Slightly Injured, not in the dessert

Yesterday and the night before there were massive snow storms in Joe's Valley. I woke up to 2 inches of fresh snow on my tent. The boulders of the right fork were covered. I thought maybe the south facing, lower elevation of New Joe's might provide some solace. No such luck. Ended up driving through a near white out to the Triassic, an area near the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry just outside of Elmo. The weather there was perfect! What a difference a 45 minute drive can make. Unfortunately I grabbed a weird pocket a little bit too hard and really tore a pulley tendon in my right middle finger. So, today I drove back to Salt Lake City to hang out with Mike and Cheryl and get some other stuff done.

I didn't bring the cable to connect my camera to the computer so photos of the trip will have to wait. When they're on the web I'll let you know.

Speaking of that, I finally posted the first couple sections of stories from the Nepal trip back in 1999. They're pretty rough right now, but at least they're up. Check them out if you're interested.

Alive in the dessert

Hey Folks, really short post here. I'm at the Orangeville (Utah) public library taking a rest day. I survivde the drive out to Utah and am having a wonderful time. I'll be back in the bay area on Saturday night. See some of you then perhaps.

Struck a Nerve

This comic really struck a nerve with me today. This week has been hell so far. Every morning I get in a bit before 9 and by about 12:30PM I've almost beaten back the email, voice-mail, and phone calls. But it's like I'm out in the middle of the wilderness in a blizzard and I'm shoveling snow. It falls continuously; just slightly slower than I can shovel. So, if I shovel like hell I can clear a small spot for a while. Of course, I'm shoveling frantically because if I can keep the spot clear for a little while then I'll be able to build a fire and stay warm (and melt a little snow too). But of course, if I stop shoveling to eat lunch or go to the bathroom then the snow will accumulate and it'll take me a while to catch up. So, anyway, I'm fed up with email; this comic made me laugh.

By the way, I use this great program called iBert to view today's episode of Dilbert by Scott Adams. iBert is a nice application for Mac OS X of course, you could just check out his cartoon on the web (you still need a web connection for iBert) but for some reason I like iBert better.

And also, I'm going on vacation. Hopefully leave tomorrow afterwork. Sleep in the sierras somewhere, arrive in SLC in the evening on Friday to crash at Mike and Cheryl's, then drive the last couple hours down to Joe's Valley for some bouldering and camping out. Just me and Khola. Should be a very relaxing trip. Be back on the first.

The internet is still a wonderful place

Slashdot just directed me to this article about Michael Crook. Pretty creepy guy. It's nice to see the internet stood up to his ridiculous posturing and served him what he deserved.

The best playlist ever?

So here's an interesting little idea. I think I've created the best playlist ever, and it'd be fun to see what other people think of it. If you use iTunes, I can almost guarantee you'll like it, even though I have no idea what kind of music you listen to. This playlist is "smart" (a smart playlist in iTunes). Really a smart playlist is just a filter. The contents of the playlist are the results of the filter placed on your music library. Each person has their own library of songs that this filter is applied to. So the playlist has your own unique set of songs because the playlist is based on your iTunes library. Ok, so by default, this smart playlist is based on your musical tastes. That increases the chance that you'll like it. But, the meat of this, is the filter itself. It shows you music that you haven't listened to recently, but that you have liked in the past. Listening to this playlist on my computer brings up music that I've almost forgotten about, haven't listened to in a while, but have really enjoyed in the past.

Try it for yourself! Depending on how you rank your music, you might have to adjust your rating to more or fewer stars, and your play count may have to go up or down a bit depending on your listening habits.

Mr Deity

I think it was Justin who turned me on to mrdeity. Pretty funny parody of God as a modern day narcissistic creative project manager. We get a backstage view of the creation and other day to day activities of the deity. The stories bend time, blending the biblical with the contemporary producing some really funny situations. The acting and production quality of these videos is very impressive. There are 8 episodes right now. Each is a few minutes long. I'd recommend watching them in order.

Fontainebleau photoset

Folks, I posted some photos of Fontainebleau from the two bouldering trips I've had there. The first was an amazing amount of fun. The second was a surreal experience caused by lack of sleep and jet-lag. There are stories in there, but they're not coming out tonight. Still you can check out the photos:

Fontainebleau