August 25, 2007 – 4:52 pm
Christian had his first game of the season this morning, and it went very well.
They were down either 0-5 or 1-5 at halftime, and came back to tie it 5-5 with Christian making the final goal, which was great.
I think his head has also somehow transformed into a ball magnet. There were a couple times during the game where the ball came right for it, and one time when he was running back for the ball when one of his teammates kicked it up pretty hard and it nailed him right in the face. It looked pretty bad actually, but he shook it off and got back in the game towards the end, just in time to score.
He’s the only one playing this year, which cuts down our soccer season from insane (last year all three played) to just plain busy. We gave them all the choice, but he was the only one who felt like playing this time.
August 23, 2007 – 2:17 pm
Numerous blogs report receiving an e-mail today from TLA containing the following text:
As a Text Link Ads affiliate we’re pleased to let you know that we’ve begun using tinyurl.com to shorten and secure our affiliate referral links. We encourage you to update your affiliate links using the following:
Homepage URL
http://tinyurl.com/….
Starter Promo URL
http://tinyurl.com/….
** Please note that our old affiliate urls will no longer work in one week so please update today. Thank you!
It’s a blatant attempt to allow bloggers to try to hide their affiliation with TLA, for fear of Google penalization. Nice try, but it’s a desperate move that won’t work. The fact that they’re directly recommending that their customers try and hide that relationship says a lot though.
This is starting to get fun to watch, in a sick way.
August 22, 2007 – 10:55 pm
… on my bike so I could talk back to the cop that just yelled at me from his car.
I was on my way back from my bike ride just now when, right after crossing the intersection near my house, a cop car sped by (going WAY over the speed limit) and mumbled something through his PA system that had something to do with the light at the intersection.
I can only assume that it was something about how I should have waited for the light at the intersection rather than just riding through after checking both ways and ensuring there was no one around (>10pm), other than him. Although I didn’t know it was a cop car, I could see by its lights that even though it was approaching the intersection at a high rate of speed (did I mention it was over the speed limit?) that it was clear that I had plenty of time to get through well before his car got there.
Now, I realize that you’re technically supposed to wait for the light, but often on intersections such as those (at that time of night) the lights are on sensors only, and a bicycle will not set them off, so if there are no cars around, you have to ride over to the crosswalk and push the button to force the light to change. I think it’s fairly understandable to just go through in such a situation (when there’s obviously no danger). Ironically, the only thing even remotely close to dangerous happening in that intersection in the span of time I was near it was his driving too fast.
It might be my imagination, but I thought that I saw him slowing down gradually, and possibly getting ready to turn around and give me a ticket. I didn’t waste any time waiting to find out, though; since I was already at my street I quickly peddled down and into my back gate before he would have the chance. In all likelihood he wasn’t after me at all, because he could have stopped much faster to turn around, but then he would have looked like a real tool slamming on his breaks and skidding (because he was going so fast…) just to give a bike rider a ticket.
August 21, 2007 – 12:00 pm
Amazon has been going crazy lately with their web services offerings.
In case you haven’t heard, Amazon offers a web service called ECS to provide e-commerce functionality to outside applications in a service oriented fashion.
This has been around for a while, and I knew you could use it to interact with their store, but what I didn’t know before today (and this might be a new feature) was that you can also use the service to buy and sell your own products (not just those in the Amazon catalog), so you can use it to very quickly and easily provide e-commerce functionality to any web site you need to.
I came across this in researching their popular S3 storage service, which has (for quite a while now) been the prime example of the type of useful features that web services can offer in a service oriented way, so that you don’t have to write any code to handle it or manage the physical infrastructure behind it yourself - you just interact with their service API and you have storage, plain and simple.
In summary, ECS is to e-commerce as S3 is to storage. It’s pretty cool to finally see delivery on the promises / hype that web services were introduced with, and so far it seems that Amazon is taking the lead in doing it well.
[ UPDATE: After re-reading that, I realized that it really sounds like an ad, so I just wanted to clarify that it wasn't - I didn't receive any encouragement or compensation from Amazon or anyone else to make that post. It just struck me as really cool. ]
August 20, 2007 – 11:26 am
Courtesy of the Off the Hook radio show, I heard about this news story from Philadelphia regarding surveillance cameras that just goes to show how people / society can get so worked up about something that they end up fighting for / demanding things that might not be in their best interests if they really thought about it.
I’ll chop the quoted story up here and comment as it goes. Read More »
August 18, 2007 – 6:02 pm
This will be my last post about our family vacation for the summer. If you’re sick of all the daily logs I posted (once I eventually got around to it), then that may come as pleasant news; either way, hopefully it’s a good ending.
I did leave out the very last leg in my daily entries, which was the 12th (our anniversary), but it wasn’t very eventful - just a whole lot more driving.
Here’s a link to all our photos from my flickr account. For the Mt. Shasta shots, you’ll have to check out the extensive collections from Randy & Kristi and Nate & Kristen, because Martha kept our camera at the lake while Christian and I were on the mountain.
Noteable photos of stuff I mentioned in my posts:
- The loaded up car - The yellow net wasn’t really necessary, I just threw it on there since I had bought it and didn’t want to feel like I wasted my money. I took it off for the rest of the trip, since the ropes were really what were securing everything.
- The burned through rope we discovered at one of our stops
- My ‘ghetto’ panorama shot (pieced together quickly in photoshop) of the beach/park/pool I mentioned
Note: I didn’t take the time to do any color correction or adjustments on the photos; life is too short for that. I tried to add brief titles and descriptions to some too, but I gave up being thorough on that as well after a while.
August 17, 2007 – 5:09 pm
2007-08-11
Well, the original plan was to get up at 5:30 and try to “summit” (which is a verb in mountain climbing lingo referring to making it to the top). More accurately, the plan I had arranged with Christian the day before was to go for it and make it as far as we could, because I didn’t think we would make it all the way based on the first day and the increasing difficulty of the climb the closer you get to the top.
Christian changed his mind in the morning, though (I think because of a combination of the coldness of the morning and the difficulty of the previous day) and didn’t want to try to go any higher. So, Randy and Nate took off and Christian and I stayed at the camp and slept a bit more. Eventually we did try going a little further / higher, once Christian was feeling up to it. It was pretty tough even without the full packs at this point, but while we were there we had to at least give it a shot. Randy and Nate made a valiant attempt, but unfortunately didn’t quite get all the way to the top either. [I don't remember how high they did get, maybe Nate will comment and clarify].
Then we made the trek back down, which would have actually been pretty relaxing (again, through gorgeous scenery) if it wasn’t for the blisters being pounded into our feet with every step. All in all, I’d say it was worthwhile, although I’m still not sure that I want to make backpacking (and definitely not climbing) a regular hobby for myself.
PS - I hesitated to mention this, but I’m sure at least some of the readers of this blog will get a kick out of it… In keeping with a “zero impact” (to nature) approach, climbers climbing the mountain must pick up a set of bags before going up, which are designed to insure that you don’t leave *anything* behind. Remember what I said about maybe not making this a regular hobby? I think this aspect is a solid mark in the “no” column for that decision; it was pretty gross.
August 17, 2007 – 4:53 pm
2007-08-10
Christian, Randy, Nate and I headed out this morning to begin the climbing of the mountain. We stopped by and picked up ice axes and “crampons” (which are required for the climb). It was pretty rough, but I was careful not to kill myself this time like I did last time, so that was good. A big part of that I think was staying more hydrated, which I was able to do while still carrying less water in my pack than last time, thanks to the spring water from the mountain itself being cleaner than just about anything you can get anywhere else.
We used the Clear Creek route, and hiked up and found a suitable location to set up camp at around 8,700 ft. It was a fairly tough climb up, since it’s uphill all the way (obviously), and some combination of the altitude and my out-of-shapeness made it a bit tougher, but it wasn’t too bad.
Camping was great - the way camping was meant to be - no campgrounds or external resources other than nature and what you pack with you. Looking out from the side of the mountain was a pretty breathtaking view - nothing (mostly) but trees and the tops of other mountains below for miles around. It actually looked like a huge ocean made out of trees spread out below; it was awesome.
I also knew that the view of the stars that night from where we were, especially on a nearly cloudless and nearly moonless night, was going to be excellent, and I was right. I set my alarm on my phone to wake me up at 11pm so that I could do some first class star gazing, and I wasn’t disappointed. I saw *three* shooting stars within a few short minutes, two of which had spectacularly large, clear sparkling tails, almost like out of a movie. Definitely a highlight of the hike.
August 17, 2007 – 4:33 pm
2007-08-09
Not much to say about today, just some driving down to the lake where we were camping for the remainder of the trip and preparing for the big climb the next day.
As you can tell, I took no notes from here on out, otherwise I’d probably have more to comment on.
August 17, 2007 – 3:59 pm
2007-08-08
After getting breakfast then heading back to the hotel and checking out, we ventured out to / through Stanley Park, which might be best described as the “Central Park of Vancouver” [note: I don't know if people actually call it that, or if we coined that phrase], in that it’s a fairly large park in the center of a “big city” environment (in this case, on the tip of the peninsula).
It was really cool to drive through and check out even more of the excellent natural scenery that we’ve been surrounded with for most of this trip. One particularly cool part was at one section along the beach there was a pool / water park area right on / over the water, and right next to a regular grass park on the shore (with playgrounds, jungle gyms, etc.). So, you can basically have a day at the park, the beach, and the pool / waterpark all in the same place. There was also a large hallow tree that the kids could climb on / in.
Once we were done enjoying the park, we got back on the road, headed toward our next destination (Mt. Shasta / Trinity Lake). We took the same border crossing on the way back out, and this time (now that we knew where we were going on the Canada side) it turned out to be very quick - undoubtedly faster than trying to squeeze through the main I-5/99 crossing. Again, there was no waiting - sailed right through and on our way, despite our large cargo containers strapped all over the car, which could have contained God knows what kind of threats to homeland security (weapons, drugs, civil liberties education literature, etc.).
We knew we would need to stop somewhere along the way, but we figured we’d just play it by ear, so we just drove until we got to Portland, by which time we figured we’d probably want to stop in Eugene, OR, so we pulled off to the nearest Starbucks to grab a coffee and make the hotel reservation online, then finished up the drive down to Eugene.
