Notag

Ick!

Removed it

Went back and reviewed my blogs from Jan 2008 and as I remember there were many new people working out at the gym. I tend to think of them as the “new years resolution people”.

We are 8 days into 2010 and I’ve walked into a completely empty gym most nights.

Just a sign of the economic times?

People don’t like working out when it’s -15F, -10F, -2F, 5F or some ungodly cold temperature?

I’m not complaining! Just seems unusual.

So, I’m shaving the other day and one of my kids is in the bathroom with me. I let the water out of the sink and I see they have 1 eye closed and are counting something.

Me: “What’cha counting?”
Kid: “The grey hairs.”

Huh?! What? Like we need reminders we are getting old.
To add insult to injury my other child comes over and inspects the sink.

Kid #2: “Count the dark ones, there’s less of them.”

There you have it. Brutal honesty of children.

Missed a couple potential snowboard days because the stomach flu hit the family and I was playing doctor.

Today, high of -10F, really unfun temp for snowboarding.

I’ll see if I can sneak in some time after the Viking game tomorrow.

Christmas and family this weekend. No snow report.

Visiting the family at the farm and sitting on the end of a 1M/1M Microwave link. Normally this is ok bandwidth and adequate latency. Throw 18 laptops, couple iTouch, couple iPhones -and- a blizzard and you have little bandwidth and even worse latency!

Speedtest.net shows our lovely 1M/1M link is down to 0.33M/0.21M and 2083ms latency! Of course I had this vision of catching up on some Raid Fight videos on YouTube.

Streaming YouTube wasn’t happening. So, I needed to download YouTube videos and play them locally. Thought this would be easy, but had to jump through some hoops.

I believe saving YouTube locally breaks the ToS so take that with what it’s worth. Use your googleFU to figure it out yourself and read other people’s warning messages.

The tool I found that worked best for snarf’n the YouTube video and saving it to disk is iSkySoft’s Video Downloader for Mac. Hit the previous link for how to use it. Drop dead simple.

By default you’ll get a .flv in “~/Movies/Free iTube Resource”, now I want iTune Video, so I used HandBrake to convert the flash files.

Worked like a charm.

Leaf made his debut today. Good to board with my kid brother.

Really looking forward to having the -whole- crew back and on the slopes the same day!

Got there in the later afternoon and crowds where heavy. Like clockwork, 4pm rolled around, people just seem to leave.

I think only 2 runs are not open. Highland rabbit run and Tree Trip run. Rolllers in the Highland are there but way to close and rutted.

Leaf got some good pictures.

Bridge run had plenty of snow but large mount of snow down the middle of the run made switches on the hill tough. I think they need to run the snow-cat through the run and even things out.

Ended the night in the Meadows riding fakey.

Gonna miss next weekend cuz of the holidays. Will really look forward to the weekend after that to get back on the slopes.

Saturday temps hit mid-20s so I and kid#1 packed up our gear and headed out to Afton.

To my amazement a crew member from the past took time off of work and met us out there. Chief has returned.

Packed powered (of course) was the stable for most runs with the occasional “pillow” of snow made by the snow machines (not!).

We forgot kid#1’s goggles so it was an icy dagger run through the snow makers. Fun stuff.

It looked like all of the Meadow and Alps are open. Terrian park in the Meadows and the rabbit run in the Alps. The major runs in the highlands are open. Bridge was open, but full of snow makers. Highland rabbit run was closed. Atomic Drop was closed. Jump Park closed.

Funny story.

We took a run through the meadow’s terrain park so kid#1 could check it out. We stopped at one particularly long kinked-box-slide and watched. Everyone was having problems with it.

1 crew of teenage boys was filming and being a typical all-boy snowboard crew. One member came down and face planted hard. He got up and dusted himself off to the jeers and laughs of his crew. His response, he flipped them the bird.

Kid#1’s eyes got very large and she pulled on my sleeve and pointed for us to go down the hill.

On the chair-lift she leans over to me in a voice filled with exasperation and says, “Dad, did you see that boy give his friends the middle finger?!”

I tried to keep a straight face and just said, “Yep.”

She sat back into the chair-lift and talking to no one in particular said, “Why do teenage boys have to be so naughty!”

Well, isn’t that a question for the ages!

I treasure these times with my daughter. She’s old enough to have an adult conversation with but still young enough to want to be with her dad and thinks it’s cool.

Did my 100th random PUG (pick-up group) and I got the achievement Looking for Multitudes and I got some email from WoW Dev team.

Thought that was kinda cool of the dev team.

Watch this little dog. The butt-drag/sniff animation is funny!

Perky Pug (direct link) or Youtube below:

I know many of the readers of this blog aren’t excited about the snow and potential blizzard that is coming, but as a snowboarder the snow makes me giddy!

On Sunday 13 runs are open at Afton, I expect even more this weekend.