Category Archives: General

Things so normal as to not fit neatly into any other area.

One more ski trip in the books

Posted on by

I have just returned from another Heavenly ski trip. Now that I’ve been up there more than 6 times the season pass has paid for itself. That is good news. The bad news is that the runs were jam packed with people over the 3 day weekend (since some companies observe MLK day in the US) and many of them were inconsiderate weasels.

In the course of two days I was fully run over by a snowboarder who just said “sorry dude” after tackling me to the ground in a semi yard sale bending my right thumb all out of sorts. Later I would find he severely cut into my skis. That evening I awoke at 1:30am to find the upstairs neighbors rocking out, and after confronting them I again got a “sorry dude” while they continued their noisy gathering until well into 3:00am. At a little after 5:30am one of the cabin mates got up and started making coffee, giving me a grand total of about 2 hours of sleep.

I really need to take a vacation from vacations, I think.

The Tao of Spare Change

Posted on by

After procrastinating far too long, I took in a bundle of change to the local Safeway and used one of those change counting machines to convert it back into useful currency. On the way in to the store I probably lost $2 or so, plus another $1+ from the house to the car. Anyway, after what seemed like an eternity (in reality only a few minutes) of noisy shaking and clanking, the machine spit out a receipt that read like this:

Change counted: $242.58. Counting fee: 8.27% Redeemable Value: $222.39

Now I’ll admit that it isn’t fun to take change and make it into dollars, but is a $20 fee on that conversion really necessary? I suppose I’ll never get the satisfaction of asking that question, since no one at Safeway has anything to do with that machine. I do get the satisfaction of knowing that I filled up the coin conversion machine so completely that it warned the next customer that it was full and could not take their change.

In the meantime it looks like I have some walking around money again.

Another Weekend, Another Ski Trip

Posted on by

I spent this past Sunday and Monday up at Heavenly skiing, using up some of those pre-paid season pass days where I can. On Sunday the skiing was pretty good, temperature was in the 20′s, and the lifts weren’t too crowded. There was a base of about 8 feet of new snow since my last trip up, so it was pretty easy to ski.

On Monday everything changed, however. The temps dropped into the 10′s, visibility went to nearly zero, and the few people on the runs we saw were having a tough time keeping upright, thanks to high winds and no ability to see. The day was cut short due to the weather, but on the way down I found the California side of the mountain to be nearly clear of fog and wind. Wish I’d been on this side of the mountain all day!

Margarita v. 1.0

Posted on by

Thanks to a generous gift from April and Steve, I now have the beginnings of a home cocktail setup. As my first action, I went out and purchased all the necessary ingredients to make a “good margarita.” Looks like the one thing you need is practice, which you cannot buy.

My first attempt came out really sour and reasonably strong. I definitely need to work on it further to get it to a good combination of taste and kick. Right now I have a lot of sour and not so much sweet. All of this is being done without the pre-made mixes you find in every US supermarket, so I shouldn’t be surprised at the outcome.

I’ll try again soon and see how that goes.

Home, Rainy Home

Posted on by

I’ve just gotten home from the joy that is holiday air travel. As is typical for me, it was freezing cold weather for most of the OK stay, and upon returning to “always sunny” San Jose it is raining. On the upside, that should mean some awesome new snow up in Tahoe, so I’m hoping for some really good powder to ski on soon.

Dearth of Newsletters

Posted on by

I am having a hard time writing a newsletter to send out. What I have discovered is that after 3 years of using LCD monitors at work and on laptops I simply cannot stand to stare at a blurry screen for more than an hour or two.

This means that I either must crank the resolution way, way down or hijack someone else’s laptop to get a newsletter written. I could also get a new job, as that, presumably, would also have access to LCD displays again.

In the mean time I’ll spend a little time in front of the CRT and a lot of time away from it.

Another Ski Trip in the Can

Posted on by

I just got back from a ski trip to Heavenly and although its good to hit the snow this trip was a bit of a let down for a couple of reasons.

  • Not enough snow
  • Temperature was too high (48 F)
  • Rocks on the trails
  • Too many folks in lift lines

Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful to be up in Tahoe hitting the snow. But I just wish it were good, functional snow. 4 hours each way for crappy snow just isn’t much fun when you think about the time spent. Maybe next time will be better.

Vanity Googling Coolness

Posted on by

I was just looking up some old colleagues of mine when I decided to do a vanity search on Google. Since I’m such a big, important guy, I expected a lot of hits and Google didn’t disappoint. What I didn’t expect to find is this:

???? ?????

Coolness! According to Tom’s Hardware Russian language site, that’s my name in Cyrillic. You learn something new every day.

First 04/04 Season Ski Days

Posted on by

I just returned this evening from two mostly full days of skiing up in Lake Tahoe. There was no new snow this week, but the weather is cold enough to keep last week’s snow around, so it worked out OK. Additionally, the resorts had the snow makers turned on, so there was some “fresh stuff” to be skied.

I’m really tired but glad to have capped off two days of skiing already this year. It certainly helps take the sting out of the loss of a job when you are freezing on the lifts and hobling around in pain at the end of the day of hard skiing. :)

Stick a fork in me

Posted on by

… I’m done. After spending no more than an hour going through the various inner workings of HR, benefits, legal obligations, and the standard “why are you leaving” talk I am now officially no longer employed. It was an interesting road taken to get to this point, but that road is now complete.

My next task is to go do some serious skiing, work on the house, assemble a PC for someone’s birthday, fly an R/C plane or two and do a lot of Christmas shopping. Oh, and that whole looking for a new job thing, too. Is it always the case that “to-do’s” fill all freely available time or is it just poor time management?