oliver Nelson
Spark,Jon Gordon Quartet
The Best Of Bobby McFerrin,Bobby McFerrin
+ 3,Sonny Rollins
Against,Sepultura
Freedom In The Groove,Joshua Redman
Live,Brian Regan
Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols,The Sex Pistols
Roll With The New (Explicit),Chris Rock
Sonny Boy (EP),Sonny Rollins
Stroking The Full Length (EP),Ruby
The Solo Album (Single),Sonny Rollins
Wish,Joshua Redman
A Night At The Met (Explicit),Robin Williams
Ain't Going out Like That,Young M.C.
Beyond,Joshua Redman
Blue Note Plays Gershwin,
Cannonball Takes Charge: Collection Vol. 6,Cannonball Adderley
Cypress Hill (Explicit),Cypress Hill
Full Moon Fever,Tom Petty
Fush Yu Mang (Explicit),Smash Mouth
Greatest Hits Volumes I & II,Billy Joel
In The Slot,Tower Of Power
Incunabula,Autechre
Irresistible Bliss,Soul Coughing
Live At The Club Mozambique,Lonnie Smith
Live Frogs: Set 2 (EP),Les Claypool's Frog Brigade
Love Songs,Miles Davis
Not A Pretty Girl,Ani DiFranco
Org Lounge,Org Lounge
Pure Gospel: 10 Top Choirs,
Quintet In Chicago (EP),Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley
Six Million Ways To Live (Explicit),Dub Pistols
The Hot Rock,Sleater-Kinney
The Marshall Mathers LP (Explicit),Eminem
This Is This,Weather Report
Ulu,Ulu
What's Going On (Reissue),Marvin Gaye
A-Sides,Soundgarden
Black Sunday (Explicit),Cypress Hill
Blind Melon,Blind Melon
Blue Lines,Massive Attack
Born Suspect (Explicit),Chris Rock
Crossroads,Tracy Chapman
Dysfunction,Staind
Expensive Sh*t/He Miss Road (EP),Fela Kuti
Fragile,Yes
G. Love And Special Sauce,G. Love And Special Sauce
Happy Hour (Explicit),King Missile
In A Silent Way,Miles Davis
Infest (Explicit),Papa Roach
Jagged Little Pill,Alanis Morissette
Kind Of Blue (Bonus Tracks),Miles Davis
Lush Life: The Music Of Billy Strayhorn,Joe Henderson
Maiden Voyage,Herbie Hancock
Make Yourself,Incubus
Mer De Noms (Explicit),A Perfect Circle
Mercury Falling,Sting
Mezzanine,Massive Attack
Miles In The Sky (Bonus Tracks),Miles Davis
No Protection,Massive Attack Vs. Mad Professor
OK Computer,Radiohead
On The Corner,Miles Davis
Out Of Range,Ani DiFranco
Pay Attention (Explicit),The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Richard D. James Album,Aphex Twin
Short Bus,Filter
Sketches Of Spain,Miles Davis
Something About Airplanes,Death Cab For Cutie
Still In Hollywood,Concrete Blonde
Surrender,The Chemical Brothers
The Fragile,Nine Inch Nails
Title of Record,Filter
Tri Repetae++,Autechre
Trompe Le Monde,Pixies
You've Come A Long Way, Baby (Explicit),Fatboy Slim
Stop Making Sense,Talking Heads
Amber,Autechre
Ambient 1: Music For Airports,Brian Eno
Blues And The Abstract Truth,Oliver Nelson
Brown Album,Primus
Cobra & Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night,Stereolab
Cowboys From Hell,Pantera
Cure For Pain,Morphine
Dr. Octagonecologyst (Explicit),Dr. Octagon
Dummy,Portishead
El Oso,Soul Coughing
Far Beyond Driven (Explicit),Pantera
Focus,Stan Getz
Fratres,Arvo Part
Good,Morphine
Homework,Daft Punk
Inner Space (EP),Chick Corea
Is A Very Funny Fellow Right!,Bill Cosby
Like Swimming,Morphine
Marc Cohn,Marc Cohn
Message In A Box: The Complete Recordings (Box Set),The Police
MoodSwing,Joshua Redman Quartet
New Beginning,Tracy Chapman
Official Life:101 Proof,Pantera
On Fire,Michel Camilo
Point Blank,Dub Pistols
Portishead,Portishead
Reinventing The Steel (Explicit),Pantera
Sonny's Crib,Sonny Clark
Soul Station (EP),Hank Mobley
Stabat Mater / Gloria,Francis Poulenc
Stories From The City, Stories From the Sea (Explicit),PJ Harvey
The First Of The Microbe Hunters,Stereolab
The Great Southern Trendkill,Pantera
The Low End Theory (Explicit),A Tribe Called Quest
The Night,Morphine
The Three EPs,The Beta Band
Trailer Park,Beth Orton
Yes,Morphine
A Glorious Lethal Euphoria,The Mermen
A Much Better Tomorrow (Single),Dan The Automator
Aja,Steely Dan
An Introduction to Early Music,
AntiPop,Primus
Aqualung,Jethro Tull
California,Mr. Bungle
Decksandrumsandrockandroll,Propellerheads
Discovery,Daft Punk
Dots & Loops,Stereolab
Double Rainbow: The Music Of Antonio Carlos Jobim,Joe Henderson
Empyrean Isles (EP),Herbie Hancock
Fingerpainting: The Music Of Herbie Hancock,McBride/Payton/Whitfield
Genghis Blues: Music From The Motion Picture (Soundtrack,Score),Kongar-ol Ondar & Paul Pena
Gorillaz (Explicit),Gorillaz
Hellbilly Deluxe,Rob Zombie
Interstellar Space (Bonus Tracks),John Coltrane
Liberation Afrobeat Vol. 1,Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra
Live,The Greyboy Allstars
Masses for Four and Five Voices,William Byrd
Missa L'homme arme,Giovanni da Palestrina
Missa Papae Marcelli,Giovanni da Palestrina
Missa de Beata Virgine I,Giovanni da Palestrina
Morning View,Incubus
Melodies (Songs),Francis Poulenc
Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley,Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley
Parachutes,Coldplay
Peng!,Stereolab
Pork Soda,Primus
Sailing The Seas Of Cheese,Primus
Simple Pleasures,Bobby McFerrin
Simple Things,Zero 7
Solo Piano - Part One (Originals) (EP),Chick Corea
Swordfishtrombones,Tom Waits
Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2,Samuel Barber
The Cannonball Adderly Quinet In San Francisco (EP,Bonus Tracks),Cannonball Adderley
The Cello Suites - Rostropovich (Box Set),Mstislov Rostropovich
The Downward Spiral,Nine Inch Nails
The Magic Flute (Highlights),Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Musical Offering,Johann Sebastian Bach
United,Phoenix
Wynton Marsalis,Wynton Marsalis
1964/1993 (Box Set),Paul Simon
A Sombient Continuum: Swarm Of Drones,
Action Figure Party,Action Figure Party
Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Soundtrack,Bonus Tracks),Miles Davis
At Half Moon Bay,Bill Evans Trio
At The Blackhawk,Thelonious Monk
B-Sides & Otherwise,Morphine
Big Band,Joe Henderson
Bootleg Detroit,Morphine
Cantaloupe Island (EP),Herbie Hancock
Chanticleer: Magnificat,Giovanni da Palestrina
Come Away With Me,Norah Jones
Complaints And Grievances (Explicit),George Carlin
Dew Drops In The Garden,Deee-Lite
Don't Stop The Carnival,Sonny Rollins
Expressions,Chick Corea
Feels So Good,Chuck Mangione
Flute Quintets, Op. 17,Luigi Boccherini
Flyin' The Koop,Stanton Moore
G-Man (EP),Sonny Rollins
G-Sides (Explicit),Gorillaz
Genesis Archive: 1967-1975 (Box Set),Genesis
George Carlin On Comedy,George Carlin
Greatest Hits,Nancy Wilson
Groove Elation!,John Scofield
Here's To The People,Sonny Rollins
Hollywood Swinging,Kool & The Gang
Imaginary Day,Pat Metheny
Infinity Within (Bonus Tracks),Deee-Lite
Into the Sun,Randy Brecker
Intuition,Bill Evans and Eddie Gomez
Life on Earth,Renee Rosnes
Like I Said (Songs 1990-91),Ani DiFranco
Live Frogs: Set 1,Les Claypool's Frog Brigade
Live-Evil,Miles Davis
Michel Camilo,Michel Camilo
Monday Morning Cold,Erin McKeown
More Noise & Other Disturbances,The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Newport '63,John Coltrane
Night And The City,Charlie Haden/Kenny Barron
Oscar Peterson & Clark Terry,Oscar Peterson/Clark Terry
Pablo Honey,Radiohead
Patrick Street,Burke/Daly/Irvine/McGlynn
Plus 4 (EP),Sonny Rollins
Porgy And Bess,Miles Davis
Pursuance: The Music Of John Coltrane,Kenny Garrett
Quartet,Herbie Hancock
Quiet Is The New Loud,Kings Of Convenience
Ready For Freddie,Freddie Hubbard
Room For Squares,John Mayer
Seven Steps To Heaven,Miles Davis
Smash Mouth,Smash Mouth
Spirit Of The Moment: Live At The Village Vanguard,Joshua Redman
Spontaneous Inventions,Bobby McFerrin
Steady Groovin': The Blue Note Groove Sides,John Scofield
Strange Cargo III,William Orbit
Stravinsky In America,Igor Stravinsky
Sweet Rain (EP),Stan Getz
Tenacious D (Explicit),Tenacious D
The Best Of Simon & Garfunkel,Simon & Garfunkel
The Illinois Concert,Eric Dolphy
The In Sound/Mean Greens,Eddie Harris
The Voice,Bobby McFerrin
Tweekend (Explicit),The Crystal Method
Vulgar Display Of Power (Explicit),Pantera
Way Out West,Sonny Rollins
We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes,Death Cab For Cutie
Why Is There Air?,Bill Cosby
Advisory Committee,Mirah
Beyond Words,Bobby McFerrin
C'mon C'mon,Sheryl Crow
Cello Sonatas,Jacqueline Du Pre
Coltrane Jazz (Bonus Tracks),John Coltrane
Details,Frou Frou
Dirty Vegas,Dirty Vegas
Genetic World,Telepopmusik
Highball With The Devil,Les Claypool And The Holy Mackerel
Kulu Se Mama,John Coltrane
Laika Come Home,Gorillaz
Let's Face It (Explicit),The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Miles Ahead,Miles Davis
Next,Soulive
Rhinoplasty,Primus
Ruby Vroom,Soul Coughing
Shout: The Very Best Of Tears For Fears,Tears for Fears
Super Melodrama,Devotchka
The Big Come Up,The Black Keys
Transition,John Coltrane
Undercurrent,Bill Evans & Jim Hall
Verve Remixed,
We The People,Groove Collective
When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King...,Fiona Apple
A Prescription For The Blues,Horace Silver
A Rush Of Blood To The Head,Coldplay
Ascension,John Coltrane
Blacklisted,Neko Case
Bonus Album,The Blow
Cello Suites (2002),Johann Sebastian Bach
Elastic,Joshua Redman
Engage The Enzyme,Young M.C.
Finger Poppin',Horace Silver
Gettin' To It,Christian McBride
Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars (Explicit),Fatboy Slim
Himself,Bill Cosby
I Remember Clifford,Arturo Sandoval
Made In Heaven,Queen
Michael Brecker,Michael Brecker
Now You See It...(Now You Don't),Michael Brecker
Number Two Express,Christian McBride
Revolution Of The Mind,James Brown
Songs In The Key Of Life,Stevie Wonder
Suck On This,Primus
The Amalgamut (Explicit),Filter
The Hardbop Grandpop,Horace Silver
The Kicker,Joe Henderson Sextet
Twinemen (Explicit),Twinemen
Two Blocks From The Edge,Michael Brecker
We Love 'Em Tonight: Live at Tipitina's,Galactic
Wes Montgomery's Finest Hour,Wes Montgomery
What Is This Thing Called Soul? (EP),The Cannonball Adderley and Nat Adderley Quintet
(),Sigur Ros
100th Window,Massive Attack
A Love Supreme (Deluxe Edition) (Bonus Tracks),John Coltrane
Airs Above Your Station,Kinski
Akoustic Band,Chick Corea
Audioslave,Audioslave
Automotive,Ben Neill
Casa,Morelenbaum2/Sakamoto
Chicago, IL 2/2/03,Twinemen
Circlesongs,Bobby McFerrin
Crescent,John Coltrane Quartet
Epitaph,Charles Mingus
Fake Songs,Liam Lynch
Fragile (Bonus Tracks),Yes
Freaky Styley (Explicit),The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Frizzle Fry,Primus
Galactic Vintage Reserve,Galactic
Get Down!,Soulive
Ghost In The Machine,The Police
Hotter Than July,Stevie Wonder
Innervisions,Stevie Wonder
Jump Start and Jazz,Wynton Marsalis
La Revancha Del Tango (Bonus Tracks),Gotan Project
Let It Rain,Tracy Chapman
Live From Hell (Explicit),Sam Kinison
Madison, WI 2/1/03,Twinemen
Monk's Dream,Thelonious Monk
Mother's Milk (Explicit),Red Hot Chili Peppers
Oh!,Scolohofo
On Impulse! (EP),Sonny Rollins
Outlandos D'Amour,The Police
Paris Under A Groove: Stylistique Vol. 1,
Phonography #2 (Import),
Pixies,Pixies
Pulcinella - Danses Concertantes,Igor Stravinsky
Purple Onion,Les Claypool's Frog Brigade
Red Clay (EP),Freddie Hubbard
Reggatta De Blanc,The Police
Standard Of Language,Kenny Garrett
Synchronicity,The Police
Tales From The Punchbowl,Primus
The Bathroom Wall,Jimmy Fallon
The Best Of Morphine 1992-1995,Morphine
The Bridge (EP),Sonny Rollins
The Clash,The Clash
The Herbie Hancock Box (Box Set,Soundtrack),Herbie Hancock
The Power To Believe,King Crimson
The Red Hot Chili Peppers (Explicit),Red Hot Chili Peppers
These Are The Vistas,The Bad Plus
Vertical Vision,Christian McBride Band
You Can Play These Songs With Chords,Death Cab For Cutie
Zenyatta Mondatta,The Police
A Day In New York,Morelenbaum2/Sakamoto
A Love Supreme,John Coltrane
Animals Should Not Try To Act Like People (EP),Primus
Astor Piazzolla Remixed,Astor Piazzolla
At The Half Note Cafe,Donald Byrd
Bird Up!: The Charlie Parker Remix Project,
Black Angels,Kronos Quartet
Bohemia After Dark,Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley
Circle (Explicit),Eddie Izzard
Denver, Co. 9/25/03,Twinemen
Early Music,Kronos Quartet
Evolution,Stefon Harris
Feels Like Home,Norah Jones
Foo Fighters,Foo Fighters
Has It Come To This?,Org Lounge
Heavier Things,John Mayer
Korn (Explicit),Korn
Live In Cambridge,Twinemen
Los Angeles, Ca 10/2/03,Twinemen
Lovehatetragedy (Explicit),Papa Roach
Man In The Air,Kurt Elling
Melody A.M.,Royksopp
Mitch All Together (Explicit),Mitch Hedberg
New Sacred Cow,Kenna
New York City,Peter Malick/Norah Jones
Newk's Time (EP),Sonny Rollins
Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 14,
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 & Piano Sonata No. 2 (EP),Vladimir Horowitz
Ruckus,Galactic
S.C.I.E.N.C.E.,Incubus
San Francisco, Ca 10/1/03,Twinemen
Sophisticated Swing: The Emarcy Small Group Sessions,Julian Cannonball Adderley
Still,Nine Inch Nails
The Bandwagon,Jason Moran
The Concussive Caress, Or, ...,The Blow
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (EP),The Postal Service
The Jody Grind (EP),Horace Silver
The Magic Hour,Wynton Marsalis Quartet
The Painter,Ari Hoenig
Thirteenth Step,A Perfect Circle
Transatlanticism,Death Cab For Cutie
Tribe,Queensryche
Una Volta,Devotchka
Uncommon Ritual,Edgar Meyer
Unstable (Explicit),Adema
Wave Of Mutilation: Best Of Pixies,Pixies
When It Falls,Zero 7
Wide Angles,Michael Brecker Quindectet
Blue Album,Orbital
Great Artists of the Century (EP),Jacqueline Du Pre
Imaginacion,Grupo Niche
Inner urge (24-bit remaster) (EP),Joe Henderson
Potatoes For Christmas (Explicit),Papa Roach
Alphabetical,Phoenix
At Home,Avishai Cohen Trio & Ensemble
Berimbaum,Paula Morelenbaum
Carbon Glacier,Laura Veirs
Contours (EP),Sam Rivers
Definite Article (Explicit),Eddie Izzard
Doin' My Time (Edited),Jim Gaffigan
Dress To Kill (Explicit),Eddie Izzard
Encore (Explicit),Eminem
Everything In Time (b-sides, Rarities, Remixes),No Doubt
Funeral,Arcade Fire
Getting Away With Murder (Explicit),Papa Roach
Glorious (Explicit),Eddie Izzard
Horn of Plenty,Grizzly Bear
LCD Soundsystem,LCD Soundsystem
Le Tigre,Le Tigre
Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center Blues (Explicit),Lewis Black
Misterioso,Thelonious Monk Quartet
Monk Suite : Kronos Quartet Plays Music Of The Thelonious Monk,Kronos Quartet
Music From The Winery,
Natty Dread,Bob Marley & The Wailers
New Birth Family,The New Birth Brass Band
Overtime,Dave Holland
Palookaville (Explicit),Fatboy Slim
Portrait in Jazz,Bill Evans Trio
Soviet Kitsch,Regina Spektor
The 5 Browns,The 5 Browns
The Big Eyeball In The Sky,Les Claypool
The Clown (EP),Charles Mingus
The Downward Spiral - Deluxe Edition,Nine Inch Nails
The Early BBC Recordings 1961-1965,Jacqueline Du Pre
The Lemon Of Pink,The Books
The Music Of Bill Evans,Kronos Quartet
The Piano,Herbie Hancock
The Tigers Have Spoken,Neko Case
Unrepeatable (Explicit),Eddie Izzard
Untying the Not,The String Cheese Incident
Waltz For Debby (EP),Bill Evans
Within A Mile of Home,Flogging Molly
Worktime (EP),Sonny Rollins
eMOTIVe (Explicit),A Perfect Circle
l'esprit de l'escalier,Cellar Door
11:11 eleven eleven (Explicit),Regina Spektor
Acoustica,Alarm Will Sound
Angel Milk,Telepopmusik
Bach for Meditation,Johann Sebastian Bach
Beginnings,Eighth Blackbird
De Stijl; M is for Man, Music, Mozart,Louis Andriessen
Demon Days,Gorillaz
Domination,Cannonball Adderley with Oliver Nelson's Orchestra
Drukqs,Aphex Twin
Drunk On Light,Weevil
Graceland,Paul Simon
Half Smile / Bytecry (Single),Weevil
Human After All,Daft Punk
Liquid Acrobats,United Dope Front
Live at the House of Tribes,Wynton Marsalis
Maximum Tool,Tool Tribute Band
Momentum,Joshua Redman
Music From The O.C.: Mix 4 (Soundtrack),
Odyssey,Fischerspooner
Out Of Exile,Audioslave
Problem Is (EP),Dub Pistols
SF Jazz Collective,SF Jazz Collective
Sideshow,Twinemen
Smokin' At The Half Note,Wynton Kelly Trio & Wes Montgomery
So Percussion (EP),So Percussion
Solace,Xavier Rudd
Songs From The Capeman,Paul Simon
Steady Groovin',Soulive
Steve Reich - Drumming (EP),So Percussion
T W E N T Y T H R E E (Exclusive),Tristan Prettyman
The Burning Bridges Tour,Maria Bamford
The Drop,Brian Eno
The Inflated Tear (Deluxe Edition),Rahsaan Roland Kirk
The Six String Quartets,Bela Bartok
The Understanding (Bonus Tracks),Royksopp
Thirteen Ways,Eighth Blackbird
Triple Quartet (EP),Steve Reich
Untilted,Autechre
We Will Become Like Birds (Exclusive),Erin McKeown
Windows Open (EP),Herbie Mann
With Teeth (Explicit),Nine Inch Nails
X&Y,Coldplay
A Time To Love,Stevie Wonder
Apollo 18,They Might Be Giants
Barber's Adagio - Orchestral & Chamber Works,
Bobby McFerrin,Bobby McFerrin
Break Out,Soulive
Cumulus (Single),Imogen Heap
Extraordinary Machine,Fiona Apple
Fred: Music Of Frederick Rzewski,Eighth Blackbird
Give Up,The Postal Service
Guess Who I Saw Today: Nancy Wilson Sings Songs of Lost Love,Nancy Wilson
Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass,Kronos Quartet
Live It Out,Metric
Mozart:  Piano Quartets, K. 493 & K. 478 [Expanded Edition],Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Music From Two Basses,Dave Holland
Music In Twelve Parts (Box Set),Philip Glass
One Cello X 16 (EP),Zoe Keating
Plans,Death Cab For Cutie
Possibilities,
Save Your Love For Me: Nancy Wilson Sings the Great Blues Ballads,Nancy Wilson
Schubert: Sonata In A Minor Op. 42, D.845 / Sonata In D Major, Op. 53, D. 850,Richard Goode
SpaceLaunch For Frenchie,Kinski
Speak For Yourself,Imogen Heap
Such Great Heights (EP,Explicit),The Postal Service
Sweet Dreams (are Made Of This),Eurythmics
The Best of the Beta Band,The Beta Band
The Jon Gordon Quartet,Jon Gordon
The Perfect Set (EP),Kenny Barron
Thousand Knives Of (EP),Ryuichi Sakamoto
Tracy Chapman,Tracy Chapman
We Will Become Silhouettes (EP),The Postal Service
Witching Hour,Ladytron
Works 1965-1995,Steve Reich
African Exchange Student,Kenny Garrett
Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988,Murray Perahia
Beethoven: Cello Sonata No.4; Variations (EP),Yo-Yo Ma
Beyond The Pale,Jim Gaffigan
Colour The Small One,Sia
Comfort Of Strangers,Beth Orton
Computer World,Kraftwerk
Curtain Call (Explicit),Eminem
Everybody Digs Bill Evans,Bill Evans (Piano)
Fab Four Suture,Stereolab
Fear Of Music (Bonus Tracks),Talking Heads
Fox Confessor Brings The Flood,Neko Case
Glassworks - Expanded Edition,Philip Glass Ensemble
Harmful If Swallowed (Explicit),Dane Cook
Hush,
I Megaphone,Imogen Heap
In Sides (Box Set),Orbital
KCRW.com Presents Erin Mckeown Live,Erin McKeown
Music for Saxophones,
Naked City: Complete Studio Recordings,Naked City
Paper Music,
Piano Quintet In F Minor; Piano Quartet No. 3 In C Minor,Johannes Brahms
Poulenc:  Works For Cello & Piano ,Francis Poulenc
Royksopp's Night Out (live Ep),Royksopp
Saxophone Colossus (EP),Sonny Rollins
Songs Without Words (Soundtrack),Fred Hersch
The Dresden Dolls,The Dresden Dolls
The Off-White Album (Explicit),Dennis Miller
The Rite Of Spring; The Firebird,Igor Stravinsky
Tone's For Joan's Bones (EP),Chick Corea
True Stories I Made Up (Explicit),Daniel Tosh
goran ivanovic group,Goran Ivanovic Group
Alive Behind the Green Door,Flogging Molly
I Didn't Get The Memo,Cellar Door
No Boundaries,The 5 Browns
Rolling Stone Original (EP,Exclusive),Death Cab For Cutie
The Best of the Black President,Fela Kuti
The Carnegie Hall Performance (Explicit),Lewis Black
A Fifth of Beethoven,Walter Murphy
Anne-Sophie Mutter - Tango Song and Dance,Anne-Sophie Mutter
Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites [Great Performances],Yo-Yo Ma
Balkan Beat Box,Balkan Beat Box
Beethoven: Cello Sonatas Nos.3 & 5 (EP),Yo-Yo Ma
Begin To Hope,Regina Spektor
Beyond the Wall,Kenny Garrett
Bolling: Suite For Cello And Jazz Piano Trio (EP),Yo-Yo Ma
Chulahoma,The Black Keys
Continuo,Avishai Cohen (bass)
Critical Mass,Dave Holland Quintet
Goodnight And Go (Single),Imogen Heap
I Wish,Tok Tok Tok
In Amsterdam: Live At The Bimhuis,Fred Hersch
It's Never Been Like That,Phoenix
LP,Landon Pigg
Lemonade,G. Love and Special Sauce
Live At The Blue Note [Rhapsody Exclusive] (Exclusive,Bonus Tracks),Eldar
Of Whales And Woe,Les Claypool
One Nation Under A Groove,Funkadelic
Questions From A Seeker (EP),Me'Shell Ndegeocello
Rolling Stone Original (EP,Exclusive),Imogen Heap
Sandbox- The Original Music Of Mark Sandman,Mark Sandman
Sorry For The Delay,Grizzly Bear
Soultrane,John Coltrane
St. Elsewhere,Gnarls Barkley
Sublime (Deluxe Edition) (Explicit),Sublime
Surprise,Paul Simon
The Chronicles of Narnia:  The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,
The Debussy Collection,
The Garden,Zero 7
Yes, Virginia (Explicit),The Dresden Dolls
Amid The Noise,So Percussion
Beethoven: The Violin Sonatas,Anne-Sophie Mutter
CHILL WITH SATIE,
Continuum,John Mayer
Dakar,John Coltrane
Here,Nicolay
Husky,Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet
I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass,Yo La Tengo
One Foot In The Swamp,John Ellis
Plague Songs,
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 4; Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,Eugene Ormandy
Revelations,Audioslave
Rivertown Voices,
Stone Cold Rhymin',Young M.C.
Strangeitude,Ozric Tentacles
Swirly Termination,Ozric Tentacles
The American Album (Barber, Copland, Thomson),Aaron Copland
The Paramour Sessions (Explicit),Papa Roach
They Can't All Be Zingers,Primus
What's Going On,The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
Babel - Music From And Inspired By The Motion Picture (Exclusive,Soundtrack,Bonus Tracks),
Distance,Cellar Door
Einstein on the Beach,Philip Glass
Food in the Belly,Xavier Rudd
Holst:  The Planets,Gustav Holst
Key,Meredith Monk
Light Grenades,Incubus
Moloch - The Book Of Angels Volume 6,Uri Caine
Paper Television,The Blow
Ready To Die The Remaster (Explicit),The Notorious B.I.G.
Rhino Hi-Five: Pantera (EP),Pantera
Sick & Tired (Explicit) (Explicit),Wanda Sykes
Sing You Sinners,Erin McKeown
Sonny, Please,Sonny Rollins
Strange Imaginary Animals,Eighth Blackbird
THE VERY BEST OF SATIE,
The Singles Collection (Explicit),Staind
Trading Snakeoil For Wolftickets,Gary Jules
Turn It Out,Soulive
Vivaldi's Cello,
5:55 (Bonus Tracks),Charlotte Gainsbourg
Alright, Still (Explicit),Lily Allen
Back East,Joshua Redman
Boccherini: Quintets for Flute, Violin, Viola, and 2 Violoncellos,Jean-Pierre Rampal
Cellar Door (EP),Cellar Door
Debussy: Nocturnes; La Mer; Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune,
Freak Show,The Residents
From The Plantation To The Penitentiary,Wynton Marsalis
Goodbye,Ulrich Schnauss
Human Like A House,The Finches
J.S.Bach,Pablo Casals - Cello-suites
Lady Croissant,Sia
Legion Of Boom,The Crystal Method
Life In Cartoon Motion,Mika
Life is Worth Losing,George Carlin
Live: Volume 1,Robin Eubanks
Mahler: Symphony No.2 - Resurrection (EP),
Masters of the Trumpet,
Neon Bible,Arcade Fire
New York Breed,Conrad Herwig
Night Lights,Walt Weiskopf
Not Too Late,Norah Jones
Nu Med,Balkan Beat Box
Poor Aim: Love Songs,The Blow
Power To The People [Keepnews Collection],Joe Henderson
Rhino Hi-Five: Me'Shell Ndegeocello (EP),Me'Shell Ndegeocello
STILL STUCK IN YOUR THROAT,Fishbone
Saltbreakers,Laura Veirs
Standards + Plus,Jim Snidero
Systematic Chaos,Dream Theater
The Bird And The Bee (Explicit),The Bird And The Bee
The Floor's Too Far Away,Ozric Tentacles
The Mozart Sessions,
The Music of Joe Henderson,Jim Snidero
The Pick Of Destiny (Exclusive),Tenacious D
The Police,The Police
The Reminder,Feist
Thomas Schippers Conducts Barber/Menotti/Berg/D'Indy,
Thunderbird (EP),Thunderbird
White Moth,Xavier Rudd
Wincing The Night Away,The Shins
Year Zero,Nine Inch Nails
#1s,Stevie Wonder
45:33,LCD Soundsystem
All Rise,Inara George
Browns In Blue,
Brushfire Fairytales,Jack Johnson
Byrd: The Three Masses,Choir Of Winchester Cathedral
Comedy Death Ray (Explicit),
From the Corner To the Block,Galactic
How To WIN!,Maria Bamford
I Still Have A Pony,Steven Wright
Ideas,Ken Vandermark
Introduction,Alex Parks
Kala,M.I.A.
Lafayette,Erin McKeown
Lightparade,D Numbers
Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte,Ilse von Alpenheim
Mistico,Charlie Hunter Trio
Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?,Metric
Pop Up,Yelle
Poulenc: Musique de Chambre (Integrale),
Reich: Drumming,
Rhino,Albino
River: The Joni Letters,Herbie Hancock
Rough Around The Edges - Live From Madison Square Garden (Explicit),Dane Cook
Spirals in Hyperspace,Ozric Tentacles
Static Prevails (Expanded),Jimmy Eat World
Sunny,Bobby Hebb
Super Taranta! (Explicit),Gogol Bordello
Superheroes,The Toxic Avenger
Swing Swing (EP),Wax Poetic
The Best of Edgar Meyer,
The Distant Future (EP),Flight Of The Conchords
Twinetime,Twinemen
Urban Angel,Natalie Walker
A Mad And Faithful Telling,Devotchka
Anthems For The Damned (Bonus Tracks),Filter
Attack and Release,The Black Keys
Brahms : Piano Quintet and Horn Trio,Johannes Brahms
Continuum (Special Edition),John Mayer
Crystal Castles,Crystal Castles
D-Sides,Gorillaz
Daniel Variations,Steve Reich
Debussy: Melodies,Jos van Immerseel Sandrine Piau
Drama,Bitter:Sweet
Edgar Meyer,Edgar Meyer
Fakebook,Yo La Tengo
Free Somehow,Widespread Panic
Gently Disturbed,Avishai Cohen
Glass: The Concerto Project Vol. III,
Grow Up And Blow Away,Metric
Hello,Tristan Prettyman
Hideaway,The Weepies
Je Veux Te Voir (Remixes 2008),Yelle
Keep Telling Myself It's Alright,ASHES dIVIDE
Kinski (EP),Kinski
Lay It Down,Al Green
Mahler: Symphony No. 1,Valery Gergiev
Mahler: Symphony No. 3,Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Medium Rare,The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
No, Virginia [Special Edition],The Dresden Dolls
Philip Glass: Complete String Quartets,Philip Glass
Some People Have REAL Problems,Sia
Spanking New Session (Single,Exclusive),Vampire Weekend
Tchaikovsky: Symphonies 4-6,Philadelphia Orchestra
The Alternative,IAMX
The Best Of (Bonus Tracks,Explicit),Radiohead
The Best Of (Explicit),Radiohead
The Invisible Line,Temposhark
The Odd Couple,Gnarls Barkley
Third,Portishead
Vampire Weekend,Vampire Weekend
Vicious Circle (Explicit),Dane Cook
Viva La Vida,Coldplay
Yellow House,Grizzly Bear
Year of Meteors,Laura Veirs
Adrenaline Flow,Young M.C.
Allegri's Miserere and Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli,The Tallis Scholars
An Evening With Joe Henderson, Al Foster, Charlie Haden,Joe Henderson
Anticipation (Explicit),Lewis Black
B-sides Demos & Remixes,Young M.C.
Bartok: The 6 String Quartets,Emerson String Quartet
Chemical Chords,Stereolab
Closer: The Best Of Sarah McLachlan (Bonus Tracks),Sarah McLachlan
Dark Shades Of Blue,Xavier Rudd
Five (and-a-half) Gardens,So Percussion
Happiness,A.K.A.C.O.D.
Holst: The Planets,
Josquin - Missa Sine nomine & Missa Ad fugam,The Tallis Scholars
KFOG Private Concert (EP),Death Cab For Cutie
Late for the Future,Galactic
Mali Koura,Issa Bagayogo
Margerine Eclipse,Stereolab
Matters Of The Heart,Tracy Chapman
Narrow Stairs (Bonus Tracks),Death Cab For Cutie
Night Ripper,Girl Talk
Not Now But Soon (Single),Imogen Heap
Number Ones,Michael Jackson
Other People's Love Songs,Corey Dargel
Palestrina: Missa Benedicta es (25th Anniversary Edition),The Tallis Scholars
Polar Bear,Polar Bear
Radio Retaliation (Explicit),Thievery Corporation
Randy in Brasil,Randy Brecker
Renaissance Giants (Byrd, Josquin, Palestrina, Tallis, Taverner & Victoria),The Tallis Scholars
Sarum Chant - Missa in gallicantu,The Tallis Scholars
Shara Worden Live at Schubas 11/18/2004 (EP),Shara Worden
Sotto Falso Nome,Ludovico Einaudi
Superhero Brother (Exclusive,Bonus Tracks),G. Love and Special Sauce
The Cosmos Rocks,Queen
The Illusion Of Progress (Explicit),Staind
The Tallis Scholars sing Josquin,The Tallis Scholars
The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra: Lickety Split,
Who Killed Amanda Palmer,Amanda Palmer
Compass,Joshua Redman
Day By Day,Femi Kuti
Flashback,The Penultimate Truth
Kind Of Blue (Legacy Edition),Miles Davis
Relentless,Young M.C.
Remixes for the Damned,Filter
Sax Pax For A Sax,Moondog
Two Beers Veirs (EP),Laura Veirs
Bird-Brains,Tune-Yards
Century of Self,...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
Damnation,Opeth
Fantasies (Explicit),Metric
Far,Regina Spektor
Fever To Tell (Explicit),Yeah Yeah Yeahs
First Train Home (Single),Imogen Heap
Girl And A Cello,Bird
Greatest Hits (Explicit),2Pac
It's Blitz! (Exclusive,Bonus Tracks),Yeah Yeah Yeahs
It's Not Me, It's You (Explicit),Lily Allen
Junior,Royksopp
Left for Dead In Seattle,Skerik
Lungs,Florence & The Machine
Metamorphosis (Edited),Papa Roach
Metamorphosis (Explicit),Papa Roach
Middle Cyclone,Neko Case
Night Of Joy,Widespread Panic
Nu Made (Remixes),Balkan Beat Box
Of Fungi And Foe,Les Claypool
Orbital 20,Orbital
Psychochromatic,Skerik
Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future,The Bird And The Bee
Stone Cold Rhymin' Deluxe Edition,Young M.C.
The Girl And The Robot,Royksopp
The Grand,Kaskade
The Open Door (EP),Death Cab For Cutie
The Very Best Things [1995-2008],Filter
Under Rug Swept,Alanis Morissette
Varshons,The Lemonheads
Wait For Me,Moby
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (Exclusive),Phoenix
V Is for Viagra, the Vagina Remixes,Puscifer
At Your Service,Morphine
Battle Studies,John Mayer
Bird-Droppings (EP),Tune-Yards
Chop 'N' Quench,Fela Kuti
Contra,Vampire Weekend
Distillation,Erin McKeown
Ellipse,Imogen Heap
Everybody,Ingrid Michaelson
Grand,Erin McKeown
Here Comes Science,They Might Be Giants
Hundreds of Lions,Erin McKeown
Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates,The Bird And The Bee
Introducing Thrifty Astronaut (EP) (EP),Thrifty Astronaut
It Takes A Thief,Thievery Corporation
July Flame,Laura Veirs
Maybe I'm Dreaming,Owl City
Na Poi,Fela Kuti
O.D.O.O,Fela Kuti
Ocean Eyes,Owl City
Plastic Beach,Gorillaz
Quaristice,Autechre
Ring,Glasser
Safari Disco Club,Yelle
Senior,Royksopp
The Dukes Of Disgusting,Bird & Macdonald
The Fame Monster (Explicit),Lady GaGa
The Girl You Lost to Cocaine,Sia
The Listening,Lights
The Obsidian Conspiracy,Nevermore
The Suburbs,Arcade Fire
Trans-Continental Hustle,Gogol Bordello
Trick Or Treat: Best Of The String Cheese Incident,The String Cheese Incident
VOCAbuLarieS,Bobby McFerrin
Victory Songs,Ensiferum
Yeah Ghost,Zero 7
Codes and Keys,Death Cab for Cutie
The Fathomless Mastery,Bloodbath
Tribal Derivations,Beats Antique
Collide,Beats Antique
Contraption Vol 1,Beats Antique
Blind Threshold,Beats Antique
Random Album Title,Deadmau5
Livin' A Treme Life,Kermit Ruffins

TEDx and Turtle Dove

2011-09-26T00:46:21.000Z

Yesterday was a pretty epic (also sick, also chill if you're Mark Pizzi) Saturday. I had to get up early despite needing to pay down some sleep debt accumulated during the week. I went to my local Chase branch to set up a business account for my LLC, which will actually have some income in 2011 (yay!). It took about an hour and then I quickly tidied up the house a bit after a pretty jam-packed week which left a lot of dishes and clutter strewn about. Then The Schmiggler came over and we went into town to eat brunch and catch up. It's been a few months maybe since I've seen her.

Then we went for a nice mountain bike ride. We rode Dowdy Draw up over to Flatirons Vista. Michale did great getting up the steep hill to get onto the vista, but it was tough sledding. We came home for a brief 45 minute nap (Michale commented that she prefers 2-hour naps) and then on to Boulder for TEDx Boulder. We stopped along the way to pick up Michale's friend Jen and then parked on the hill and walked to Mackey. The crowd was 1800 or so and I'd have to say that TEDx Boulder is probably the Boulderest thing I've seen so far. It's jam packed with tech and science geeks. There's an assortment of crunchy food vendors touting their green & clean goods. The "we're Boulder and we're great" vibe was thick in the air. The themes were food, education, and science. I'm a big TED/TEDx fanboy and have had TED parties at my house, but for whatever reason last night didn't click with me. I liked a talk about avoiding extinction via meteor but most of the others were pretty blah. I did enjoy Kimya Dawson's performance, though, and of course Schmiggler loves her. I guess I might have crossed the line into Boulder overload perhaps.

TEDx was a good 4 hours long and then I high-tailed it down to Arvada for a gig with Turtle Dove Quartet. We played the 12-Volt Tavern in old town Arvada. I arrived while the first band had only about 2 more songs to play, and we hit around 11pm. I wasn't sure how things would go, but it turned out very well. We've been rehearsing pretty consistently and making lots of tiny improvements to each song, and I think it came through in the performance. We played an hour long set of 7 original tunes and 7 covers. I think it was pretty well received, especially given the fact that the 12-Volt is a dive bar and not necessarily packed with music enthusiasts.

I think I got home around 1am starving for some triscuits and swiss. I snacked and watched some Treme before finally giving up the ghost after a very long 18-hour day.

Today is some recovery, some settling in to my new job lifestyle, shopping, cooking, and hopefully practicing some classical sax.

Oktoberfest and Gora Gora Orkestar

2011-09-18T12:22:15.000Z

Having a damn fine weekend in Louisville. Friday I went to Oktoberfest downtown at the pavilion with a new friend Brenda. We drank Oskar Blues beers and had some street food while listening to the polka band and chatting up the locals. Today I ran a bunch of errands and had a yummy panera bread sandwich and some cinnamon crumb cake. Tonight I went back into downtown Louisville to enjoy the Gora Gora Orkestar. I sat in a bit for their second set, which was fun. They played the Star Wars Cantina song and some great 7/8 beats. I think Smithwick's is poised to become my favorite beer. It's really good.

Work

2011-09-11T06:59:15.000Z

So it's been almost 8 months since I quit my job at HP. I prefer being retired and hope to return to that disposition as soon as possible. But, alas, next week I return to the world of wage-earners. It took a long time and a lot of flip-flopping to decide between two opportunities, but I've decided to join a Boulder based development shop called Dojo4. I was also considered a Boulder TechStars startup, but ultimately decided I'm not ready to dive into a startup right now.

Hung out with Julia last night. We tried the new rooftop bar at the Rex in downtown Louisville. Nice locale. Menu has variety but otherwise follows the Applebees/TGI Friday model. Today I went to the farmer's market and then hiked Rabbit Mountain.

Cousin Dr. Annie gets hitched

2011-09-07T23:11:58.000Z

So my travel adventures at Burning Man didn't end when I made it to the Reno airport. I caught my flight from Reno to Denver, but there was a lightning storm near the Denver airport, so we had to circle in a holding pattern for a while. Eventually the pilot announced that we were out of holding fuel and had to divert to Scott's Bluff, Nebraska to refuel. We were on the ground for about an hour in Nebraska before heading back to Denver. When we arrived, we were about three hours late and I had missed my connection. There were no more flights on United to St. Louis that evening so I ended up having to buy a new ticket on Southwest to get me to St. Louis. I eventually took off (standby) around 9:30pm and landed in St. Louis around 12:30. I was planning to take the MetroLink train from the airport to Forest Park, so I headed up there and bought a ticket. Only after that did I see on the schedule that there were no more trains this late at night. I later realized that my phone was still screwed up with time zones and there may have actually been one more train I could have caught, but anyway I went to the taxi stand to wait for a taxi. I waited a while and folks in front of me got cabs. When it was my turn, I approached the next arriving cab and he asked me if I was Mr. SoAndSo. A family that had arrived after I did came up and took that one. It seems in St. Louis, at least late at night, there is not a standing pool of taxis waiting. Everyone has to individually call the company to dispatch a specific taxi for them. So I eventually got a ride to the hotel and arrived around 1:30am. I was rooming with Uncle Eddie, who was inexplicably awake and brushing his teeth when I arrived. He works in mysterious ways.

Saturday we had breakfast at a crepe place near the hotel and then went to check out the Gateway Arch and the Museum of Westward Expansion. Then back to the hotel to rest up some more before the rehearsal dinner at a restaurant not far from the hotel. After dinner there were cocktails on the deck at the hotel and we stayed up chatting a while. I drank three whole beers that night. That's my personal record. :-)

Sunday I woke up early to play tennis but my plans got message up by some TXT miscommunication. I went back to bed thinking tennis was canceled due to rain, but it was actually still on and I missed it. I met up with Matt and Frankie and we went into Forest Park and visited the St Louis Art Museum and the Mildren Lane Kemper Art Musuem. I liked the contemporary paintings they had at SLAM, including Gerhard Richter's "Betty".

The wedding ceremony was at the church Ryan's family has been going to forever, and the reception was at a hall inside the St Louis Zoo. Anne and Ryan had brought a country band down from Chicago and there were a lot of fun. There was ample cake and I had three pieces. We all had a good time celebrating together. Early the next morning I shared a cab with Andrew and Ariel to the airport and headed back home. At the Denver airport, I ran into Sharon and Ned, neighbors of Bill and Leslie, and they gave me a lift home, which was great.

Burning Man 2011: Rites of Passage

2011-09-07T22:50:08.000Z

So Burning Man this year was characterized by tough days and fun nights. Before I write my compulsory chronological narrative, let me start with a few overall observations. It was tough this year. It was my third time there, but I felt less well prepared this time than last time. Maybe over the course of my 2-year hiatus I forgot how incredibly unsuited I am to long days of exposure to fierce desert sun. There were times over the first few days when I thought I wasn't going to make it. This did eventually improve, though. I ended up having some great experiences, including my best musical performance to date.

OK, so here's the story from the top. On Wednesday August 24th I went to Darrell's house in Boulder to help load up his 1976 Chevy Tasca motor home. It turned out that he was not just taking our gear, but the entire infrastructure for his camp, Shangrila, as well. This included lots of PVC, steel pipes, tarps, a giant hoop to hold a shower curtain, a wagon, a bunch of 7-gallon water jugs, 3 bikes, coolers, etc. So Darrell, John, and I spent a few hours packing stuff into the motor home. Even when folded down, the 4'x4' panels of my hexayurt don't fit in my car, so I had to have a friend with a pickup truck give me a ride to load those. Late Thursday morning we did some final packing and then hit the road. Darrell took a back-road-heavy route past Fort Collins and Loveland and I took over driving when we hit I-80 in Wyoming.

We stopped at the heavily-billboarded Little America stop for some grub and those famous 50 cent cones. It was getting dark and Darrell discovered the running lights on the motor home were not working. We fiddled with bulbs and fuses and got most of them working and then motored on. I was enjoying snacking on peanut butter filled pretzels and gummy bears after a few weeks of slow carb dieting to get slim and trim for the burn.

We stopped for the night at a roadside rest area along Great Salt Lake after lumbering over the mountain passes in Park City, UT. As I dozed in and out of sleep, I was suddenly shocked to attention by a loud ring of the doorbell. I guess someone from one of the other parked cars was at the door. "Darrell, someone just rang the doorbell", I said up to Darrell who was sleeping in the bed above the cab. "There is no doorbell", he replied in a Matrix-like koan. "Oh, I must be hallucinating", I drearily said and went back to sleep. In the morning we figured out that Darrell's email notification bell on his phone is what I heard and we had a laugh about the funny dazed conversation. In the morning we took some photos on the salt flats before getting back on the road.

Thursday morning we ate breakfast at a roadside McDonalds in Wendover, UT, which has delicious sweet tea (although it's best to mix mostly unsweetened with a little of the saturated sweet tea for a more reasonable sugar content). I was trying to get final offers from two potential new jobs and trying to coordinate what I could over my cell phone, but in the end it had to be postponed until September. We motored on until Battle Mountain, Nevada, where we ran out of oil. We went to a Napa store to investigate and spent a while troubleshooting and trying to find what was leaking oil and fix it. Darrell put new oil in the engine and a leak fixer product and we carried on hoping that and/or the spare oil Darrell bought would get us there. I should note that that Napa store had the biggest, most ass-kicking swamp cooler I've ever seen.

On the ride, Darrell had been keeping busy when not driving by making necklaces to give as playa gifts. In the tussle of dealing with the oil leak, a big group of necklaces had become hopelessly tangled. He tried to undo it, but it just ended up being a storm of sailor-quality profanity as Darrell became pretty upset.

We arrived at Fernley, Nevada that evening and did our final stocking up at Wal-Mart. We grabbed showers at the Love's truck stop and had our last restaurant meal of steak at a Casino restaurant. We parked at the truck stop and spent the night. Friday morning before dawn we headed north toward Burning Man. We watched a pretty sunrise over the Black Rock Desert as we approached the event. We met the greeters and found our way to the location of Darrell's camp. We found the guy in charge of placement pretty easily, which I thought would be an exercise in futility. We unloaded all of his camp's gear and then drove me across the event to the Automatic Subconscious site, where my campmates were already 2 days into their setup.

I helped get the second AutoSub quonset hut up and then assembled my hexayurt with some help from David Levy. I worked on tightening about one bazillion bolts on the steel frame of Doug's "Go Fly A Bike" art/mayhem project. Then I helped start the setup of the kitchen. My camp, Automatic Subconscious, is a Boston camp with maximal infrastructure. There's a giant 74 kilowatt diesel generator that powers all of the Boston hive, and AutoSub has 2 large shade huts, a full kitchen, running water, a freezer, a shower, an evaporation pond, and tons of food in coolers.

Friday night was a delicious meal of steak and salmon for the early setup crew. We went out to visit the temple and the pier on a nice warm night. It was still possible to find some moments of silence as the festival doesn't open officially until Sunday at 6pm.

Saturday it was cloudy all morning with some sprinkles of rain. This meant less sun and lower temperatures, which was great for me. We set up the evap pond, which is called "Lake Woodward" and pronounced "Lake Woodwood" by the Bostonites. I helped build the shower and then re-arranged the coolers in the kitchen. I tried to get my swamp cooler going in the afternoon (I later heard that it hit 112 degrees Saturday afternoon once the clouds blew over). However, it hit my first major snag in that my 12v battery seemed to have leaked some sulfuric acid during the trip (maybe altitude issues???). It was a frigging mess. It burned holes in some of my clothes and gear. Luckily it was well-contained in my tarp and I had enough excess tarp to wrap it up and fold it out of the way. The second major annoyance was the fact that the rubber boots I had bought at Goodwill didn't fit properly and were giving me bad abrasions on my ankles and calves and threatening to blister my feet. This was bad news as the only other footwear I had was flip-flops. I also didn't have proper knee-high boot socks. I don't really have any experience wearing boots. So this was a problem that I would battle over the next few days. One of our campers made a run to Gerlach that day and I asked him to pick up some boot socks for me, but that run took all day and he returned with a single pair. By the end of the day my feet were aching both from the poor-fitting boots as well as just general hurting from so much standing, walking, and lifting. Saturday evening I washed my pants, which were already filthy and stained, in some meltwater. They also had some acid on them I was trying to mitigate, but it had already burned a few small holes here and there.

Sadly my swampcooler proved to be no match for the desert Sun. It helped a little, but it was a far cry from the "20 degrees" cooler I had read on the internet. I think the main issue is the water pump I had was too weak and couldn't keep the swamp pads moist. It was very hot Saturday and I was mostly trying to lay low and rest from 3pm to 7pm or so. I cruised down to center camp but it wasn't open yet.

Sunday morning I unloaded gear from the shipping containers AutoSub sends from Boston to the playa. I ended up trimming the tops off of my boots, which solved the abrasion problem, but by this time I already had a few open wounds that would just sit there and not heal until I got off the playa. We carried Phil's aerial rig out to the playa across the Esplanade from AutoSub. I strung a bunch of Christmas lights up in the AutoSub dinning hall with Ayer from Camp Cwality. Let it be known that I hate Christmas lights and rope lights should always be used in their stead. In the afternoon we started the top layers of the AutoSub dome build. We had rice, beans, and salad for dinner and heard some welcome speeches as early crew officially ended.

Sunday night I rode out to deep playa and explored around a bit. There was a bike obstacle course near AutoSub that I tried a few times. It had some fun teeter totters and some balance challenges. Now that the gates were officially open, it was very quickly getting crowded. I looked at the stars a bit and found a rock climbing camp (which I could never locate again later in the week).

Monday morning was very cold. I cleared some crap out of the kitchen for Tish. I ate some cereal with banana (availability of fresh fruit is a great perk of camping with a well-outfitted group), and helped Tish cook some bacon for the camp. I rode around BRC a bit but couldn't find the climbing camp again. Back at AutoSub, I helped some more with the dome build out. Right at noon I went to Black Rock Boutique, when they just opened for the first time. They have a big wardrobe of playa clothes you can have, and I desperately needed alternate footwear. I located a pair of black canvas 2-toed ninja boots that fit much better than my rubber boots. They weren't perfect and the left big toe separator was too long and hurt a bit, but it was much better than the other ones, so I was happy. I also ran into Doug who I camped with at Freedom Community in 2009. Then back to AutoSub to help put the canvas cover on the dome, which was now fully up.

I rested a bit and then had our dinner of franks and beans. I rode around looking for a funk jam session at Bandlands but couldn't find it. This is what happens about 75% of the time when you set out looking for some specific thing at Burning Man. I rode out to the deep playa and played some sax by one of the sculptures. I played some jazz ballads and some classical noodling. People would stop by and listen for a while. One woman in particular stayed a very long time listening to the lyrical classical noodling. Most of the day Wednesday I wasn't feeling well, which is really not what you want when you're in the desert dealing with sweltering-hot port-a-potties that are 3 blocks away.

Tuesday morning I rode out to the "Another Door" installation on the playa near the 6:00 road between The Man and Center Camp. The piece is a maze of doors that are interconnected with flywheels so opening one door closes another one. It was pretty ideal for music since it provided shade, shelter from the wind, and a bench that worked reasonably well as a music stand. I played some of my Bach cello suites and another more modern piece. Then I went back to AutoSub to watch Phil and Liz do an aerial workshop. Next I rode to Center Camp and got a wind surfing lesson on a little training rig on wheels. I've taken a few lessons on the water so I had the basic gist, but it was a good reminder. I rode out to the 9:00 plaza and mailed off some postcards. The workers at the post office windows are notoriously sassy, and I had to use my trick of puffing my belly out way far to get my postcards mailed. Then I went over to Wisky and Dust (a Denver based camp) to practice some juggling, which was fun. Tuesday was pretty windy and dusty, and my bike started to malfunction a bit, but I was eventually able to repair it. Of course, AutoSub has a bike repair stand and any tool you could possibly need.

Tuesday night I danced in the AutoSub dome where Encanti was deejaying. I rode out to the Go Fly A Bike installation. This is a gigantic rig that spins a long post. One end of the post dangles a bicycle, and the other has water barrels that serve as ballast (in theory). The rider pedals the bike around a circular path and then eventually gets lifted up off the ground to 15 feet into the air. The design involves complex pumps and switches, but they ran into a bunch of technical difficulties with that and ended up just having someone hang off the other end to lift the rider up.

Wednesday morning I returned to "Another Door" for more classical sax. After that, our camp was visited by "Cool Whip" (or something like that) from a neighboring camp. She is a mechanical engineer who had transported a giant 20 foot long 30 inch diameter drainage pipe to the playa to use as a slide. However, due to some communication issues, she was unable to install it on the artwork she had intended and thus found herself with a spare, useless, giant pipe at the beginning of Burning Man. So she proposed we hook it up to the AutoSub dome and use it as an egress slide. The AutoSub dome has a great feature of an external ladder on the wall that leads to a level of netting one level down from the top where people can hang out. It's really comfy and provides great views of the Esplanade. However, the ladder only accommodates one person at a time in a single direction, so having a slide to go down would be nice. We set to work under Noah's guidance and made short work of hooking the pipe up to the dome. 20 minutes later, and the 300-pound beast was installed. However, it was crazy steep. Like, not much better than jumping steep. So we spent several hours building various platforms to raise the end of the pipe and thus reduce the angle. Once we had done that, we shot some test victims down it and realized the landing pad of futon mattresses was getting moved with each rider. So then we spent several hours working on improving the landing pad. By evening, we eventually opened it up to the public. However, within the first 90 minutes, someone hurt her ankle on the landing and we had to call in the BRC rangers to get her some medical attention. Thus was the end of the egress slide, which we had to dismantle.

Wednesday afternoon I attempted to visit some friends on the playa. I managed to locate Pat McConaghy's camp and find his RV, but he wasn't there. I found Camp Beaverton but no familiar faces, and I couldn't find Freedom Community at all. I checked out Center Camp briefly. Dinner was Mac and Cheese and I was on cleanup duty. In the evening I hung out a bit in the dome and went out searching for live music. Instead, I found Camp Dodgeball Addiction, where there were running pickup dodgeball games. I played a while and had an absolute blast. It was really fun. Easily my favorite camp this year.

I rode out to deep playa and located a sculpture suitable for some saxophone playing. The sculpture is called Symphonic Portal and consists of a large cylindrical base upon which are mounted two piano harps. The strings are here and wind chimes made from whippet containers and hung in front of them (This is why I originally thought this piece was called Nit Whips). Here I busted out the sax and improvised a bunch of funk/jazz/lyrical stuff. I think this was my single best performance to date. The Muse was there and speaking through me for sure. I played exhaustively for what felt like hours but was probably 45-60 minutes or so. Folks cruised by on their bikes and hung out for a while to listen. I was playing very intensely at times but trying to create variety with time signatures, key signatures, tempo, dynamics, extended techniques, etc. This experience was probably the turning point for me where the burn went from mostly bad and crossed into a worthwhile journey. When I finished playing I went back to Camp Dodgeball Addiction but they were closed for the night. So I headed back to AutoSub and enjoyed a bacon, cheese, and avocado sandwich with Phil. Riding around earlier in the evening, I heard remixes of Imogen Heap, The Bird and The Bee, Royksopp, and Chromeo. Who says there's no good music at Burning Man?

Thursday morning I had ice check duty and spent a while waiting in line for ice at the 3:00 plaza. Then I went to the ARTery to check in with Darrell, who had offered to shoot some photos of me. I was on the verge of canceling saying that I just couldn't take any more afternoon Sun, but I decided to just reapply sunblock and push through. We set up a time to meet again later that afternoon. In the mean time I returned to AutoSub and tried to find a few folks to join me to go play some sax for the folks in the ice line. There were some lengthy "getting ready" delays and then some communication failures, so 2 of my 3 helpers ended up heading for center camp instead of the 3:00 plaza by mistake. So I had just 1 lovely assistant and I made the best of it. I played some funk and talked up the crowd a bit. Some folks were into it, but overall they were hot and cranky and just wanted their ice and were not amused. After that I went back to the ARTery and rode out to the playa with Darrell to shoot some photos. We got some good shots, and returned to Symphonic Portal to capture some more shots there.

Thursday evening my logistical challenges began. I had some serious constraints to deal with. I wanted to be at the Burning Man entry gate at 8am to meet a ride from Craigslist. I had several hours of gear deconstruction and transportation to do before that, which meant I had to tear down my shelter and pack my gear Thursday evening. So I packed up most of my gear and slowly dragged it on a wagon all the way across the event (from 3:30/Esplanade to 7:45/Divorce). It's probably close to a mile and it took about 90 minutes to do. For the second trip, I tore down and folded up my hexayurt, swamp cooler, guy lines, tarp, etc, and loaded the wagon. Liz helped me find a suitable way to tie the wagon to my bike so I could ride along pulling the wagon behind me. That made the second run much much faster and I was able to complete it before sundown, which was good. But it was a big effort at the end of a long day. Dinner was curry beef and then I headed out to watch the burning of the regional effigies. Meh. Burning stuff is just not that interesting to me. So I went and played more dodgeball! After tons of dodgeball I went to the temple. There was a fantastic sound piece installed that I hadn't heard before. Tons of folks were lying on the floor relaxing and meditating while this piece played dozens of gongs and chimes that were mounted on the walls. Each gong was triggered by a wire and would light a red light when sounded. All the gongs must have been driven by a central computer somewhere (I assume). It was a really cool piece and I took a video of one section of it.

So now I had to spend the night Thursday at camp with no shelter. I was planning to just crash on one of the couches in the AutoSub living room, but it turned out to be very cold and windy Thursday night. Most other nights I would have been fine but it probably got below 40 degrees. I was using a moving blanket from the container (used to wrap furniture when in a moving truck) for warmth and tried to nod off. I made it until about 3:30 when I woke up shivering violently and extremely cold. I went to the port-a-potties to pee and I was shaking so widely that I thought I might not be able to hit the urinal. It was bad news. Luckily, Liz had smartly suggested I go into the shipping containers if it got too cold, so I grabbed some cushions from the dome and a few other very dusty moving blankets and set up inside a shipping container. I had to wear my dust mask over my whole face all night since the blankets were so dusty, but once I was out of the wind and wrapped up, I warmed up and was OK the rest of the night.

Liz woke me at 6:10 so we could head to the temple for the wedding of PeteZ and Dreamy Jenn from AutoSub. It was still before sunrise and a nice morning, but still very cold. There was a very cool balloon project sailing in the sky. Lots of hippies were lying around waiting for sunrise, and there were applause when the sun crested the mountains. Doug from AutoSub officiated the wedding ceremony, which was very nice. I had to immediately embark on my epic journey to make it to St. Louis for my cousin's wedding. So I biked over to 7:45/Divorce and left my bike next to Darrell's motor home. From there I had one duffel bag with clothes and my sax strapped across my shoulders and I started the long walk toward the highway. I made it a bit past the greeter station (probably a mile or more) and then was able to hitch a ride to the highway with a European guy in a pickup truck. Out by the entrance to Burning Man I stood in the shade of the Burning Man sign and waited for the ride I had arranged via Craigslist to show up at 8am. Before 8, I was approached by both BRC and BLM rangers and interviewed to see whether I was trying to get into the event. 8am came and went and I was unable to rendezvous with my ride. Of course my Virgin Mobile cell phone had no signal, and my hands were so fundamentally destroyed by a week on the playa that the touch screen didn't respond to them initially.

So here I am at the entrance to Burning Man with a duffle bag, my sax, my desert sun hat, a few granola bars, and no water. I had a plan B to call a friend in Reno but of course that would require working cell phone. Somehow these days I have developed a zen-like attitude toward these events and I just patiently waited and waved my thumb at the occasional car leaving the event. After about 20 minutes or so I managed to flag down a pickup truck heading out. The driver thought I was waving at him to remind him to remove a BRC ranger flag he was flying mounted on his rear view mirror. We had a strange "what are you talking about" moment, but then he realized I was actually hitchhiking and offered to take me to Fernley, which was great. It's about a 2 hour drive, but I knew once I got to Fernley, I was back "on the grid" along I-80 with working cell phone. My ride was a father/daughter pair of BRC rangers that needed to get a prescription in Fernley. I chatted with them a little bit but it wasn't long before I passed out in my seat. In Fernley they dropped me off at the Love's truck stop, which is great because they have showers there. So I ate some lunch, had a long thorough shower, and then started parading around with my cardboard sign reading "Reno" to try to make my 1:30pm flight. It was about 11am by this time and Reno is 33 miles east of Fernley. I found a ride with a guy in a Jeep who was taking his son to Reno for his driver's license test. It was an open jeep and a great temperature for it, so I enjoyed the ride. The father kind of looked like Paul Tuttle from American Chopper, with a big white mustache that connected with a partial goatee. They were very nice and seemed in fine spirits. They took me all the way to the airport itself and dropped me off at departing flights at 12:30. Perfect timing for me to make my flight.

So looking back on the whole experience, I think if I go again, it won't be until 2013. I'd also like to ship my gear out there, maybe store it somewhere near the event, and then travel by airplane instead of driving. I forgot how harsh and demanding the environment is. Overall it did end up being a worthwhile adventure, but it had both highs and lows.

Click on any photo in this post to see the full photo gallery, or click here to see the full photo gallery. There is also one other video of a fire installation here.

Lots of saxophone

2011-08-20T12:24:04.000Z

Last Sunday I played with The Turtle Dove Blues Band at the Dickens Opera House in Longmont. Sharing the playbill was our buddy Uriah's band Stedfast. It's a punk band consisting of about a dozen teenagers, most of whom are cross-dressed. They put on a pretty funny and weird show, including having four people on stage sitting at a tea table and periodic trips onto the dance floor for moshing. The most amusing part for me was how much Logan loved it. He was grinning like a kid on Christmas the whole time. The performances were delayed due to complete absence of a sound man for about an hour, but eventually the venue tracked someone down and things proceeded. We played pretty well and it was a fun night.

Monday I drove down to Denver and met another classical sax player to play some duets. He is the music director at a Baptist church, so we met there and played in the sanctuary. Being both a saxophonist and an organist, his sight reading was impeccable, so we breezed through a whole bunch of material. He's a strong player so I'm looking forward to playing with him some more next month. Hopefully we'll be playing the pedestrian malls in both Denver and Boulder.

Then I headed to Thornton to see a movie at Cinebarre, which is an eat-in theater. They serve food and drinks both before and during the movie. Tickets are just $5 Mon-Thu. I think I'll definitely be going back. It's a fun experience. I went with Julia and we saw "Horrible Bosses" which was funny and worthwhile and reminiscent of "Office Space".

I spent Tuesday in Boulder starting with Boulder Open Coffee Club. I've been back on the Slow Card diet for the last 2 weeks or so trying to get down to minimal weight before Burning Man, now that my digestion issue has been figured out. (Quick aside, I was having bad chronic problems with my digestion for the last 3 years and I finally figured out what the issue was and solved it, which is awesome). I applied for a job at a Boulder startup and met the cofounders for coffee later that afternoon. Tuesday was binge day, and I finally managed to do it mostly successfully. Just some sushi for lunch and some snacks here and there. For dinner I tried the new restaurant in downtown Louisville "Lu Lu's BBQ". It's Texas style barbecue, which I don't really like, so I have to give it a thumbs down. Julia and I watched "Vicky Christina Barcelona" Tuesday night, which I thought was great and very funny. I may watch it again just to re-hear some of Javier Bardem's dialog.

Wednesday I did some more interviewing in Boulder, this time with a web consultancy. Thursday I stopped by Connor O'Neils for a going away party for a friend of mine who is leaving town to go start a company in Palo Alto. Then it was over to the Laughing Goat for an Afronauts gig. It was a good gig, although I think our first gig had a few more people and even better energy, but still it was a lot of fun and well appreciated, I think. Afterward Mike (Afronauts percussionist) and I ate burritos and drank Dos Equis Amber at Illegal Petes while chatting about Mike's adventures at raves in L.A.

Thankfully today was the first day in a long time where my calendar was completely clear (and google calendar just doesn't even show that the day exists). I was given a "challenge problem" by the startup, so I spent most of the day working on that. This evening I put together my home made swamp cooler, which I will bring to Burning Man to cool my hexayurt. That was a fun little project and hopefully I'll be very grateful for it about this time next week. Speaking of which, I leave for Burning Man on Wednesday. I'm part of my camp's early setup crew so I'm arriving about three days prior to the official start of the event. As of now I don't have an official ride to get me from the event site to Reno so I can fly to St. Louis for Cousin Dr. Annie's wedding. I'm counting on hitchhiking and hoping the fact that I won't have much of any gear with me (probably just my alto sax and a day bag) might make a successful hitch more likely.

Still lots of planning and packing to do between now and Wednesday.

Recording, Gigging, Mohawk

2011-08-15T03:23:53.000Z

It's been about two weeks since my last post. For a guy who's not officially employed, I sure have been pretty busy. When I got back home at the beginning of the month, I went to the TechStars Demo Day 2011 at the Boulder Theater. It was a cool event with some nicely polished pitches. The following night (Friday) I checked out Gora Gora Orkestar in downtown Louisville at the Waterloo after the street fair. They had a good crowd from the street fair so the vibe was fun. Saturday Annie and Ryan were in town so I went to the Pizzis for a BBQ. We walked up to Chautauqua afterwards and milled around outside the Los Lonely Boys concert that was happening.

The next Sunday was spent at Macy Sound Studios recording a demo EP with Turtle Dove Blues Band. We did an analog recording to two-inch tape. Things went pretty smoothly and it was a fun day. We should have the finished product soon I hope. Tonight we're playing our first gig as a 4-piece band in Longmont at the Dickens Opera House with another band called Steadfast. We've been rehearsing a lot and building up a good library of songs, so it should be a good show.

This past Friday just for fun I went and got a mohawk and some red color in my hair. There was a pretty good response to it on facebook (that link may or may not work, if not just check my wall photos). I like it and it was fun to walk around downtown Boulder with it on Friday.

Friday I did some fun bouldering at The Spot and then stopped by briefly at the Phoenix Asylum open house. A guy there named Sam was showing off a homemade swamp cooler. I'm planning on making one of those for my hexayurt next week, so it was great to see one up close and learn the details of how they are made.

Yesterday I spent the morning at REI's garage sale. Picked up a nice used Osprey pack for $60. I had been taking an ancient Jansport book bag with me rock climbing. It wasn't big enough to hold my rope and I don't have a rope bag, so it made for an awkward nuisance. Now I can fit everything in the pack and should I ever decide to do an overnight backpack trip (which I would really like to do), I have a pack that should work. Then I went up into Boulder Canyon with Rom and some other CHAOS folks for a day of climbing at The Sport Park. It was super crowded and hot, but I got enough climbs in and some good practice leading.

After climbing I had to scramble home to get ready for the Afronauts gig. We played at Caffe Sole in South Boulder. As we expected, there wasn't much of a built in crowd, but about umpteen people did show up and the show came across well, all things considered. We were missing two horn players, which is a big hit, so Andrew (our trombonist) and I had to cover for them a bit.

I feel like this morning and afternoon are the first down time I've had in a while and I'm trying to knock off some to-dos and household chores before heading to Longmont for the Turtle Dove Blues Band gig.

Jersey Visit Continued

2011-08-01T08:41:56.000Z

The week down the shore spending some QT with the family was great. I got to hang out a lot with my nephews Will (2) and Danny (just shy of 3 months). Seaside Park has a "baby beach" with a large enclosed area of the bay that is consistently about 1.5' deep. Will can splash around in there in his floaty vest and be able to touch the bottom if he wants and not be scared by waves. He spent hours in there. I went for some nice runs and bike rides and took lots of naps. I didn't have a room so I was couch surfing in the living room, and the living room is ruled by Will starting around 6am every day, at which point I switched into Will's bedroom to sleep a few more hours. We got to watch the sun set across the bay every evening and played some dominoes at night. Kate saw the Jersey Shore film crew out with their cameras and lights when she drove through Seaside Heights. I did a bit of coding in the heat of the afternoon and released a major update to Linkzie.

Friday we drove back to Lambertville. I went for a long bike ride heading south along the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park. It's totally flat and paved with fine-grained gravel. It's great for biking. However, on the way back while I was still about four miles from town it started pouring rain and I got soaked. The weather was hot so the rain felt great and in general I didn't mind it. I did have my phone with me, which I tried to keep dry by wrapping it in some dollar bills and putting it in my back pocket (first world problems), but that was about my only concern. Dad drove down to the base of the hill leading into their development to offer me a ride, but I just gave him my phone and biked up the hill. It's nothing compared to what I routinely mountain bike in Colorado. We planned to go to Bell's Tavern where my parents typically eat on Friday nights but it was too crowded by the time we got there, so we ate at Number 9 instead, which was slow but tasty.

Saturday I went out to West Long Branch for a fun summer BBQ at Thorp and Rox's house. There were a lot of folks and a lot of kids there. We had the PA set up outside and there was some jamming going on. The kids hit a piñata. Eventually the cops showed up and we had to move the music inside. I got to visit with the Sunny Daze crew and some of my other friends from that area, which was great.

Today I biked north along the canal up past Bull's Island park to Kingswood Boat Launch, and then turned around. As I left the Lambert's Hill development, I crossed paths with Mom, who instructed me to stop at Rojo Coffee Roasters on the way home and try the green tea mango smoothie which she had just discovered. She has an account there and I could just "charge it to her account". She's so adorable. It was a great summer day and there were lots and lots of folks drifting along the Delaware river in inner tubes. I stopped in Stockton and grabbed a sandwich to go. Back in Lambertville I did as ordered and got the smoothie at Rojo.

My folks left for Portland this afternoon so I have one more day here to myself before heading back home.

Jersey Shore

2011-07-25T21:54:57.000Z

I spent yesterday on the beach with the Skareckis. The water was warm and nice with fun little waves. We had a nice Cuban sandwich on the boardwalk for lunch and relaxed on the beach. Sunny Daze had a gig right on the boardwalk that evening. They are sounding great these days and they have three killer horns (trombone, tenor, alto). They have been writing a whole bunch of new tunes, but they threw me a couple of old familiar tunes so I could jam with them a bit. After the second set I had some yummy ribs and sweet potato fries on the boardwalk followed by a gigantic cookies and cream milkshake. We hung out and talked a while and then headed over to their main hangout, the Nip and Tuck, for their standard nightcap of chicken wings. I stayed over at Marc's new house in Fair Haven.

Now I'm down in Seaside Park with my family for the week. Should be a bunch of good relaxing and good eating.

Hot Time, Summer in the City

2011-07-24T14:33:41.000Z

I slept 3.5 hours Thursday night before heading to DIA to catch an early flight. I usually have plenty of time to spare but this time I think I managed to subconsciously confuse the boarding time and the departing time so I ended up getting to the gate just ten minutes before departure and I was the last person on board. But I did make it and fell immediately to sleep, only waking when the wheels hit the runway for my connection in Milwaukee. That's the way to do it. I didn't sleep all of the next flight though. I ordered my usual cran-apple beverage, but I think maybe I should start opting for Ginger Ale.

The sights of New Jersey were all there to great me in the area surrounding Newark airport: huge industrial lots, waste dumps, a giant Fedex depot, factories and parking lots full of stretch limousines and hummers. Somehow I have managed to schedule a trip into NYC on the hottest day in NYC in my lifetime (2nd hottest ever with #1 happening in 1977, before I was born). I took the train into Penn Station. Then I walked to a private luggage storage facility between Penn Station and Port Authority so I wouldn't have to schlep a suitcase and my alto sax around all day. I stopped to enjoy an authentic NYC dirty water dog as well. Then I headed to the west side to meet Matt at The Kitchen and pick up a spare key to his lower east side apartment, where I'd be crashing that night. Then back into the hot-and-stinky subway up to the upper west side to meet Chris and Alex and Amy for burgers and shakes at Shake Shack. It was fun to chat and catch up. We wondered around to the Apple Store afterward. Alex noticed that the computers upstairs had sleek little Apple cables locking them down, but in the lower level there were no cables, so he proceeded to investigate by disconnecting the ethernet cable from one of the laptops. Instantly, a loud siren started blaring throughout the entire store. Chris and I tried to walk away from the culprit inconspicuously. It took several minutes for an employee to do whatever they need to do to stop the alarm. They didn't approach us or say anything so I figure the siren probably says all that needs saying. I looked at Alex and said "I can't wait to tweet about this". :-)

Alex headed home and Chris and I talked some more over by Lincoln Center. Then I took the subway down to the Lower East Side for a much-needed cool shower and the respite of air conditioning. I was gross with sunscreen, sweat, and NYC stink. Later than night my old band-mate from Confunktion Junction, Satish, came in and we met up at a dive bar called Iggy's in the Lower East Side to chat and catch up. We talked a long time and I even drank two whole beers, which happens about once a year for me. I called it quits around 2am and went across the street for a banana nutella crepe which was fantastic.

The next morning (technically this morning, but it's been a long day so it feels like yesterday) I made a valiant effort to get to Murray's Bagels since Satish said they were the best in NYC, but I had incorrect information about their location and didn't have time. So I just got my luggage out of storage and headed to Port Authority to catch the bus out to my parents' place. I slept soundly for the first hour of the bus ride. My Mom asked later if the bus stopped at Newark Airport or not and I had to admit I hadn't the slightest clue since I was out like the dead.

I met my new nephew Daniel Lyons Murzenski today. He is about 10 weeks old and he's super duper adorable. He likes to be held in a belly-down position kind of surfing on your arm and craning his neck up a bit to peek around every so often. I also played with his older brother Will who is now 2 and talking up a storm and running around all over the place. We played a lot of legos and went in the swing for a bit. The Pizzis came out in the afternoon for a collective July birthday celebration with yummy food and good chocolate cake for dessert. I was totally exhausted by 9:30 pm and so I went to bed. I only slept three hours though so now I'm awake and it's 4:30am here. I think I can go back to sleep, though. More NJ fun planned for tomorrow including sitting in on a Sunny Daze gig on the boardwalk in Asbury Park.

Pretty Good Sunday

2011-07-11T07:13:11.000Z

OK, I have to chalk this day up as pretty darn good. In the morning I biked into town and had a dirt-cheap but tasty breakfast at the newly-remodeled B.O.B.S Diner. Eggs, ham, and cheese on a roll with a side of potatoes for less than $5. I then walked 11 feet over to the newly-expanded Bittersweet coffee shop, drank an iced mocha latte, and did some career planning for the fall. I drank two full cups of coffee this month. One I got with a free card from a time when Ozo Coffee in Boulder let someone else walk off with my burrito. This one I just bought out of guilt for my habit of camping for hours at a time in coffee shops using the wifi. That 2 cups is probably more than I've had in my entire previous life combined. As I understand it, the Mocha Frappuccinos I got in Hilton Head while imitating Mike Pizzi don't actually contain any coffee. Anyway, my foot was tapping for hours after that.

My coffee shopping was interrupted when my phone rang with my bandmate explaining he would be late to rehearsal. Oops, forgot about that, so I high-tailed it home and went to Broomfield for a 3.5 hour rehearsal. After that I enjoyed some left over cupcakes from yesterday's failed Afronauts gig (more on that later) and watched a Queen documentary on NetFlix instant. Tonight I'm hoping to do some work on Othenticate. Overall a pretty good day.

Yesterday The Afronauts went up Coal Creek Canyon for a gig. We got the whole band up their with our gear. We set up all the instruments and equipment under two tiny tents. Right as we were about ready to sound check it started to drizzle. There were clear skies in site so we figured we'd just wait it out. Ten minutes later the drizzle turned into a downpour and high winds picked up. A small river began to flow across the stage area. We had to scramble to quickly get all the gear indoors. Most of us ended up soaking wet and cold. We've had four gigs so far and two of them have been canceled at the last minute due to rain. No more outdoor gigs for us I think! On the plus side they had a ton of delicious cupcakes and a giant cake shaped like an alligator.

NJ Visit

2011-07-01T23:59:14.000Z

So I'm going back to New Jersey for a nice long visit at the end of July. I'll be doing a brief NYC visit, spending some time down the shore with my family and my new nephew Danny, and relaxing in Lambertville a bit as well. We'll also have our multi-birthday party, July edition with the Pizzi clan, which will be fun. I'm looking forward to hanging out at the beach with my old Sunny Daze buddies. Even though I've been back to visit a few times, I still feel like I haven't hung out with that crew properly since I moved in 2007.

Afronauts Boulder Debut

2011-07-01T23:55:20.000Z

The Afronauts had our first performance in Boulder Wednesday night. We played the Laughing Goat Coffeehouse on Pearl St. It was a big success. The band that played before us, Back to the Woods played a great set and the audience was in good spirits. We crammed almost the entire band onto the small corner stage. The attendance was great. The place was nearly packed, and there was a very small space for dancing up front. We heard a lot of positive feedback and in general folks seemed to really be digging the music and the vibe. Stephen and I did our first dueling baritone saxophone duet, which went over really well. We're trying to book another night there later this summer, so stay tuned for updates.

Last night I drove up to Longmont to sit in with Gora Gora Orkestar at a fundraiser at the Left Hand Brewery. They are a really fun and vibrant group. What's not to love about odd meters, sousaphone bass, and flat-two scales?

Riding

2011-06-26T01:50:04.000Z

Things have been humming along here in "normal" mode for a few weeks. This spring and summer so far I've had Afronauts rehearsal on Wednesday night, so I could never make the Wednesday night mountain bike group ride. But we have 2 weeks this month where band members are out of town so no rehearsals. So two weeks ago I went and rode North Table Mesa with the group, which I had never ridden. The start is the longest, steepest hill I have ever ridden. Then there's some narrow single track around the top of the mesa and then a fun descent. Afterward we went to Woody's in Golden for buffet pizza. I had never been to downtown Golden before. It's actually really nice and cute. This week we rode Walker Ranch, which has quite a few technical or steep spots I had to walk, but it was still a fun ride.

Last week on Thursday was another Denver Hack Nite meetup. Attendance was a bit low but we enjoyed hanging out on their outdoor patio and relaxing. I got some good input on my Othenticate project. On Saturday there was a guided tour of bouldering crags on Flagstaff mountain, which was great for me since I don't know where anything is. Sunday I met up with Stephanie and Terry to boulder indoors at the spot. We did some fun routes, including the video below, but I eventually ended up tearing a callous off my hand which took a few days to heal before I could climb again.

I've been practicing for The Afronauts debut Boulder gig this Wednesday on Pearl St and coding away on Othenticate. Made good progress in the past two days, which is nice. I might start working on my hexayurt for Burning Man later this afternoon. I've also made travel plans to spend some time in New Jersey at the end of July, so I'm looking forward to that. Still need to meet my new nephew Daniel in person. I'm out on my deck now under my shade umbrella enjoying the summer weather. That's all for now.

Afronauts debut

2011-06-13T07:14:58.000Z

Picking up where we left off, two Sundays ago the Turtle Dove Trio had our first gig at the Dickens Opera House in Longmont. We played well and had fun doing it, but the audience consisted mostly of the other band on the bill and a handful of close friends. It is a fun room to play, though. The week after that I was working heads-down on my new product, trying to get a working prototype before MicroConf. I also went on a fun mountain bike ride on the newly-opened Benjamin Loop up at Betasso Preserve with Erin and Lynette. It was a good ride and we ended up doing about 10 miles. That Sunday I headed to Las Vegas for MicroConf.

So MicroConf in Las Vegas was fun and worthwhile. Most of the talks were fun and informative, with the exception of Noah Kagan's, which was incoherent and bizarre. By coincidence HP was having their big combined hardware and software summit simultaneously, and again by chance I happened upon my old Opsware coworker John Yi at the Wynn casino. It's fun to bump into people in far away places. We arranged to meet for sushi the following night and catch up, which was fun. I also enjoyed swimming in the Riviera hotel's pool since it sits between three high towers and is shaded all morning, which means I can splash around without dousing myself in sunscreen.

I do really dislike Las Vegas though. Completely not for me. I felt like I was in a struggle to prevent money leaving my pocket right down to the final cab to the airport, where the hotel bellhop said as long as they don't take the highway, it should cost under $20, and the taxi driver argued that taking the local road "at this hour" (3pm on a Tuesday?) would hit traffic and take much longer. I paid him the $30 and then paid Frontier Airlines another $50 to get me the hell out of there early so I could be back in time for Afronauts rehearsal.

Speaking of which, my 9-piece powerhouse afrobeat band The Afronauts had our first gig last night at Cervantes' Other Side in Denver. It was part of their 2-day celebration with bands on 2 stages all night, so there was a decent crowd of several hundred folks altogether there. We had a blast playing and the audience was definitely digging it. There were probably about 100 or so folks in the room. We were very well received and the playing overall was solid. It had a lot of fun up there. We hung around afterward drinking our free beers, munching pizza, and listening to Pink Floyd covers by the headlining act Dead Floyd. Loading up 2 big vans and driving out there and back was also fun.

Prior to the gig yesterday I did some climbing up at Solaris in Boulder Canyon. It was a group of four of us and we paired off into two pairs, myself and Ben sticking to easy sport routes while Julius and Paul tackled harder stuff. I got some good practice leading and cleaning. It seems the first outdoor climb I do, I'm convinced that this sport is not for me and I should switch to bouldering, but by the end I'm feeling better and not so tentative. I led a 5.9 on sight, which I still find pretty nerve racking whenever I'm above my protection.

Anyway, yesterday was an all around good Colorado day. Up early and driving up the canyon to rock climb by 9am, a nice long disco nap in the afternoon, then playing a fun gig at night, finally getting home around 2am or so. This week it's back to work on my new product, details TBA.

What I've Been Up To

2011-05-29T06:50:01.000Z

So I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. After I got back from San Francisco, I started the outdoor climbing season officially with Jessie up at Watermark in Boulder Canyon. I haven't been climbing outside again since due to the persistently cold and rainy weather we've been having. I have been climbing in the gym a lot though. I started going to the climb/fit classes again now that I've built up enough endurance to have any hope of completing the assignment Chris gives to us. Fitness classes have been going well, too. I'm still sore from all the push-ups and jumping we did this past Thursday.

I've been rehearsing a lot in the evenings. The Afronauts were supposed to have our first gig two Saturdays again for Boulder Spring Festival but that got rained out, unfortunately. However, it was our trumpet player Alice's birthday and since the gig wasn't officially canceled until moments before showtime, most of the band was already there and now had some free time, so we hung out at the Boulder Cafe, ate the cupcakes Alice baked, and ordered happy hour apps and drinks. We have another gig booked in a few weeks at Cervantes in Denver that should be a good crowd, so we're working toward that. We got some band photos taken as well. I've been trading a sax student of mine sax lessons for photography (he's a pro studio photographer), all set up via craigslist, which is fun.

My other band, the Turtle Dove Trio, is playing on Sunday in Longmont at the Dickens Opera House. We've been rehearsing with a new drummer and our sound has changed a lot. It should be a fun show.

I've also finally settled on a business idea that seems to fit my extensive criteria and I'm happily coding away on it. I'm hoping to have some semi-decent prototype to show off when I head to Las Vegas the week after next for Micro Conf. A buddy of mine from Denver is going as well, so hopefully we'll have some fun while we're there as well.

This week Thursday and Friday were very Boulderesque. I was planning to work heads-down most of the day Thursday, but I eventually decided to go hike up to the Royal Arch in Chautauqua Park with Lynette and then head from there directly to fitness class. Friday I skied at A-Basin with Big Wave Lew (who is now back in town for the summer, yay). I've never skied this late in the season before. It was a fun experience, but it was cloudy so not nearly as warm as I was hoping. My calves are definitely sore today, though. This weekend is also the Boulder Creek Festival, which I'm planning to check out on Monday with Michale, which should be fun.

Wicked Wiggling in San Francisco

2011-05-13T03:32:45.000Z

Elise finished her finals last week and decided to go and visit Ed in San Francisco and invite me to join here. We arrived without issue Saturday morning. Ed picked us up in his pimpin' '91 Volvo wagon and we headed into town. Ed had an apartment viewing to go to in the mission, so we went along for that. It was interesting to watch the dynamic. There were quite a few folks looking at the place and a handful of applications submitted. Definitely a landlord's market. After that we hit Beretta for brunch. We had yummy and interesting pizza - my first foray into a pizza with an over-easy egg on it. There was also french toast and mint lemonade to be had. Next stop was Ritual Coffee. Elise had to get up crazy early to take her roommate to the bus station so she was needing her fix.

We strolled toward Dolores park, past Bi-Rite and there was no line, so we got some ice cream. I have been past this place several times and always the line has been too long. We ate our treats and then lounged and napped on the grass in Dolores park. Like last time, I got too much sun and now I have lobster arms. That evening we were joined by Emily and Lara for fantastic sushi in Cole Valley. A small unmarked shop operated by a husband and wife. The food was very good and there was a lot of it.

After that I left the group and shared a cab across town with Emily, heading on to Glen Park after we dropped Emily off. I hung out with the "Bad Ideas Committee" crew for a while and then went to stay at Pat's apartment. Sunday morning I slept in and then took the Muni bus over to Cole Valley, my trusty android phone helping me find the bus routes and stops. Ed had put us on the enormous 10-page waiting list at Zazie well ahead of time, so when I arrived we only had another 10 minutes or so to wait. We got a table on the backyard patio. I had delicious pancakes and shared some of Elise's omlette. After feasting we walked all the way through Golden Gate Park to the beach. We rode the bus back home and relaxed watching some "30 Rock" and "That Mitchell and Webb Look". Then we drove through dense traffic way out to Oakland to meet up with two of Elise's Peace Corps buddies at Burma Superstar. Again we had a mighty feast and it was delicious.

Monday I walked a good ways to Rock Nation cafe in the mission for a delicious breakfast of pancakes and eggs. I worked on my laptop in the morning alongside Marcia and Tanya. Around lunch Rebecca stopped by and chatted for a while. Then I was off to the other end of the mission to pick up the bicycle I rented via AirBnB. That afternoon I picked up my alto sax which I had stashed at Ed's and went into Golden Gate Park to do some playing under a tunnel, a locale very similar to the spot my sax quartet used to play in Cen tral Park in NYC. I played a good while. A woman stopped to listen for a little while and took a video on her iPhone.

I biked "The Wiggle" again back into the mission and stopped to climb at Mission Cliffs. While climbing, someone approached me and asked if I had lost a carabiner, handing me a small keychain carabiner they found on the floor. I had the key to the Kryptonite U-lock I was using for my bike clipped to a belt loop with a carabiner. However, the carabiner being handed to me was open and no longer had a key. Crap, I thought. We searched the gym floor for the key with no luck. I was envisioning having to buy a new bike since that would be cheaper than getting a locksmith to tackle the U-lock. I was somewhat bummed, but on my way out as I gathered up my stuff I found my carabiner with the bike key intact in my shoe. I hadn't left it on my belt loop after all. It seems someone found an identical black and silver keychain carabiner but it was just a coincidence. I was relieved.

Now it was after 10pm and I hadn't eaten since late breakfast so I grabbed a giant burrito and a Dos XX beer before crashing for the night.

Tuesday morning I ventured on my bike into the SOMA neighborhood, hoping to find a coffee shop where some startup techies hang out. I didn't quite land on the mark, though. After a quick breakfast waiting for the coffee shop to open at 10am, I took up residence at Wicked Grounds. I did some good coding and enjoyed the amusing scene. Then I biked back to the mission and met up with a friend Marty who gave me some tips for my OKCupid profile. Then again I biked the wiggle to Golden Gate Park and played sax. Then back again in time to meet up with Pat at Rosamunde. We had tasty sausages and beer and discussed his first day going in to work with black fingernail polish. Then I went back to Mission Cliffs for more climbing. It was a good and challenging session. My partner, whom I found via OKCupid, was keen on climbing harder and harder so we did a very tall 5.10b that goes to the peak of the pitched roof and eventually we both got up a tricky 5.11a corner route with lots of stemming and mantling. Then another easy time falling asleep after a long day.

Wednesday I went back to Rock Nation since they have good WiFi and a great menu. While my bike was locked outside of Mission Cliffs Tuesday night someone stole the handlebar grips, so I had to find a place to get those replaced. I did some coding, hit the bike shop to get new grips, returned the bike, and then took BART to the airport.

It was a really fun and full visit. I'll post some photos shortly after I get them uploaded.

Insomnoblogging!

2011-04-18T12:58:09.000Z

Today was overall a very fun day. In the morning I coded a bit in preparation for a meetup next week where I will be presenting a new framework I've learned and hopefully helping folks do some work in it. Then it was in to Boulder to work on SparkRelief. We had our developer meeting and then did some coding. After that I went to Bay Leaf on Pearl St to restock my stash of Chocolove chocolate bars (dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt is my current addiction). I cruised by The Cup to inquire about their open mic night tomorrow. Matt the guitarist and singer from my new blues trio and I are going to play duets there tomorrow night.

Then it was off to the climbing gym with my new climbing partner Jessie. I climbed four days this week and it showed today. My forearms were pretty tired, and I was too, so after climbing I took a long nap on the couch at BRC. Then it was back into downtown Boulder. We had lovely Spring weather and I had my bari in the car for the open mic we were planning to play today but couldn't get a slot, so I busted out the bari on Pearl St. for a little while. It was fun and I'm pretty sure there were a few never-heard-a-bari-before folks who passed by. After gathering up my four dollar bills and smattering of quarters, it was back to The Cup for some more coffee shop coding. Stayed almost until closing and then came home and watched 25th Hour, which I thought was really well done and engaging.

In other news, this week my assistant George finally finished and installed the CD shelves he built for me. Initially, he promised to have them done, by Christmas, but better late than never. Now I finally have all my CDs out and available in their jewel cases and God intended. Hurray!

All day Boulder

2011-04-13T10:35:47.000Z

I spent the entire day in Boulder today. Started off with Open Coffee Club early in the morning, which had some funny moments but too many announcements and side conversations. Atlas Purveyor's could really use a sun shade of some kind. Got to get into the far side of the room next time. After that I headed up to north Boulder for an extended javascript hacking session with Spencer Tipping. I learned lots of good javascript deep magic and also made some good discoveries with ....I guess I'll post the tech details on my tech blog instead. Anyway, then I grabbed some Chipotle and headed to BRC for some climbing. Got to partner up with someone and do some top roping after several weeks of mostly autobelay, which was nice. I did cleanly scend a 5.11 on autobelay, which is a good day for me (and rare). Had a nice long climbing session of mostly 5.10s and a few 5.11s. Then I coded a while at The Cup before grabbing yummy Dragon Roll sushi dinner at Hapa. I spent the evening at The Laughing Goat listening to Supercollider, who appear to be the heaviest jazz cats in the Boulder scene and are sounding really good. My new blues trio The Turtle Dove Blues Band is hoping to make our first public appearance at an open mic in Longmont on Sunday, which should be fun. Another (hopefully) full band Afrobeat rehearsal tomorrow night which I'm looking forward to.

Dirt Bike Alley

2011-04-10T05:46:46.000Z

I finally got around to trying out the new Superior Bike Park this afternoon. When I was a boy, riding bikes was one of my favorite activities. We lived near a river, and on the far side between the river and the dikes by the road was a small circular dirt path with a few jumps built up called "dirt bike alley". This was a really fun spot to visit. These locations have gone mainstream these days, with an adult-sanctioned skate park in Louisville and now this bike park in Superior. There are usually some pretty impressive tricksters to be seen. I had fun moseying around the beginner area populated by small children, some literally still using training wheels. If I were a parent, I would think that independence from training wheels would logically come before riding up and down giant dirt ramps, but I guess not everyone sees it that way.

After the group of intimidating teenage acrobats pedaled away, I took a few trips through the advanced course. I have to say, kid or adult, this is a pretty fun activity. Build some hills in the dirt. Ride your bike over them. What more do you want?

There's another one in Golden that I'll try soon and they are working on one in the Valmont area of Boulder.

Movie Report

2011-04-03T05:04:35.000Z

Here's a quick note on some movies I watched recently. I watched the climbing docudrama Touching the Void. It was pretty intense and riveting. I intended to watch it in small doses while eating, but ended up watching in just two big stretches. I'm stunned by folks with super-human will to live. I really don't know how to process it. I think I might now have to watch The North Face and maybe 127 Hours (which I was planning to not watch).

I got two DVDs from the Louisville library as "impulse buys" on my way out. Inglorious Basterds was great. I usually don't know what to make of Tarantino films, but this was unexpectedly powerful and interesting. This is probably my #2 Tarantino film after Pulp Fiction now. I also started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I can tell is going to be great even though I've only watched the first half. Gotta love Noomi Rapace in this one.

That said, I'm feeling overwhelmed by films featuring tons of violence and evil. I think I might schedule a month of films about good people doing normal things for a while to check back in with reality.

Cousins Ski Weekend

2011-03-21T07:05:12.000Z

We had a great ski weekend up at Copper this weekend. Elise, Leslie, Annie and I drove up Friday morning. Bill rented us a sweet slopeside condo walking distance from the Super Bee lift. We took care of some condo/parking logistics then hit the slopes. There had been some good snow Tue/Wed so the snow was really good still, and the weather was warm and sunny. We had a great day on the slopes. We quit around 2:30 and hung out at the lodge. I found a lounge chair outside and grabbed about an hour snooze. This is a great advantage of wearing a ski helmet. You can basically lay down anywhere and you've got nice support under your head and neck making for comfy napping. I was also just feet away from the gigantic meat smoker they have there so I was wafting in delicious smoky meat smells. When I awoke, Torrey and Carl had joined our group for some post-ski beers. Then it was about time that we could get into the condo so we walked over there and unpacked.

The kitchen facilities proved inadequate to make the pizza Leslie was planning, so instead we went over to the JJs restaurant at the lodge. I got yummy pork ribs, but everybody else got mediocre pizza. Late that evening, Bill arrived with Ryan and Ed in tow from the airport. Elise invited Ed last minute and he was able to make it out, which was great. We all skied Saturday. The weather was still warm but it was windy and cold at the top and it got cloudy in the afternoon. We spent most of the afternoon skiing Timberline and I made numerous runs on Little Burn, which is a favorite run for both me and Elise. Saturday night we relaxed in the condo, watched the gigantic moon, and had a good time. Elise's roommates Hanna and Austin also drove up. We were celebrating Elise and Annie's birthday's as well.

Sunday we did a lot of packing logistics in the morning and then Elise, Ed, and I skied about half a day. It was pretty sketchy in the morning but in the afternoon Timberline had good snow so we ended up getting some good runs in. We drove back to Boulder and had a delicious pasta dinner including leftovers from the double chocolate cake Bill made for the birthdays. So that completed my Copper 4-pack so I might now be done for the season. It was a really fun weekend with lots of guests (11 total I think).

Another good week of retirement coming up. Ignite Denver is Tuesday and then on Thursday March Fourth is playing the Fox.

Now are the good days

2011-03-17T09:14:13.000Z

OK, here's a little recap of the past two days. Tuesday morning Boulder Open Coffee Club tech meetup. Chatted with another solopreneur and got some input on Linkzie. Coded some node.js/backbone.js goodness. Worked on business ideas. Took a long nap. Groceries/errands. Chatted with Chris. Dinner with two bandmates who showed up two hours early for rehearsal. Rehearsal in my basement for our Afrobeat band, which has now added a trombone. Stayed up late.

Slept in until ten this morning. Did some coding then headed to Longmont for a rehearsal with my blues trio project. After that since it was 75 degrees and gorgeous outside, I decided to ride one of the mountain bike trails in that neighborhood. Without specifically planning for it, I had everything I needed already in the car including obviously my bike rack and bike, helmet and gloves, active clothing from my climbing bag, clif bars, and water bottles. Rode Heil Valley Ranch. Then straight to Boulder for climbing followed by dinner at Illegal Pete's where I chatted briefly with Natty, one of the Everlater co-founders. Now for some coding to close out a great 48 hours in the land of no obligations. Hurray!

Spinning up

2011-03-11T07:30:42.000Z

So things are really starting to hum along nicely here. I've been rehearsing with two bands: one is a blues/rock trio with guitar, drums and me on bari sax; the other is a large Afrobeat group with drums, percussion, bass, guitar, and three horns, and we're looking to add keyboard and vocals as well. It's been fun to get back into playing and just see how things are shaping up. I bought a new bari sax mouthpiece that is sounding good for the Morphine cover songs we are playing in the trio, and I'm still playing my monster Otto Link 8* metal mouthpiece for the Afrobeat group. I haven't played my Eigenharp much at all lately, but I have a list of songs I'd like to try to figure out on the Eigenharp. I'm also thinking about getting this software called Ableton that would allow me to record myself on saxophone, make loops, and then build up layers of loops the way Zoe Keating and Imogen Heap do. That would probably be fun, so we'll see.

My various business-y projects are moving along as well. I sketched out a little rock climbing gadget I've been thinking about for a while and snooped around The Home Depot for ideas. I may try to get someone to make a CAD drawing of it. I've finished a draft of an article, hired an editor from odesk.com to edit it, and sent it out to some colleagues for feedback. I also went to a meetup called Interaction Hour where I got a bunch of good input on Linkzie, most of which have already been coded and published. Still haven't found the right idea yet to dive into in terms of building a real-deal, money-earning web application, but I have some irons in the proverbial fire.

The increased social activity from music and my hard core tech meetup habit is really enjoyable though. I went to a cooking club gathering last weekend with some folks from Startup Weekend, and we're going skiing on Saturday. It seems pretty likely that I will develop friendships with some of these new bandmates as well, which I would also welcome. It's really easy to find activity partners when you relocate to Boulder as a 30-something, but growing those into legitimate friendships is more difficult. Anyway, things are feeling optimistic there though.

Today was sunny and warm. I spent most of the day in Boulder. I went to the 7am "The Rapture" climbing/fitness class and got to work with one of the climbing instructors one on one for ninety minutes, which was good. I climbed a fair amount yesterday as well so now my hands and arms are pretty sore today. After climbing I did some "laptopping" as Michale would say at Ozo and then Atlas. Bumped into Carly and Liz. Came home so I could get in a mountain bike ride before sunset. I rode my home turf of Davidson Mesa. It's nice to be able to mountain bike in shorts and a T-shirt at 70 degrees on Thursday and then ski on Saturday.

Oh, and I had lunch outside in the sun yesterday with Elise, so that should be some good vitamin D this week. Incidentally my doctor tested my vitamin D back in January and it's all good, so I guess I'm getting enough sunshine despite the long hours in the office coding and in the basement honking.

Basement Rehearsal Studio Lives!

2011-03-03T12:54:22.000Z

Well, when I finally got fed up with how apartment living in NYC cramped my musical style, I moved out to Colorado and bought a house with a big basement to use as a music studio. Today for the first time it was put to good use. I had a 7-piece Afrobeat band rehearsing this evening as well as a duet rehearsal this afternoon for a total of about 5 hours of rehearsal today. The space is working out nicely. I even ran outside for a quick loudness check. You can definitely hear the band from the sidewalk but it's not loud enough to cause any complaints, so I think we're clear to rehearse whenever we want as long as we want. Hurray!

Slim and Trim

2011-02-25T00:51:09.000Z

I've completed two months on the slow carb diet. Dropped between 8 and 10 pounds. I got my body fat measured this morning after "The Rapture" fitness class: 5.6%. That's lower than I was expecting, but hey, I'll take it. w00t! Now my life long love affair with Triscuits and Swiss Cheese can continue.

In other related news, I've had the bad habit of biting my fingernails forever. Suddenly I've stopped biting 2 of my fingernails and they have grown for about two weeks or so. I have no idea why this has happened, but it gives me hope that I can kick the habit entirely. I chalk it up to in general just having more mental cycles available which translates directly to more motivation and willpower.

Rejecting the Idea of Rejecting Ideas

2011-02-19T02:06:30.000Z

Man, quitting one's job frees up a lot of cognitive resources. I've started to find spare interest and energy coming out of the woodwork. More on that later. One of the things I've noticed is that with an open calendar and full ability to choose new projects in front of me, I've gone into a very experimental mode. I think due to the time constraints of working 50 hours or more a week, my natural tendency when considering new possibilities, projects, activities is to do a cost/benefit analysis, try to predict the outcome with little or no actual data, and then reject things outright a priori. Then I feel smart and efficient in my ability to use my powers of analysis to avoid silly distractions.

This has changed significantly now. I am now taken with the notion to try things, even if they seem suspect or unlikely to pan out. My gut is now saying "try it for real and then react appropriately" as opposed to nullifying things beforehand. So I'm out there on craigslist looking for musicians with whom to collaborate and I'll go out and jam with anyone remotely in the ballpark. I bought an Android phone with no contract and figured if I didn't like it, no worries. Most interestingly, this week at the climbing gym the instructor Chris Wall (I'm a big fan) mentioned to me that I should try his 7am Thursday climbing & fitness class called "The Rapture". Here's how my internal monologue went. Oh man, that is supposedly harder than the level 2 class I already take which nearly kills me. It's at 7am and a 20 minute drive away. It's going to be full of elite climbers way stronger than me. Nah, no way I'm doing it. (End of internal monologue). So this new instinct kicked in and said this: You trust Chris. He knows what he's doing. Give it a try. If it sucks, you pack up and leave, no harm, no foul. (End of internal monologue). So that's what I did.

So there I was yesterday at 7am in the climbing gym, doing get-ups carrying a Bulgarian Bag, then swinging it around my head, then doing burpees (yes, you can watch that video. She's wearing clothes technically. It's not porn, really), then immediately proceeding to climb 2 laps up the wall. You do all the exercises with your climbing harness already on and clipped in so you don't get any rest in between the exercises and the climbing. So the workout was tough but not beyond what I'm used to, but here's the kicker. I was the only student who showed up. So I got a 90 minute personal coaching session with Chris Wall, which would normally cost over $100, for free. So that was pretty sweet. I used the opportunity to ask about my seeming inability to make forward progress on my climbing. We worked on recovering on the wall without falling, and I made a good breakthrough.

What I discovered with Chris shouting me through my "I can't" place was that the wall (performance limit, not the structure I'm climbing) that I hit and give up is just two inches away from hanging on, successfully shaking out my arms and resting, and continuing to climb. Chris helped me get past it when I had already started to see in my mind my forearms redlining and started my internal countdown to falling of the wall...10..9..8..7. This is the spot where normally I just give up, admit that my arms are exhausted and unable to hang on, and fall. But if I can concentrate for just the tiniest sliver longer, keep my composure, hang on, relax, and rest effectively, I can keep going. So on my final lap of the morning with Chris shouting rapid fire instructions and encouragement, I rested on the wall, alternately hanging off each arm while shaking out the other, and then managed to climb another ten moves or so and hit the top of the route. It was really great. I thought when I started I wouldn't even make the first good rest hold. Now the work for me is to remember to do this in my normal climbing.

So that's one example of keeping an open mind and being willing to invest small amounts of effort and time into activities of unknown benefit having an unexpectedly positive outcome. I think I'll try to more explicitly adopt this attitude for a while and see what happens.

Wow. Good.

2011-01-31T11:56:34.000Z

I've had four days of independence so far and it is going great. Today I practiced both baritone and alto sax, read about javascript and LLCs, added a new feature to Linkzie, wrote a bit on the white paper I'm writing, ate a ton of calories as part of my weekly "cheat day", checked references for a new personal assistant, and am now watching some movies. If things continue this way of easy motivation, it will be really fun.

2011 Life Reset

2011-01-27T23:32:10.000Z

In August 2004 I took at job at Opsware Inc working in their professional services group helping customers install and customize their data center automation software. In June 2006 I joined the engineering department, and I've been working on that product for the past 6.5 years or so. In November 2007 Hewlett-Packard acquired Opsware and thus I've been working at HP. It's time for me to take my career in a new direction and get more control over my time, so I have quit my cushy, high-paying, corporate job to work for myself!. Hurray! Yesterday was my official last day and today is day one of my 2011 life reset.

I'm pretty excited about the future. For the past six months I've been learning modern web development during nights and weekends. I built a little prototype web application (a bookmark manager) up at linkzie.com, and also helped another friend of mine get his own moonlight application up and running. I've been following a lot of blogs written by self-employed software developers who have managed to earn their living building targeted web applications for small niches of users. My plan is to try my hand creating one or two information products as well as hopefully developing a web based application. I plan to try this at least through Labor Day (7 months) before considering full time employment again. This will also be a little breather period for me. A seven year itch if you will or a mini-retirement.

As my last day drew nearer, my motivation and desire to rekindle my saxophone playing got much stronger. I'm looking forward to getting back into regular practice and hopefully connecting with some local bands. Here's my current break down of projects and hobbies.

Work
- Write a white paper on advancing quickly from junior to senior software developer in a large software company
- Build an information product that helps baby boomers use the web without anxiety, confusion, or uncertainty
- Build a niche web application
Music
- Get back into baritone and alto sax playing
- Start my Morphine tribute band
- Improve my Eigenharp skills
Exercise
- Increase my climbing stamina by doing laps
- Be able to climb most 5.11 routes at BRC

So that's the plan. We'll see what the future holds, but I'm excited about a blank canvas with lots of opportunity. I had many phone conversations with friends and family before coming to this decision, so thanks to everyone who has been there for support and advice through this process! You guys are great.

Golden Gate Bridge

2011-01-24T14:46:18.000Z

I had a really super Sunday in San Francisco today. I started the morning with climbing at Mission Cliffs with Rebecca. I'm definitely at or close to my peak abilities despite my three-month hiatus, so that's good. It was a fun session and I got to climb a fun and challenging 5.11a route with a big overhang. After climbing I made plans to meet my cousin Ed and bike over the Golden Gate bridge down into Sausalito. I went to my first airbnb room, packed all my stuff up and headed out. However, I had both a fairly heavy backpack with my computer gear and a full roll-aboard suitcase. So I ended up carrying the rollaboard with the handles over my shoulders like backpack straps and clipping the computer backpack to that with my climbing carabiner. With that arrangement I was able to ride my loaner bike to airbnb apartment number 2. More on that later. Anyway, I then rode a route called "The Wiggle" from The Mission into The Haight and met up with Ed. We stopped briefly at Lindy in the Park and then made the ride over the bridge. The weather was gorgeous - sunny and warm. In Sausalito we had a bite to eat and wondered around a bit, and then took the ferry back to San Francisco. It was a really nice afternoon ride.

Now, about this second airbnb room. It's in a big hacker live/work space called the Warehouse near 15th and Shotwell. I think about 12 folks live there but there are a lot of visitors as well. The place is heavily customized. They've got holes cut in the second floor and hung nets inside them where you can sit and hang out as if it were a hammock. They have a big theater room, a beer keg, pinball, a swinging couch, a tiki bar, and lots of crazy decor. It's a pretty cool place to visit if you're a hacker, but I sure hope some random airbnb customer doesn't book it thinking it's just a normal room. It's definitely not. Anyway, it's weird and great.

Monday I went out to dim sum for lunch with my two main US-based QA engineers, Bill and Tony. They are both originally from Taiwan. I tried two completely new foods: chicken feet and jellyfish. We also ate the usual assortment of dumplings (shrimp dumplings are my favorite), and the main dish was lobster with noodles. It was really fun, and it turns out they both carry enormous Costanza wallets.

The rest of the photos from the trip are here.

San Francisco Visit

2011-01-23T05:02:38.000Z

I'm in San Francisco this weekend. Staying in rooms rented via airbnb. So far so good this morning. I walked to Sunrise restaurant in The Mission for poached eggs with avocado, bacon, and spinach on English muffin. Yum. Then I hit Mission Cliffs for some exercise and bouldering. Stopped home for a shower and a nap and now I'm off to explore around and find some yummy lunch.

Mini-break in Central City

2011-01-10T04:22:19.000Z

Michale and I did a spontaneous little weekend getaway this weekend. Friday morning we were planning to go up to Idaho Springs to soak in some hot springs. We booked a spa (non-refundable) but shortly thereafter Michale did some more reading of reviews and decided it was probably not going to be good. So we ended up having to go up there, take a little tour, and then decline our stay so we could get our money back. We then headed up to Central City, a little gambling town in the mountains, for our plan B spot at the Fortune Valley Hotel and Casino. The Excite travel folks told Michale it would A) have a jetted tub in the room and B) be in a separate building from the casino and C) have a mountain view, all of which turned out to be false. But anyway we made the best of it and had fun people watching the folks on oxygen tanks playing the slots.

On Saturday we heading into the little town of Central City to look for coffee and breakfast, but we found most places not quite yet open for business. We tried a restaurant on the second floor of a casino and were greeted by the single scariest host I have ever met. He was a young man probably early twenties who was not in the dining room when we arrived at the host podium. He came out from the back and had clearly been sleeping. He looked extremely tired and confused. He had a long and broad stream of drool glistening conspicuously on his chin. He seemed to have approximately four teeth. My thoughts moved instantly to "Deliverance". We had a brief chat in which he explained that he had been awake for 70 hours, although he declined to indicate any reason for this. We decided to move on.

After breakfast at another diner in town, we went up to Frisco, walked around town a little bit, and took out the sled for some more sledding. We've had two sledding trips recently. I'll post both videos below.

After sledding we went up to Breckenridge and again walked around town looking in stores and snacking on cup cakes and hot dogs. Then we headed back for the big casino buffet dinner featuring crab legs, top sirloin, clam chowder, and ice cream sundaes. Michale played the slots for a while, winning $14, and we snuggled up in our hotel room with some Dog the Bounty Hunter.

There are some pictures from the trip up.

2010 Review

2010-12-28T05:56:51.000Z

I've been doing a lot of chatting with friends and family lately, and Jamie Sue recommended I check out The Art of Non-conformity, which I've just gotten into. The author has just done his annual review and I thought it would be valuable to do one for 2010, even though I think 2011 will be a year of much more innovation and change. So here we have it, and I'll try to keep it brief.

Starting right on January 1, 2010, I had a strong focus on exercise. I trained with Chris Wall at Boulder Rock Club for 10 personal training sessions including a handful of private climbing lessons. I did quite a bit of weight lifting on my own coupled with his level 2 group fitness "Cry in the dojo" classes, which feature Tabata-style high-intensity interval training (HIT). Those were both deeply challenging and deeply satisfying. I did them pretty steadily through September when my membership expired and I decide to shift gears to learning new web development tools. I got some good sports psychology experiences out of both the classes and the personal training. My 2011 plans are still being defined, but it's likely that I will get another BRC membership and get back into climbing and the group fitness classes.

In terms of climbing itself I hit a few milestones including a bunch of 5.11 routes in the gym, learning how to set and clean sport anchors outdoors, and getting the gear necessary for outdoor sport leading. I also did my first session of outdoor bouldering. Overall I didn't do that much outdoor climbing though, but plenty in the gym.

My relationship with Michale was the biggest overall change from my past struggles in the relationship department. We had a lot of fun times together in 2010 including trips to Belize, Breckenridge, San Francisco, and Vermont. We watched lots of movies and shows (The Office and Six Feet Under being our staples), went to game nights, tried snowshoeing, went whitewater rafting, attended several Ignite events and TEDx Boulder, did a lot of walks and hikes, did a 10th Mountain Division Hut trip, went "restaurant camping", rode bikes around Louisville and Boulder a bunch, rode the Boulder 360 bike ride, played tons of Guitar Hero/Rock Band, went to Denver Decompression, watched a few plays, and tubed Boulder Creek. We also hosted some friends including my cousins Mike and Ed, Andrew and Sara, Chris and Tina, Monica, and Cecil. Things are good now and hopefully 2011 will bring even more joy and sweetness.

One of my other goals in 2010 was to get plugged into the Boulder tech scene. I think that went reasonably well but I can do better in 2011. There are a TON of tech events in Boulder every month. I've gone to both the Boulder and Denver New Tech Meetups, Denver Hack Nite, Ruby on Beer, the Front Range Pythoneers Unconference, This Week in Startups, Mobile Monday Colorado, Startup Junkies Underground, The DaVinci Institute Inventor's Showcase, Agile the Pivotal Way, and Boulder Open Coffee Club. The most significant connection so far has been with Boulder Community Computers where I've done a handful of days volunteering. In 2011 I'll look to get more specific connections.

In terms of concerts, it was overall a fairly light year but I got to see some shows I really liked. These included Imogen Heap, Zoe Keating, Charlie Hunter, and Erin McKeown. I was hoping the Eigenharp I bought might get me back doing music regularly but no luck so far. It's still on my agenda for 2011, though. On the technology side I will say that somewhat to my surprise I have indeed converted to the Mac. I ran Linux for about 10 years or so and while an Ubuntu laptop is still quasi-viable, the Mac is indeed superior. Sadly it's not something major, it's mostly the fact that suspend/resume work properly and the multitouch wireless mouse and scrolling are awesome.

I won't comment much on work since this is my personal blog, but overall 2010 was sort of "blah". I enjoyed several trips to Cupertino, one to Houston, and another opportunity to travel to Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The big initiative I started in 2008 is progressing along well and is nearing 2/3 completion. I feel like a lot of my overall approach and practices have gelled and my core working habits are solid. More work related news to come shortly, though. Things have been otherwise somewhat chaotic and lacking in clear direction from leadership.

OK, other random things. I still continue to make good use of personal assistants, although unfortunately my main assistant for 2010 turned out to not be trustworthy. The newest edition to my "team", George, is very handy with home repairs and has made some nice improvements including repairing my clothes dryer for $25 as opposed to the $300 replacement cost. He's currently working on built-in shelving for the living room to house my CD collection, which I am looking forward to.

In the health category, I had a weird digestive issue for the early part of 2010 which remains a mystery. I thought maybe I was lactose intolerant but that has since been definitively proven untrue. It ultimately went away after I had a colonoscopy but no specific treatment. My only theory is it was some kind of bacterial infection that was destroyed by the colonoscopy prep process itself. Things have been fine ever since and now I'm back to 100% certified omnivorous which is great.

2011 promises the biggest changes in quite a while so stay tuned for a post with my 2011 goals very soon.

Eigenharp on rails!

2010-10-23T07:02:54.000Z

Well, after over a month of shipping delays and another two months of software malfunctions, my Eigenharp Tau is now actually functional, and after a few practice sessions where the software actually does what the instructions say it is supposed to do, I've now made a bit of progress. I've figured out a few of the basic things and learned how to record multilayer loop tracks of arbitrary length with multiple voices. It's pretty fun. I'm still not fluent on the actual keyboard itself in terms of knowing that key # 27 is going to play B flat yet, but that'll come. Practicing tonight I was able to get enough going to actually enjoy it. For a while there, I was pretty pessimistic, but now the fun begins!

I've also been learning some new technologies: ruby, rails, and jQuery. I've been building a little prototype app and that has actually been going much faster than expected. That's been a fun hobby the past few weeks. Hopefully let's say before the new year, I'll post a beta of the app.

Comments fixed

2010-10-15T06:04:11.000Z

For a while it seems my anti-spam system for blog comments was misconfigured and holding comments in a quarantine without telling me. This has been corrected. All comments that were trapped in the void are now posted live on the site. The anti-spam setup has been fixed so this shouldn't happen again. No comments that were submitted have been lost. Sorry for that technical glitch. Ditto applies to my professional blog.

Denver Decompression

2010-10-11T04:24:55.000Z

Last night Michale and I had fun getting dressed up and going dancing at the Denver Decompression. Decompression is a post-Burning-Man party to help people ease back into the "default world" and also to raise funds for the regional burn Apogea. We spent most of the morning hitting costume stores and thrift stores for our get-ups. I got a funny 1970s looking woman's one piece jumpsuit/Bruce Lee track suit type thing that fit perfectly for $10.

More Decompression photos are here.

Anniversary

2010-10-10T06:47:28.000Z

Michale and I have been together for one year today. Here is a partial list of great things about her.

In the wintertime she wears big fuzzy socks to bed and then after a few minutes she looks right in my eyes and wiggles them off with no hands and it's adorable
In the summertime sometimes she wears her bathing suit under her clothes all day even if we have no specific plans to go swimming. Y'know. Just in case.
She's a champion at word games like Bananagrams and Boggle
She likes to snuggle and watch shows
She is always up for a nap (or two)
She knows about hippies and can translate from hippie to techie for me
She wears yoga pants a lot and does the occasional spontaneous downward dog
She likes to mix up all of her food into a bowl. Today she poured French Onion soup into a bowl containing leftover mashed potatoes and broccoli.
In the morning when she has bed head and is wearing her glasses she looks like Ray from Jerry McGuire
She has a funny little white Ford "house car" where she keeps all manner of things people usually keep at home
When we've been out past her bedtime she slumps way way down in the passenger seat, puts her shins up against the dashboard, pulls her jacket hood down over her eyes, and falls asleep
She goes on fun adventures with me

Margy's Hut Trip

2010-09-29T08:55:22.000Z

So Michale and I went on a CHAOS hut backpacking trip this weekend. There were eight of us altogether and we carpooled from Boulder/Golden out I-70 to a trailhead near Lenado, CO, about 8 miles from Aspen. The hike was a bit over seven miles each way and elevation gain was around 2300 feet I think to the hut at 11,300 or so. We had never done a hut trip and didn't have the big overnight packs, so we borrowed a set from Bill and Leslie.

We saw some great Aspen trees with their leaves bright yellow, which is a great contrast to the green evergreens and clear blue Colorado sky. The group overall was pretty typical Boulder: grad students, techies, scientists, and funemployed folk. Everyone got along well.

The hut was way more luxurious that I was expecting. I had in my mind a vision of a sort of rickety lean-to type contraption with four walls. It's closer to a house than a hut. Solid walls and insulation. Windows. Two floors. Large dining room with two big picnic tables. Kitchen with three gas burners, two sinks, running water. Tons of cooking and dining stuff. Wood burning stove. Solar powered lighting. Foam beds with pillows and linens. Really the only rustic aspects were the outhouse and the lack of hot water. It was a nice surprise and we really enjoyed our time there.

After the hike down we dipped our weary feet in the ice cold stream water. We stopped at the Woody Creek Tavern for a lazy lunch. Then we took the scenic route home, following 82 east past Aspen and curving our way across Independence Pass. We were a little tired for such a long journey home, but the views were indeed nice.

The rest of the photos are here.

Two to the fifth power

2010-09-24T08:46:53.000Z

Well, things have been humming along nicely the past two weeks. Michale and I had a fun Guitar Hero session a while back with another friend. I bought two original Guitar Hero guitars and six (6!) discs worth of games, so now we're stocked up and ready to rock. The next day was Boulder Pride Festival so we went and checked that out a bit. Last week AJ was kind enough to give me and my friend Stephanie a little clinic on setting and cleaning sport climbing anchors. So now I've got the minimum gear and knowledge needed to go out and do sport climbing independently without needing someone more experienced. So that's a nice milestone. Last Saturday we went out and climbed at The Sport Park in Boulder Canyon and tried out our stuff. I did my first outdoor sport lead, set the anchor, cleaned anchors, and rappelled down. It's fun!

Hung out at AJ's again on Friday night and he gave me and my friend Dorota rides on his motorcycle (sequentially, not simultaneously :-0 ). Then we watched Good Morning Vietnam. It's so good. I forgot how long it is though. Sunday I spent the day celebrating my birthday with Bill and Leslie. We had pancakes and eggs for breakfast then drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park and did a nice long hike up past Loch Vale to Sky Pond. After the hike Michale and Elise joined us for dinner at Bill's house featuring birthday cake Michale baked for me. It was a really fun day and nice to spend so long outdoors.

Monday was my actual birthday so Michale and I went to the arcade and batting cages and had a grand old time. Tuesday was a double header tech meetup night for me. I went to New Tech Denver, but had to head right back after the first presenter to go to This Week in Startups (TWiST) Boulder. TWiST is a cool little event where a bunch of cities around the globe (Tokyo, Sydney, Boulder, Dallas, etc) have a local event where a few startups pitch the crowd. Then the crowd in each city votes for the local winner. The winner in each city then gets on the live skype video stream and pitches to Jason Calacanis. The hosts were impressed with Boulder for consistently "crushing it" when it comes to startups.

Next Saturday we're off to Aspen for a CHAOS hut trip. It will be our first hut trip, so we're gearing up. The idea is to catch all the Aspen trees in full autumn glory and so far all signs indicate we'll hit that goal. Should be an adventure!

Charlie Hunter

2010-09-10T11:29:15.000Z

Saw Charlie Hunter tonight at the Fox Theatre in Boulder. He had Mike Williams playing bass trumpet. I've seen a lot of strange instruments, so it's pretty rare for me to hear something new, but I can honestly say I had never heard a bass trumpet. I could tell it was bigger than a flugelhorn though. The drummer Eric Kalb was sounding very good, but overall I didn't like the show very much. Mike played a lot of quasi-random isolated notes and flubs and was short on lyrical lines.

Plateaus

2010-09-02T19:27:00.000Z

OK, so here's comes a rare touchy-feely, gut-spilling blog post! So what's running through my mind these days is this notion of plateaus. I've got three main interests that I pursue with some degree of commitment: music, computers, and athletics. That's it. Just those three and there's not much else in my life that I've ever engaged in deeply. In all three of them, I seem to be well into a plateau in terms of ability and engagement. I'm thinking a lot about this and whether anything can or should be done about it.

Pondering this often, I've come to observe that a great deal of my own personal satisfaction and perhaps a lot of my sense of self worth comes from perceiving myself as "good at" things. I want to be on the right hand side of the bell curve, at least on a small set of things where I have a certain amount of talent and motivation, I want to feel like I've built up a set of accomplishments and skills that put me pretty far out there to the right of the bell curve. I don't know why I have this desire. I don't know whether or not it's ultimately healthy. I'm somewhat torn on that fact. There's a part of me that thinks if you don't get really "good at" a few things, you're ordinary, ineffective, and unremarkable. There's another small Zen camp in my psyche that thinks ultimately this doesn't matter and it's not important. One part of me thinks its latent indoctrination from grade school and my love of getting "A"s. And there's another statistical camp in my psyche that says I should expect to be toward the middle of the bell curve by definition and there's not much escaping that ultimately because it's baked into how we compute the bell curve. But anyway, at least right now this notion of feeling motivated to excel is winning the overall debate in my psyche.

So now let me discuss each of these plateaus a bit, which I think will be therapeutic. Musically, my saxophone playing skill pretty much peaked on April 7, 2001 when I had my senior recital at the Oberlin Conservatory. After that I did make some additional progress, especially in the realm of live performances with Sunny Daze, altissimo playing, and some more chamber improvement from the trio and quartet playing I did with Chris, Alex, and Charlie. But the slope of graphing that improvement over time was much more horizontal compared to the steep curve during my conservatory training. After another six years of not much effective individual practicing and just riding that plateau, I sort of gave it up, moved to Colorado, and switched focus more to athletics. The good news is that my technical abilities seem to more or less self maintain. Were I ever to start practicing again, I think my speed and finger technique would quickly return, my altissimo capability seems to have been baked into my throat and does not seem to deteriorate due to lack of practice, which is actually pretty cool. My endurance however has completely gone to pot and my face muscles are exhausted after fifteen minutes of playing. That would take a few months to come back I think.

But the classical stuff wasn't really my main concern. I felt like through school I kept up well enough with the classical sax players at my level. But my interest wasn't strong enough for me to go onto the graduate school or professional level. I really like playing and studying classical saxophone music, but the truth is I don't like listening to it. I listen to music voraciously still to this day, but I've never owned more than a dozen albums featuring classical saxophone, and there's only a small handful of pieces that I will get in the mood to hear and actively go and play on the stereo. So graduating from Oberlin with recital performances I'm proud of and still enjoy listening to feels OK to me as the pinnacle of my classical saxophone experience. I loved the experience at Oberlin, but I didn't have the motivation and interest to go on to graduate school or to do what it takes to play classical music at the professional level. So I feel very much grateful for that experience and at peace with where it came to a conclusion.

The jazz side is where most of the frustration and feelings of inadequacy reside. So given the choice, I would have majored in Jazz Saxophone Performance at Oberlin. I auditioned for both classic and jazz but got rejected from the jazz program and a nice scholarship for the classical program, so that settled that. However, I still took a lot of improvisation courses, and played in the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble big band as well as doing a few small jazz combos.

There was a time when the jazz majors had a period of accelerated growth where it became obvious that the woodshedding they were doing and the dedicated improvisation practice took them out of the student level and into the young professional caliber. I saw this with frightening clarity case after case after case. In most cases, it happened in their junior year. In the case of my friends Moppa and Kelly, toward the end of sophomore year we were all still playing pretty much at the level of really talented high school students. But there was an enormous and profound change that happened to them (but not me) in their jazz playing over junior year. By the end of junior year, they had learned to "get around on the horn" as Peter Dominguez would say and had developed individual voices coupled with virtuoso technique and a big repertoire of memorized standards. At that point there was still a voice in my head that believed I could do that too if I was able to dedicate the amount of time to it that they are since it was their major and for me it was just a hobby I squeezed in to my spare time as best I could.

Having been pondering this for almost a decade now, my current outlook is fairly bleak. The hard truth is my ear is not nearly good enough for me to realistically play high caliber jazz music. My ear has always been weak. When Andy Fusco first started working on it with me and trying to get me to do transcriptions, I was basically functionally tone deaf. He would play a note on the piano and ask me to sing it. It would take me a while to get it right and even when I did I wasn't confident I was singing the correct pitch. With a lot of focus and training in high school and in my aural skills classes in college, it got much better. I was able to get through four levels of aural skills, which was pretty challenging, but for the most part I didn't see a huge disparity between myself and most of my classmates, and I got "A"s in Aural Skills I-III. It was only Aural Skills IV which focused on a lot of atonal and twelve tone stuff where despite my efforts I couldn't muster more than a "B" due to the errors I was making with my ear. That plus the "B" I got in a more advanced Jazz Improvisation class were the first "B"s I ever got where I thought that was the best I could do. In reality the "B"s were probably generous grades. I think conservatory teachers tend to go easy on students academically because the performance aspect is so rigorous.

Anyway so at this point it is clear to me that my ear is so weak that I just might not make it in jazz. I took extra ear training courses (from Neal Creque) as well as a private study with Tim Weiss. Sadly of course Neal Creque has an amazing ear as everyone on conservatory staff does, so I felt like it was the sighted trying to teach the blind to see. If it's just an effortless sensory reality for you, I don't think you can comprehend what it's like when things just sound like undifferentiated notes. Tim Weiss I think was more sympathetic to my struggle and tried to teach me the "sound colors" approach. Anyway, I knew I had a challenge here and I was making a concerted effort to overcome it. I was doing extra ear training practice, buying miracle cures from the back of band instrument catalogs, walking around with A 440 on a loop in my mp3 player (the Diamond Rio, one of the earliest portable MP3 players :-) ), and so forth.

But now when I think about this, it seems like an insurmountable problem. If you can't hear and interact spontaneously to a certain level in jazz, you just "can't hang" as they say. When I auditioned for the jazz program at Oberlin, Peter Dominguez checked my ear. He rightly detected major problems. I still remember it vividly. He asked me to play "Happy Birthday" and I said I didn't know it. So he asked me to play it by ear and I couldn't. I think I got the first three pitches but not much more and had to stop. My assumption has been this alone was enough to get me rejected from the jazz program. Not sure if that's true, but part of me wishes someone along the way would have stopped blowing "you can be the first astronaut president" smoke up my ass and sat me down and said "look, kid, you're 5'4" and you're ear is weak. Basketball and jazz are not going to work out for you career wise, really, and there's nothing to be done about it". (Not that I was in to basketball, I'm just trying to make the point that sometimes there are fairly obvious indications of a mismatch happening).

So that's pretty much where I am today. I quit my band after several years of not making significant improvement, and having my improvisation limited to modal tunes with very few chord changes. I've now come to terms with this reality but I'm not really sure how to proceed. I've had a few thoughts on this over the years. First, stick to simple music, as in the Boston band "Morphine" that basically just jams everything out in D minor using a 2-string bass and calls it done. Secondly, I thought if I got into electronic music, at least I wouldn't have to worry about intonation. I bought my Eigenharp hoping that would rekindle my passion for music, but so far it hasn't caught on (yet). I'm still optimistic that some combination of a new keyboard or Garage Band or the Eigenharp might do the trick.

The other observation I've had is that while compared to the other students at Oberlin, my sense of pitch was very weak, compared to them, my sense of rhythm was significantly better than average. I've always been really good and reading complex rhythms from sheet music and transcribing them as well. Based on that I sometimes think about learning to play the drum set. I think I could be good at that. However, the problem is the music performances that really inspire me these days are all melodic and vocal. I don't know. Maybe I'll try it for a bit and see how it feels.

OK, whew, it feels good to type all that stuff out. On to the next plateau: computers. Ironically, this is probably the complete opposite of my music experience. Here's something that I seem to have significant talent at but I've not had much formal training or focused practice. The realization I had while I was attending the Henri Mancini Institute that being a professional musician wasn't going to work out, coupled with realizing I really liked computer programming and I was effortlessly good at it was a defining moment in my growth into an adult. I say "effortlessly" not to mean I didn't bust my ass working on it, but comparing working really hard in 16 credits of Comp Sci over 2 years to 10 years of relentless dedicated practice of the saxophone makes it seem comparatively effortless.

So with the help of one truly great and inspiring Professor Stephen Wong, using my remaining electives over my junior and senior year, I learned object oriented programming in Java and with the help of my CS lab buddies I learned a lot about linux systems administration. Of course, I didn't have most of the mathematical prerequisites, so some stuff went completely over my head. But honestly, only once in my networks class where we did some graph theory equations and stuff did I just have to write "I'm sorry I don't have the knowledge to even begin to answer this question at all. It's probably something like 2ⁿ ÷ (n - 1) though." :-) All those problems seemed to involve 15 minutes of intense mathematical machinations, but the answer always seemed to be the same as far as I could tell.

So I learned enough about web development and Java to pass Sun's exam and eventually get my first job out of school doing programming at CodeFab. Nine years later, I've built a handy little career here. I've worked with lots of the biggest companies in the world, gotten some good travel experiences, been through a big acquisition, and been inspired by some really talented coworkers. But again I think I've hit something of plateau here. It's not as flat as the music plateau as there's always a certain amount of growth happening, but basically now there's so much awesome community happening on the Internet that my scope of my peer group keeps expanding and expanding. I'm reasonably comfortable saying that even with a very large peer group of about 14,000 software engineers at HP software, I'm probably well to the right of the center of the bell curve. Not sure exactly how far right, and probably not the extreme right, but somewhere along that descending slope. That is, considering overall effectiveness at making software. I'm definitely not the most whiz-bang programmer and I'm not going to be winning any awards for algorithms in C, but at the end of the day I can get shit done and it usually comes out "less bad", let's say, than average.

So now I think I'm ready to expand my peer group to the Internet at large and work toward becoming a legitimately world-class programmer. I may need to go back to school or at least take a leave of absence and do some focused self-training to fill in the gaps in my education and broaden my skill set. I've made a pretty good mind map of this stuff, so I feel like I know what I want the end state to be. I'm not clear yet on which of several alternative paths I'm going to take to go in that direction.

What's not clear to me is what is the right balance here in terms of how much time/effort I put into the computer stuff versus the reward and sense of accomplishment and self worth I get out of it. I think clearly if I double down a bit and level up a notch and overcome the plateau, I'll enjoy that. It's not clear just how much higher the next plateau has to be for me to feel satisfied. I think in my mind I'm pretty ambitious but in my life experience I'll probably be satisfied with any plateau that is noticeably higher than my current level.

So the third area of athletics is more straightforward. I'm not deeply committed to athletics but I enjoy exercising and rock climbing has become more or less my primary hobby these days. I've had pretty good commitment to exercise since January 2009. I've been doing something active at least three times a week continuously since then, with a few intense periods of even more than that. I've been stuck climbing around (barely) 5.11 in the gym for probably 6 months now. I took a bunch of expensive personal training sessions last winter and worked on it a bit, and I got a bit better, but I seem to progress pretty slowly. Most of my climbing partners progress much faster than I do, sometimes to the point where I'm dumbfounded and I literally have no explanation for how they are doing it.

Also, it's not even clear to me that I like rock climbing outdoors that much. I still haven't done a ton of outdoor climbing, but whenever I go I'm always looking around at my buddies skeptically like "do you guys really like this that much?". It's logistically kind of a pain, and constantly worrying about the gear and the weather makes it pretty stressful for me. I might just need to get beyond the red zone here, but I'm a bit skeptical and maybe taking sort of a South Butt approach to it. I suspect ultimately I'll end up wanting to spend less time exercising and choose some exercises I can do quickly at home so I can focus on my other two big areas of interest, but I guess time will tell.

So that's what I'm thinking about now. These plateaus and whether or not I want to try to level up. And how much of that desire is healthy. Comments from family and friend are welcome!

Sibiu

2010-08-28T09:08:54.000Z

Well, I got more of an adventure than I bargained for on Friday. We worked in the morning until about 12:45 and then George, Bogdan, Diana, and I piled into George's car to head toward Sibiu, a central town about a three hour drive from Cluj. However, earlier in the week we had been discussing going to Turda, a nearby town about 20 minutes away, so I was mentally prepared for that. But apparently these guys were enthusiastic about such a long round trip journey so off we went, George aggressively passing cars and trucks as we zipped along the windy 2-lane paved road that serves as the interstate highway. The roads here don't quite cut it as highways: not enough lanes, constant curves, and no concept of exits so the highway just goes right through the center of every town you pass, causing a multimile traffic jam at every city.

But off we zoomed, stopping along the way at a great roadside bistro for lunch. At George's recommendation I ordered the chicken goulash, which was by far the best meal of this trip. Chicken pieces in a pinkish goulash sauce with a side of polenta. Delicious. It was a really great meal. We sat outside but in the shade. George and Bogdan ordered a large piece of pork that came with a large piece of boiled pork skin that was like nothing I've seen before. My best guess would have been that it was tongue of some kind. They also had an enormous vat of soup. Diana had the chicken and ham dish that was my original choice prior to George's recommendation and a funny fancy chocolate milkshake. The restaurant had several sections of tables inside large wooden geodesic domes made out of stained boards joined with steel connectors. That is about as close as I'll get to Burning Man this year, I guess.

After the delicious lunch we were off again, hitting some traffic at Sebes, some of which George avoided by simply veering off the highway into the residential streets in frustration, following some locals, winding our way to the other side of town, and rejoining the highway again. Sometime around 4:30 or so we arrived at the large outdoor technology museum outside Sibiu. Here they have a lake and large grounds surronding it. They transport various buildings from the past few centuries from every region of Romania and reassemble there here as a museum and park. It has lots of windmills, water mills, sawmills, seed oil extraction buildings, and a few churches. We toured around a good long while before hopping back into the car to visit downtown Sibiu.

Sibiu is a walled fortress city and just by sheer chance there was a large Medieval Festival happening this weekend, so the large cobblestone pedestrian malls and plazas were buzzing with people. The temperature had cooled down and it was quite lovely. We saw some sword fighting, torch fighting, some music performances, and lots of costumes. We also went into some churches and climbed up to the top of the clock tower to enjoy some vistas. We had a nice lazy small dinner followed up with soft serve ice cream. There are young girls operating very small portable soft serve machines for 2 lei (about 60 cents or so) a cone about every 100 meters along the pedestrian mall in Sibiu.

Then we made again the long journey back to Cluj, but this time except for one or two brief backups, there was no traffic, so George was zipping along between 120 and 160 kph most of the way, taking the curves like a race driver. We got back to Cluj shortly after midnight. I certainly wasn't expecting such an adventure! I had just a few hours to rest and shower before I had to head to the airport for my Cluj -> Bucharest -> London -> Denver journey home.

The rest of the photos from the Romania trip are here.

Romania again, three years later

2010-08-27T00:35:28.000Z

So I've flown out to Cluj-Napoca, Romania once again for work. It's been almost three years since the first trip, which was incidentally also the start of this blog. The journey out was a long one. Denver to Chicago with a "stop", which was an entirely different flight on a different plane at a different gate, so why they had indications that it was a single flight is beyond me, and then from Chicago on the big old 747 out to Frankfurt, and the from there to Cluj. The trans-atlantic part was actually not bad. I brought a good pillow and with the help of a sleeping pill was able to doze most of the time. Once in Frankfurt, I had an eight-hour layover (my longest ever) waiting for the only flight of the day to Cluj. No free wifi but I was able to find power outlets, and I had remembered my adapter and also thought ahead to save a bunch of documents from the wiki to my laptop so I could work on them offline and on the plane. It was annoying to have to convert dollars to euros for just two snacks though. I relied heavily on my stash of trusty Clif bars. Several employees at both the immigration desk and ticket counter commented pleasantly on my "pancakes" T-shirt. Even with the long layover, I made it to Cluj and to the same hotel as last time without much hassle. One funny thing about the landing in Cluj is we all got off the plane into a big double bus waiting for us, but there was a long delay, maybe twenty minutes, before the bus moved even after all the passengers were aboard. Then the bus drove us about 60 yards to the main terminal. It was silly. And of course there were no other flights coming in to the airport at that time, so I'm not sure why the bus was required. Another cool thing was that the taxi drivers get into and out of the airport using a fingerprint scanner.

The HP Cluj office has grown! Last time they had probably around 15 total employees. Now it's up to 98! They've taken over two other sizable sections of their office building. We've had a fairly full and productive week of training sessions and lab exercises. It's a shame I'm spending about 4 calendar days traveling only to be here for 5 days. Plus the jet lag has been somewhat bad. I have gone for an early morning jog since I'm awake in the wee hours of the morning anyway three times so far and enjoyed exploring the neighborhoods a bit. I found a park called Parcul Mare that has a bunch of outdoor exercise equipment anyone can use, so I've been doing that.

We've got our first and only social outgoing scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, so I'll be posting about that sometime soon. Photos from the Romania trip are here.

Vermont Lyons Reunion

2010-08-07T07:29:33.000Z

I went out to Vermont for a little Lyons family reunion. The Ireland contingent was there which was a special treat. We had nice weather and lots of great meals. It was a pretty chill schedule. I did a small hike with Deed and Dad and we poked around the Bookstock festival in town and played some mini golf. We also drove into New Hampshire for a reunion of my father's cousins at Joyce and George's great lake house. My 92-year-old Great Uncle Chick was there and it's always fun to see him. Matt and I did some kayaking around the lake and Joyce took folks out on her pontoon boat. Sadly the second group got stuck with engine trouble in the pontoon boat and had to be towed back to the dock. After they were gone far too long, Joan went out in a kayak in search of them. Joyce also took us out to the barn to see her two horses Spirit and Bo, and Caoimhe road a horse for the first time ever.

Photos from the Vermont Lyons reunion are here

The travel back was a bit of a pain. I took a small 10-seater Cessna from Lebanon, New Hampshire to Boston, but then US Airways cancelled my Boston to Washington leg. I got rerouted on an AirTrain flight to Denver but it didn't leave until about six hours later. So door to door it took me 16 hours to get home. Thankfully Google provides free wifi in Boston Logan so I was able to get some work done on a side project while I was there.

This week is the 2-night Boulder Denver New Technology meetup where the TechStars 2010 startups present their pitches. I only got to see the first two last night. I had to cut out early to walk over to Chautauqua to hear Zoe Keating perform. Tonight the rest of the companies present. It's a big and enthusiastic crowd. We completely filled the large lecture hall and had to spill over into another classroom upstairs with a live video feed. Also this week is TEDx Boulder, which I'm looking forward to.

Hedwig

2010-07-28T11:17:23.000Z

Had a fun weekend last weekend even though Michale was visiting Seattle. Saturday I had some yummy tamales and wood fired pizza at the Boulder Farmer's Market. Then I holed up in The Cup for some mind mapping and planning stuff over a giant mocha milkshake. Then I headed up Flagstaff Road and did the Meyers Homestead trail on my mountain bike. In the evening I joined Stephanie and some friends for Top Gun at Boulder Outdoor Cinema, with some game-playing beforehand. Sunday I did some computer work at home in the morning and then road Dowdy Draw/Spring Brook Loop with Erin. Then off to Denver to see a live performance of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Avenue Theatre. It was overall very well-performed and enjoyable. Afterward we got dinner at Steubens.

Uck. Last night was my worst performance at Climb Fit class yet. I'm not sure what happened. I did OK on the first 2 laps then faded very quickly and by the fifth lap I was "pumped out of my tree" as the instructor likes to say. The tops of my forearms are sore these days from computer RSI all day. After class the bottoms of my forearms were aching relentlessly. I'm not sure what that's about but it was frustrating.

Tonight Michale came home and we went to the first half of Ignite Denver which was some good people/hipster watching combined with some so-so presentations. Tomorrow I'm off to Vermont for vacation and reunion with the Lyons side of the family!

Eigenharp arrival and recent recreation

2010-07-21T20:31:42.000Z

OK, so it's been three weeks or so since I posted. Over July 4th weekend we had a nice dinner at the Pizzis with some of Elise's soccer friends who were fun. The following Tuesday was a great Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup. They had a whole bunch of local non-profit groups present for two minutes about what they do and what technology problems they have. Then they spread out to different classrooms and the tech community went and helped them out. It was a really great event. I hooked up with Boulder Community Computers and have been volunteering there a little bit in the past few weeks.

Two weekends ago I got Michale a used mountain bike and surprised her at breakfast on Saturday. We took it to the bike shop since it turned out to have a bent front wheel, and then we went on a long ride out to Lafayette and back along a nice bike path. We road under a flooded underpass and got our shoes wet though.

Last week on Thursday my Eigenharp Tau finally arrived. I ordered it on the very first day it was available and it took a month to arrive. I'm excited about the possibilities but I'm still just working on figuring out the basics. It doesn't come with much documentation at all, so its a bit mystifying, especially considering the interface consists of mostly 95 unlabeled buttons. We'll see how it goes. So far I've figured out how to change sounds and scales and I can play Happy Birthday with unintented pitch bends.

This past weekend Michale and I did a fairly spontaneous camping trip up to Frisco to escape the heat. We headed up to the mountains after I finished setting up a network build system for Boulder Community Computers. We were able to find a decent car camping site and secure a space close to Dillon Reservoir. Then we took the bikes out and biked along the path between Frisco and Breckenridge. It was nice to be by the reservoir but I think it fostered a lot of mosquitos, so now we're each nursing a dozen or so bites. We did "restaurant camping" as it were. I didn't have the motivation (or equipment) to pack and cook our own food, so we just headed into downtown Frisco for dinner Saturday and breakfast Sunday. Sunday we biked about twenty miles round trip between Frisco and Keystone, which was a lot of fun and I'm pretty sure it's the longest bike ride I've ever done. I think Michale really liked the experience overall, especially the bird watching.

Sunday evening back in Boulder I met up with some friends for a pot luck picnic and then we heard the Colorado Music Festival orchestra play some nice Brahms pieces. It was another really fun and varied weekend.

Tonight is my little "You Film Fest" party #3 where we're going to watch some Ignite Boulder talks. Then Michale is off to Seattle to visit her peeps this weekend and next week I'm headed to Vermont to visit my peeps.

Photos from some of these events are here.

Tubing Boulder Creek

2010-06-30T22:22:33.000Z

Last weekend was a blast. Friday night I hung out at Stephanie's and watched the Blue Planet on her big projector. Saturday started with pancakes with Michale and then we headed to Boulder for the farmer's market and tubing the creek. We borrowed one tube from Big Wave Lew and bought another one at the Conoco on Broadway and Arapahoe. We met up with five other folks from CHAOS by the library and walked up to Eben G. Fine park to put in. Overall, my takeaway from the experience was: don't tube Boulder Creek. The water was cold but mostly that didn't bother me, at least not until I got out. It was fun to cruise along on the fast smooth sections, but going over the little waterfalls while thrilling seems just too dangerous. Everyone got knocked out of their tube and into a big fountain of water holding you under the surface. You have to wait until the current brings you out from under the waterfall before you can get your head above water again, and that's just very much a not fun "I'm drowning" type feeling that I'd rather leave out of my recreational experiences. There are lots of rocks around waiting to knock you unconcious or scratch you up a bit. Michale got a bit banged up. Of course, once you pull over to the side or get out, the fact that you are soaking in ice cold meltwater hits and I started shivering right away even though the air was 90 degrees.

Saturday we had a very yummy sirloin for dinner, which marks only the second time I've grilled steak here. Michale whipped up some blueberry vinagrette dressing for a nice salad with jicama (that's a new one for me) and walnuts. Sunday after breakfast we lost power so we went over to Dragonfly Coffee Shop and hung out on our laptops for a while. I got to show off my fancy new MackBook Pro. In the afternoon, we went to the Rec center and then ate some broiled salmon with garlic butter for dinner. It was a very fun and relaxing weekend.

In other news, three n00bs tried to walk into the Chris Wall level 2 group fitness class "Cry in the dojo" on Tuesday. The regulars looked around and started placing quiet bets on how quickly they would bail. This is not a "try it and see if you like it" type of class. Surprisingly, they made it through the whole first round, about thirty minutes worth of vigorous Tabata intervals before they excused themselves and bailed.

Erin McKeown and Janet Feder

2010-06-25T11:08:29.000Z

I just had the privilege of seeing a small-room show by Erin McKeown and Janet Feder in Boulder at Immersive Studios. I'm a big fan of Erin. I hadn't heard Janet before but from what I can gather she's sort of a classical guitarist gone rogue and she's great if you are into interesting noisy and dissonant but songful acoustic guitar instrumentals. Erin blends a good mix of early jazz, blues, folk, and rock with a solid voice and great songwriting chops. Her guitar sound is a really rich and slightly brash hollow body electric. I am mostly familiar with a live record of her's called Lafayette, and on that record her guitar sound on "Blackbirds" is my absolute all time favorite.

So Janet played mostly instrumental on a "prepared" acoustic guitar. "Prepared" is the term used in conservatories for when pianists put stuff onto the strings and otherwise futz with it under the hood. Janet had some really cool effects with hooking small metal bands onto the strings as well as tying a loose guitar string around one of the strung strings and then dragging the loose string along the regular string. She played in a bunch of unusual tunings and her songs had lots of nice crunchy harmonies while still being tuneful and sonically very interesting. It was also cool to watch how relaxed her left hand was and how lightly she pressed the strings to the frets. Definitely an unexpected pleasure especially since I'm primarily listening to melodic pop bands these days. It reminded me of my days at Oberlin.

The space is a small 60-seat theater in a recording studio, so it was very intimate and the sound was terrific. This reminded me of when I got to hear Charlie Hunter upstairs at Mo Pitkins in NYC. The audience was quiet and attentive with the one exception of one very young girl who was there at the beginning for a few songs before her parents' delusions about this being an appropriate place for a five-year-old finally wore off and they carried her out.

In other news I went code complete on a major release as well as a subsequent patch release this week so there's a good ten months of work or so that is done and done. Now it's on to the next big project full steam ahead as always. Got some fun plans for the weekend as well. I was glad to be back to climbing and exercising this week as well after lounging around eating Oreos on vacation last week. Chris Wall turned it up on notch on his Group Fitness 2 class on Tuesday and made us do 12 sets of each exercise instead of the usual 9. I'm still a bit sore in the thighs and shoulders from that. I also did some lead climbing on Wednesday and tried out my new rope. Just need to wait for my backordered carabiners and I'll be fully equiped for outdoor sport climbing.

Hilton Head 2010

2010-06-19T09:07:13.000Z

Last Friday night I went to the Ogden Theatre in Denver for an Imogen Heap show with Erica, a new friend. Imogen was singing in full force and it was a really great show with a nice long set list. Her band sounded really good as well, particularly the drummer. She did an improvised song for a local charity, and audience-participation renditions of Just For Now and Hide and Seek. We got soaked in thick rain going back to the car, but it was overall really fun.

I went straight from the show to Bill and Leslie's house. I showed up at 1am, rested a few hours, and then we left for the airport at 3:30am. We just had a lovely week on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina for our family reunion. This is our third year in a row. It's lots of golf and tennis plus some swimming both in the ocean and in the pool and a bit of bicycling as well. There was lots of good food this year, which is featured prominently in the photos. It was a very fun age for Will. He can't really say much of anything yet but he is happy and fun. He knows High Five and is good at walking around, carrying tennis raquets, and hiding in cabinets.

My sleep patterns were pretty disrupted so I spent two dawns out on the beach watching heat lightning and sunrise. The weather overall was pretty oppressively hot. We got a bit of a break this afternoon with some clouds and a cool breeze, but most of the week it was low to mid nineties, sunny, and humid. Of course we watched a lot of World Cup matches as well, all slunked in along a big wrap around couch and alternating not paying attention, with most people browsing the web on their laptops, with intense vocalization at the interesting parts of the match.

Photos from the trip are here.

I also bought a bunch of new toys! I got a set of my own climbing gear (a rope and some quickdraws) finally. I had been watching prices and got the REI outlt deal of the day - a 60 meter rope for less than $90 (normally they are in the $225 ballpark). Then, after about 12 years of using Linux on PCs as my primary operating system, I bought a MacBook Pro. However, this is mostly triggered by the fact that the EigenD software that accompanies the (hopefully) awesome Eigenharp Tau only runs on Mac OS X. So now shipping to me is an Eigenharp, an electronic instrument designed for live performance, which I have been lusting over for many months since they were first announced, and a tricked out MacBook Pro loaded with RAM and a 256 GB solid state disk drive. I'm hoping the conversion to Mac will be mostly smooth, and I think it probably will, but I'll miss the awesomeness of the Debian package format and associated tools infrastructure and a bunch of other things. I'll probably write a post about that on My Professional Blog in a few weeks.

Climbing, Sliding, Riding

2010-06-10T10:36:06.000Z

Just a quick update on what I've been up to. Finally got over to The Spot last Thursday to boulder on their newly-added wall. It's a nice addition. Friday I lifted weights at BRC, which made me still a bit sore for climbing outdoors on Saturday. We went up Boulder Canyon with a fairly large group to Avalon. I got to cross the creek doing my first Tyrolean Traverse, which was mildly thrilling (?). We did a bunch of climbing and I think I climbed my favorite outdoor route so far.

After climbing I met up with Michale and her friend Cecilia who was in town. We wondered around the Pearl St mall a bit and eventually headed home for a nice meal with broiled salmon and some good veggies. Of course we played some Guitar Hero as well.

Sunday we had a big pancake breakfast and then had a lovely drive out to Golden to hit the Heritage Square Alpine Slide. It was pretty fun, you get a really nice view of the whole surrounding area from the ski lift that takes you to the top, and it's just $7, so overall worthwhile if you're passing through. Then we headed back to Boulder, grabbed some loaner bicycles and some eats, and then headed over to Scott Carpenter Park for the B360 Bike Ride. We had fun riding all around Boulder with a big crowd and lots of free yummies from vendors at the end.

Finally got back to the Level 2 Group Fitness class at BRC last night and then rested for an hour before my climbing partner arrived for another ninety plus minutes of climbing. Next up is a highly anticipated Imogen Heap concert on Friday in Denver, and then Saturday morning it's off to Hilton Head for the Pizzi family reunion!

Garden of the Chris

2010-05-31T08:43:13.000Z

Chris and Tina came out for a Colorado vacation visit! They arrived last Saturday in the morning. Michale and I took them to The Huckleberry for lunch. Then we took a nap since their flight was stoopid early. We went in to Boulder and strolled around the Pearl St Mall. There were some good street performers out that day.

Sunday we all attended the now semi-annual Uncle Eddie breakfast at Lucille's. It was delicious and fun. Then Chris, Michale, and I went up to Idaho Springs for some white water rafting! We got a brief safety lecture, put on wet suits, booties, splash jackets, PFDs and helmets, and then headed downstream with five clients and one guide in our raft. We did the "intermediate" level trip and it was a lot of fun. The guide makes it a bit overly dramattic, barking out rapid fire rowing instructions that seem not entirely necessary, but it was a really fun outing and not exhorbitantly priced. We went over rapids, got splashed a bunch, huddled down in the center of the raft going over falls, and Michale even got to drag one of our dim-witted companions from another group back into the raft when he tumbled out!

Afterward we hooked back up with Tina and walked into downtown Louisville to dine at the Empire Lounge.

Monday morning Chris, Tina, and I drove down to Colorado Springs for a visit. We first took the Cog Railway to the top of Pike's Peak. It was cool views going up the mountain. The weather was severely windy and cold at the summit. It was 17 degrees with wind chill to -10 and winds initially running 60 mph or so. We couldn't make it even from the train to any of the peripheral view points because it was so cold and little dirt and rock particles were pelting us in the face. After only about 10 minutes, the wind hit 90 mph, which we were told is hurricane levels, and everyone had to immediately reboard the train so we could head down and back to safety. At this point decent size hunks of rock were being hurled through the air as everyone covered their faces and made a mad dash for the train. It was pretty thrilling and a big relief to get out of there. The wind was so strong that it took down a tree further down the mountain, and the tree crashed on some power lines which fell across the cog railway tracks. So we ended up stuck in the train waiting for the power company to clear the downed lines for an hour or so.

We ate at Adam's Mountain Cafe and checked out the big arcade next door full of old arcade games. Then we went to the Garden of the Gods park. That was really nice. The weather was gorgeous and we frollicked around looking at the amazing rock formations. We had dinner in Colorado Springs that night with some yummy guacamole prepared table side.

After we checked into our motel, I had to go scouting for suitable wifi access somewhere as I was planning to work remotely while Chris and Tina went sight seeing on Tuesday. I tried the Manitou Springs library. They had working wifi and a sort of OK table for me to sit at, but my VPN software was blocked by their firewall. Grr. On to the second library. This one was closed for RFID conversion. Grr. Third library was OK though. Ended up at the Sand Creek branch and they had free wifi with decent speed and even though the used the same service provider as the Manitou Springs library, for some reason my VPN worked OK. This whole search took two hours, which is pretty typical. I missed my amazing home office.

So I worked from there Tuesday while Tina and Chris went to the Cave of the Winds. It was a bit challenging working from there and there was no good lunch available, so I fell back to my lifesaver - my trusty Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch Clif Bar. At the end of the day Chris and Tina came back in the car and we hit the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, which was interesting but just a little. We still had some daylight so we went over to the famous fancy hotel The Broadmoor and snooped around a bit, which was actually a lot of fun. Then we stopped at the Ritz in Colorado Springs for dinner before getting on the road back home to Louisville.

I was working the rest of the week, so they borrowed my car and did a few local attractions: the Denver Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, the Celestial Seasons factory tour, and the Silver Plume steam train. Thursday Tina cooked us some delicious apricot-and-mint-glazed lamb skewers, and Friday I did some rotisserie chicken.

The rest of the photos from Chris and Tina's visit are here.

I took them to the airport stoopid early Saturday and then met up with Michale for the Boulder Creek Festival. It's really fun. We love watching the little kids in the giant rubber band kid launchers (they had 2 or 3 of them spread around). On Saturday I got two compliments on my trusty "plain text" white T-shirt. Then a big rainstorm hit just as we came upon Lewis and Nancy by chance. So we hunkered down under the library overpass waiting out the worst of the rain. It did last a good long while despite Lewis's frequent mentions that it would pass in half an hour.

Today we ended up having a big yummy pancakes and bacon breakfast and then again spending most of the day at the Boulder Creek Festival. It was nice and sunny and warm today and we walked and walked and walked all over the place, laughing and eating and chit chatting.

(In case you missed it, there's a dude on a rope swing in that photo)

The rest of the Boulder Creek Festival photos are here.

As a side note we've been watching season 3 of The Office on netflix instant. They've really hit their stride now and the episodes are hysterical.

California fun

2010-05-09T04:06:49.000Z

Had a really fun extended trip to California. It was a work trip but I tacked on both the weekend before and after to hang out in San Francisco. I flew out early on Saturday morning (April 24), grabbed my rental car, and met up with Pat to hang out. It was a very groovy and enjoyable experience as I was in a very much "take it as it comes" kind of mood and just enjoying the novelty of San Francisco. Throughout the day, Pat would suggest something and I would say "absolutely, that sounds perfect". We got Salvadorian lunch, looked at a funny pawn shop, took a nap, rode the bus to the Apple Store and played with all the latest gear, and went over to Japantown for some yummy sushi. After sushi we walked around a bit and saw a funny scene. A pair of drunken college goofballs were stumbling their way across a big overpass and got engaged in a conversation with the group of homeless people under the overpass. This ended with the goofball dropping a small bottle of booze down to the the homeless folks, who then broke out into a rendition of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and were clearly delighted. It was pretty funny.

After sushi we went and got ice cream. I was under the mistaken impression that I am lactose intolerant for the past 18 months. I recently got officially tested and learned that in fact, I am not lactose intolerant. There was much rejoicing. This was an official dairy-fast-breaking celebration and I got a big ice cream sundea (as it was spelled in the store) and it was great. We took a very crowded bus back to Pat's neighborhood, or so we thought. Something got screwed up and we ended up a few blocks into an area Pat had heard was not safe. So we nervously made our way back into calmer waters, hung out on the roof a bit, then called it a night.

Sunday I packed up my stuff in the car and drove over to Golden Gate park for a nice run. Afterward I met up with my cousin Ed for brunch nearby. Then back to meet up with Pat before heading over to Dani's house to hang out in her lushly overgrown back yard, chat with some Freedom Community folks, and learn knife throwing. As it usually happens, eventually additional members of "the family" as they say appeared and we discussed what to eat for dinner for about 45 minutes before finally deciding upon Peruvian food. So we all rolled to The Mission and had a big long meal with lots of good chatting (albeit much of the chatting was not entirely appropriate for a restaurant filled with families).

I tried to meet up with Ed again for Classical Revolution, but dinner ran late and all was finished by the time I arrived. And I arrived at the wrong address by a lot anyway, so I just drove down to Cupertino and checked into my hotel.

It was not a good work week to have a sore throat as I had to give two presentations, both of which were being recorded. It was pretty annoying and I really sounded strange. Other highlights included no less than four sushi meals included some served on a little boat and one all you can eat lunch. Friday it was back up to San Francisco to hang at Pat's where a little party was happening.

Saturday Michale arrived (yay!) and we checked into our hotel and headed over to the Embarcadero to look at the yummies at the farmer's market. We wondered around along the waterfront up to the wharf. I got a crab cake that I had been jonesing for. We also paid hommage to Pope Joe at Trader Joes so Michale could get her favorite hummus. Pat joined us later for seafood lunch and then napping in a nearby park near Ghirardelli square. Then we got some ice cream before heading back to the hotel. Michale and I took a "nap" from 6pm to 8:30pm and then just decided to give up on going out of the hotel again that night. I ordered room service and then we went back to sleep. Yay for mini-vacations.

Sunday we had excellent breakfast at the diner across the street, walked around a local farmer's market fair, and then rode the bus out to the ocean. We walked along the beach a ways and then took a long walk through Golden Gate Park. We tried to make our way to Cafe Gratitude for some raw food yummies, and after a few address mistakes, we finally arrived to find it closed due to a power outage. Bummer! So we grabbed some pizza on Castro instead and then took the bus out to Diamond Heights for a party at Marcia's.

The party was a lot of fun and Michale fit in with that crowd swimmingly, as I knew she would. It was good. There was ice cream cake and swiss cheese and lounging and talking and hot tubbing.

I commuted to work with my boss Monday morning and then back in the evening. I met up with Rebecca and Brian for rock climbing at Mission Cliffs a bit. It's always fun to visit new climbing gyms. Then it was back to the hotel for early sleep. Tuesday morning Michale and I headed into the BART just as it was opening at 4am only to realize the first train to SFO wasn't until nearly 5am, which was too late for our flight. So we had to fall back and take a cab to the airport.

Photos from the trip are here.

Happy

2010-04-17T23:45:18.000Z

I'm reading and enjoying Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt. I've got a new project starting and some other exciting changes happening at work, so I was pretty restless last night. I finally gave in at four AM and just got out of bed and started drawing mind maps for a few projects. I did eventually get back to sleep after fully draining and redraining all my RSS feeds and facebook updates. I slept late and feel pretty rested.

This morning I cooked a delicious breakfast. An omlette with grilled chicken, baby swiss cheese, and red potatoes. I had Ani DiFranco and Chick Corea in my Sonos/Rhapsody playlist and I experienced a strong moment of contentment and gratitude. Today I'm going to bike from Louisville to Boulder (for the first time, it's shameful, I know) and hit the BRC for some weights and climbing. Tomorrow will be another great breakfast at Watercourse with Michale and her Seattle friend Monika who is visiting Denver this weekend.

I am happy. This is all I want out of life. Any improvement above this is just gravy. :-)

Spring is rather quite fetching

2010-04-04T05:42:48.000Z

Oh, it's such a lovely spring day today. A bit windy but otherwise delightful. This morning my new assistant arrived with an electrician and a handyman for some long needed home improvements. Finally my promiscuous garage door opener that opened when neighbors both in front and behind me used their remotes has been replaced. I got a bunch of light switches fixed up properly and some new hooks in the exercise room for my gymnastic rings. All this happened while Michale and I made banana chocolate chip pancakes and played bananagrams. Also, my dog run got its first real use. The electrician Dave had a big German Shepherd named Deuce in his truck. So I offered to put Deuce in the dog run. Michale and I went and played fetch with him for a while in the back yard. He escaped the dog run a few times by pulling the door open, but eventually Dave tied it shut with some electrical wire and all was well. Deuce also got to meet my neighbor's Golden Retriever puppy Bella.

Then we went to the Boulder Farmer's market and for a walk and picnic up Boulder Canyon. Then we came home and took a long nap until Michale kicked me out because I was done napping and fidgeting too much - thus I'm blogging our day so far. Oh and the Ice Cream Truck just came down my street, which is what motivated this post. The Ice Cream Truck rules. Michale didn't hear it so I'm going to surprise her later with an Oreo pop. Oh and on that note, for the last 15 months or so I've been under the impression that I was lactose intolerant, which is a major downer, but now that has come under suspicion after some trips to the doctor. So I had some baby swiss cheese on my sandwich today, which they gave me for free since I bought so much turkey. I haven't had swiss cheese in a really long time and it was probably in the top three of my all time favorite foods, so there was much rejoicing.

Oh yeah, and last night we went to a friend's house for game night featuring Outburst from 1988 and Egyptian Rat Screw. And Michale made me a hat!

Climbage

2010-04-02T21:24:20.000Z

Had a great climbing coaching session with Chris Wall this morning. Did laps leading a 5.10 route. On the third lap, I was pretty sure there was no chance of getting to the top, but I surprised myself. I made the first four clips pretty easily and when I got to the last big jug before the push to the anchor I was like "I've got enough left to do this". I relaxed and did it and it felt really great. I listened to some fantastic San Francisco Jazz Collective on the way home with great vibes and marimba. I don't know why these awesome instruments aren't used more regularly. We need to hear a lot more vibes, marimba, bass clarinet, french horn, and trombone.

Tonight Michale and I are headed to a friend's house in Denver for games night. Let the weekend begin!

Pizzi invasion

2010-03-31T08:38:00.000Z

Lots of good stuff happened in March. For the middle two weeks it was full steam ahead at work and the gym. I did the Group Fitness Level 2 "Cry in the Dojo" classes with Chris Wall at BRC every Tuesday this month. They are intense! There are 12 participants and 12 mats with a different exercise at each mat. Everyone wears a heart rate monitor that is hooked up to a projector with a grid of color coded rectangles, one per person. You can see everyone's heart rate, the goal being to exceed 91% of your maximum heart rate and get your rectangle to turn red. It's high intensity and timed. You do each exercise for 20 seconds then you have 10 seconds to move to the next station and start the next one. So far I don't think I've gotten higher than 87% of my 208 max heart rate. It's not as traumatic anymore but in the beginning when class was over I didn't want to interact with anyone for a solid 40 minutes or so.

Last week after the big snowstorm (hopefully the last one this season - we've had snowstorms for 6 months now), my cousins Ed and Mike arrived for a long weekend visit. We did a bunch of fun things including skiing Copper on Friday, rock climbing, watching Elise play soccer, tennis, two big yummy dinners at Bill's, two big yummy breakfasts at my place (pancakes then crepes), and watching Point Break. We took over the rock climbing gym with six climbers and three spectators in our group. It was a really fun visit.

Pizzi visit photos are here.

Squashies

2010-03-06T10:36:30.000Z

The Skareckis came out for a big Colorado ski trip adventure visit. They arrived on Wednesday morning and spent Wednesday through Friday exploring the area around Boulder. They hit the Butterfly Pavillion, the Louisville Rec Center featuring its big yellow water slide, and even went indoor skydiving in Lone Tree. Thursday night Marc's college friend Marissa came over and we had a big dinner with Rotisserie chicken and lots of trimmings. This was followed by an intense game of Bananagrams wherein Michale validated my prediction that she would dominate. Michale and I had to get up early on Friday so we retired around eleven and left the three of them to hang and talk until the wee hours.

Friday after work we had some logistics to deal with. Marc had sent a package with their ski gear UPS for guaranteed Friday delivery. However, with the big snowstorms in the east, it didn't make it, and we were scheduled to head up to Breckenridge early Saturday morning. So we had to drive around Boulder and pick up some borrowed gear in addition to hitting Sports Authority minutes before close to quickly outfit Sunny with snow pants, gloves, long underwear, and goggles.

We drove up Saturday morning. We sang The Twelve Days of Christmas as well as Sweet Potato in the car on the way up. Marc and Casey also talked at length about how great They Might Be Giants' Here Comes Science album is, always lamenting how they couldn't remember any of it. They then proceeded to sing no less than twelve of the album's nineteen tracks a capella flawlessly. During the trip I loaded it onto my mp3 player for the ride home to verify all the lyrics. Sunny and Casey particularly got fired up for the Einsenhower Tunnel (Einsenhower Tower as Casey calls it) and the Continental Divide.

We rented a sweet ski-in ski-out condo right on the slopes at Breckenridge. The skiing was pretty great. Michale came up Saturday to join us for hot tubbing, swimming, dinner, and skiing Sunday. It snowed five inches Sunday night. Michale and I sat in the outdoor hot tub sipping hot cocoa while the snow fell on us. Marc and I headed out alone Monday morning to ski the freshies and hit the summit. We made a lot of runs between 8:30 and lunch time. Then Casey and Sunny joined us. They found some good runs for Sunny including a few little entertaining themed runs through the trees with castles, dragons, cobras, haunted mine graveyards, etc.

Tuesday was going to be a "perfect storm" of circumstances to try snowboarding. I have a season pass so I'm not concerned about the lift ticket. We had a condo so I could bail and go back to skis if needed. Marc was there and willing to give me a lesson. We had fresh sow and plenty of warmth and sunshine on Tuesday. It was mid week so it was not too crowded. So with all these circumstances aligned, I figured it would be fine to try snowboarding instead of just going off on my own while the Skareckis stuck to green circle runs. So I rented a board, packed a bunch of bath towels into my snow pants to pad my knees and butt, and headed out there. Marc gave me some tips, and within about four runs I was able to get down the learner slope without falling.

The Skareckis went over to lift nine and left me on the beginner run to try to get my skills together. I got the basics but was still not quite stable. After a long lunch break and a nap, I went back out for a few more runs. I made my way over to peak nine with great effort and fear, only to take one run then realize it was already 3:30 and the lifts would close in half an hour, so in order to get back to the condo I would have to B line it back to peak eight. I made it back in time. I was very tired though since it's very different leg muscles than skiing, so on the slope back to the condo I was wiping out every twenty yards or so. Anyway, it was cool to get a chance to try it, but I have no plans for further experimentation unless unusual circumstances hit again. It's just too awkward with the undoing and redoing the binding and the awkward pigeon toed shuffle.

We got up early Wednesday morning and went straight to the airport. It was a really fun trip and some great skiing!

The rest of the photos are here.

Belize

2010-02-25T11:17:12.000Z

I took Michale on a vacation to Belize! Belize was on my list of places to go for good scuba diving, and Michale wanted to go some place warm. It's a very easy trip: 6 hours of plane rides, English speaking, US Dollars accepted. We arrived Wednesday late afternoon in the Belize City international airport, and took a tiny Cessna puddle jumper to Ambergris Caye, the island where San Pedro is. It was the smallest plane (maybe 12 passengers max) either of us had taken. We stopped briefly on Caye Caulker to drop off one passenger and the rest of us stayed on for Ambergris. We got the island flavor right away with the baggage claim being a small section of grass delimited with wooden posts and a chain painted white. One of the handful of airport staff asked us where we were going and called them to arrange our taxi to our condo development. Lelo our taxi driver took us there, narrowly missing people, dogs, and structures the whole way, with that frightening but amazing precision that taxi drivers always have. He was the first to introduce us to the island slogan "No shoes. No shirt. No problem", which he repeated numerous times.

Wednesday night we just got settled in, strolled through the tiny downtown, and ate mixed seafood pasta at Elvi's. There was shrimp, lobster, scallops, conch, and calamari in it. Michale started reading up in the guidebooks and guest register we found in the condo that night. "A bit loud at night" is what Michale wrote in her journal. What this means is our condo was just off the street where loud golf carts and cars go past. The old lady occupying the private home next to our condo blares her TV for many hours each day and evening. Drunk people walk by and talk loudly. One day they chainsawed a coconut tree into pieces for several hours just outside the condo. Another day was the hardware store across the streeet's tenth anniversary and they rented a huge set of speakers and played music all day. It was not the calm tropical oasis I was hoping for.

Thursday was our unscripted exploring day. We wandered out of the condo development out through the streets toward the western shore of the island. We didn't get far before two young men in a golf cart approached us and pitched us some freebies if we went and looked at time shares at a new resort on the northern side of the island. We hemmed and hawed a bit, but eventually decided to go with them because it seemed like fun and would make a good story and we would get a free day golf cart rental out of it. They were very excited because the prize we had selected out of their manila envelope of prize tickets was a free week's stay at the resort, which they claimed meant $100 US for them. For all we knew, half of the tickets in the envelope said that.

They drove us up to the resort and chatted away. They explained the new movie theater just over the bridge to the northern section which had recently been built and is planning to open for business in a few weeks. The drove us up into the complex, which was mostly up and running except for the last few units under construction, and otherwise mostly deserted. There was one other couple getting a time share pitch and maybe one or two guests. We were introduced to our salesperson, Karia, a slim freckled blonde woman, wearing, get this, a thigh-length down jacket and wool turtle neck sweater. Now, it was surely cool that day, probably in the mid sixties, but the full on winter garb was quite surprising and amusing. Michale and I set across from her in our shorts and flip flops. The deal was we had to sit through a 90 minute presentation, then we'd get our golf cart rental. So we did and we chatted with Karia about our vacation habits (oh yeah, we told them we had been married for two years, although Michale hadn't yet begun wearing the fake wedding ring she brought on the trip). Karia explained how she and her daughter ended up leaving Canada to travel and eventually landing in Belize. She showed us a model unit and then finally released us after we declined to buy a time share on the spot, despite her lovely financial models and diagrams she drew on her trusty yellow legal pad. According to Karia, aggressive time share marketing got to be such a problem in Belize that the regulated it such that these places could approach someone only once, give them one pitch, and then the "mark" would have to buy in on the spot, and if not the developer is forbidden from interacting with them further.

So we got a lift back all the way to the southern end of town from another young man in a golf cart with our golf cart rental voucher and 7-day stay voucher in tow. We explored the far south end of town (although the island extends quite a bit further south) a bit before stopping in Ali Babba's for rotisserie chicken, which was quite tasty. The rest of the afternoon we relaxed, napped, dipped toes in the water, and bought some groceries. San Pedro has a small grocery store every hundred yards, but presumably due to the realities of island sundries, they each seem to carry virtually identical goods. We got the necessary items: coffee, creamer, peanut butter, and some fruit. We ate a yummy meal at Mickey's featuring salty Belizean style grouper followed by frozen custard and strolling on the beach.

Friday I did my first scuba dive out to a hand-shaped coral formation in open water. As soon as I started to descend, a big three foot ugly looking fish with a prominent lower jaw came up from the bottom to examine me, which was a fun feeling. We saw a nurse shark swimming around and lots of cool fish. Right at the end of the dive some of the others saw a mother and baby dolphin. I missed it since I was the first one out of air and was already on my way up. It's tough to inhale slowly after twenty years of split-second inhales playing woodwind instruments. As I feared, I got seasick after getting back in the boat despite the drammamine I had taken both the night before and shortly before the dive. I wasn't feeling very well so I bailed from the second tank dive. It was nice since they go back to the dock and dive shop between dives since the dive sites are mostly very nearby, so I had a chance to bail for dry land instead of bouncing around in the boat while everyone did another dive. The drammamine messed me up so I went and slept in the hammock on our balcony for a good long while.

During this Michale was wondering around exploring on her own. She eventually wondered onto the wrong side of the airport and was a bit frightened by some kids that approached her asking what she was doing there. Thankfully they left her alone though and she came back. Then Michale went for a swim in the sea, but it was still quite cool so I quickly got shivers and got out to spectate. We ate some yummy sushi at the Hummingbird Cafe and then took a long walk up to the northern section of the island. We eventually encountered Legends Burgers and went in for a "dinner 2" burger with swiss and mushrooms. We chatted with the owner Tyler a bit then hitched a ride back home on a passing golf cart.

Saturday we lounged around the pool. I did some yoga while Michale did her pool exercises while we waited for the last morning water taxi to Caye Caulker, a smaller island about 45 minutes south of Ambergris Caye by boat. Our sea band pressure point motion sickness bracelets worked great for that trip. The water taxi captain wore a CU Buffs hat. We became quite concerned when the water taxi stopped in open water about a quarter mile from Caye Caulker. Another, smaller boat pulled up along side. Without any official explaination or clarity about what was happening, many of the passengers and luggage were transferred to the other boat, which was apparently the one making a Caye Caulker stop, while the main boat continued on to Belize City, or so we figured. We hopped over to the small boat and they took us to the island. Here a local explained that Caye Caulker is "go slow island". Upon landing, we walked down the dock past the "Sexy-Chicken" boat and the tile placard on the dock reading "Caye Caulker. Go slow.". Immediately, it was clear that Caye Caulker was what we were looking for and Ambergris not so much. Caulker was mellow, quiet, and mostly free of golf carts.

We wandered down to "the split", a small gap in the island created by a violent hurricane in the 1960s that boasts fantastic snorkeling right next to the Lazy Lizard bar and grill - "A sunny place for shady people". This spot has a great vibe. Folks lounged around, snorkeled, ordered drinks, and smiled broadly. A funny group of middle aged men, possibly Australian, sat and drank beer in their black speedo bathing suits on a wooden picnic table half submerged in the sea. Two buxom women and a small boy hung out wearing hats made from palm leaves. We ordered creole shrimp and a chicken burrito, which were Michale's favorite food of the trip. Then we found a spot of beach with sun for Michale next to shade for me and napped for a while. Then we were ready to do our snorkeling in the split. We saw lots of big schools of tropical fish that hang out in the ruins of old boats and docks in the split. The water is shallow - never more than about fifteen feet, so the snorkeling is great. A funny man in a speedo showed me a somewhat big shark hiding under a piece of wood about ten feet down. We swam over to the other side and saw lots of Trumpet Fish, then stepped out onto the land and walked around the marshy squishy sand on the north side of the split, seeing two big iguanas. As we headed back to the south side, snorkeling back to the beach in about eighteen inches of water, I turned my head and almost bumped into a football-side red octopus right in front of me. I picked my head up and yelled "octopus!" to Michale and we watched him do a funny frightened sideways shuffle away from us.

Saturday night we made a menu error and ordered ceviche at Wild Mango, the best reputed restaurant in San Pedro, only to realize we had no idea what it was and that neither of us liked it since it was so limey and salty. Oh well. We compensated with a banana chimichanga for dessert. Michale was sun burned and spend a good long while applying cucumber to her skin. We relaxed at home and watched "The Abyss" on TV. Probably not the wisest choice ten hours before a scuba dive.

Sunday I went to the dive shop to do the other tank of the 2-tank dive I had bailed on Friday. It was a busy day with lots of divers. The captain said we were going to Hol Chan, which is a fantastic spot for both scuba and snorkeling in a marine reserve. I asked if Michale could come snorkel, ran back to the condo to get her, and we both got on the boat. At Hol Chan the water is very shallow. Two dive teams went in and did our exploring while Michale got to snorkel with a private guide. There were lots of cool fish on this dive as well, including big schools of large shiny Tarpon. Michale also hung out with a sea turtle for a while. After that we zoomed over to "Shark Ray Alley" where nurse sharks and eagle rays hang out waiting for dive boats to feed them. Here we just snorkeled around the boat a bit. It was just us and one other couple and the vibe was very relaxed. The were TONS of eagle rays and it was really cool. They are so graceful and spiritual and other-worldly. It's really cool to watch them soar under you and snorkel down right above them. We also had some nurse sharks come hang out right next to the boat.

We ate some chicken and ribs at Wet Willy's on a dock then went and picked up our free golf cart. We drove up as far north as you can go on the cart and then walked beyond that past some of the newer big developments. We found a suitable beach and I napped extensively and pleasantly while Michale splashed around in the water. We ate in that night - egg scrambles on our little kitchenette gas stove. The condo maintenance guy showed me the trick to lighting it: pull it out away from the wall then bang on the gas pipe. Works every time.

Monday we were picked up at our dock bright and early by a speedboat full of tourists headed for the mainland under the guidance of Gus and Juni, our tour guides. The boat ride was really fun. The boat is fast and Gus was funny. The entire area between the reef and the island is very shallow water, so you can almost always see the bottom as the speed boat zips along. We stopped when we saw a bottle nosed dolphin popping up out of the water, then zipped along, narrowly zooming through the frighteningly shallow water between two small land masses topped with mangrove trees, the branches extending out to the boat such that we nearly had to duck under them. After about an hour we were at the mainland and we went up the Belize Old River, eating delicious Johnny Cake chicken sandwiches and eyeing wildlife Gus and Juni pointed out, including egrets, crocodiles, and iguanas.

The group split here with most folks getting on a big green bus to the Lamanai Mayan ruin site, and just two couples headed to the cave tubing site. Michale and I went to the Belize Zoo with Juni while another couple from Scranton PA went zip lining in the jungle. The zoo was really fun. Juni was our private guide, describing each of the animals and usually commenting on whether or not they are commonly eaten by locals and how tasty they are. We saw lots of cool animals up close including Tapir, the national animal of Belize, which are really funny to look at, and Howler Monkeys, which make a super loud scream to mark their territory. They also had some really cool owls and eagles.

After the zoo we joined up with the other couple for lunch at the Jungle Paw resort and then we headed up to the cave tubing site. We walked behind our guide along a path through the jungle, in our life vests and helmets with our tubes overhead. The cave tubing was nice, but not quite as exciting as it would seem. The water is still and shallow and you just paddle your way through some caves and then you are done. Then it was time for another fun boat ride back to Ambergris. We ate a fancy meal of meat and fish at the Sunset Grill on the west side of the island. A big group of Tarpon fish hang out in the water right next to the restaurant (it's on a dock) and wait for scraps like hungry dogs. You can swarm them by making a throwing gesture. They are pretty creepy.

Tuesday was our last day and travel day back to the states. We got up early to watch the sun rise from the dock. I went for a run while Michale relaxed by the pool with a papaya and a book. We had a nice breakfast at Lily's Treasure Chest before our trip home via golf cart, water taxi (driven primarily by the Captain's knee), taxi, airplane, airplane, and car.

Overall the trip worked out really well. We were a bit disappointed with Ambergris Caye. Too loud and bustly. If we were to do it again we'd probably opt for Caye Caulker, which has fewer amenities but is more tranquil. I was a bit bummed Friday afternoon because the diving was problematic with motion sickness, the air and water were pretty cold, and the salt water was starting to irritate my skin, plus my normal sensitivity to sun exposure. So I was starting to feel like the Carribbean was a poor choice. However, once I switched to the pressure point bands for motion sickness, everything was cool. Those things work great! The sun came out, it got hot, and Caye Caulker was fun. I chatted with Michale and then felt really good from then on. Michale and I made pretty good travel companions since we're both pretty flexible and laid back while traveling.

But there was no time to rest because we got back late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning the Skarecki family showed up for our ski adventure!

The rest of the Belize Trip Photos are here.

Guitar Hero

2010-02-16T07:45:57.000Z

It's been a good week. Went to a fun CHAOS pot luck on Thursday and really enjoyed the long weekend. I went to the Avery Brewery on Friday with Josh and Elise and heard some good bluegrass by The Longest Day of the Year. Afterward I went and worked out at BRC, which is open to 11pm on Fridays, which rocks. I rested about twelve hours before climbing again on Saturday at The Spot. On Sunday, Michale treated me to delicious breakfast at Watercourse, which I devoured. I also brought home a sweet potato cinnamon roll for later. Michale and I had a blast playing Guitar Hero World Tour for hours on end both Saturday and Sunday night. So much fun.

Zing

2010-02-09T12:51:21.000Z

So after a thorough workout at BRC tonight, I headed over the snowy roads to Zing salon in Boulder. They have late hours and happy hour discounts after 9pm, so I usually go for that. I've been there enough to know the owner Joy and her minuscule black toy poodle François. It was about 9:30 and the shop had closed down early. However, Joy was behind the register in the dark, illuminated by the glow of her PC. She had told me stories of her early days starting the business in downtown Boulder, where she hung a sign reading "If you've got money, I've got time" and would cut your hair anytime day or night. So I rapped on the door, triggering François's three-pounds-of-fury guard dog behavior, and she came and let me in. As I've been doing lately, I placed my hairstyle in her capable hands without objection and I am now suddenly two pounds lighter. We chatted enthusiastically about the new business she is opening and my upcoming trip to Belize. I counseled her as best I could based on my experience with overcoming performance anxiety at music school, and she complemented me nicely saying "that is the best advice I've heard all year". It was decidedly pleasant to have Joy and her funky salon all to myself and such a nice chat. Now, I would be doing a disservice to the great Jim Curly and Pam of Style Street in Cranford if I declared this my most enjoyable haircut experience, especially considering Pam lent me a flute for like five years, but it certainly is in the top three.

The January 2010 blog post

2010-02-05T12:27:59.000Z

It's been a good start to 2010 thus far. I've started personal training with Chris Wall at the Boulder Rock Club and so far so good. He's got lots of fun and challenging exercises. I've also been to two of his level two group fitness classes entitled "Cry in the dojo". He has 12 students, 12 exercise mats, 12 heart rate monitors. Everyone wears a heart rate monitor around their chest and they all transmit back to his computer which projects onto a big screen. Everyone has a big square that changes color based on how close to your max heart rate you are. He tries to get you to spend a lot of time in the red. The class has a reputation for a reason. It's tough, but I've survived without puking twice so far. After the first time I needed about forty minutes to recover, but hopefully that will improve. I have already noticed the increased core and lower body strength in my last ski outing. I've also still been climbing a lot and setting new personal bests. I climbed another 5.11 at BRC on top rope and led my first 5.10, which was fun.

We had our second YouFilmFest party with the theme of TED talks. They are really amazing. We used youtube commercials as interludes between the talks. I still need to figure out the theme for next time.

I skied Copper with Big Wave Lew three weeks ago on a Friday. It was a gorgeous sunny and calm day and the snow was great. We got really lucky and had a great day. I'm working Sunday to Thursday now so I can ski on Fridays and avoid the weekend traffic and crowds. Two weeks later Les joined us and we had another good day. I was glad to have Les driving so I could rest up to go out that night to celebrate Michale's birthday. We had Thai food in Denver (OK, well she did because I wasn't feeling well as has been the case a lot recently), then went to see the play "Good Girls Don't, But I Do" at the Packing House Center for the Arts. It's really in an old packing house and deep into an industrial zone that made me question whether I had the right address. Michale says that makes it "fringy" though. The road narrowed as we approach the address and a group of scary looking biker dudes were there screening cars as they slowly passed through the narrow gap they had left. Apparently across the street is a biker club and these guys were making sure everyone was either A) a member of their motorcycle club or B) going to see the feminist comedy play across the street. It was funny, and the director of the theater mentioned that security was top notch. The play itself was well done, clever, and funny. There was a good mix of narrative, song, and dance. It was also refreshingly short which delighted Michale and I since we are hopeless 30-somethings who struggle valiently but unsuccessfully to make it to 11pm on a Friday.

Michale and I had a bunch of other fun dates as well, and now we're in the final preparations for our trip to Belize in less than two weeks! We did a bowling birthday party as well as a trip to Denver's weird Disneyworld type Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita. I'm taking a scuba refresher course Saturday. The winter does feel a bit long this year, so I'm looking forward to the hot weather and wearing sandals.

I haven't blogged in a month because I've been going at pretty much full speed. I've been working very long and exhausting hours trying to get my biggest project to date ready for release and otherwise just hopping from one thing to another without very much time to unwind. But it's fun to do that and a nice vacation is nearby.

And now for one of my rare touchy-feely paragraphs where I depart from the safety and comfort of mundane chronological narrative! So back in September I blogged some goals. Without much difficulty, I've achieved them all except for the "more music" one. I seem to still be in a "waiting for the muse" phase with regard to music, although I was still able to bust out the bari to seranade Michale for her birthday last week with an impromptu Happy Birthday meets bluesy funk noodling piece. So music is still simmering on the back burner. However, the rest are all in full effect. I've asked for a mentor at work and have had a few meetings with him and we're starting to get beyond the initial information dump and into concrete action items, and it's feeling good. Overall, I'm feeling a really nice balance of identifying goals, putting in some competent effort toward them, and seeing positive results pretty quickly. I think yoga has already made a noticeable improvement in the curvature of my spine and posture. I say "already" even though I've been doing it on and off for years, but I thought my posture was beyond repair when I started. However, the thing that was really great and palpable over the weekend was the feeling of having recently arrived at a new level and feeling immediately ready to go for another higher level without spending much time at the current one. I think my overall confidence at life in general is at its highest. I think I've also come full circle with my essence. By this I mean I'm deeply a left brained, type A, engineer. I've been this way from at least grammar school. For a while in my post-college years, I put a lot of effort into balancing this out and trying to grow in other directions. I feel now like I have an awareness of the places where I'm toward the edges of the bell curve. I feel a certain comfort level with enough non-type-A things, and now I'm ready to accept my talents and who I am more fully. I haven't quite gotten clarity on what the means in concrete terms yet, but there are some inklings there.

Let My Children Hear Music

2010-01-08T13:01:48.000Z

So I'm up late listening to Charles Mingus's album Let My Children Hear Music, and it is just overtly beautiful. I listen to this music and immediately envision a puling, organic ballet. The music itself sounds like a living organism. It's just tremendous.

OK, now that that bit of jazz nerdery is over, here's a quick update. Over Christmas I had a nice visit with the parents. Since I was flying in to Philly, they made a day of it and went in early to shop for bar stools then see a movie. Then we went to a very fancy restaurant called James to celebrate Mom's birthday. The decor was great and the food and beer were pretty good. It was nice to have some time with just me and the folks. The Christmas festivities were good. My young nephew Will was exhibiting extreme cuteness.

I came back to Colorado after just three days and immediately hit the slopes at Breckenridge with Erin. They must have opened up a few new trails that day since we got to make a few fresh tracks. Over all for early season it was a very good day and we ended up skiing a pretty full day - more than I was anticipating. Then that Tuesday I did the CHAOS blue moon hike with Mags. It was before the official full moon, but still a gorgeous night. Clear and still and not too cold. It was a nice short hike with a picturesque section under some overhanging trees. Everyone brought something blue to share.

Michale and I spent New Year's Eve at the Phoenix Asylum Speakeasy roaring 20s party, which was a good time. Many folks had impressive costumes. Saturday I hiked Mesa trail with a big Pizzi/Abrams crew, which was a nice early morning outing still leaving a full day ahead. I got a dual membership at both Boulder Rock Club and The Spot for the next six months, so I'll be ready to do some serious outdoor climbing this Spring. I did yoga classes and climbing at BRC Monday and Tuesday and will do some bouldering at The Spot tomorrow. Michale and I are also starting to book a trip to Belize in February, which I am very much looking forward to, especially considering we are in our second severe cold snap of the season. It's six degrees outside right now.

December Recap

2009-12-22T11:35:07.000Z

OK, I think it's time for a random stream of consciousness blog post! The bulk of December has passed and things have been humming along nicely. Work is very busy as I am at the helm of a big project and we're running behind schedule, so I've been working long hours to try to keep things moving forward. But the project is "my baby" per say so I'm motivated to do it and get it out there, so I'm enjoying it. I went up and skied Breckenridge two weeks ago just to try out the resort early season. This is the first time I've had a full season pass, so I figured I might as well get out there. It was pretty good, but things will be better later in the season. Plus Lewis will be around this year and Elise has Friday's off so I'm hoping to ask if I can work Sun-Thu during ski season so I can ski Fridays. We'll see.

Climbing is going pretty well again. I've been to three different gyms this month with four different climbing partners and have been getting back up to my personal best. I attempted another 5.11a but was defeated. Hopefully I'll conquer it next month. Speaking of which, I'm planning on doing some personal training next month, so hopefully I'll make some fast progress with that extra help. Yoga has also been going pretty well and I've been practicing fairly steadily this month (except for a few days when I got sick), so that's been nice. It's time to learn a new set of asanas though.

I had a bunch of fun dates with Michale this month including a big breakfast I cooked here for her and the Pizzis, dinner at Bill's, a birthday party at a friend's house, a CHAOS pot luck, Avatar, and a few others. So that's been fantastic. My dental woes are complete now I think and I'll hopefully enjoy a full year before having to go back again. I'm still feeling some anesthetic wear off from today's filling triple header.

All the stuff I shipped out here did make it out although it was an adventure getting it at the post office. I had to make three trips and wheel out a giant cart to my car to get it all. Much of it was pretty banged up but it all made it out here. I set Maggie to work on the big project of assembling somewhere on the order of 700 CDs where the discs, linear notes, and jewel cases were all separate. She and her husband worked on it for about fifteen hours. She's researching some shelving options and I am very much looking forward to having full access to all my CDs once again.

Almost all of the Christmas shopping is done now and I fly out to NJ Wednesday for a brief visit, then back here on Saturday and on the slopes Sunday.

Winter season startup

2009-12-06T10:33:44.000Z

Winter is officially started here. Monday I hike up Anemone in Boulder with CHAOS. It was around 10F, but the air felt good. Today I started the ski season off up at Breckenridge. I'm excited to have a season pass this year and try three new mountains.

NJ Turkeys

2009-12-02T09:08:57.000Z

Band Thanksgiving on Saturday was a blast. I hung out with Marc in the afternoon as he made his final preparations. I was impressed since he had all of the cooking done well in advance, so he had plenty of time to just relax with a G&T and wait for the guests to arrive. Mrs. Mare would be proud. He cooked two turkeys and all the fixings. It was great to see all my old band buddies again and hang with their wives and young children. After the feast, the three girls ages three and seven put on a dance show for us consisting of a few rehearsed moves and lots of improvisation with audience encouragement. As would be expected, there was a fire going strong outside on the patio so we sat around and talked well into the night.

Sunday we took Sunny and her friend Ajahnay to Miller's Luncheonette in West Long Branch for some real deal New Jersey diner brunch featuring lots of pork roll. It was great. Of course our plan was to head directly from the diner to another huge meal at my parents' house but that presented us with no worries. That afternoon my Mom made spicy pasta with sausage and meatballs and we ate an early meal "pronzo" style. Monday and Tuesday I worked from my parents' house. My mother's side of the family was all in the area, so we did a triple header with a big restaurant dinner Tuesday, more pasta at Mom's Wednesday, and Thanksgiving at Aunt Elizabeth's. It was a mighty onslaught of food.

Friday I drove with Chris and Tina up to Poughkeepsie NY to spend a day and a half with them. We had another big Italian meal Friday night then watched V for Vendetta (which I had not yet seen). Saturday we went car shopping with Tina who was unfortunately a victim of a high speed rear end hit and run while stopped at a red light, which destroyed her car. We went to a yummy Japanese place for lunch and under Chris's guidance I ordered my first legitimate meal of sushi roll. I had a "Black Dragon Roll" which was shrimp tempura down the center with avocado and cucumber and topped with eel. It was fantastic and I had to close my eyes while I chewed the large pieces and savored the flavor combinations. It took 31 years for my palette to be ready for that, but it's totally there now, and it was great.

Sunday Tina made chicken saltimboca and we played a deadly-serious game of Jenga. We surpassed the 30th "Master" row and spent at least four solid rounds convinced that the tower would surely collapse on the next turn before making it all the way to row 34, 2 away from "expert".

Sunday was a driving and visiting extraveganza. I drove down to Long Valley NJ to visit with Kate, Steve, Meghan, Tim, and Pat. We hadn't seen Tim and Pat in quite some time so it was fun to catch up with them and their wives. We all played with baby Will who is a ball of energy and enjoyed the contrast with Meghan's daughter Maeve who is perpetually still and yawning on the verge of sleep. After that I drove to Cranford and met up with my high school buddy Rich at our old hang out Tony's Pizza, still going strong in Cranford. Then I drove down the shore to record an episode of "The Jersey Shore Podcast" with Joe P and Dan P.

In the evenings and when I could find a few minutes I had been rummaging through all my old stuff stored in my parents' basement. Monday it was craigslist to the rescue again as I hired a woman and her son to spend all morning furiously packing boxes, 24 in total, to be mailed media rate USPS to my new house in Colorado. Soon I'll have my beloved Queen posters displayed again!

I almost missed my flight today due to struggles locating the Enterprise rental car return lot, which is an "off-airport" lot at EWR on highway 1&9. I can't believe they expect visiting drivers to venture out of the airport into the evil rat's nest of 37 highways that converges around Newark airport. It's a maze of 100-yard 2-lane merges and exit only lanes forming a cruel game for the inexperienced drivers my Dad refers to as "Stay Out of Downtown Newark". Everyone loses at least once or twice. However, I was able to eventually get to the lot, return they smoke-smelling, manual windows and doors, 10 gallon fuel tank crapmobile and take the shuttle into the terminal. But I had to check a bag since I was bringing my soprano sax back as my carry-on bag (or hand luggage as the Brits say) and then after a long delay due to an unmanned X-ray machine and a troupe of about 5 elderly folks in wheelchairs that were pushed to the front of the line for reasons I don't quite understand, I made it through. I hurried to my gate only to see a big sign reading Ft. Myers. D'oh. Gate change. Then I had a few hundred yards to run to find the nearest gate display and of course whenever I fly Newark I'm looking at no less than five miles of foot travel to my actual gate, so I had to run from C94 to C127, arriving about 6 minutes before takeoff. However, there was some major back up with these folks getting into their seats so a queue had formed in the jetway and it took a while to get everyone seated.

I'm flying back to Denver now and looking forward to hanging with friends this week. Tomorrow is another Paul Mags moonlight hike, which should be fun.

Trip statistics:

Total time between arriving at jetway and plane takeoff combined for round trip flights: 12 minutes
Restaurant meals: 5
Big home-cooked meals: 6
EZ Pass screw-ups: 1
Worst rental car agency ever: Enterprise
Raw audio recorded for a 15 minute podcast: 30 minutes
Packages shipped: 24
Craigslist victories: 1

The rest of the photos are here.

Big Gypsy Immi Love

2009-11-29T06:58:53.000Z

I went out to California for work again. I flew out to San Jose on Sunday, arriving in the afternoon, and took the rental car up to San Francisco to meet Pat. Rebecca and Tanya were also there. I hadn't seen Tanya since Burning Man 2008 so I was glad she was home. Pat and Tanya have been roommates several months now but had only very slowly been furnishing their apartment, so they wanted to go to Ikea and pick up a few things, so I offered to drive them their in the rental car. I had just driven past it on the way up. We mistakenly went to the one in Palo Alto, a good forty-five minute drive south of San Francisco, which I had just passed on my way up, so it felt a bit silly. In any case, we went in there and as expected I found it a bit uncomfortable and crowded with families with hordes of children literally running amok. We breezed through and picked up just a few things. They couldn't find any window coverings they liked in their budget and the book shelf they were going to buy for Marcia was out of stock. So with three small coffee tables and four folding chairs in tow, we headed up 101 again, stopping at a Best Buy along the way for Pat and I each to get some headphones. This time we hit bad traffic getting into the city, so we were a bit late for the "family dinner" we had planned with Marcia, Rebecca, Rebekah, and another friend of theirs. We stopped to pick up some food and drinks then ate together on the new coffee tables. I gave Rebecca a ride to her new nomadic residence and then again made the long drive down 101 to my hotel in Sunnyvale.

The week of work was both disappointing and exciting. We did a bunch of planning and realized we would fall quite short of the mark for our next release, and a formal procedure was started to notify interested parties that we would be dropping features from the release, so there was some stress and frustration associated with that. However, almost instantly after the announcement, the team started making huge strides of progress, so that got me excited that maybe A) we could still deliver the main functionality we were shooting for but B) people might not be constantly panicking about it.

Bernie and I took a very nice run at Rancho San Antonio park Tuesday morning. We saw some wild turkeys and enjoyed running on the curvy, hilly dirt trails. I met up with Ed one night to do some rock climbing. I gave him a crash course in belaying and he took the test. Administration of the test took longer than it should have so I figured he was probably not quite passing it, but apparently he was good enough to be permitted to belay me that night after some additional instruction from the gym staff, but not convincing enough to get the permanent "OK to Belay" card. We did some fun climbs though.

I was set to come back Friday night but a bit of snowy weather in Denver caused United to cancel my flight and reschedule me for Saturday morning. I ended up booking a rather weird and appealing hotel called the Domain Hotel on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale for that final night since my original hotel was full. It was dirt cheap - $50 - so I expected it to be basically a Super 8 type setup, but I was surprised to find it fully remodeled in a modern high-tech but weird decor and nicely appointed with sleep number beds, a fancy office chair, and actual wired ethernet. I'm not particularly skilled at describing the weirdness of the hotel, but let's just say it was weird and odd and I liked it. However, I had worked from 6:30 am to 11:30 pm that day, scarfed down a turkey sandwich at the Denny's next door, and had to gas up the car, return it, and get on an early flight so I went immediately to sleep.

Back in October when I went to hear the Kronos Quartet Cynthia and I got Boba Tea. I have a fascination with Boba Tea, and some of Cynthia's friends that we met at the auditorium asked why I liked it so much, and I wasn't sure, but I said something like "I don't know. It's just yummy and Japanese and weird". And that made me realize that Boba Tea is just strange and random enough to be weird and delightful and I think these days I am quite delighted by things that are pleasantly weird.

Michale picked me up in Denver and came with me that evening to the Imogen Heap concert at the Fox Theater in Boulder. It was an odd show at 7pm because apparently they had double booked the theater so they gave Imogen an early show and had a second show afterward. It was fun to see Immi in person and enjoy her fetching stage presence. As with most of her live performances though, it was fairly lackluster. Her opening act had technical difficulties that prevented him from doing anything at all. And sadly the new Ellipse album is just not stellar. It's certainly got some good tracks, but nothing more. Just some good tracks.

Sunday evening I had a meal with Jennifer in Denver and then took a swing dancing class at The Mercury Cafe. The band they had was called Impromptu Musique and they were "gypsy jazz" and quite good, especially the trumpet player.

This past week I had two fun climbing sessions Wednesday and Thursday with Stephanie and Safia, respectively. I've been working a lot and not doing much else, although it was good to do a little yoga now that I was back home. Last night I went with Michale and her friends Tollie and Zack to an America Indian Fry Bread Taco place and then to the Bindery | Space theater to see a very funny black comedy called "Big Love". It was really quite great. It was a modernization of an ancient greek play and there was some great acting, singing, riding around on roller skates, and a constant swing between the macbre and serious grandious and the silly and humorous and humble. I go to very few plays, so it has been quite a while since I have enjoyed one this much. I also really like being very close to performers, and the theater had seating on three sides of a square stage at floor level, so it was very up close.

I'm composing this post on a flight to Newark. I'll be in the NJ area until December 1. Tonight Marc is getting me at the airport and we'll have Thanksgiving The Prequel with the band crew. I haven't seen most of my old bandmates and their families in two years since last year I got a cold in transit and had to cancel the visit while I was contagious, so I am very much looking forward to it. Tomorrow it's up to Mom's for a big Italian Pronzo meal which I am also very much anticipating.

Watercourse

2009-11-09T01:17:16.000Z

I had a very good week and weekend this week. I went bouldering Wednesday and top rope climbing Thursday. Both were good sessions but I'm in need of a few days rest for sure. I have a new pull up bar in the yoga room so I was messing around with that as well. Saturday I did some nice yoga and went for a run. Then I headed in to Denver to help Michale get a couch into her apartment. We had a fantastic meal at Watercourse, a really cool vegan restaurant. It was delicious. I had polenta with cashew butter, carrots, beats, and grilled tofu. When we were done I wanted to eat it again. We also got two delicious desserts to go. After a brief tour through the Tattered Cover book store we headed home to lounge on the couch with our decadent vegan cake. It was heavenly.

I'm currently in DIA headed out to California this week for work.

Full Moon Hike

2009-11-04T21:41:28.000Z

Did another nice full moon hike with Mags and Chaos Monday night. We went up Sanitas on a cold and misty night under some hazy clouds. There was still ample light on the trail. I had never actually hiked Sanitas, the most popular trail in Boulder, so it was good to get that done. I baked some banana bread for the hike which I think came out great. Yesterday I was working up at Fort Collins since HP had a big town hall meeting. They gave us New Belgium beers (brewery is in Fort Collins), hurray!

Best. Month. Ever.

2009-11-02T06:12:18.000Z

October 2009 was undoubtedly the best month of my life so far. Back in this September blog post I listed a bunch of goals to take my life up a notch. A month later, I'm making big strides on at least three or four of them. Some of them won't kick into high gear until January, but it looks like it will be all systems go, so that's really great.

Work has been going pretty well. We're finishing up a release and also knee deep in code for the next major release. My team had a strong demo for our second phase ("sprint") and although we're behind on our estimates, we've delivered enough working code to keep most folks optimistic I think. Also on the work front I attended about half of the developer day they had in town, which was pretty amusing and informative. The really interesting part was it was held at the offices of a tech startup incubater company call Tech Stars. I didn't know there was enough activity locally to have such a thing, but I guess there is, so that's encouraging. Also on the same day I ran about 13 blocks in the snow to attend part of a Python Unconference at the Google Boulder office. They have a rock climbing wall in the freaking lobby for Christ's sake. There was a cool vibe in there and it was clear that lots of the folks in the room were smart and technically sharp. I also got to meet and hang out with Bruce Eckel, who has some widely used books on computer programming out there and (including my first ever computer programming text book Thinking In Java) and a very popular blog that I enjoy. Plus, he's a burner.

In terms of fitness, I hit two personal bests. I wanted to also add a third personal best run, but it didn't fit into the month, partially due to 24" of snow. But I swam 65 laps in a 25 meter pool and climbed a 5.11a route, so things are going well there. I deepend my yoga practice, as they would say, up to four or five sessions a week. That has been working really well. I enjoy my little yoga room I have set up and the consistency has made noticeable improvements to a few poses and my balance in general. I also got in one or two good mountain bike rides as the warm weather and evening sun were fading into winter, which I enjoyed a lot. I biked with a big group up around Dowdy Draw and Spring Brook loop, which was September 30 so technically not this month, but close enough.

On the music front, as previously blogged, I heard the Kronos Quartet perform early in the month. Also this month on the music scene was a very good Galactic show at the Fox Theater. I didn't know this ahead of time, but Stanton Moore is their drummer. He's a great funk drummer and I have some of his stuff as a leader and sideman, so it was a bonus treat to unexpectedly hear him live. He did a big solo where he took his snare drum off the stand and went up to the front of the stage, which, although gimmicky, was still pretty funky. It was fun to have Erin there too contributing her sarcastic remarks occasionally.

The main area of awesomeness this month was the social scene. I went with Erin to a family party since she's got three family members that are all pregnant now. I did a CHAOS full moon hike with Mags, which was really pleasant (another one coming up tomorrow night). I met a really sweet and fun new friend named Michale and hung out with her quite a lot. We had tea and watched lots of Six Feet Under and had some yummy meals. I hosted a CHAOS pot luck that was pretty well attended and seemed to do a good job of introducing seven or eight new folks to the group. I also hosted the first YouFilmFest party where I asked some friends to choose a few favorite youtube videos and then we hung out and watched them all including introductory comments. It went over very well I think and I think most folks will come back for the second one, which I'll probably plan for sometime in January.

Michale and I went to Elise and Josh's for a fall festival party where we played Apples To Apples (well, everyone else played while I protested and grumbled about what a terrible pathetic game that is) and Cranium (yay). Josh melted some caramel and we dipped apple slices in it. Yum. Also had a few good family visits. Cousin Dr. Annie and her boyfriend Ryan flew in from Chicago and we had dinner with them, which was nice. Uncle Eddie came out for a visit which included a stop for dinner at my house and lunch at Lucile's this afternoon. I'm writing this post from Eben G. Fine Park in gorgeous sunny 60 degree weather while Eddie reads his New York Times.

Halloween was a big deal this year. Jennifer and I researched some awesome costumes and had a fun evening a week or so ago driving around to costume stores, hobby stores, and Home Depot to get everything we needed. She ordered a few new items and I had some essentials shipped out from NJ. We dressed as the music group The Dresden Dolls in their costumes from the video Coin Operated Boy.

The costumes, when all put together worked great. Next time we'll opt for a higher end white face paint since the cheap stuff doesn't look properly opaque and smooth. We went to a party in Denver where we were mistaken for Charlie Chaplin, Marcel Marceau or generic mimes. Although I think two people knew of the band when we told them. We gave out little candies with the description so people could google it later if they liked. More Halloween photos are here.

I also had some fun home improvements this month. I hung a Metolius Slim Gym rock climbing exercise board over the door frame in my office. I've been enjoying working on pull-ups while gripping the slopers instead of a nice bar. I hoping to get some other cool equipment hung in my basement similar to what they have at The Spot. I hung the great big saxophone painting that my parents bought for me and kept in their house until I got my own place. You can see it behind the Halloweeen photos.

So yeah. It's pretty cool to be sure you've just lived your best month yet. There was one minor bummer. I chipped a tooth (ironically while flossing) last Thursday and had to spend two and a half hours in the dentist chair getting a crown early Saturday morning, but overall it wasn't too bad. Oh, and my lawn sprinkler exploded two hours before the guy showed up to winterize it, but that was just a minor busted part. I'm looking forward to a trip to Cupertino for work and a long trip back to NJ over Thanksgiving next month. Plus a live Imogen Heap show!

Eigenharp

2009-10-11T10:49:33.000Z

Oh man. Holy crap. This thing looks awesome.

Slight change of plans today but all for the better. :-) (inside joke). I got to most of the Developer Day which was cool. There is a tech startup incubator company called TechStars in downtown Boulder that I wasn't aware of. It is encouraging to know that it is there, though. I also got to meet Bruce Eckel, the author of the first ever book on computer programming I used (his Thinking In Java was the text for my now-infamous CS 150 class). We have a lot in common: java, python, colorado (with the implicit skiing, hiking, mountain biking), and Burning Man, so it was fun to meet him and chat briefly at the happy hour after his talk. I also went to the Google Boulder office where they were hosting a Python Unconference. As I said in my facebook status update "The fucking Google Boulder office has a fucking rock climbing wall in the fucking lobby". :-)

I hate emoticons. I can't believe I used two in this post.

Unconference

2009-10-09T11:26:26.000Z

Just a quick note that so far so good in October. Work is not going so great but we're making some progress. I feel ready to just sprint at top speed but our tools and codebase are just not conducive to that. I feel like I've spent months planning a great road trip and getting psyched up for it - bought my snacks, made my playlists, and then I go into the garage and the car has been completely disassembled down to the last bolt. Can't go anywhere until you rebuild it from scratch. Anyway, that's work. Now on to play.

I climbed at The Spot again today and felt strong for the first time since August. I climbed a bunch of 3-spot intermediate problems and did some yoga while I rested my forearms. There is always a motley crew of outcasts at The Spot. It gives it a funny vibe. The strength training class was there climbing while wearing weighted packs. They also were giving away their old Chris Sharma King Lines posters, so I got some schwag for my yoga room. Yes, I have a little room in the basement just for yoga. I bought some candles for in there and I've been putting it to good use. Noticeable improvement in my crow pose, wheel, and other inversions. I'm hoping soon to install some gymnastic rings and a chin-up bar in there soon too.

I've got some very fun Halloween plans set up and all of a sudden have made tons of social plans for the coming days. Oh and on Tuesday I did a CHAOS full moon hike at night that was a lot of fun. The air has that yummy fall crispness now. It's cold here and will be snowy over the weekend. I got my season pass (I think this is my first ever legitimate unrestricted season pass, another mountain milestone) and A-basin is opening up this weekend already.

Saturday there is a Developer Day conference in Boulder as well as a Python Unconference hosted at the Google Boulder office. I'm signed up for both. I'm going to have to overlay the schedules. I'll bring my BMX bike so I can cruise back and forth to the interesting talks. They are just a few blocks apart. I'll be curious to see what the attendees are like.

Black Angels

2009-10-05T03:16:45.000Z

This was a very good weekend with a pretty good balance of activities. Friday was a fairly terrible day at work;I was consumed entirely by sideways firefighting and explaining to management that we won't be ready to ship in two months. After that I went into Boulder to meet up with a friend for my curious obsession: bubble tea. Thankfully I arrived a few minutes early and could just catch my breath and unwind from work and try to let some of the frustrations go. It worked well enough that I could enjoy the evening but wasn't really gone yet. We walked with our Bubble Teas over to Mackey to hear the Kronos Quartet play a concert of contemporary music. I really enjoyed all the pieces. They also did their signature piece: George Crumb's Black Angels, which I also enjoyed hearing live. I rounded out the night with some buffalo wings, which I had a strange craving for.

Saturday during the day I exercised with yoga, weights, and swimming. I set another personal best: 65 laps, which is about two miles. It took me about an hour and a half or so which is about four different lifeguard shifts, apparently. Then I went to a party with Erin thrown for a bunch of her friends/family celebrating three concurrent pregnancies in their core group. Afterward we went to hear Galactic at the Fox Theater, which was a pretty good show and enthusiastically received by the Boulder crowd. The covered a Balkan Beat Box tune, which is unbelievably hip, and their drummer is the amazing Stanton Moore.

Today it's mostly working from home on a Sunday, but I'm making some good progress which has been long awaited. Lots more good stuff in store for October.

Spring Brook

2009-10-01T10:16:46.000Z

Did a really fun ride up community ditch-doudy draw-spring brook loop (twice) with a big group of eight riders. Another fun, short, nearby ride. Hurray! We finished just before dark and spent the evening at Southern Sun. This is basically the quintessentially Boulder after work schedule. We were going to do Marshall Mesa but it was blowing strong winds so we opted for something somewhat sheltered.

Making progress on the current project at work, but probably not enough to make the next major release, at least not without some heroics on my part, but I think I still have what it takes to open up the code fire hose full blast. We'll see. We haven't yet got the big pieces done to the point where the rest of the system falls into place quickly. I'm looking forward to some good music and fun this weekend as well.

Speakers everywhere

2009-09-27T03:25:07.000Z

OK, random blog about miscellaneous things. First off, I now have a totally kick-ass, no compromises whole house home theater system! w00tz! I've been looking forward to this day probably since some time in high school. The guy came Friday morning and spent all day running speaker wire through the attic to almost every room on the main floor (including the bathroom. Grooving in the shower oh yes!). Then he hooked everything up including the 50" plasma TV that just barely fits on the table I have for it and almost looks out of proportion with the room. The AV receivers they have today are just amazing, and affordable. I also found a fantastic deal on a Blu-Ray player. I bought a new LG model that does Blu-Ray and has an ethernet jack and support for streaming both NetFlix and CinemaNow. The remote from the receiver can control the TV and Blu-Ray player adequately so there's no mess of remotes. And for the first time in two years I have my entire CD collection and a good stereo on which to listen to it. I refuse to listen to The Tallis Scholars in any kind of Lo-Fi or compressed format, so now it's full on CD quality and speakers in the bedroom. So basically with NetFlix I can watch a huge library of movies instantly and with sonos/rhapsody I can play damn near any piece of music instantly. It's pretty fantastic. Can you imagine showing this to someone from 1950?

Last night I christened the system with The Bourne Identity on Blu-Ray. Awesome. You don't watch the movie, you ARE the movie. For any of my local friends, you are welcome to come to the new Adams Ave Theater anytime. Just be prepared to have it loud and deep.

Yoga continues to go well. I got a block and am forcing myself to do the seated pretzel twists that I hate but crack my back in a unique way. My inversions are getting good and I think soon I'll be ready for an unsupported arm balance. Today I went to the Louisville Recreation Center, which will be my local gym from now on. It's just a quick zoom on the bike on Via Appia around the corner. There was a cyclocross race today and it was very crowded. So crowded that I didn't want to bother actually, y'know, joining the rec center, so I just went in and worked out. This was probably somewhat influenced by watching Jason Bourne do black ops last night, and chatting recently about my old days at Accenture getting hotel discounts by saying we were consulting for whatever company was having a big event at the hotel. I swam forty laps in their fabulous pool. It's a few degrees warmer than the one at 24 Hour Fitness in Boulder I think, which takes that initial hesitation off.

Tomorrow the guy comes to install all the window blinds and other treatments. That will leave just basically the light fixtures in the basement as the last remaining (low priority) new house fix-up. Oh, let me briefly mention the bed frame fiasco. I bought a bed frame from the utterly incompetent The Great Indoors (Sears) on July 4th. They needed 6-8 weeks for delivery, as if it was still 1954 or something, but OK, their price was pretty good. So after 8 weeks and not a peep from them I called to check where the heck my bed frame was. Oops, said the retail zombie on the other end of the line, it looks like it arrived here in the local store about a week after you bought it and we just forgot to schedule home delivery. Duh. OK, so I scheduled home delivery and it showed up a few days later. Of course this involved a highly regimented and fully automated Interactive Voice Response (IVR is the industry acronym for the computers that talk to you on the phone and everyone hates). So after a few messages from their IVR about when the delivery was to occur, it arrived. The box looked like they had dragged it here behind the truck. There were numerous large tears that crumpled the thick cardboard. I unpacked it but it had been dented and scratch in numerous places in such a way that it wouldn't even assemble. I called to complain. TGI credited me 15% and ordered a new one. After two more weeks I called to see where it was. Oops, the manufacturer has it back ordered. It'll be another month before it's ready. Stop. Cancel. Refund. About another week later they sent someone to take the busted one out of my garage. They still haven't refunded my credit card. Plan B was American Furniture Warehouse. I bought a bed frame online on last Saturday I think. It showed up on Thursday and they assembled it and took away all the packaging. It was about $300 cheaper than TGI. I did misread their website which said "platform style design" to mean it was a platform bed, but it wasn't. This meant I needed a box spring, which I didn't want initially but by now I just wanted this chore done, so I rented a pick-up at Lowes, drove to their Broomfield warehouse store, bought the cheapest box spring they had, and got everything set up. This was all before TGI could even come get my busted, overpriced bed frame. So anyway, now I have a bed frame that I thought was a bit risky stylistically, but in the room I think it looks great. It's called the "Matrix" bed and it's all chrome and black leather. I know it's kind of a cliche bachelor thing, but I'm not ashamed of my Matrix fascination, and it looks great with the red wall paint and black night stands I got.

So with that, the Pete Lyons Personal Economic Stimulus Plan (PLPESP) is now concluded. I think we're on the road to recovery and you can all thank me later when the Dow hits a billion.

Had a demo of the past month's work on Friday. Not as much to show for a nine person team as I would have hoped, but it was the start of a big new ambitious project so we lost some time to ramp-up and general panic at the workload I had promised we can deliver. Oh well, the next one will be great. I'll be working a lot of hours to get it done, but I'm psyched about it so now's the time to do it.

Tonight I'm headed to The Sex Show at the convention center in Denver with a friend. Not sure what to expect, but for sure it will be entertaining.

The coffee shop just spun up Vampire Weekend. I hate to leave during good music, but got to get home to meet Jen. Cheers.

Back at it

2009-09-19T10:05:06.000Z

It's nice being back home. I climbed in the gym Sunday and Wednesday. That is the end of my BRC punch pass so I won't be going back much. It's on to the shiny new Movement Climbing and Fitness. I've been doing yoga at home and enjoying that. Thursday I biked the great Betasso Loop trail and today I rode from my house around the Wurl wildlife preserve and around Davidson Mesa. I was just a few minutes late to see the sun dip behind the mountains from the mesa, but I'll catch it sometime next week. Tomorrow is climbing outdoors in Clear Creek Canyon followed by a night on the town in Denver to see a Judy Tenuta comedy show. Sunday is my birthday and my Aunt is nice enough to cook me a yummy dairy-free breakfast and then take me hiking up in Indian Peaks. Hurray.

Online dating minus the morons

2009-09-17T22:24:04.000Z

When I read articles like this one from the OK Cupid blog, they always post some complete jack-ass messages sent by guys on their site. It makes me sad for the recipients of said messages and frustrated because my own messages have to be mixed with theirs. I really wish that there was a "flag as jerk" button recipients could hit and we could just weed these morons out and get on with it.

Phase three

2009-09-12T20:44:41.000Z

Today I'm going to the next level. I've got a big project at work that has the potential for either great success or great failure, but I'm firing on all cylinders to make it my best work to date, and I'm locking in on a steady state of daily optimal performance and creativity. I'm also at a good point now to refocus and rededicate myself across the board. Here are my goals:

Peak performance at work
More love
More effective exercise
Better diet/nutrition
More yoga
More music
More reading

Today I will consider all these things, make my trade-offs, priorities, and commitments, and start making it happen each day. It's going to be a great day and only get better from here.

Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity

2009-09-11T12:26:14.000Z

Watch this brilliant TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity. God I love TED talks and Derek Sivers' blog.

Dust, Silk, and Shampoo

2009-09-10T10:50:51.000Z

Well, Burning Man 2009 was even better than last year, thanks primarily to finding a really great camp. Here's the account.

Coordinating transportation was a bit tricky. I was going to rent a car but my rider bailed and then I had a few different ride shares. I eventually found a guy in North Boulder who bought a 1976 Winnebago Tasca just for the burn and had space for passengers. So Saturday night I took my stuff over there and loaded up the gear. We were supposed to leave Sunday morning around six. Despite my self-declared mastery of all alarm clocks, I failed to set the alarm on my new atomic clock alarm clock correctly. I overslept an hour and then scurried over there as fast as I could. The RV gets pretty poor gas mileage, and we actually ran out of gas about 1/16th of a mile from our first gas stop. Oops. Other than that the ride was pretty smooth and comfortable. It's a real treat to be able to lie down on a long road trip.

Sunday night we stopped at a truck stop somewhere east of Lovelock, Nevada for a very surprisingly good final hot meal. We continued on to Fernley, the final decent supply stop on the way to the burn. One of the RV batteries wasn't working right and we got a jump from other burners. The gas station was full of them and had huge extra stock supplies ready to go. I was hoping to just camp and sleep but Darrell was anxious to hurry up and wait on the entry gate line, so he drove through the night to get there. Of course this is just about the worst, most crowded time to drive up 447, so we sat in tons of traffic, often at a dead stop. We got into the actual playa gate line around 4am. As the Sun rose, the party started, and burners started getting up on the roofs of their RVs, doing yoga, drinking, climbing on cars, and generally getting excited. It was a fun vibe. Tommy and Darrell broke out the playa wear and scotch. There were lots of cute and playful playa bunnies wondering around mooching drinks.

We finally got through the line around 9am after waiting five hours. I drove the RV through the gate and to our camps, which by coincidence were about 200 yards apart, which made things very easy. Right away I started helping with the last bits of set up for my camp Astral Headwash finishing the plumbing up and setting up the shower. My own shelter went up pretty quickly which was good. We did a few initial head washes on Monday to test the plumbing for leaks and then opened up for business. I tried to take a nap in the afternoon (I couldn't really sleep in the loud old RV rumbling around through construction zones and rumble strips), but I mostly just lay there sweating and praying for sundown. In a very rare event, we actually got a few sprinkles of rain on Monday late afternoon, but it only lasted a moment. I hunkered down in Center Camp for a while watching bad interpretive dance. Is there such a thing as good interpretive dance?

Tuesday I did a nice yoga class at HeeBeeGeeBee Healers. The What Where When guide book had some poor information layout, so it listed yoga as 9am to 10am, but many people thought it meant yoga and 9am AND 10am, so there were twenty-some folks standing around waiting for a yoga instructor. So someone volunteered to lead the class and it was actually quite nice.

Following yoga, I went and played in my personal record for largest game of duck duck goose. I counted around 140 participants. They were hoping to break the record of 243, but it didn't happen. It was still pretty fun and people were in to it. A few good crashes and chases. Tuesday afternoon I went and worked some. The first person whose hair I washed got to use my nice brand new definitely-lice-free brush and she walked off with it! Later I cruised around the deep playa on my bike. In the evening I went to watch Phil and Liz, my camp mates from Astral Headwash, perform Aerial Silk at center camp.

Wednesday was my first official work day, which started out with a run to Artica for ice for the camp. Then I washed a bunch of heads and ran the welcome table for a while. Astral Headwash is a great camp. The desert is a really hot, dry, windy, dusty, harsh environment. Burners line up long before we open and wait over an hour to have us wash their hair in nice cool running water. People absolutely love it. We get lots of moaning and marriage proposals. It's super fun. After work I took a nice shower in our little camp shower. That's another great benefit of being in a camp with hundreds of gallons of water (about 200/day) and huge evaporation ponds: you can get your hair washed as much as you want and take a few showers without having to worry about packing out your grey water. So nice. One of the burners whose hair I washed also gave me a tank top with built in nipple tassles that I made good use of a few nights. Wednesday night I saw some cool performances at the Robosapiens dome and did lots of biking around the playa and some dancing here and there.

Thursday I hung around camp a bit in the morning then headed over to the Black Rock City Roller Girls camp to get bashed with shoulders and hips by roller derby girls.

In the afternoon I found Marah at Culture Labs and relaxed and chatted a bit. Then I did some nice yoga at Wisky and Dust (the Denver folk) then headed to Black Rock Roller Disco to watch the Roller Derby match. Gotta love the ref fights! I did some dancing at Robosapiens dome in the evening.

Friday was another work day at Astral Headwash. After work I did some yoga at Wisky and Dust then spent most of the night in Center Camp watching aerial silk, ballet, and the battle of the marching bands. Watching the Black Rock City Ballet do a modern dance duet to the Bach Cello Suites was very intense. I have seen a lot of modern dance and been mesmerized it, but it is a vastly different experience when you are at eye level with the dancers just fifteen feet away. At this intimate distance, I could see the constant struggle for balance as the man lifted and moved the woman. It made the experience much more affective and moving. Such great strength and balance used to achieve elegance and grace. They also did the second annual Battle of the Marching Bands, which was all around great. The bands were Environment Encroachment from Chicago, who don't do much for me, Titanium Sporkestra, a very quirky punkish percussion group from Seattle, Orchestra Zirconium a more traditional brass based marching band also from Seattle, Gamelan X, a Balanese Gamelan group from the Bay Area, the Burning Band (Burning Man "Official" Marching Band), and of course March Fourth Marching Band from Portland. The Emcee Steven is just great. He wears a great drag costume, has lots of funny quips to make, and actually makes very perceptive commentary on the performances. He's really got it down. The Burning Band is just about the most rag tag group ever. They stumble out onto the stage, mill around a bit, talk amongst them self about what song they are going to play, then someone starts playing the melody (mostly drinking songs) and they all honk along and wonder around. It's pretty amusing. Gamelan X was actually really great. The music is just so different but so great. They have tons of beautiful cymbals and tam-tams and the whole thing is full of great rhythm and delightful clanginess. Of course, March Fourth totally rocked and stole the show. They did a third round tie breaker, but March Fourth had the crowd won over and everyone spilled into the stage to dance. It was good timing for me since I had been dressed that evening by Tara in some fuzzy pants and a shirt that had built in silver wings under the arms, so it was the perfect garb to stand out a bit while dancing in the crowd. Lots of fun.

Saturday I mailed some post cards at the post office and did some logistical hunting to track down a ride back to Boulder and get someone to take my place in the RV. We spent the morning tearing down Astral Headwash and explaining to a few unobservant burners that we were not in fact washing hair today, and pointed to the mostly disassembled camp as evidence thereof. We had excess water to spread around the playa so Craig grabbed a hose and before long had a gaggle of topless women in front of him getting sprayed. I want that job next year. In the afternoon I went with Phil and Liz to the Autosub dome and they gave me an introduction to aerial silk. It was a lot of fun, and I was able to leverage my upper body strength from climbing (although you need certain other muscles as well) and did a few fun moves. It was tiring though and hanging by my feet, arm pits, and hips left some bruises. In the evening I mostly chilled in camp and chatted with my camp mates. It was very windy both Friday and Saturday nights, so it wasn't clear if and when the man would burn. I was pretty worn down by now so I just hunkered down in my tent early and skipped the burn. I did wake up and see from camp while he was still burning, but I was in no mood to venture out into a thick crowd in a dust storm.

Sunday we did the final tear down and packing of the camp, and when Kori got back from exploring the deep playa, we headed out in her Subaru for Boulder. It took us two and a half hours to get off the playa onto 447 and five and half hours to reach Fernley. We eventually stopped in Lovelock to sleep and take the all-important quasi-religious first post-Burn shower.

Overall the burn was even better than last year. First, I was better prepared and knew what to expect, so I spent less time in shock and awe. Mostly it was how great Astral Headwash is and the great gift we gave to the community. I'd love to camp with them again next year if they'll have me back!

The rest of the photos are here.

Ellipse

2009-08-26T09:43:54.000Z

I have it! Imogen Heap's new album is out and I own a physical copy. However, I'm exercising delayed gratification and won't listen to it until I'm on a nice long stretch of highway on the drive out to Burning Man on Sunday. Speaking of which, I bought a funny BMX dirt bike for the burn that is probably going to be a lot of fun to ride around on and do wheelies. It has pegs!

In more serious cycling news, tonight I biked Betasso Pass with Erin. That thing is pretty much God's gift to the intermediate mountain bike rider. Really fun. It's a short loop, so we did it twice.

Great Day

2009-08-23T22:40:40.000Z

Today is a great day. I got up early hoping to catch my parents before they drove to the airport but they had already left. But this meant I was up early and ready to start my day. I started laying out all of my Burning Man gear on the garage floor. I hope to complete 90% of the preparation and packing today. I thoroughly washed my poor little Kelty tent that is still wimpering in fear from last year. However, it's about as clean as a tent that has already been to Burning Man can be and the Colorado sun dried it out in about an hour. I'm hoping to buy a small BMX bike for the burn today as well if Craigslist comes through (and it always does).

I am listening to Taproot, which I haven't in a long time and it is blending great with my energy today. I made a yummy breakfast of scrambled eggs, many slices of watermelon, and some peach pie leftover from the BBQ Friday night. It was delicious. Plus there are chocolate chip cookies available. Oh, and I'm totally excited since my parents brought my tenor sax out with them. I don't think I've played my tenor saxophone since probably early 2007 sometime. In October 2007 when I left for Romania and started this blog, I lent it to my friend Alex, who took good care of it and played it for two years. But now I have it back and I can try to play some Joe Henderson and some Joshua Redman on it. I'm excited to do that.

I'm just full of good feelings today. I have social outings planed after work with interesting and fun women for the next three days. Summer is coming to a very pleasant close here.

Housewarming

2009-08-23T03:58:35.000Z

My parents are in town for their first visit. We ate at the Old Louisville Inn on Thursday and did some shopping for miscellaneous things I didn't have yet that Mom considers essential. This whole week was pretty busy at work and I had some handymen working on the sprinkler and a bunch of other projects, so it was a bit hectic. By the time I got done working Friday my folks had already cooked most of the food for the BBQ. I had some friends and family over for a housewarming BBQ Friday night, which was a lot of fun. We had perfect weather for relaxing on the deck and eating outdoors.

Today we did more shopping like crazy and got some other great stuff. Mom helped me pick out interior paint colors and curtains to match. We had yummy sandwiches for lunch at Dish Gourmet in Boulder. Tonight we're off to Bill's for dinner.

Here we go

2009-08-18T12:55:53.000Z

Well, I'm just about to enter the tail end of summer stretch of busyness. This weekend I for the most part took it easy. I met my Burning Man ride share buddy and we planned our logistics. We were sitting at a large table at The Cup coffee shop in downtown Boulder. By chance there were about three other burners within ear shot, one of whom has camped with my camp Astral Headwash in previous years, so I got a few good insider tidbits. I stopped by Listen Up in Boulder to shop for a home theater system. I've been planning this for a while and I have somewhat elaborate requirements, so I was anticipating lots of components and complexity and don't-work-so-well-togetherness but it turns out a decent receiver these days does most of everything and you basically strap your inputs and outputs to that and you're done. So that's a nice surprise. Hopefully I can get that thing going soon. Mostly I have to decide on in-ceiling speakers verses just leaving them on the floor or just mounting them on the wall up high with a bracket.

Oh gosh I had to come back and edit this in. I got up so goddamn early on Saturday I suffered memory failure. I awoke at 5am to drive to Gray's Peak, an easy 14er (kind of an oxymoron, I know) with a buddy from my hiking group. When we arrived around 7am or so the four mile road between I-70 and the trail head already had cars reversing back down because the lot was full. So we had to park and change our planned 8 mile round trip hike into a 16 miler. So we hiked up to the trail head, started out on the trail, got maybe 1/8th mile in and it started rainy steadily with no signs of letting up. So we donned rain gear and hiked back down to the car in defeat. So much for my first 14er. Too risky to be up that high if there's any chance of lightning.

I also tried the new climbing gym in Boulder, Movement Climbing + Fitness. Pretty nice and very big. We're now up to four indoor climbing gyms and they are all pretty busy.

Then I spent some time planning a crude shade structure and buying parts at Lowes. I have it assembled in the back yard now. I think it should hold. Probably. Maybe. We'll see.

So the rest of the summer is going to go like this: today I switched projects at work to a major overhaul of my primary feature, so I'm digging in to that with both hands. I've been wanting to do this for over a year, so I'm going gangbusters. My parents arrive Thursday for a long weekend visit. Friday I am having a house warming BBQ and then hanging with the rents over the weekend. That leaves only one more full weekend for final Burning Man packing and preparation, then it's off for a week in the desert and by the time I get back on Labor Day we'll be knee deep in September. Thus ends my first summer in Colorado.

Kinky over beautiful

2009-08-10T11:38:53.000Z

This past week at work was fun and exciting. I got to see a lot of old coworkers that I haven't seen in over a year. I also finally met in person some people I have been working with for almost a year as well. There were lots of fun and yummy lunches and dinners. Monday I went for a jog with Bernie and Matt at Baylands Park in Sunnyvale. They call it a park, but where we ran was really just dikes surrounding reservoirs next to a water treatment plant. It was without a doubt the least appealing place I have gone jogging. The air was stagnant and reeked of numerous nauseating stenches. There were tons of flies in the air. At points I needed to cover my mouth with my hat to filter them out. Even so I'm sure I inadvertently swallowed at least a dozen flies. I still haven't received a satisfactory explanation as to why Bernie chose that spot other than they always used to run there. Tuesday I went climbing with Tedo and now I can pretty much keep up with him, which isn't saying much, but I've made clear progress. Wednesday night we had a reunion of four early Opsware black belt consultants and it was fun to be all together again and catch up. Thursday there was a reunion of old Loud Cloud and Opsware folk (many of whom had already left by the time I joined) at Blue Chalk in Palo Alto, which was also a good time. Memorable quotes included the following:

Give me kinky over beautiful every time. -- Antonio
I used to snap my fingers and women appeared. Now I snap my fingers and women are like "shut up". -- Pat
Turn off the lights and pet me. -- Pat expressing the sentiments of a lonely cat that had been embarrassingly shaved

Work wise the week was very busy with lots of meetings and trying to take care of my normal job responsibilities in the small cracks between meetings both scheduled and informal. However, the really fun and exciting part was Bernard and I were secretly cooking up a prototype of migrating my main feature (bare metal OS provisioning) from our current architecture to our newer architecture. I generally worked from 8:30 to 6:30 or so, went out and socialized until 9:30 or 10:00, then came back to the office and coded until 2:00am. We got the whole feature working end to end including a fancy flex based GUI and the back end in one week and ready for a demo to an eager audience at 8:30 am Friday. The demo went great and the audience, who didn't know exactly what they were coming to see, is now (mostly) supportive of giving us the team we need to fully productize it. It's pretty cool since I have been working on this feature for about three years now and this will be by far the biggest change to happen under my watch.

Thursday there was another, bigger Opsware reunion attended by a bunch of folks who left Opsware before I joined as well as some folks I worked with that have since left HP. It was good to hang out and chat with them for a while. Friday I picked up Ed at Google HQ in Mountain View and we dropped off my rental car at the airport and took the BART back into the city. Sara joined us for dinner. After much uncertainty we decided on a sushi place that is highly regarded. Sara is vegetarian and Ed was unwilling to try the fish, but I ordered two pieces of the special they had and found it pretty good. Not amazing but I can see the potential and will try some more in the future.

Saturday morning I wondered out of the apartment and found the panhandle and Golden Gate Park. I did a 4.6 mile run around there and was feeling quite good. I'm not sure if the sea level altitude still makes a difference after a week, but my cardio was able to do it effortlessly. It was a cool feeling to pass some flatlanders huffing and puffing while I'm breathing like I am taking a nap. I think that run or the one Sunday morning were probably the furthest I have jogged since I usually quit after 3.5 miles or so. It feels like without too much training I could work up to a half marathon, so I may do that at some point, but probably not soon.

Saturday afternoon I hung out with Ed and Sara and Pat in The Haight. Ed and I had some delicious brunch and then we hit a record store, the Bound Together anarchist book store, and the People's Cafe. Pat and I went over to join up with Marcia and the rest of the crew for dinner at Marcia's. It was fun to hang out. Marcia's crew is pretty darned enthusiastic about their lifestyle, and it's amusing to be around them in their element. After dinner I washed dishes and the girls went to get into costume for their night out clubbing (panties, mouse ears, big purple boots, etc). One of Marcia's roommies Ivan came down into the kitchen to eat his dinner so it was just me, Pat, and him there. So we started talking and he had is laptop with him and was lamenting that it was broken and wouldn't boot. We asked what was wrong and he explained that he had been messing around with dual booting Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux and had deleted some partitions and left his machine unbootable with a grub error 22. Pat and I exchanged an amused glance. The coincidence here is pretty funny. I explained to Ivan that Pat and I were each high level Linux sysadmin gurus and we probably had about 10,000 hours of linux administration expertise between us. It's just funny. He wondered down into his kitchen for dinner and two strangers who had the precise obscure skills needed to fix his laptop are just standing there. So we made pretty short work of his problem, re-installing his grub boot loader using the GNU parted recovery CD he had used to cause the damage in the first place. This left me amused for the remainder of the night. This is probably second in line of my all-time tech rescue stories after the time I talked Cody at The Kitchen through brining his entire network back up after a power failure over the phone.

Then Pat and I went back to the Mission district and found a Mexican place still open. Pat didn't eat much at Marcia's because, as he described it, the food they cook consists primarily of "nuts and berries". So he had some nachos and felt satiated. Then I got a map from him and walked the 3.2 miles from there back to Ed's place in The Haight. It took precisely one hour. It was a nice night and I got to walk through some interesting neighborhoods.

This morning I did another run in Golden Gate Park. I saw disco roller skating, which I absolutely adore, as well as people setting up a sound system for outdoor swing dancing. Then Ed and I went back to the People's Cafe for food and on to a quick driving tour of Pacific Heights and wandering around Fisherman's Warf briefly. Then off to the airport for the short and pleasant flight back home.

The rest of the photos are here.

Lighthouses Rule!

2009-08-03T13:04:13.000Z

So after a 48 hour medical delay today I flew out to San Francisco. My tolerance for air travel grows increasingly low, but I managed to get through it. I got the rental car and made my way to Pat's apartment in the Mission district without any trouble. We chatted a bit there, admired his fetching neighbor across the way who was hanging out on her balcony, and then headed out in search of yummy food. We found a tiny El Salvadorian restaurant that had delicious tamales and popusas. Pat thought it was so good that as we got up to leave he wanted to come right back. Then we hung out in Dolores Park, listened to Michael Jackson blaring on a boom box, and watched cute skinny girls play Frisbee.

We headed on over to the Pirate Supply store just before it closed, which I found to be not particularly entertaining. The we wondered into a new shop in the neighborhood specializing in just honey. The proprietress was a very chatty woman with bright red hair who fed us lots of delicious honey samples, including some fennel honey, eucalyptus, cactus and local honeys. Pat and Rebecca each bought a jar. Then it was back to Pat's where we hooked up with Marcia and Rebekah and Rebekah drove us around on a local's guided tour of "Significant and Insignificant" things. It was quite fantastic. She showed us the big hippie grocery co-op, where all the best night clubs were for any given sexual orientation, all the various strip joints, famous restaurants, the best taco cart, chinatown, little italy, etc. She drove us up and down some really insane hills including the famous Lombard street.

After that we hit Urban Burger for fuel and went back to Pat's to eat and chat and comment on his lack of furniture and attempt to sit comfortably on his partially inflated air mattress. I drove Rebekah and Marcia home and then made my way down to my swanky hotel in Sunnyvale where I will stay this week. It was a very fun and enjoyable time. Pat's crew is a bit obsessed with some random internet video of some dude tripping on acid and ranting about random things that come on TV, which is where the title of this post comes from. I think it's this one.

OK, it is promising to be a very fun and productive week out here. A few reunions are also planned. Further bulletins as events warrant. I took some good and funny photos, too, but on a borrowed SD card since I (again, sigh) left mine at home in the laptop, so I'll have to post those later.

More photos are here.

Summertastic

2009-08-02T12:09:18.000Z

Tuesday night I ate something evil. I think it was some carrots that had gone bad. I'm not sure. But in any case, I must have gotten some bad food parasite because I was up all night puking and in bad shape most of the day Wednesday. So I called in sick Wednesday and slept most of the day. I thought I was mostly better Thursday so I worked a full day and went to the climbing gym, but after a few 5.10+ routes I could tell I was still not quite right so I went home. Friday it seemed to resurge so I called in sick again. I had a flight booked to San Francisco Friday afternoon but I declared myself unfit to travel and moved it to Sunday morning. I slept most of the day Friday as well and then ten hours Friday night, so when I awoke today I was pretty much as well rested as I can ever remember being. I also hadn't eaten much of anything since Tuesday but finally felt up to it so in the morning I had a nice omelet.

I was a bit bummed because I have been looking forward to a reunion with my ex-NYC friends in San Francisco for a while, but I'll see them about twelve hours from now. However I had a free day that I wasn't planning on having so I asked Erin if she wanted to go wind surfing, but she had already made plans to go to the Spruce Pool in Boulder. I had enough time before that to run some quick errands on my bike. Now I have a respectable set of mountain bike repair parts and tools such that if my bike brakes down in some obvious-how-to-repair-way there's a certain chance of me fixing it independently, albeit a small chance. Then I packed up my pool gear, slurped down a quick smoothie, and drove to Erin's house. We biked through town, stopping at Feather Thy Nest to look at second hand furniture. We then met up with Heidi at the pool and lounged around a while. Then we all went and swam laps. The pool felt fantastic. It was warm and sunny and I hadn't exercised much this week but I was feeling good so I swam forty laps and enjoyed every one. My recent swimming has been indoors at 24 Hour Fitness usually at 9 or 10 pm, and swimming outside on a sunny afternoon just felt great.

After the pool we rode over to Lark Burger which is supposed to have some yummy burgers. We giggled as a goofy looking, stuck-in-2001 dude with spiky gel hair, saggy jeans with a big white belt, and a gaudy necklace made some fairly lame passes (including forcing an unwarranted high five) at the cashier who was totally not impressed. Then we enjoyed our meal. My burger was pretty good although my taste for burgers is rapidly fading away. The home made lemonade was quite refreshing though. I've tried several places in recent years that are reputed to have good hamburgers but my expectations are never really met. Erin had a greasy turkey burger that made her totally over-greased and yucked out. Of course this is just a few minutes before her pick-up soccer game. She has a tendency to be somehow ill prepared for the soccer games every time it seems.

So Erin went and played in a huge pick-up soccer game which eventually got so big and confusing that they broke into two games. I watched amusedly and spoke to Matt on the phone briefly. We headed back to her house so she could shower and delegate her chore of exercising her two golden retrievers by riding around the block with them chasing me. So I took the dogs around the block and they chased cats and birds and ran into peoples' yards so I called their names and they ignored me.

Then we headed to Boulder Outdoor Cinema for a screening of The Princess Bride. We got a miracle parking spot and decent seats for the theater. The screen looked quite good outside and everybody loves this movie. I was particularly amused that this entire day I spent in my sandals, board shorts, and sun shirt which gives it that extra summer bathing-suit-all-day flare that I do so enjoy.

Tomorrow it's off to San Francisco first thing in the morning. Hoping to be chilling in the park with Pat and Marcia and Rebecca by lunch time.

More house photos

2009-07-27T00:03:12.000Z

More photos of the new house are here.

The First Chickens

2009-07-26T15:24:37.000Z

Thursday night was the inaugural rotisserie chicken attempt. As I found in my real estate dealings, the instructions that were readily available were far from comprehensive. I managed to basically get the things on there OK, but I was soon facing large flare-ups in the grill such that I brought a fire extinguisher up from the basement. However, once I turned off the three middle burners, leaving only the side two, that seemed to quiet down. Sadly after about 20 minutes the spit had fallen out of the motor, but luckily I think I caught that within the first few minutes. Then later it seemed like the rotisserie sections were unscrewing and collapsing in the middle, which was going to be a big problem. However, it seemed to hold out and when I eventually disassembled it after it cooled there was still many turns to go before it fully disengaged. So in the end the chickens turned out quite tasty. However I made two whole chickens expecting around twenty people for the CHAOS pot luck, but only five showed up, so now I have tons of chicken. I brought a big container over to my neighbor's house as well.

Today I went up to Fort Collins and did some fun mountain biking in Lory State Park and Horsetooth State Park with Jaz. The trails are nicely maintained and of moderate difficultly, which was a nice change from Sourdough. Jaz got a flat when we were pretty darned far from the trail head so we ended up pushing our bikes quite a while until the second tube donated by kind passing cyclists actually fit and worked and we were gleefully back in action. Then we had yummy sandwiches at the pickle barrel.

This evening I attempted some chocolate chip cookies but they came out pretty crappy. Not sure if it was the recipe or the altitude or what. They are still edible though.

Tool

2009-07-20T09:48:57.000Z

Wow. Super fun weekend. Friday Erin and I met up with Elise's crew at Lazy Dog for the tail end of Happy Hour. Then we grabbed some quick but tasty Tibet dumplings and scooted into the theater just in time for Public Enemies. Sadly it was crowded so we ended up forced to take the only pair of seats left in the front row. I thought the movie was a bit blah and too long. Hard to comment otherwise since we were mostly craning our necks to look at pores - the cinematography featured a lot of extreme close-ups of faces.

Saturday morning I met up with two folks from CHAOS and we drove up to Estes Park and climbed the Jurassic Park area. It is really, really gorgeous up there right now. Beautiful black water of the mountain lake, lush green pines, alien rock formations. My partners were wondering if the drive was worthwhile for me since I had to be back in Boulder just after lunch to make it to the music festival, but I was really pleased just to spend a bit of time there. I did get three climbs in and we were in the shade for two of them, which was nice.

Then I drove back home for a quick shower and meal before driving out to the Mile High Music Festival. I wasn't sure I was gung ho about an all day affair, but it actually turned out to be really great. The vibe in the crowd was a lot of fun. It was really hot, and the headliners were hard core bands Tool and Widespread Panic, so it was lots of heavily tattooed and pierced girls in bikini tops and cut off denim booty shorts. The festival had a waterworks thing that was spraying the crowd with water, which was nice. I stopped and kicked a hacky sack for a while with a group. We were joined by a girl in a white bikini top, tons of big tattoos on her back, booty shorts just barely staying up, and converse. Her friend was in a long black dress which she hoisted up a bit to expose her converse sneakers when it was her time to hack. Their guy companion could hack impressively without spilling his completely full beer.

I only caught the tail end of Galactic, which I wanted to hear and sounded good, but it was just so much driving and I wanted to eat a big lunch at home so I wouldn't need to buy much expensive food at the festival, so I missed most of it. I did hear some of Greyboy All Stars, who had two great songs and the rest so-so, G Love and Special Sauce, and Incubus. However, the surprise hit was Indie Arie. I have her "video"/queen song that I really like and it's her big hit, but the show was great. After a terrible and delayed sound check, they finally got rolling and she spoke for about five solid minutes (of a 45 minute set) because she was upset and needed to get through it in order to put on a good show. She grew up in Colorado and went to school in Denver, so it was a home town crowd, but apparently she doesn't gig much in the area. Anyway, her family was there to see her but she said her brother had gone out to the parking lot to get his cell phone charger and been arrested for scalping tickets, so her mother was at the police booth trying to get him discharged so they could make the show. She was pretty upset. So she wanted to sing a brand new song she wrote yesterday called "Life Is Good". The musical director and keyboardist knew it, but the rest of the band didn't. So the two of them quickly taught the gist of the song to the band and backup singers and then they immediately performed it. Pretty gutsy for a huge festival show! Anyway, that song was good and the audience joined in and then she did her big hit song as she was now feeling better. The crowd really liked the show and the authenticity of her performance. It was a nice and unexpected treat.

Then I moseyed over to the big stage to claim some ground for the Tool show. I haven't seen them live and I had heard they put on a great show, and they didn't disappoint. Of course I was pretty darned far back, but at least I didn't need earplugs, although it was still super loud. The visuals were great and of course the crowd was totally into it. By now it was dark and the heat had given way to a perfect temperature. They played basically a "greatest hits" type set list, which was cool. Maynard James Keenan also had a funny comment after the first song. "Tonight's performance is brought to you by the cool, refreshing taste of ..." then a long pause. Is he doing an endorsement? Man I thought Tool was way above that stuff. "... boobies. .... Say what you will. Everybody likes boobies".

Today I went and again biked Sourdough Trail, but this time with just Erin. It was again very challenging but fun. We went just a bit farther than last time. The plan was to go until the point at which I had turned back last week, but focusing on the trail I rode right past it without noticing, and only on the way back was I like, oh, here's last week's turnaround spot. We probably did an extra mile or so. Then we grabbed some yummy Snarf's sandwiches back in Boulder and sat on the grass behind Boulder High and enjoyed them after pedaling up those monster hills all morning.

This afternoon I finally got a much needed nap. I have acclimated to another Colorado lifestyle aspect: I now get up earlier on weekends (6:30) then I do during the week, and I generally play longer days than I work (I was out "playing" from 8am to 11pm on Saturday). Anyway, the new mountain bike and the bike rack are working out great. I'm also loving the Rogue car. I've made great use of the extra space for bikes, furniture, people, tubes for Boulder Creek, shopping until the cart is full at Target, etc. Overall I'm really pleased with it.

More photos are here.

The best. Again.

2009-07-14T18:37:44.000Z

Louisville Colorado has again been named the best place to live according to Money Magazine. w00tz! Go go gadget real estate appreciation!

Sourdough Trail

2009-07-13T10:15:39.000Z

Saturday I rode with some CHAOS folks on Sourdough Trail up between Nederland and Ward. It was a pretty challenging ride, but I stayed on the bike about 85% of the way I'd say. I even cruised over two log jumps, although I chickened out of a third that looked more like a log wall than a log jump. The new bike worked well. I am just learning to use pedal clips so I toppled over at zero MPH twice trying unsuccessfully to get my feet out in time to arrest the fall. The group was nice and all good riders so it was a good time. I have some tentative plans for a second attempt next weekend.

This morning I did another highly successful yard sale tour and got a bunch of great stuff. I loaded a computer desk, night table, small shelf unit, and watering can into my Rogue and put a big five foot tall wooden shelf on the roof rack. The Rogue is proving really handy for the outdoor sports toys and household chores. I'm really liking it.

I also met some of my neighbors. They all seem really nice and so far are all of similar age to me. My direct neighbor to the north is another single computer dude who bought his house just a few weeks after I bought mine.

I filled out the day with tweaking my lawn sprinkler, climbing at BRC, swimming (check out this Tim Ferriss blog post on total immersion swimming), and finally caving in and joining teh facebooks. So look out for friend requests coming your way. Oh and yesterday I bought a grill! I hold grills as a somewhat sacred object and so it is with much joy that I shopped, purchased, transported, and assembled mine. Sadly removing the liquid propane connection to install the natural gas line has proven impossible for me due to a bolt that refuses to loosen, so I have to admit defeat and get a handyman to do it on Tuesday. In any case, a celebratory grilling will be done Tuesday. I may bust out the chicken rotisserie next Thursday for a pot luck. We'll see.

Albino

2009-07-11T12:37:14.000Z

Tuesday morning I climbed my personal best: a 5.11-. w00t!

Thursday night I bought my fancy 3-figure mountain bike (as distinguished from my 2-figure mountain bike that was stolen last month). It's still pretty much the cheapest thing stores in Boulder will sell, but at least it has hydraulic disc brakes and a shock lock-out. I also got real mountain biking shoes with clips and everything. Hopefully all this gear doesn't backfire on me tomorrow when I ride with some CHAOS folks on a trail that will probably be way too hard for me.

So after I got the bike Thursday night and tested it out a bit I quickly grabbed a pre-show burrito at Illegal Pete's. We saw some petty thief clutching what was presumably a purse being chased on foot by a policeman, who we cheered on even though it was clear with his bulky uniform and equipment belt he wasn't going to be catching up with the nimble thief. However, he was barking coordinates into his radio so hopefully teamwork and technology prevailed. Then I went to Boulder Theater and heard the band Albino. It was a dual CD release party with The Motet. Albino is a great ten-piece afrobeat group from the bay area. This band played a very memorable concert at Burning Man last year on Wednesday in the saddle amphitheater that was right behind the Freedom Community camp. They will always have a special place in my heart for that. The Boulder crowd was of course way into it, so it was a good show. They played "Thriller" as an MJ tribute which was really fun. The horn section even did the zombie dance. At intermission the horn section joined up with the local Batteria Allegria and jammed while walking around amongst the crowd, which was a nice touch. Sadly I forgot my earplugs and even though I tried one gas station in the final minutes before curtain, I didn't have enough time to buy some, so I had to leave shortly after The Motet's set began because it was just too loud.

Today I began the process of meeting my new neighbors. I met three so far and hopefully tomorrow more of them will be home when I go ringing doorbells. It's looking to be a good weekend overall.

Low Humidity

2009-07-09T03:55:57.000Z

It's 90 degrees here today and I'm still pretty comfortable. I _might_ bust out the A/C. It's pretty nice. When it's 90 in Jersey you are soaked in sweat in 10 minutes if you walk outside. Sadly some wrist pain is coming back again that I have gotten in the past when working at a desk that is too high. I'm taking some restorative measures, but I'll still have to wait a while for my GeekDesk to arrive.

I love the web

2009-07-08T09:15:28.000Z

I bought some corn at the Boulder Farmer's Market. I haven't cooked this myself before, and I knew it was fairly self-explanatory, but I just wanted to do a quick google - just in case. I found this page. This could not be more exactly what I want. Picture by picture. Tiny text annotations. Not even full sentences. Informative but just tiny hints of personality. No ads. No terrible layout with big div tags of links everywhere. Old school. So good.

Independence Day

2009-07-06T09:02:14.000Z

I worked a bit in the peace and quiet of the holiday on Friday, which was nice. In the evening Erin and I walked in to old town Louisville to meet up with weiskind and rayhawk for dinner and drinks. We had a few laughs at Empire diner with regard to accidentally making out with the bar tender.

Saturday was my personal economic stimulus plan. I hit four garage sales before 9am and scored some great patio furniture dirt cheap plus some other assorted sundries (free stapler!). Then I did a bunch more shopping all over the place for various little items for the house. In the evening I caught the last bit of a trivial pursuit game (25th Anniversary Edition) at the Pizzi's then went with Erin to watch the fireworks at the CU football stadium. That ended up being a lot of fun. The crowd was throwing paper airplanes all over the place, and the fireworks were basically right in front of our faces. After that we tooled around town a bit on bikes and stopped at Haagen-Dazs for the first ice cream I have eaten since November. Mmm....coffee mocha chip.

House of fun

2009-07-02T08:15:20.000Z

Well, it's really nice here. That's what I have to say. The street is a quiet dead end cul-de-sac. This is similar to my beloved Crescent Pl where I grew up. It may be simple psychology at work, and that's fine. I like it. Things are making improvements quickly. The lawn sprinkler has been repaired and is working, lawn has been mowed, a gas line for the stove and grill has been added, and new dual-fuel range has been installed, various electrical problems have been fixed or improved, a radon mitigation system has been installed, packages from home have arrived, the mystery of how to open the stopper on the downstairs bathroom sink drain has been solved (you push it down to make it pop up! who knew?), plates and some basic housewares have been purchased (square, blue & gold). I still haven't been here a week! So in general I'm liking it quite a lot. I'm enjoying breakfast in the sun on the deck getting my sleep clock reset and some vitamin D. The handy man says it is easy to run speaker wire in the attic to any room upstairs. Score! I went downstairs and told the plumber that it smelled like gas when he left the new gas outlet in the kitchen open while he was installing it. House didn't explode. Score! I even ventured slightly out of my programmer world of clean and pure digital abstractions to the brick and mortar world of home ownership by replacing all the locks myself and even changing some lightbulbs. Impressive, I know. I used the drill and everything.

Ownership feels nice. It's control. There were a bunch of long and questionable extension cords strung around in the garage for the garage door opener and sprinkler. It's my house. I had an electrician install power outlets next to each of them. That's so cool! Louisville is pretty darn idyllic. I haven't done much exploring yet, but I can tell I will really like it here.

Unfortunately the exit process of the last (last!) apartment hit some problems. My crappy bike and my landlord's crappy bike got stolen from the back yard (behind a tall solid fence) on the day before move out. I even tried to put my bike on my bike rack and take it to the new place but it didn't fit so I left it one more day and it got jacked. We also had the last of several plumbing backups we have had in that apartment, which created an annoyance and issue to be argued over with the landlords. Oh well.

I also just want to again note that Imogen Heap is just so adorable. Her new album Ellipse comes out August 24. Can't wait.

Later tonight I will bust out the bari sax for the first time in a long time and wail downstairs. It will be loud. No one will care. Mission accomplished.

Hubing

2009-06-30T08:17:44.000Z

Sunday we hike up to Saddle Rock in the morning and then went tubing on Boulder Creek. The water was running really really fast. It was essentially class III rapids I would say. We walked along the creek for a mile and only found about a two block stretch that looked like it could be done in a tube without certain demise. Big Wave Lew went over an extra waterfall that Erin and I were too chicken to attempt. We walked back up a few times and did the same section over and over. We got a lot of comments from passing pedestrians and cyclists to the effect of "you guys are nuts", which Lew particularly enjoyed. We only ran into one other group of tubers on the water. We saw lots of people renting tubes but no one tubing the section of creek we were on. This one set of tattoo-laden guys came out looking like drowned rats. We asked what it was like and they said they started way up at Eben Fine Park and "we got fucked up", so we were glad we didn't go any further west.

A place to call home

2009-06-28T07:52:36.000Z

I closed on my new house and I'm all moved in! It feels really great. Moving is easy when you are a nomad (now former nomad). I've been filling shopping carts at all the stores to get all the stuff I need. I hired a personal assistant off of craigslist and she has been a huge help coordinating cleaners, plumbers, electricians, handy men, landscapers, utilities, etc. The house feels great - especially my new memory foam mattress and new pillows. Click on the photo above for a few more shots, but the place is still essentially empty so I'll post more photos in a while.

You will also find there some photos from a recent CHAOS hike up to Royal Arch. Other than dealing with the house closing, I started doing some swimming at the gym and enjoying that. It's been a while since I posted so I'm omitting and forgetting some things, but I guess that's motivation to try to blog in a timely manner. Anyway, tomorrow we hike Green Mountain followed by tubing on Boulder Creek which should be a good time.

Ew! His face! His face!

2009-06-14T23:11:55.000Z

I'm back from a very fun family reunion on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. We played lots of tennis, went swimming in the ocean, played catch on the beach, and rode our rental cruiser bikers around. The golfers golfed in the morning and evenings we enjoyed yummy home cooking and drinks. The title of this post is a quote from one of my cousins shouted during some horsing around in the ocean.

House Take 2

2009-06-06T10:05:48.000Z

Woo hoo! Today I signed a contract to purchase a house! This time hopefully it goes through. I'm very excited. More news on that when things are finalized. Last Sunday I did a nice hike with CHAOS up Bear Mountain then down Bear Canyon then to Ken's for some grilling and chilling. I had a few other good social outings this week as well, including Josh & Matt's birthday BBQ. Tomorrow it's off to the much-anticipated family reunion on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. In addition to meeting my fresh-from-the-oven nephew Will, I also get to see Jamie Sue. Can't wait!

Climbing Course

2009-05-31T13:43:41.000Z

Today I went up to Estes Park and took the Colorado Mountain School's into to outdoor rock climbing course. It's an all day course and there were just two students registered, so it was basically like an all day private lesson with a professional guide. I learned lots of good stuff, including how to repel, which I have been wanting to learn for a while. We did quite a good number of fun short climbing routes as well. The weather was mostly good with the exception of a brief rain and thunder storm in the afternoon.

Photos are here. I've got lots of good stuff coming up this week as well.

Andy on Bud Light

2009-05-26T10:44:53.000Z

So in a rare event Andy is watching some TV to watch the Denver/LA basketball play off. The Bud Light commercial where they throw some dweeb out of a third floor corporate office building comes on, and Andy quips "Bud Light: The beer drunk by idiotic Corporations at their stupid-ass meetings"! Love it.

Well, we have had a rainy Memorial Day weekend here in Boulder, but still a lot of fun. This weekend was the Boulder Creek Festival and the Bolder Boulder 10k race, both of which I bypassed. Sunday I had a really fun mountain bike ride on the Wapiti trail with some folks from CHAOS. The trail was a lot rockier than I remembered from hiking it. Luckily Josh was nice enough to lend me a decent mountain bike to use which proved to be absolutely critical. The riding was really really enjoyable. Just hard enough and rocky enough to keep me nervous and concentrating and in "flow", but still doable.

Wapiti Trail Hike

2009-05-20T10:22:29.000Z

Sunday I hiked the Wapiti Trail up in Heil Valley just north of town with a group of eight from my hiking club. It was a really nice hike and a very friendly group. Very easy hiking but great mountain views. Next weekend I'm going to go back and bike it, which should be fun.

Tremont Mountain Sunrise Hike

2009-05-17T04:54:43.000Z

In the middle of the night, I headed out to Golden Gate Canyon with a bunch of folks from my hiking club to hike Tremont Mountain and see the sunrise from the summit. We assembled in Boulder at 3:30am and drove about an hour up steep, windy roads, with several stops for car sickness, to the trail head. The weather was not good. It was raining on and off in Boulder, very cloudy with dense fog, and pretty cold. However, we made a go of it and when we got to the trail head the rain was done and the ground was more or less dry. We hiked off trail, bushwacked, and scrambled up for about an hour or so to tag the summit. We were running a bit behind so we were too late to be on the summit for sunrise, but it was moot due to the clouds and fog. Normally you would be able to see all of Golden Gate Canyon and the Continental Divide, but our visibility was about 100 feet.

We scrambled back down and had some yummy breakfast at the trail head of eggs, potatoes, peppers, and salsa along with tea, OJ, etc. It was about 37 degrees there and there was still patches of snow here and there on the mountain.

More photos here.

Best weekend in a while

2009-05-11T09:46:49.000Z

So overall starting with the Brazilian Batteria on Thursday and concluding today with dinner at Uncle Bill's, this has been a very enjoyable and full weekend. Today I hiked 7.5 miles along the Walker Ranch Loop in about 3 hours. It was a cool day with lots of fog and mist in the air plus just a few occasional raindrops. So the trail was not in heavy use. It is a very interesting hiking taking you from recently burned forest down along the rushing rapids of the South Boulder Creek, through some meadows and back up some steep single track rocky trails.

More photos here.

Lost two houses, Ari, climbing

2009-05-10T08:11:11.000Z

I've been having lots of fun in the past few days. On Thursday the local Brazilian percussion Batteria performed on Pearl St. It was fun to watch and hear. Friday Andrew and I went to hear the great Ari Hoenig play drums at Dazzle in Denver. He's got a very unique sound and you can instantly see why he is a bandleader on the drum set.

Today I went and climbed bihedral up in Boulder Canyon with a crew of about seven climbers. It was only my second time climbing outside and it was quite powerful. I can understand how surfers become mesmerized by the power of the ocean. Climbing in the gym is lots of fun and you think about technique and so forth, but climbing outside on a real massive, immovable, unforgiving mountain is just immensely humbling. I was definitely very nervous for the first climb or two and then settled into it a bit. But we did some really fun routes and when you're way up above the ground clinging to the side of a giant rock, you definitely feel put in your (small, temporary) place. We did have some near misses with falling rock and a few minor scrapes and cuts, but otherwise things went OK. Definitely glad I have a helmet now so I don't get knocked out by a falling rock while belaying someone who is sixty feet off the ground.

More Spring 2009 photos are here.

You might find this hard to believe, but I also managed to have two more house purchases fall through in failure. Sigh. It's basically back to the drawing board. I certainly learned a bit more about the whole negotiation process.

Boo LiveNation. Boo Macky

2009-05-04T04:39:16.000Z

So last night Bill Maher performed at Colorado University's Macky Auditorium. For reasons I can't possibly fathom, a university event, which have thus far been pleasantly shielded from the antagonistic over-commercialization of live performance, decided to sell tickets through the evil incarnate LiveNation corporation. Maybe the deals are arranged such that you can't get Bill Maher unless you book and sell tickets through LiveNation? Not sure. Anyway, I harbor a deep resentment for these greedy evil bastards who charge unbelievably large "convenience fees" for services that any other online retail considers just a normal part of doing business on line. I've started boycotting LiveNation events, but I was in luck this time since I now live just a few blocks from the Macky box office. However, in a seeming effort to discourage the audience and basically spit on their patrons, the Macky box office didn't staff anyone on the phone the day of the show. Instead they played a recorded message saying there might be some tickets left and that the box office would open at 6:30pm. So I went there at 6:30pm and stood in line with about 40-50 other people for 20 minutes in the cold and drizzling rain outside waiting for Macky to open up their box office. Did they open on time? No. Did they let the line into the lobby out of the rain? No. Did anyone come out to apologize and say when they would be opening? No. Did I get disgusted and leave after twenty minutes of this? Yes.

CU, WTF is with LiveNation? Just sell us tickets either online or in person with no offensive "fees". You have an army of cheap labor at your fingertips ready to answer phones, build and maintain online ticket sales systems, and staff your events. Why do you need to outsource this to a company that is basically bringing airline customer service to live performance?

Busy good

2009-05-04T02:09:55.000Z

Last week was the most busy, eventful, and stressful I've had in a few years I think. First the great news is my sister had her baby! So now I am a proud Uncle Pete. With the new baby, my family now has three instances of inter-generation first name duplication. Hurray for nicknames.

Lots of activity on the house including inspection (sigh) and dealing with the fallout from that. Things are moving along but at this moment the sellers are dragging their feet responding to the inspection repair list, so I'm a bit concerned about that.

Work was also very busy since we entered code freeze (basically done as far as engineering is concerned) this week for a major release that I have been working on for over two years. Lots of last minute bug fixing and more than daily manager status emails and requests.

Also, we moved! We are in a great temporary apartment right in downtown Boulder close to everything. I've been walking and biking around for the past few days and really liking it. Friday we hit the Boulder Cafe followed by the B-Side Lounge for a bit of dancing. Saturday morning I had a yummy breakfast at a great Creole breakfast/lunch restaurant in Boulder called Lucile's Creole Cafe. Last night it was Chinese food and bowling in Broomfield (Andrew rolled an admirable 147. I was terrible) then we hit Johnny's Cigar Bar to hear a nice band playing Brazilian jazz music. Today it's brunch with weiskind and later more rock climbing.

Found a house!

2009-04-27T00:40:19.000Z

So after almost eight months of searching, about 33 viewings, looking at many hundreds of web pages, getting outbid twice, and having two uncooperative sellers, I have finally at long last found a fantastic house in Louisville and signed a contract to purchase it! I'll post more details after closing and it is officially mine (end of May).

Friday I went to meet a new friend and we ended up going to a minigolf/batting/driving range/arcade type amusement park. We only had a few minutes, but I did a few tokens in the batting cages. I have had this weird jonesing to see if I can still hit a baseball for a while, so it was fun to finally satisfy that. It turns out that yes, I can still hit them. I made contact with just about every pitch, fouled off an awful lot, but had a fair share of good long drives. When it comes to golf though, I've never done it and I was pretty much a complete disaster at the driving range. Whiffing was common. Driving 18 yards at ground level was common.

Last night Andrew and I went to a very underwhelming improv comedy show in Denver. Andrew has been designing, making, and drinking banana-based smoothies like a madman recently. I've been partaking fairly regularly as well, although my obsession recently has been homemade chicken burritos with black beans and rice.

Now, the real big news is that probably within the next day or so I will be an Uncle! My sister is going to the hospital to deliver her baby boy this evening and they are planning to induce labor tomorrow. We are all very excited and filled with anticipation for Baby Murz (as he is thus far known).

Vancouver

2009-04-11T11:29:33.000Z

Wednesday morning I did my final yoga class (core) at Yoga Union two blocks from Bernie's place. Andrew and I grabbed a yummy lunch at Detour Cafe and then did the short drive up to Seattle. In Seattle, we met up with MoJo for dinner and conversation, which was very jovial and enjoyable. Then we motored on up to the Canadian border. The border crossing was more eventful than I expected. We crossed at a small border crossing along Route 539. This is a strange place to cross, I gather. The reason we were doing so was immediately before getting in the car in Portland, we did priceline for a hotel in Vancouver. This got us a good rate, but at a Super 8 hotel about 45 minutes east of Vancouver. So we arrived at the border crossing at 11:51 pm, and it was lucky because apparently they are closed between midnight and 8 am. I think there's a weird thing when you ask a question with the context of "are these people a threat?", the way you hear the answer is a bit colored by the context. Anyway, we explained to them that the two of us (scruffy 30-something males) were on a road trip from Colorado planning to visit Vancouver for two days. The agent remarked that coming all the way from Colorado for a two-day visit was unusual, and we explained that we had spent time in Portland. This combined with the fact that Andrew has a California driver's license even though we said we are both living in Colorado, combined with whatever other suspicions they had, caused them to have us pull off to the side and go into the office for some further interrogation. So a very friendly Canadian patrolman asked us a bunch of questions, punched us into their system, and then went and searched the car for about ten minutes. Then he gave us directions to our hotel and sent us on our way.

Thursday we spent pretty much all day exploring the various districts in downtown Vancouver on foot. We hit a bunch of different cafes and malls. We got another lucky timing break when we went back to the car around 5 pm to get some water and asked the attendant when they closed, to which he replied that the gates close at 6 pm, which we hadn't noticed, so we narrowly escaped having our car trapped overnight. Andrew remarked that overall Vancouver does have a very NYC feel to it, with just a touch softer edge. It has similar density and layout. The Chinatown district is pretty big and there are several large asian communities. We also walked through numerous blocks that were really sketchy and had lots of sketchy looking folks standing around on the sidewalk. In the evening we made our way to the quite nice Granville Island neighborhood and had a very yummy dinner of some crab cakes and pot stickers at The Sandbar restaurant. Then we watched the Ultimate Improv Championship at Vancouver Theatre Sports League.

Today we ate some Vietnamese back in Chinatown (ish) before driving up to Cypress Provincial Park, intending to go for a hike. However, after some napping and then driving further into the park our elevation put us above the snow line so hiking was not so good. We considered doing the Capilano Suspension Bridge, when we thought it was just a bridge, but it turned out to be an expensive theme park experience, so we bagged it. Instead, we walked the Varley Trail in Lynn Canyon Park a bit before another drive into the city, eventually settling on Subeez, which was pretty good, not amazing.

The rest of the photos are here.

PDX 2009

2009-04-08T11:57:49.000Z

Saturday we drove through Idaho to Boise. We stopped and met up with a friend I had made when I lived in Boise last Spring. We had a nice dinner in downtown Boise. We were considering motoring on a bit further, but we were both pretty sleepy by then so we grabbed a motel for the night and headed on in the morning. Sunday we ate breakfast in Baker City, Oregon and then drove along the Columbia River Gorge to Portland, arriving about 3:00 pm.

First order of business was putting some air into Bernie's visitor bikes and then getting some much-anticipated bubble tea at Fat Straw. We cruised around the Hawthorne neighborhood a bit, stopping at The Dollar Scholar and then picked up some food for dinner. We had Buffalo style tempeh using Bernie's recipe, along with some millet and khale and coconut ice cream for dessert. Yum.

Monday Bernie and Andrew were both working so I went again to Fat Straw to read in the morning then took a nice yoga class at Yoga Union. Andrew and I got some yummie but huge burritos at Los Gorditos taco cart for lunch then biked down around Ladd's Addition, down to Oak Bottom Wildlife Refuge, and over the Steel Bridge to look at the cherry blossoms. We met up with a bunch of Bernie's crew and had dinner at Hot Lips Pizza. Afterward we rode around a bit and made our way to the esplinade to chat and hang out under the cherry blossoms.

Today Andrew and I went to an introductory Vinyasa 101 class followed by lunch at Paradox Cafe. After a brief rest we drove out to Multnomah Falls and hiked up to the top. It was a fairly amusing crowd on the paved but steep pathway to the top. There were ample tourists, pregnant women, couples with infants, couples pushing toddlers in strollers, various PDX hipster urban types, some guy wearing a weight vest and ankle weights, and overweight people huffing their way up.

Tonight we biked to Dot's Cafe in the Clinton District for a very tasty meal. Pictures so far are here.

Road Trip April 09

2009-04-04T11:22:12.000Z

Today we embarked on a road trip. We left Boulder at 5:30 and headed up 25 into Wyoming then east on 80. We got hit with some snow which was at times pretty bad and lots of wind. The ride was fun though with some good conversation and music. We pulled into Elk Mountain, Wyoming - population 192 for dinner. The vibe at the Elk Mountain Trading Post/Cafe was nice. They had a fish tank with especially clean glass, one pool table, and pretty decent food. The waitress (who also does the local weather announcements) says we can expect about ten inches of snow. I'm hoping it won't be that bad, but we'll see. We ventured another 42 miles to Rawlings, where we are holed up for the night. Hopefully we'll have a full day of top speed driving tomorrow, but the weather will probably slow us down.

Five Peace Band, aps101, and Banjo Billy

2009-03-31T09:08:32.000Z

So I have one more reason to feel like a legitimate Colorodan. I now own three separate helmets (bike, ski, climb). I took the Learn to Lead climbing class at BRC a few weeks back, so I'm working on the lead climbing and belaying stuff now. I did two days of Spring skiing. Two weekends ago it was pretty awful conditions so I came back early. This past Saturday there was a lot of snowfall during the week so conditions were very nice, especially after the sun had softened up the snow a bit. I got my first negative answer to my normal "are you OK?" query when I see someone sprawled out on the slopes. I saw a woman heading down a mogul run and doing fine, she left my field of vision, and when she came back in she had lost a ski and was on the ground. So I brought her her ski and asked if she was OK, but she was not. She had dislocated her shoulder so I asked another person to ski down to the lift and get ski patrol while I waited there with her. They arrived after not too long and took over. My next job was to find her ski partner in the lodge and let her know what happened. This was pretty tricky given how many people wear similar colored ski outfits, but I actually did find her eventually and gave her the scoop. I did one last run and then headed home to be back in Boulder in time for Elise's birthday surprise.

Josh had rented out Banjo Billy's Tour Bus and we all gathered up to surprise Marty and Elise. This rig is a converted school bus done up to look like a mountain mining shack of some sort, and the owner/driver gives tours of Boulder with some historical info and some ghost stories and crime stories. He's got a limousine license so booze in the bus is OK. Overall it was pretty fun and good for Andrew to get shown around Boulder a bit. We stopped off to surprise Elise's parents as well and basically fifteen mostly drunken grad students piled into their house all of a sudden around 9:30 at night. We finished off the night with more drinks at Catacombs.

So Andrew arrived from LA last Wednesday and for a welcome gift I took him to hear Chick Corea's new Five Peace Band at the Paramount in Denver. The timing was such that I had to go back to some of my old consulting tricks and dial in to a conference call and virtual room from a parking garage with my laptop perched on a garbage can online via downtown Denver's free municipal Wi-Fi. Once that was done we grabbed some food and then headed to the show. The band is killer: Chick Corea plus John McLaughlin with Christian McBride, Kenny Garrett, and Vinnie Colaiuta. It was a great show with some fantastic compositions and killer solos. The Denver crowd was very enthusiastic and gave a few standing ovations during the concert as well as some spontaneous applause during a great Christian McBride bass solo.

So last Thursday we got about a foot of snow here in Boulder. Of course, this being the day after Andrew arrived, he wanted to go stock up on groceries. I explained that they don't plow here but he headed out in his new used Nissan Sentra front wheel drive sedan. He actually made it about twenty feet out the driveway before his wheels started to completely spin and he came back into the driveway. Yeah, better wait a day or two for the sun to melt it.

I bought a membership to the rock gym so I'm planning to go at least three times a week or so. Andrew and I are now planning next week's road trip and looking forward to that.

Some photos from the Banjo Billy Bus are at the end of the gallery here.

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra

2009-03-19T21:37:46.000Z

NYC's long-running Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, originally started as the Thad Jones Mel Lewis Orchestra in the 1960s, was here at CU Boulder last night. They put on a pretty good show with memorable playing from trumpeter Terell Stafford, trombonist Jason Jackson, and alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw. Tenor man Ralph LaLama is known to be about as hard-swinging as they come, but his playing last night didn't deliver what I was hoping for. I've seen this band a few times and they are usually funny because the sax section always has some kooky night owl jazzers who look disoriented and disheveled out in the world before 2am. They won a grammy last year and Jim McNeely's arrangements are really fresh and tasty.

Tonight I learn to lead climb at BRC.

I have another great concert scheduled for next week, but that's a surprise.

Now with real mountains!

2009-03-17T09:37:59.000Z

Sunday I went rock climbing outdoors for the first time ever! On a real mountain cliff made by Mother Nature. I went up Boulder Canyon, just a ten minute drive out of town, with a few other folks from the CHAOS outdoor club. We scrambled our way up the tricky path to the Plotinus Wall and did some sport climbing. It was fun. This week I'm taking a lead climbing course so I'm able to be more helpful climbing outside next time.

A few more photos at the end of this gallery

Steamboat 2009

2009-03-02T02:15:00.000Z

On Tuesday the Banff Mountain Film Festival was here in Boulder and they showed about six short documentaries. Lots of great shots of climbing, skiing, and snowboarding. My favorite was a documentary about three BASE jumpers who travel to central China to BASE jump into the Heavenly Pit.

Thursday after work I packed up The Blue Machine and drove 3.5 hours to Steamboat Springs. Like last year, I stopped somewhere along I-40 deep into the remote mountains to star gaze. The night was calm and clear and the sky just looks so awesome when you can actually see thousands of stars and the dusty trails in the galaxy. Friday morning it was snowing, windy, and cold. I was at the Steamboat Springs Gondola before it was open and got to make some nice fresh tracks. However, it was just brutally cold so I eventually had to go inside to warm up every other run.

So the morning was cold and mid day was a bit icy because it was warm on Wednesday so the layer underneath the powder was rock hard ice. However, I did manage to find a few runs with good snow at the end of the day.

I met up with a group of other Boulderites who had rented a condo for the weekend so I stayed with them Friday night. We had a nice meal and enjoyed hanging out. Saturday it was sunny, clear, calm, and delightful. We all skied/boarded together all day. It was nice to have such a big group (nine all together) and for them all to be expert skiers. We did a few hike-to runs, lots of trees, and a few journeys out of bounds. It was a blast.

Sadly, I forgot my new snow pants at home, which prompted my companions to sing "He's a Jeans Skier" to the tune of "Dream Weaver" and inquire why I wasn't wearing an NFL jacket.

There are more photos here and a video here.

Today I'm looking forward to some much-needed yoga and saxophone and then next week work is going to get busy for a while.

Vasquez Ridge lies behind me. Bloody, unconscious - vanquished.

2009-02-17T09:13:00.000Z

Here's my new weapons!

After some fun rock climbing yesterday, today I awoke at ten to six and headed up to Winter Park to try the new skis, new snow pants, skiing without a pack, and listening to music while skiing alone. The new skis took some getting used to as they are a bit longer and more rigid than the last pair, but by the end of the (long) day, I felt reasonably comfortable on them. Overall I have to say this was probably my best day skiing alone so far, and I did a lot of that last season. Hmm, actually, maybe the big powder day at Park City last year is still the reigning champion. Anyway, the drive was good, no problems with parking or crowds, and I DJed a good set. Started off with Zoe Keating (one cellist with overdub loops. Very interesting), then on to Wynton Marsalis Jump and Jazz, which is great, then Nice Inch Nails The Fragile, and the new Death Cab for Cutie album on the drive home. I skied Vasquez Ridge mercilessly all morning. I took a cell phone photo of what I consider to be the funniest ski run name I've seen:

More settling in

2009-02-08T08:59:00.000Z

So it was with a great sense of fondness and gratitude that I parted ways with The Green Machine this week. I sold it and the bike rack to a guy across town, so I drove the car with the bike on the rack to his place, completed the sale, pumped up my tires using his bike pump (tires have needed air since September), and rode eight miles back home. It's strange but completing this chore has given me a sense of completeness to the trip I wasn't expecting, and this weekend I'm full of motivation on a raft of new projects.

Speaking of new projects, in a surprising but not entirely unexpected turn of events, the project I have been working on at work since September was abruptly canceled this week. So once again I watch months worth of code drift out to sea, never to see the light of day. So this generated a lot of upheaval. My team was split up and put onto two other projects effective immediately but what I work on longer term seems still up in the air.

I caught a lucky break last week. I took my skis in for a tuning and it turns out my bindings were recalled by Atomic due to a tendency to crack. So I get some new bingings and supposedly these ones won't crack on the slopes. I've been up to the mountains a few more times and am planning this season's trip to Steamboat Springs maybe toward the end of the month.

In other activity news, I joined 24 hour fitness here and plan to continue my exercise routine. I've actually managed to lose about twelve pounds since October. Rock climbing is also going pretty well and I'm making steady progress in skill and endurance. It's quite satisfying to be totally stumped by a rock climbing route on the first attempt and to complete it cleanly on the third.

Dos Equis with Charley

2009-01-25T09:49:00.000Z

I've only tried about a dozen beers so far and honestly I'm still not that interested. However, I had a Dos Equis tonight and it was quite delicious. It's dangerous how much I like Mexican food these days. I actually tried to get some Thai but I couldn't find one place and the other place seems permanently closed. Anyway, I'm sitting here stuff full of ski fuel for tomorrow and am quite contented.

At the restaurant I started reading John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley in Search of America". You know, between my Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins, they have probably read 50,000 books, yet not one of them recommended this book to me before my trip. As a matter of fact, I don't know how this ended up on my amazon wishlist, but here I am anyway. After the first paragraph I was hooked. Jamie Sue, you must read this immediately. Here's a line from Part One:

The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.

He gets bonus points for the Oxford Comma.

My beloved Green Machine is now up for sale on craigslist and has been through one test drive already.

Winter Park got 11 inches of snow last night. I'll be there tomorrow to enjoy it.

Weak Areas: None noted

2009-01-22T09:39:00.000Z

Woo hoo! I now have a "Brainbench Master Certification in Python 2.4"! Next up, renewing my Sun Certified Java Programmer status.

Gym rat

2009-01-20T02:42:00.000Z

I've become a bit of a gym rat this month. I've been lifting weights and jogging three miles at least every other day. It's getting to be fun and gives me a chance to load up my mp3 player with lots of hardcore heavy metal/punk type stuff and some techno.

Last weekend I saw some pretty funny short comedy films in Denver at the Festivus Film Festival. I also just want to state that I am putting forth that Six Feet Under Season Two Episode One "In the Game" is the pinnacle of the black comdey genre.

We had a great day skiing at Copper Mountain Saturday. It was quite warm, clear sunny skies, and no wind. Still plenty of good snow, though. I must say having the rear bumper of the rogue to sit on while you don your ski boots is far superior to trying this from a sedan.

That's mostly it. I'm starting to flip through the book "1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die", which I bought for myself while Christmas shopping and my mother also ended up getting as a gift for me. It's nice to go check out their suggestions on Rhapsody.

...oh yeah...and it's 66 degrees and gorgeous out right now. Time to run outside!

Snow and Fire

2009-01-02T04:47:00.000Z

I started the ski season yesterday at Copper Mountain. Tried to go out Tuesday morning but it was extremely windy in Boulder so I decided to wait a day. Wednesday on the mountain it was warm, clear, calm, and sunny. Very pleasant first trip. No fresh snow, but plenty of cover.

Last night for NYE I went to the grand opening party for the Phoenix Asylum artist co-op here in Boulder. They had the place, which is normally a shop for metal working, wood working, etc, in nice shape for a party with lights, DJ, VJ, bar, etc. They had some good fire spinners as well.

Attack of the birds

2008-12-22T00:49:00.000Z

Winter has arrived in Colorado. We've had three or four snowfalls and some frigid temperatures. I was shivering last Sunday night and cursing the thermostat when I glanced at the weather report: -12F! I guess that's why the thermostat wasn't able to keep up.

In other news I had some avian adventures in the house. Somehow two medium sized birds managed to get into the chimney and all the way down into the fireplace. Trapped behind the glass doors and flapping around on the gas logs, they made a good amount of ruckus. I assembled various makeshift devices to try to get them into a big box and then transport them to the back porch and let them go. The glass doors open with a single hinge and sliders in such a way that is is not possible to open them without giving the birds a chance to escape and go flying around the house. In one of the early attempts, one black bird did get past me and fly into the living room. Luckily he made just one hop and then immediately went out the open back door. That left one big woodpecker in the fireplace. Realizing my chances of getting him outside were pretty slim, I called the maintenance guy. He came the next day and decided the bird was big enough that we should call an animal control company. So with that extra delay I slipped a piece of whole grain bread into the fireplace to offer him some sustainence until the company could come Saturday morning (I had discovered them in there Wednesday evening). Luckily though, the company was able to come earlier than planned and a young guy just put on a pair of gloves, grabbed the bird, and walked it outside. I was anticipating some elaborate net to cover the entire fireplace. Anyway, he said he thought the piece of bread may have made the difference, so I was glad to have done that.

I'm currently in the air flying from Denver to Philadelphia for a nice week with the family. I haven't seen my parents since June. I can't remember a prior time going six months without seeing them at all. I'm also excited to see my sister who is five months pregnant.

Ozrics, Crystal Method, Likeness to Lily

2008-12-06T07:09:00.000Z

So we had a yummy Thanskgiving at the Pizzis with lots of eating and playing of games. Last week I did a ton of climbing with Becky on Friday and Saturday. We were planning to climb outdoors Saturday but it ended up being cold and snowy so we climbing for three and a half hours indoors anyway. Becky has been climbing a lot in the past six weeks, so at this point she is noticably better than me, but I'm working on catching up. I'm setting my lower boundary to 5.9+.

Last Friday I went to the Fox Theatre for a show by the Ozric Tentacles. I had never heard of them, but their stuff is surprisingly good to code to. Lots of amusing aging hippies at the show as well. I went back on Tuesday for The Crystal Method, a pair of dance/electronica big beat DJs. It was by far the closest to a rave I have been. The young college kids were out in force with their glow sticks and big sun glasses. Some good people watching. One kid jumped on stage, stage dove (I guess technically that part was a success) but the crowd surfing that usually immediately follows a good stage dive was a failure. He crashed to the floor and pissed off some folks on the way down. One kid punched him right in the jaw as soon as he got up and knocked him right back down. I was also situated in a spot on the elevated platform about three steps above the floor right in front of the stage and got to witness little white pills (presumably Ecstasy) being sold directly below me. The purchasers of said pills then later on took turns shaking glow sticks around in elaborate trippy patterns in front of each others' faces.

Yesterday we had our first legitimate snow here in town. For some reason, they seem to just not plow here in Boulder. I guess if it dumps like a foot and the weather calls for clouds for a week, they sound out the plows, but otherwise they assume the Sun will melt it in a day or two. So anyway, I'm glad to have all wheel drive and a heavier car and not be fishtailing all over the place.

Oh yes! One last thing. The new Likeness to Lily album, Fairwell, Recruit is finally out! I highly recommend this band and this album. I went to about a dozen of their live shows in 2006/2007 as they were creating the songs on this album. I'm giddy to finally have recordings after hearing so many live shows. (And I totally scored First Post on downloading the mp3s).

Speakers. Hell Yeah. Speakers.

2008-11-28T00:28:00.000Z

Just prior to Burning Man at the end of August, one of my super cheap-o set of computer speakers (small stereo pair plus sub woofer, "CA" brand) stopped working. I was packed pretty full, so I tossed the other speaker and sub woofer. Since then I haven't had speakers. I have been using the tiny built-in speakers on my laptop or occasionally headphones.

When things finally stabilized enough to where "get new speakers" bubbled up to the top of the to-do list, I did some shopping online, tried to get some from the fancy high end audio store in town, but ended up ordering a pair of M-Audio Studiophile AV40s. They are not premium speakers - just about one notch better than the Logitec or Creative Labs stuff you can get in Best Buy.

Holy crap. My life is significantly better. It's amazing. They sound great and I can feel the music in the air. Everything is so much more powerful this way. Man. It's intense. I've been missing it. Now I just can't wait unti I get my own house so I can buy the kick-ass home stereo of my dreams.

In other news, Rhapsody finally has some Tracy Chapman and some Nirvana. This week ikioi left on Monday morning and I've been working pretty hard these three days. The project is at the exciting phase where it's starting to come together and be able to do real work, which is fun. And man, it's nice to not be writing design documents.

Today it's Turkey Fest at the Pizzis. Tomorrow climbing and backlog of errands.

Four visitors in a month!

2008-11-22T12:37:00.000Z

Friday night aps101 arrived for a brief visit. We had some pretty extravagant Moroccan food in Denver complete with a belly dancer. This included a pastry thing filled with chick peas and chicken and covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon. Plus a huge tender lamb entree. Yum. Today (OK, well, I've been piecemailing this blog together for two weeks - this was Saturday Nov 8) we walked through downtown Boulder and Andy got a sense of the vibe here.

In other news, I bought a new car! Allow me to introduce The Blue Machine. It's a 2008 Nissan Rogue SL. I am very happy with it and really enjoying the fancy sound system and the ride. It's a very different experience from being slow and low in my Sentra for so long.

Sunday Andrew and I went into Denver to cruise the 16th street mall and spent a good long time in the tattered cover book store.

Monday Colonel Power arrived to complete the roster for Operation Buffalo Pyramid. We went straight from the airport to the nearest open Taco Bell to quell his cravings and then it was bed time. On Tuesday ikioi treated us to some delicious beer bread made with wheat beer and his variation on spaghetti bolognese. We feasted. Then after dinner we played a "game" even though ikioi states "I don't play games" in a very manner of fact voice. But this one involved numerous fascination philosophical questions and generated great conversation.

Wednesday A & P headed to Illegal Pete's and I later joined them at the Boulder Cafe for some buffalo sliders and more good conversation.

Thursday we headed to Southern Sun and met up with my relatives. Afterward we went with Elise to Catacombs for cheap beers and trivia night. aps101's major contribution was the Beatles audio clip recognition while I did reasonably well on video game characters.

Friday aps101 took off and in the evening ikioi, Becky, and I got some delicious Cold Stone Creamery ice cream and watched Gattaca. Since it's getting to be that holiday season, Cold Stone has their Dark Chocolate Peppermint ice cream in, which is, in my opinion, THE GREATEST ICE CREAM IN THE UNIVERSE. I stocked up.

To bring the visitor count up to four, Marc got stuck on a layover in Denver, so we made a late night run to the airport to get him. We brought him back, fed him some beer bread and beer, pointed him at the iron, and flopped him down on the pull-out sofa. But not for long because we had to leave for the airport again at four AM so he could make his flight and get to his 8:55 AM interview in California. He later reported that he miraculously made it there early despite flying to a different airport and thus screwing up his rental car reservation.

This week has been a bit more chill with just two of us here. Housing market is still pretty slow but I might go see some homes over the weekend. Been bouldering at The Spot some more and am two for eight on my current problem. But now I think I have the right beta and I will send it next time (dropping some climbing lingo on you there).

One last weekend with ikioi and then it's back to solitude for me.

Houses, cars, visitors

2008-11-03T06:11:00.000Z

Ah, much fun in Boulder was had today! But I see now that the blog has gone for a few weeks with no update, so here's a quick summary.

I put an offer on a house that I very much liked, but the sale was contingent on the seller getting a new job and relocation package, which fell through the same day I made my offer, so they withdrew the house from the market. Bummer. So it's back to square one essentially since there are no other offer-worthy homes on the market right now.

This has had significant impact on my other late October logistics. I canceled my trip home, partly because my moving logistics would be at that same time and partly to be around in case any last-chance-before-the-holiday-trough listings came up. So that meant I had to find other temporary housing. The good news there was that there were at least a few fairly good matches for temporary furnished rentals on the market. I almost rented one place a mile from the Boulder Rock Club, but eventually had second thoughts when their rental application asked for my bank account numbers and credit card numbers and they wanted to run a criminal background check. So I ended up renting a very comfy tri-level home in Gunbarrel, which is an area on the north east outskirts of Boulder. Overall, it's a pretty convenient location. Man, what a difference 3500 ft of elevation makes! It has been in the low seventies here in the afternoons all week. Much nicer than the howling wind and cold up in Coal Creek Canyon.

The other nice thing about this place is I can stay as long as through the end of April if the house hunt is a complete disaster. So very hopefully this will be the last (#8 in a year!) temporary rental home before I move into my own place.

Sadly Halloween this year was a complete flop. I got a sore throat Wednesday night that was fairly annoying Thursday and by after lunch Thursday I stopped eating. So on Halloween I had a terrible sore throat, didn't eat anything, and felt sick and tired. I tried to work a bit in the morning, but around 10:30 we lost power, and it ended up staying out for over three hours. On top of that, I ran the dishwasher for the first time in the new house that morning and for reasons yet to be determined it leaked into the basement. So I'm here on my cell phone calling plumbers, with a sore throat and no power on Halloween. Major bummer. I eventually called in sick/powerless to work and slept most of the day. My costume and make-up went unused. I bought two big bags of candy anticipating a horde of trick-or-treaters, and left it out in a bowl for them to avoid spreading my sore throat, but only a handful (if any, I'm not sure), came, so now I have to find some way to get rid of this candy or otherwise ration it out over like six months.

Yesterday was a day of intense car shopping. I test drove a Nissan Rogue, a Honda CR-V, and a Subaru Forester. It's a very close decision. I think the expertise of the Pizzi boys will need to be called in. I've been flip-flopping between the Rogue and the CR-V as my top choice.

Today was awesome excercise day! I biked 5.5 miles to The Spot Bouldering gym. Did a pretty long bouldering workout, then biked back.

Soon, visitors! ikioi and aps101 will both be here to visit this month, even with about 4 days overlap! Fun will be had for sure.

AstroJazz

2008-10-13T09:15:00.000Z

Ha ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha! Things are going fantastically these days. First a brief mountain weather update. We had our first snow Saturday night and it actually stuck and didn't all melt today. It's been rainy and chilly down in the plains though. I was hoping to get the house settled before I bought a new car but I'm so paranoid about driving my Sentra up Coal Creek Canyon in the snow that a new (used) car must be purchased stat. Also, the past two night-time drives up to the mountain retreat have been incredibly foggy. Like 15 mph foggy. Pretty nerve wracking.

Friday I attended a concert/presentation/lecture in the Fiske Planetarium called AstroJazz. It is led by this Astro Physics Ph. D. Dr. Cherrilynn Morrow who is also a jazz vocalist. So basically she sings some jazz standards with altered lyrics talking about outer space, plus some originals, and she has a slide show projected up onto the planetarium with some fantastic telescope photos and lots of timely astronomy news related items. Plus there's the normal planetarium projections. It's really funny because she's such a hardcore star geek that she wants to turn it into a lecture and her slides sort of lead her in that direction, then she hits a slide with a song title and she's like "Oh right, time to sing another song about solar storms". It was such a delicious mix of geekiness and...OK...well actually it was just pure unadulterated geekiness, but there was jazz music too! Here's a piece of fascinating trivia for you music nerds. So generally solar activity in terms of solar storms and susnpots seems to follow a fairly consistent eleven year cycle back and forth between quiet and noisy periods. However, there was an unusually long period of low solar activity between 1645 and 1715, known as the Maunder Minimum. There is a theory that this long quiet period on the Sun caused a "Little Ice Age", and during that time tree growth was slowed considerably, producing unusually dense wood. These trees were grown and harvested just at the time of Stradivarious's "Golden Period" of violins, and this USA Today article explains the theory that this dense spruce was an important ingredient in the unmatched quality of the violins from this period by Stradivarius.

Saturday I saw a very appealing house that, after family and friends consultations indicated support, I will be making an offer on ASAP. Wish me luck! I also saw Burn After Reading on Saturday and I guess I had slightly higher expectations based on the word on the street. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think it was all that noteworthy. Maybe, like Fargo, repeated viewings will reveal lots of fantastic subtleties.

Today I also had a great brunch and then a nice long rock climbing workout. Tomorrow it's up to Fort Collins for work.

In other news, I have become hopelessly obsessed with the Joe Henderson tune "Y Ya La Quiero" sometimes listed as "Y Todavia La Quiero". Now, I've always thought this tune was off the charts good, but now I'm just playing it over and over and then going to youtube and finding other versions of it. Joe Henderson is the absolute devil on Tenor Sax. When he plays in the low register it's like he's hitting you in the face with an oar, and when he does his evil trill noises your head bursts into flames.

The Wood Stove

2008-10-08T08:24:00.000Z

Well, no luck so far on the house hunt. I've seen two interesting properties go under contract, but at this point I've pretty much seen every interesting property on the market in Louisville. I've also seen a lot of places in Lafayette and Broomfield, and in general have a much better idea of what's out there and what I will and will not like. However, after a month of searching it seems that I am in "wait for new listings" mode, unfortunately, which means I have to make additional temporary housing plans and in general extend my limbo period.

I did, however, finally have enough free time on a weekend to go for a hike. I hiked about seven miles in Eldorado Canyon State Park on Sunday. The weather was gray and threatening rain all day, but it never amounted to more than a drizzle, thankfully.

Practicing has been going well here in the mountains. Today I felt extra rugged as I fired up the wood stove for the first time. That thing works pretty well.

The Ranking of the Cities

2008-09-26T08:27:00.000Z

OK, the wheels are pretty much all in motion on the house front. Sadly, there's not much inventory in my budget in Louisville right now, so I may have to wait for something to come on the market. That is unless I decide to settle for one of the towns slightly farther from Boulder.

I wanted to post some brief thoughts on each of the cities I toured this year, so here goes.

Santa Fe, NM

I liked the architecture here and a lot of the visual feel of the city. It's actually a lot smaller than I had imagined in terms of cultural activity. Kind of a sleepy town in terms of restaurants and night life. The overall age demographic leans toward retirees. Probably has the lowest diversity of outdoor activities to offer of all the places I went.

Boulder, CO

Well, Boulder is the winner, although it's technically too expensive so I'll have to settle for one of the nearby towns. Great weather, tons of outdoor activities, lots of music (including touring acts, local bands, and the CU College of Music), a great vibe that blends hippie, jock, and techie. Denver International Airport is nearby and is a hub so I can get direct flights to most places and never fly longer than four hours or so. Plus I have some family here, and there's a big HP office in Fort Collins. Overall pretty fantastic. The only real cons are these days it is getting a bit overcrowded and there's a strong NJ vibe happening nearby with the huge housing developments and golf courses. Also, CU is a bit bigger and has more of a frat/party scene than ideal, I guess. I think it's the best choice given where I am and that I'm coming from NYC. Eventually I could see myself moving to some place even smaller and less crowded like Flagstaff.

Park City, UT

Well, this is too much of a destination resort to appeal to me year round. However, fantastic skiing in the winter, and Park City downtown is very cute. Salt Lake actually has some fantastic climbing gyms and a good music scene. Most of downtown Salt Lake is fairly odd and deserted, though. The LDS influence is way too prevalent for me to live nearby, though.

Boise, ID

Boise has fantastic variety of outdoor activities all year round including hiking, biking, skiing, rafting/kayaking, etc. I like the fact that it's basically a few small blocks of urban downtown but immediate transition to suburban neighborhoods with no apartment buildings. Real estate is fantastically affordable. Not much of a local music scene, but national acts do often stop there to play. Usually have to get connections in Portland or Seattle to fly anywhere. Overall the people are a bit more socially conservative than I'd be comfortable with.

Bend, OR

Bend was in many ways similar to Boise in terms of great variety of outdoor activities. Overall I liked it quite a lot. I really like the pine forest landscape and housing is also pretty affordable. The problems with Bend are really long winters, three hour drive through mountains to get to the Portland airport, and perhaps the overall vibe is a bit too geared toward suburban families with young children.

Flagstaff, AZ

Flagstaff was a very close runner up. Fantastic hiking and biking. I'm told the skiing at the Snow Bowl (12,000 ft) is very good in the winter. Not crowded. Great small town feel. Pretty weird mix of college students, hard core cyclists, Grand Canyon tourists from the US and abroad, transients from the train and bus stations, and everyday small town folk. One aspect that I found very compelling is that although Flagstaff gets very cold and snowy in the winter, all year round you can drive forty five minutes south to get off the Colorado Plateau and go biking in sixty-five degree weather. That's really nice. Plus there's just a lot of great National Parks within a day's drive, especially the Grand Canyon. I also liked the real estate here. Not as cheap as Boise or Bend, but still much cheaper than Boulder. The weather in the summer is fantastic because the elevation is so high. I was there most of July and August and didn't need cooling or heating at all. In NJ it always seems that you get about three days between when you need the heat and when you need the A/C. The two main drawbacks are the local music scene and the three hour drive to Phoenix airport.

So the overall order:

Boulder Flagstaff Bend Boise Park City Santa Fe

All of them were certainly enjoyable to live in briefly and provided lots of new things to go check out every weekend.

In other local news I had my first official set of house viewings with my agent. This was mostly educational for me, and I feel a lot more aware of the market now. I will say that the fact that Boulder is out of reach and there are almost no homes in my budget on the market in Louisville is pretty frustrating. If I buy in Broomfield or Lafayette I basically cancel out my work from home benefits because I basically have a 25 minute commute for night life.

I heard Tom Myer give a recital at CU on Tuesday. The highlight for me was a William Albright piece for three saxophones called "Doo Dah". Very interesting sounds made with a lot of extended techniques.

The Map

2008-09-11T09:17:00.000Z

Oh my God, you guys, Susan Oetgen's second Likeness to Lily album is almost out! Susan is a beautiful singer that I met through my brother. She's trained operatically but has been composing for and singing in an eclectic jazz/pop band for a few years. She's got a gorgeous voice that I find mesmerizing. Her songs tend to be sad and focused on the struggles of love (first album) and war (the second album). I probably saw almost ten of their live shows in NYC in 2006-2007. A very special group and as of yet unsigned and not well known. Also check out her Fairwell, Recruit video.

And now since the trip is essentially officially over save for the house buying part, here's the map of the trip Oct 2007-Sept 2008.

Poll: Shave the beard?

2008-09-08T07:06:00.000Z

This blog was originally on livejournal. To see this poll, click here.

The Overload

2008-09-08T06:50:00.000Z

You know, I think it's a good thing that I'm bathing in scenic mountain beauty for the next two months and have access to a hot tub. I think I'll need the relief given the number of things coming to pass at the same time. I just rolled off the main product I have been working on for four years onto a new project, so there's lots of work and stress associated with that. Burning man actually also generated a lot of clean-up chores back home and I'm still not done with those. I took the car to the car wash, but they really don't measure up to playa dust. It's cleaner, but still needs more work.I have to buy a new car capable of handling the mountains, get a mortgage, shop for and buy a house. Needless to say, my to-do list will be lengthy for a while. Here are some photos of the house:

So far the weather has been nice. Today it was gorgeous - 70 degrees and sunny. I did some much-needed yoga outside and then went for a run in my new running shoes after a professional gait analysis and fitting at Boulder Running Company yesterday.

Mustard vs. Ketchup

2008-09-04T10:26:00.000Z

Ha ha! Burning Man 2008 has been achieved! How fantastic and weird and wonderful. On the drive out there I passed through Las Vegas and drove in bumper to bumper traffic along The Strip, so I had a chance to at least have a peek from the car. These days my hatred of traffic is so intense that when it didn't seem like I would be able to easily park anywhere, I just kept on going.

On the way out there I passed through Goldfield, Nevada, which is one of these weird little towns that I find so odd and interesting on my long drives. There were some cool vintage vehicles sprinkled around as well as some crazy art cars that some guy builds by gluing thousands of random trinkets to busted up old cars. Very strange but delightful. I also took my highly anticipated no simple highway photo of me on my car out in the middle of nowhere. This is to match a similar photo a coworker of mine took on his cross country wondering trip in 1991.

I arrived in Reno around dinner time. The plan was to finish stocking up on the last few essentials, then wait around for the rest of the Freedom Community folks to arrive, and then caravan out to Black Rock City together. In the Reno Wal-Mart there was a very clear distinction between oblivious regular Wal-Marters and hordes of burners stocking up. You overhear some funny conversations at this point. Anyway, I got my final water and supplies, gassed up, had one final real meal at Boston Market, and then waited around. However, I never really saw any other Freedom Community folks, so at around 11pm I got sick of waiting and headed out to the playa. It's about two hours drive out there plus another two hours in line waiting for admittance to Black Rock City, so I arrived at my camp around 3am. Upon entering the city, the greeter gives you an info packet, and if it's your first burn, makes you perform a snow angel in the playa dust then ring a giant metal bell, then you can proceed. The bell is struck with a steel spike and it was the loudest sound I can remember hearing, and I've heard some loud things. I knew I was to be made to roll in the playa, but I didn't realize this would happen immediately and then I'd have to get back into my car. That really sucked because the car was in theory the "dust free" zone and as soon as I got back in there it was completely coated in dust.

Once I found camp I parked and temporarily set up my tent planning to find a more official location and stake down properly in the morning. In the morning I relocated a bit but then went off to help with various camp setup things. However, by late Monday morning we had our first exposure to a serious white-out playa dust storm. My tent still wasn't staked down at this point, so I had to quickly get a few stakes in, secure everything, then go take cover in the dome. The white out lasted pretty much all day, and by the end my tent was full of dust. So this was kind of a bummer but at least I got exposed to it quickly and reset my expectations. You can't do anything in a dust storm without dust wrecking it, including trying to prepare food or even open your food container. After dark it settled down though and I was able to get properly staked down. No shade structure for me though. The cheap-o one I had brought would be no match for these winds, so I didn't even bother. I had already seen one tent hurtling down the playa at 30 mph.

Tuesday through Friday were gorgeous and still though, which was fantastic. The initial dust storm had me pretty pessimistic about lasting a week, but everything is much easier and no big deal when it's calm.

OK, so what was it like? It's hard to describe. I think I'll give you three things. The standard one-phrase answer to what is Burning Man is "Disney land meets Mad Max on acid". The second thing I think is to just list stuff I did or saw to give you a sense of the variety that is there.

Free roller disco set up in the middle of the desert

Giant dentist-waiting-room ball maze game with a tilting platform controlled by pairs of connected levers

60 foot long teeter totter. Riders must be topless.

30 foot long spinning "teeter totter of death"

Steam bath project. Little hut with heated rocks and steam where you go to sweat off all the dust and sunscreen and baby wipe residue.

All manner of massages, yoga, body work at the Hee Bee Gee Bee Healer village (they are based in Boulder).

Roving diner that serves grilled cheese all night from a different place each night.

World Nake Bike Ride event.

Critical Tits topless bike ride (supposedly several thousand women did this).

Clinch Fighting class at Debase camp. I learned how to apply and defend a body lock and the Muy Thai clinch.

More yoga classes than you can attend in a day.

Screening of Flash Gordon with cookies and chilled milk. This movie is so freaking amazing. I hadn't seen it in a while and I forgot how fast paced the action is. Go Flash!

Pianist plays Beethoven sonatas on a keyboard at Lost Penguin Camp's bar and cafe.

Woman in post office makes me sing her "Jingle Bells" before she'll mail my postcards.

Techno music. Everywhere. Loud. All night. Till you puke.

Hopefully, that gives you some idea. For me, the one moment that really captured it was when I was climbed up on the Death Guild's Thunderdome steel geodisic dome. So there's a camp called Death Guild that for the past ten years at Burning Man have built a big geodisic dome (a popular structure on the playa), rigged it with two bungy-cord harnesses, and hosted battles where two combatants beat the crap out of each other with padded bats. Now, this whole thing is entirely drenched in Mad Max. Everybody is wearing some form of leather BDSM type gear. Lots of dyed black hair and dreadlocks on the women. Lots of nipple rings on the men. It's pretty fantastic. But the best moment was the second fight of the night. Pushed through the crowd lined up to fight are two college age goofball guys in matching ketchup and mustard costumes, and they are ready to rumble! This is what it is all about. So for me, to sum it up in four words: "Thunderdome: Mustard vs. Ketchup".

Other notable events include the Battle of the Marching bands in Center Camp. There were five bands including March Fourth from Portland, who kick ass. Also, on Thursday a bunch of folks from my camp designated as the "First Unitarded Congregational Chorus" sang back up while The Wet Spots, also camping at Freedom Community, performed.

On Wednesday night the kick-ass funk band Albino performed in an amazing huge saddle-shaped amphitheater. It was a great concert, but the fringe benefit was that once they had the amphitheater set up, they just left it up even though there weren't any more official events. So I went in there to practice saxophone and rest very often for the rest of the week. Thursday night after midnight I took my baritone in there and was playing for a while. I was feeling particularly inspired and improvising freely. Folks in their full glowing costumes would stop and listen for a few minutes and then wonder off. At one point it was just me in there, and then I saw someone decked out with glow bracelets standing at the center. After a few minutes the shapes changed enough that I could tell it was a couple kissing. At this point I was playing some lyrical arpeggio stuff. A moment later, another couple showed up and started making out. They both stayed around for a few minutes while I improvised. It was really fantastic. It could very well have been my most satisfying performance to date.

Even though Marcia was not camping with us in Freedom Community, I did manage to track her down knowing only that her tent was amongst the hundreds of tents somewhere "behind the roller disco". I walked back in there and within the first hundred feet walked up to Marcia standing outside her tent. Fantastic!

Saturday was another dust storm, and I spent most of the day hunkered down in the saddle resting and chilling with Lula.

Saturday night the whole camp went out to watch the man burn. They had to delay it due to the wind, but we actually timed it pretty well so when we got there, we just hung out for about 15 minutes, then they started the fireworks, and then they burned him down. Very efficient. I was particularly lucky that I ended up in the first row of people standing after about 30 rows of people sitting, so I had a nice clear view of the whole thing.

Sunday morning before dawn I started packing up to head out. I made it to Park City that night in time to rendesvous with my former landlord Gunter who was nice enough to put me up for the night and allow me to get my much-needed post-playa shower. Monday I headed to Golden, Colorado, seeing my first ever double rainbow on the way.

I'm now here in Golden way way up in the mountains at 9,000 ft. It's a good 25 minutes drive to get down off the mountain and 45 minutes into downtown Boulder. The house is fantastic though. More description and photos later this week.

The rest of the Burning Man photos, which I think in general came out really well, are here.

The new project and Burning Man

2008-08-24T02:29:00.000Z

OK, I'm all done with Flagstaff. The Green Machine is once again fully loaded and ready to drive out to Burning Man. The last two weeks here have gone by quickly. Burning Man generates a ridiculous amount of chores and to-do items. Plus I had to spend 6 days total in Cupertino this month. Last week was some transition stuff and the past two days I was there for some Agile Development/Scrum training. Yesterday was my last official day assigned to the HP Server Automation project, which I have been working on exclusively since I joined Opsware in August 2004. Actually, I just now realize today exactly completes my fourth year at Opsware. In September, I'll be working on a new project, which is going to be a big change, and hopefully all for the better. New code base, get to pick our own tools, better lab, no customers (yet), no huge ominous backlog of bugs, no legacy code written by dozens of different people in different languages over a period of eight years, no tech support escalations, no sales demos, etc, etc.

So the plan is to leave within the next 30 minutes or so, get some gas and lunch, then drive about 4 hours to Las Vegas. Find some cheap hotel and just wonder around Las Vegas tonight. Then tomorrow drive another 8 hours or so to Reno, NV and meet up with the Freedom Community camp convey, which should depart out for Black Rock City (the temporary city where Burning Man occurs) sometime around midnight Sunday. The man burns the following Saturday night, and then that Sunday I hope to get from Black Rock City to Park City, UT, but there's a good chance I won't get that far. Then on Labor Day I try to make it to Golden, Colorado. I've rented a gorgeous house up at 9,000 ft in the mountains about 35 minutes outside of Boulder. It has spectacular views and a fantastic outdoor hot tub built amongst a huge enclave of giant boulders. Then the new project at work starts as does the house hunt.

Anyone placing bets on whether I last a week out in the desert with no power and no plumbing and 50,000 hippies and freaks?

Biking to Fisher Point

2008-08-10T12:10:00.000Z

Today I had a fantastic mountain bike excursion. I drove down Lone Tree Road as described in my guide book and hunted around for the right place to park, which I eventually found with some directions. I parked in a small lot next to the Flagstaff Urban Trails System trail. There was one other car in the lot. A young woman was sitting in her red truck with her bike on the rack. I was hoping she would get out and be able to help me find the trail I was looking for, but she just stayed in her truck. I figured she was meeting someone there or waiting for the weather to clear up as it was cloudy and threatening thunderstorms. I took off on my bike and eventually found my way onto one of the FUTS trails that I thought I could take around to the Fisher Point trailhead. As I cruised around it started to rain, as it does pretty much every afternoon here during the July/August monsoon season, so I took shelter under the I-40 overpass, queued up Mahler Symphony No. 2 and waited it out. It cleared up pretty quickly and I continued on in the trails that were now wet, muddy, slick, and dotted with puddles.

After not too long I was back at my car and realizing this trailhead was harder to find than I thought. The red truck was gone. I headed the other direction. I knew I had to cross through a golf course community to get to the trails, but exactly how and where I was to do that was not indicated in my guide book. As I rode up the road toward the entrace to the residential section, I spotted the same red truck parked across the street, bike still on the rack, driver still inside. So I figured I'd ask for directions. The driver said she and her girlfriend had just ridden that trail last week and that it was great riding and beautiful scenery. She gave me some directions and I asked if she wanted to come along for the ride as well, since she had been apparently somewhat hesitant about whether to ride or not. She agreed, threw together her gear, and off we went.

The weather cleared up on the way out. It was some fun riding. Muddy and puddlely at first but dryer as we gained elevation. We went past the beginning of Walnut Creek Canyon, which has some cool rock formations. The last two miles or so to the point is steep enough that you have to hike for the most part and ride when you can or you dare. It didn't take Lisa long to notice my $70 Wal-Mart Mongoose bike. Of course I explained that it was just a beater that would take a lot of abuse at Burning Man, but when the chain on her fancy K2 bike started acting up and my Mongoose was working great I teased her about that.

We enjoyed the nice views and a rest at the top, and then did the fun downhill. There was some really fun terrain to coast down on. I almost crashed at one point but I managed to sort of let the bike fall out from under me and remain standing, so it doesn't officially count. Pretty much as soon as we were back on level ground again, it began to rain and then thunder and lightning, so we waited it out under a tree, discussed lightning safety statistics, and then carried on in the now even muddier trail when the rain abated. There were some seriously slippery spots that caused me to fishtail all over the place, and by now we were both completely caked with mud, but it was a blast. The plan is hopefully week after next have Lisa show me some trails outside of Sedona.

I headed back to my car. I was so muddy that I had to strip down to my skivvies before getting into the car, and then when I got home had to spend some quality time hosing myself and my gear off. After a nice shower and a quick rest, I finished the evening with the amazing George St. Pierre defending his UFC title. Then I drove out to the Fort Valley trailhead, parked my car with Laura Viers playing, and laid on the windshield watching the stars for a while. I saw three shooting stars, including one that seemed really close and had lots of detail visible in the tail. A fantastic Saturday overall.

More photos here.

Sedona

2008-08-04T11:50:00.000Z

Today I went to the Navajo Arts and Culture festival at the Museum of Northern Arizona, which is just around the corner from my house. I did a quick tour. There were some interesting paintings, but it was mostly weaving and jewelry which were not too interesting to me. The museum does have a nice exhibit about the Therizinosaur, a new species of dinosaur that they discovered in Arizona recently. After that I drove down to check out Sedona, which is about 50 minutes south of Flagstaff. The road takes you through some gorgeous scenery including Oak Creek Canyon and Slide Rock State Park. I walked around the touristy streets and shops in Sedona a bit, and had a nice long lunch with phone calls to my parents and Thorp. I waited out a thunderstorm, then checked out a few of the nearby lookout points with views of the red rock formations.

The rest of the photos are here.

Mountain bike ride #2, crash #1

2008-08-03T08:11:00.000Z

Pretty good Saturday today, given a late start. I left Quinn's Restaurant in disgust at their "stop serving breakfast at 11am" policy, which is a heinous crime, and headed to the Downtown Diner, which has a proper policy regarding availability of pancakes. Then I headed across the street and did some hacky sack in heritage square. Shortly thereafter the local belly dance class Gypsy Chicks did a performance. There's some less than impressive photos here. Then I ran a few errands around town. Late in the afternoon I went for my second ever mountain bike ride up Schultz Creek Trail, which is quite nice. I have a feeling I will really like mountain biking. It has many of the same appeals of skiing without the cold weather, bulky gear, expensive tickets, crowds, etc. However, on my way down I did experience my first mountain bike crash. In a way it was satisfying because unlike skiing where as a beginner you usually have a few silly topples before you are actually good enough to partake in a bona fide yard sale wipe out. However, this was a legitimate "la la la here I am coasting downhill on my bike" one second and "la la la I'm not on my bike anymore and the electronics in my backpack were probably just crushed" the next second type scenario.