A Connecticut Yankee Out West

Spaced

Having let this blog sit dormant, I figured I'd try and support the company cause and use MSN Spaces for a bit.

So, maybe you want to check me out there:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/johnco/

Pimp My Goaticon

After a few weeks of trying to get to know and love the new "goaticon" on MSN Messenger 7.0, I must say I just can't seem to get past the initial distaste and disappointment I've felt over the artwork.  I'm just not using the icon nearly as much as I would have liked.  Had it been more goat-like, or had it been more stylized, or had it been, well, better in my eyes, I think I would be spewing forth goat.  Instead, I've pretty much mothballed it at this point. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to knock the artist or the quality here.  I think this is basically just a "difference in artistic vision", and I had some preconceived notions about what should have been done.  Michelle's "Budgoat" was waaay better to my untrained eye.  I don't agree with the rationale behind why it (or something like it) didn't get used, but I can certainly respect such a decision, and I'll trust the folks who made the call.  I just had higher hopes for the endeavor.  Now I won't end up using what we've "paid" for, which kind of takes the cool factor out of it all just a little bit.  This was still a fantastic idea for charity fund raising, and if I had to do it all over again, I would.

Hmm, I wonder if we donated some more $ if we could get them to actually change it in the next release?

A Mayor Walks Into A Bar...

Here's an odd one:

I met some coworkers up in the city Wednesday night for some bar hopping.  Normally I don't dig on going out late on a "school night", but after about 6 days of staying at work until midnight or later (one of which was an overnighter) in the previous two weeks, I decided I deserved a little break.

Here's a random one:

As we prepared to leave one establishment, fairly late in the evening, in walks the mayor of SF.  We didn't stay and hang out with the man or anything, but it was a surreal situation, as the bar was not crowded.  I get the idea that this isn't exactly unusual for some folks (the guy is young, recently single, and on Paris Hilton's phone), but I don't exactly get up to the city much or hang out in Mayoral circles.

And now for random and odd:

Having left the scene now dominated by the mayor, we wandered over a block and my happily inebriated coworkers picked up some donuts, because they couldn't find a burrito joint that was open.  After inhaling his donut, one of my coworkers just randomly veers into this other bar, wherein we proceed to head to the back, and run into one of our VP's.  I kid you not.   One of our VP's and a small contingent of other company folks just happened to be in town on business and hanging out in this bar that we serendipitously walk into at some time after midnight.

My colleagues, already particularly intoxicated (me = sober driver), now have an even better reason to keep drinking, and proceed to put their livers into overdrive as we hang out with upper management in a loud, somewhat deserted San Francisco bar late into a Wednesday night.  Nobody ended up in jail or fired (that I know of) , and we even got a nice thank you email from the VP the next day, so all's well that ends well.  I was home by 2:30am, and at work by 9am.  I'm not sure I can say the same for the others, but I didn't have to fight a hangover, either :)

Last Day? (D12K11)

Pete and I headed to Kirkwood on Sunday to enjoy some sunny California spring skiing as the mountain prepares to close this coming weekend.  Neither of us was anywhere near as excited as we normally are to get on the mountain, but we were looking forward to a nice relaxing sunny day with soft snow.  It is interesting to make the drive when there is a lot less snow around.  It seems just a little wrong to see the bottom of the snow stakes on the sides of the road when you are used to *maybe* seeing just a bit of the tops.

Mother Nature had different plans though.  Most of the day was quite cloudy and overcast, with variable precipitation all day and very, very flat light.  The snow took longer to soften then expected as a result, so it was quite reminiscent of an East Coast ski day.  It was a much better day for skiing then snowboarding, but I'm not testing the new knee that much until next season.  Being on the mountain was still way better then most other things I could have been doing, but this was probably my worst snowboarding experience in California to date.  I continue to feel very spoiled when it comes to Tahoe experiences as a result.

It is sad the mountain is closing, there is still plenty of snow left, and from the looks of it, they're due for more snow this week.  They just don't have the attendance now though, everyone has moved on to summer activities, myself included I guess.  I'd probably go again this weekend, but I twisted my knee and ankle well enough that I'm still limping a bit and I'm looking at sailing this weekend.  So, I suspect this was it until next season, unless I attempt something back country or take some vacation and head to the antipode.  What a great season, I hope '05 - '06 comes out similarly.  I'll get back on skis some then too.

Skipper Johnco

I completed "Basic Cruising" a week+ back and can now skipper up to a 34' sailboat (like the one shown here).  I need to charter some boats a few times before I move on to the next level, "Bareboat Cruising".  I'm not sure how much further I will go after that, as there is another two levels of certifications that can get you to a point where you are well prepared for full on ocean passages like San Francisco to Hawaii (that trip is about 2 weeks at sea, one way).  Bareboat would let me go to various locations and rent a sailboat for days at a time without having to also hire a crew or captain (hence the "bare boat" term).  This seems like a great way to vacation.  I'm already looking at two September weeks in Tahiti with some friends who have the bareboat experience well in hand already.

So, if anyone wants to tour the San Francisco Bay by sailboat, I can hook you up!  I think it is a great way to experience the area, day and night.  Charter cost will generally run somewhere between $50 - $120 a person, depending on boat, day, and # of people.

The instructors I've worked with so far have been very good, and the rental fleet (mostly Hunters) seems very well maintained.  Club Nautique is where I went, based on recommendations from others.

"Deputy" JohnCo

I need to dispel the rumor floating around that I want to personally trash Scott "Spam King" Richter's house if he is ever found guilty and, by some magical twist of fate, have his reportedly large, plush domicile seized by the government and handed over as part of payment.  For the record, were this fantasy world to come true, and his casa became our casa, I have no interest in damaging the place.  Such an act would reduce the home's value and I only want to work for the best interests of the company and the email world.

I *would* however, not be adverse to hanging out in the place for a few days with several hundred of my close employees, various fellow spam fighters, and some industry media (supermodels and famous people welcome at anytime, of course).  I'd probably even be willing to do this all on personal time and expense, although I think that would hurt the symbolism of the event: "Mess with our customers and we'll sue you out of house and home" or some such.  We could create a PSA with footage from various spammer ex-homes.  Here we are at Richter's ex-place, enjoying the jacuzzi, here we are in Mrs. "Great new Stock's" ex-kitchen making margaritas, here we are in Mr. "All Natural Viagra's" ex-living room playing twister.  I'm thinking of dozens of anti-spam slogans you could attach to such images.  I bet you could too!

I'm sure the law doesn't work that way anyway, but a man can dream, can't he?

Psst, people should stop spamming (and phishing), pass it on.

The jig is up, spammers!  You're surrounded!  Come out with your hands up and perhaps even flashing that deed to your house!  This dude over at ZDNet has blogged your end by deputizaing everyone who reads his post.

Gates proves real resolve in bringing spammers to justice by ZDNet's David Berlind (last paragraph contains our deputization, be still my beating heart).

All jokes aside, the more publicity Microsoft's determination and litigation gets, the better, IMHO, so please do pass it on.

For some reason, this seems like a good time to point out the obvious; that the opinions expressed here (and in all my posts) do not represent my employer's in any way, and are strictly my own.  The rest of such a disclaimer reads something along the lines of:  "The posts on this weblog are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights."  Got it?  Good.

Good Friday? Great Friday! (D11K10)

The past week was quite busy, but I was able to fix my schedule at the last minute to take Friday off and work Saturday instead.  This allowed me to take advantage of the few inches that fell on Thursday at Kirkwood.  (You can click on the pictures for larger versions, if you want.)

Now, those couple inches fell on top of 7-10 *feet* that piled up from Saturday through Wednesday, so I was well positioned to have a great powder day.  With all the fresh snow sticking in the trees, no clouds in the sky, and the bright sun high thanks to the late season, the drive up was particularly beautiful.  Fortunately the roads were mostly dry as well.

We hit the Wall lift right at 9am and dropped straight into Eagle Bowl underneath the Cirque.  Then it was up lift #2 to go check out the backside of the mountain, where we were met with a portion of the mountain that had seen no tracks that day, and only one or two the day previous.

Pete and I decide that a hike is in order, neither of us having tried this spot before.

About 15 minutes of huffing and puffing get us to the top where we recover for a few minutes and then head down through some fantastically light powder.  Pete says it was like skiing with warm bath water splashing up and around. A fantastic, fantastic run.

Up chair 4, spying from the lift that 99 steps is virtually untracked, we decide we'll go for another hike.  My  first 99 step hike.  It's never seemed worth it before, but today it is almost audibly screaming out to be taken advantage of, especially after the joyous hiking experience we just had.  This hike turns out to be fairly steep in a few sections,  and certainly more then 99 steps (took us about 3o minutes with a few breaks), but ohhhhh so worth it.  I have one of my best rides *ever*, getting to crank some massive carves along an untracked expanse.   The snow is lightly wind packed, but not just at the surface, so the board gets to sink in a little while still giving enough support, such that I get the lean forward hand drag carve on my toe side and the flirt with the hip on the slope heelside carve as well.   Total zen ride.  If I never snowboarded again after that ride, I'd be content.  But, as luck would have it, I got to continue with a great day.  We dropped into Thunder Saddle, right underneath the Cirque (being good boys and not ducking the line like we were originally thinking), continuing to find nice fresh fluffy powder under the blue sky.

We head back over to the backside and enjoy a lift ride up with an interesting semi-retired couple from the Santa Cruz hills.  It seems the missus is an artist, and the husband is learning all about Unix by running the web site that showcases her work.  You *have* to check this out:  www.animalhead.com , no joke.  I think I might get the goat for the office.

Anyway, we take the mini hike to get over to Two Man Chute, where we continue scarfing down fresh tracks.   Getting tired and needing food, we decide to have lunch at Red Cliffs Lodge, taking High Whiskey for, get this, more fresh powder to get there.   We sit outside, soaking up the sun, having one of the standard Kirkwood lunches, chili cheese fries and Gatorade.  It seems like Red Cliffs serves a larger portion size of the delicacy then the others; I couldn't finish all mine.  We had wanted the jambalaya, but the cafe was closed.  There was a Subaru ad next to us with a quote something along the lines of "the only way you get fresh powder is to be the first person there".

After lunch we took things a bit slower, hitting Sentinel Bowl, Palisades, a great bump run down Look Out Janek, Saddle Bowl, a little bit of a hike to drop in through one of the Sisters into Sister Chute and then one last easy bump run down Monte  Wolfe and into Red Cliffs.  These afternoon runs weren't as powderlicious as the morning, but they were still terrific.  They involved Pete's fourth call from the SOC (work), documented here:

and a lift ride with a tele-skiing grandfather who learned to tele four years ago at the young and tender age of 72.  We never saw a monoski, but there was a guy attempting to use his split decision on 99 steps with climbing skins and then later as a snowboard.  I always thought the contraption was kinda cool, but never quite functional enough.  This guy's troubled efforts didn't make me think any different.

Lift lines were almost nonexistent and there was never much of a crowd anywhere we went.  I have plans for the next three weekends in a row, so I suspect this was my last powder day (quite possibly my last day period) of the season.  What a great way to close it out!

Kirkwood and Mother Nature seem to still be going strong, with another 20-26" falling Sunday and Monday.  It has been a banner snowfall year at "The Wood", right now clocking in at 547" - 710" (46 to 59 feet).  The average mid-mountain season total for the resort is 500", so this is a heavy year.  It is a totally different story up in Washington, where a warm rain spell back in January was followed by an unusual dry stretch.  This has pretty much completely trashed the season there.  Kirkwood actually hired about a dozen people from Crystal Mountain, which sounds like it has been closed more then it has been open this year.  They average 380" a year, so I'm left feeling sad for my Washington coworkers.

1 Subaru. 2 Subarus. 3 Subarus. More Subarus, ah, ah, ah, ahhhh.

I think an interesting anthropological investigation would be to study the make, model, and year of the cars in various ski resort parking lots.  I notice what feels like *lots* of Scoobies at Kirkwood, but I'm not sure if that is just my personal bias as a Subaru owner, or an actual reality.  It makes me wonder about other ski resorts and states.  Are there more SUV drivers at Squaw?  How about Sugarbowl?  Vail certainly had lots of high end SUV's, but it also had my 2dr Cavalier.  What is the rental car distribution?  It would be higher at Heavenly, I would think.  Subaru is the "official vehicle of Kirkwood", do they know something I don't about the Kirkwood demographic?  Are they just kind of guessing like me?  Did their marketing actually impact the # of Subaru's in the lot?  Would they choose another mountain if they knew more about the average Kirkwood lift rider?  Winter sports enthusiasts are certainly a target market for 4 wheel drive vehicles, but different mountains are more and more catering to certain segments of the population.  If most of the cars at Kirkwood are Subarus, what does that tell you about the people on the slopes?  The drive to the mountain?

All that has been stewing in my brain since a few weekends back when we saw perhaps 9 Subarus lined up in a row in the parking lot, then an SUV, then another several Subarus.  Now, every time I go to the mountain, this line of thinking pops back into my head.

Yeah, I'm a bit of a geek at times.

D9K8, the ski weekend that almost wasn't

Original plan:  Leave work Friday afternoon, drive ~320 miles to Mammoth, pray we make it through the forecasted snowstorm without too much delay… nixed for various reasons, so shift to:

Plan #2:  Leave work at 4pm on Friday, crapshoot if the drive will involve snow squalls, stay in South Lake, ski / snowboard Kirkwood Saturday and Sunday.

I was able to leave work just before 4, buzzed home, grabbed a shower, saw that the roads were going to be clear and that no snow was going to fall and then met Pete at his house at 5, loaded up his STI, and we drove up.  I napped on and off for some part of an hour, mostly between Dublin and Jackson.  Wait a minute… Jackson?  Why were we driving through Jackson to get to South Lake you might ask?  That's certainly not the fastest way to get there you'd correctly surmise.

I should have added an "am" next to that "4".  4pm, 4am, what's the difference?  Well yes, 12 hours, smarty pants, but the delay in my departure was thanks to an emergency 18.5 hour work day, resulting in a cancelled hotel reservation, and no sleep.  The best way to start a ski weekend, ev-ah.  That makes 3 times in the last 4 months that I've pulled an all nighter for work, two of them on Friday nights.  It was worse for some of my coworkers though, as they ended up slogging it out through much of the weekend as well, and had been involved earlier in the week as well.  It is *deeply* frustrating when you have to manage the prevention of burn out in people on such a consistent basis, both in the short term (rotate people through so they get sleep and maybe some time off) and the longer term (job satisfaction and the perception of work/life balance being a myth).  We're hiring, and I swear that if we were staffed the way we intend, everyone's lives would be better, and I'm only partly exaggerating when I say "everyone".  We impact enough communication around the world that I could make the case that a better service = a better world.  That also translates into needing smart, quality people, not just "crank turners".

The trip works out great though.  I was reasonably awake while on the mountain, which is starting to show signs of spring like conditions.  Tight corduroy,  firm snow and windy mountain tops met us each morning, but by late morning / early afternoon the snow had softened, the wind had slowed; all without a cloud in the sky.  I'll be content if these were my last days of the season, but would really like to get at least a couple more days in.  The knee is hinting that its getting stronger and is certainly less bothersome, it seems a shame to not see what that will keep translating to on the slopes.

By some of our standard criteria, we had "complete" Kirkwood days:  We saw somebody slide down almost the length of "The Wall", tele-gods pounded away down the bumps, and the monoski's were out.  We even rode the lift with a monoskier from Pennsylvania.  He provided some great beta on board design, ride experience, etc.

Mar-mott!

Deciding that another day of three meals in the hospital cafeteria is not the way to go, Mom and I decided to stop at Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast before heading into the hospital.

After picking up our orders and sitting down at a small, 2 person table, I removed my jacket and draped it around the chair.  We begin to discuss the "recent" (perhaps five years ago now) renovations to the "venerable" (well, long standing at least) hometown Dunkin' Donut.  We are politely interrupted by a middle aged mother of x.

My first interpretation of her approach (which turns out to have also been my Mom's) is that this lady knows us through her son or daughter and she's coming over to say, "Hi".  But no, this is not the case; she has no idea who we are, nor we her.

She mentions noticing that my jacket says "Mar-mott" on it  (she pronounced it that way, hard emphasis on both syllables, with the mot being more like the mott in Mott's Canyon instead of the "mut" that I usually hear out of people).  She goes on to relate semi-intelligibly  some story about her family being on vacation somewhere, and either seeing a marmot, or  someone having a similar jacket, or something involving "marmot".  Whatever the source of the identification, it seems that "mar-mott" was a call they made to each other all weekend, and they got quite a kick out of its continued use.  Her entertainment over this was barely contained even as she spoke about it. 

This was something she needed to share strongly enough with me that she had specifically come over, after having noticed my jacket while I stood in line previously.   She told us she just thought it would brighten our day if she passed that along, or something along those lines.  I'm not so sure it brightened my day, but it at least took my attention off of hospital thoughts for a moment.

Gotta love the random person consciously choosing to momentarily intersect their life with yours to share a miscellaneous anecdote.  I'm sure I've done something similar, but I found this situation particularly incongruent.