Troutmaster

Anyone Up For Snowboarding?

I was trying to close down applications so that I could get home and watch the World Series when I noticed that some of the ski resorts that I track had bases. I investigated a little further and found out that Sugar Bowl is going to be open this weekend. I want to see if I can convince Timber to go snowboarding this weekend.

Hobbits Did Exist!

Check out this article. It states that a species of dwarf existed only 18,000 years ago. That is simply amazing. Now find us the species of Wizards! I think this lends credence to the idea that bigfoot could really exist.

Tivo Report Card

A little over a month ago I decided to go ahead and get an 80 hour Tivo unit. In summary, Tivo has caused me to watch a little more television but the television that I watch is more effecient because I get to skip through the commercials. The shows that I currently watch that I did not watch before are my new favorite Fly Fish Television, The O'Reilly Factor, Good Eats, and Globe Trekker. I never even knew that Fly Fish Television existed (on at 2 AM on weekdays) and just that show makes having Tivo worth it. I also like the fact that I've been able to watch just about all of the baseball games during the playoffs even through I've been really busy at work. Overall I would recommend Tivo thus far.

Say No To Quiznos Pastrami

I grabbed a pastrami sandwich from Quiznos today and I have to recommend that people not get it if they are into pastrami. My major complaints are that it had too much mustard and not enough pastrami. On top of that I like my pastrami warm and this stuff was cold. But I do recommend the black angus steak sandwich. That one is always a winner.

Soccer Injury

I play soccer on Mondays and last night I was playing goalkeeper and my team played to a 4-4 tie. Right near the end of the game the opposition mounted a charge. They brought the ball across half and brought it over to my right side, still in mid field. They then passed the ball across the field to my left side and in a little closer. Then they put the ball in the air with a few guys coming in toward the net to head the ball. I went out for the ball and we all met in the air at the top of the goal box. One of their guys got his head on the ball and right after that happened I got my hand on it and redirected it to my left and away from the goal. Then about 4 or 5 of us all collided in the air. Someone undercut me and I came down on my side and everyone else fell to the ground. I heard a crack, and it looked like one of the girls on the other team had injured her ankle. From the sound of it I'm guessing she has a torn ligiment. I came down hard on my right quad but I was able to get up. Since there were only 30 seconds left in the game and that girl could not get up they let the time run out. I think I was really lucky to come down the way I did and not get injured, but someone on the other team was not so lucky. I would rather they have scored an won the game than to have someone mess up their ankle, but that's the way the ball bounces sometimes.

Decisions About Election Made

Over the weekend I sat down with my voter booklet, sample ballot, and Arnhold recommendations and decided which way I will vote on everything from President to propositions to school board. I'll reveal my selections on election day.

Get The F@#$ Out!

Don't worry, that isn't addressed to anyone except for my old T21. I got my new laptop on Thursday and today I sent away my old one to the scrap heap of corporate America. I was motivated to get my new T41p up and running. I wonder what my company is going to do with my old laptop? It sure would make a good target at a gun range. :-)

U.S. Open IX Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Tournament

I went to the US Open Jiu Jitsu Tournament this weekend with Rong and got to see some pretty good matches. Today at the trounament I got to see Rickson Gracie in person. I hope I can train enough over the next year to compete in the US Open next year. I'll also have to lose about 50 pounds. :-) Also on Saturday I started my Mandarin class. We spent most of our time going over the different meanings of the word ma and trying to put some sentences together.

Got New Laptop Yesterday

After nearly three years I finally got a new laptop for work. Now I have to get it setup and send back my OLD laptop.

Moose Hanging Out

One of my uncles sent me this story and it checks out. The people involved with the hanging moose decided that the moose would most likely die with or without tranquilization, so instead of ruining the meat with the tranquilizer drugs they decided to go ahead and shoot it. I wonder how this story would have gone if it had taken place in California? There would probably be a memorial to the moose if they had shot it and there would be town meetings where residents would complain that the authorities didn't do enough to save the moose. At any rate, I think it illustrates the difference between the real world and California.

Political Sign Vandalism

The reason I haven't put up a Dubya 04 bumper sticker on my truck is because I'm worried that some crazy liberal(the Bay Area is full of them) will vandalize my truck as a result. I found this article that talks about people vandalizing yard signs for both candidates. It kind of makes me think that I made the right decision.

Raining Here Means Snow In Tahoe

It is raining cats and dogs in San Jose right now. With the colder temperatures of fall and winter we usually see most of our rain for the year in the Bay Area. Also, when it is raining here in the fall/winter that means that it is most likely snowing in Tahoe. As you can see from the photo that is true in this case. This is very good indeed. :-)

Who Would Osama Vote For?

Who would Osama vote for? That's an interesting question. It is interesting because if Osama had his way there would be no vote... ever. But out of the two candidates, Dubya or Kerry, who would Osama want to win the US Presidency? Putin seems to think anyone other than Dubya as referenced here. Does knowing that affect the way you'll vote? We'll see in a couple of weeks.

Pumpkin Festival Napalmed By Rain

We didn't make it to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival this weekend due to rain. We were concerned that it might be too windy and rainy to have much fun even though the festival was still going to be open. I guess we'll have to give it another try next year.

Apple Mini Store Oakridge

Timber and I went to the new Mini Apple Store in the Oakridge Mall yesterdray. It was much smaller than I thought it would be and they didn't have many 3rd party products or desktops. They had ipods, powerbooks, ibooks, imacs, accessories, and some software. Overall I liked the design of the store. We ended up getting the Airport Express, but I heard that it can be a pain to setup with windows machines. The funny thing about the store is that it seemed like the only people talking to the people that worked there were Apple employees. I guess Apple employees wanted to go check out the mini store to see if it would help the company. We'll give the Airport Express setup a try and find out later. Overall I would recommend checking out the Mini Apple Stores if you come across them.

Good Search Idea

I found this link to mysearch.yahoo.com which is a pretty cool idea. Basically (assuming you have a yahoo! account) you can search for something on the web and then you can save it to MyWeb, Save it with a note, Share it (email the link to someone), or block it from your results. But once you save a result to MyWeb you have it stored somewhere so that you can either view the page/site again in the future or search only against MyWeb. The more pages you put into MyWeb, the more powerful search against MyWeb will get. You can also classify the pages so that they are almost bookmarks, but it is cooler than just being bookmarks because you can search against entire sites and get pages from within the sites in MyWeb.

Pumpkin Festival This Weekend

The Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival is this weekend. Timber and I are going to check it out on Sunday. Saturday we are going to a baby shower for a friend. Other than that we'll be busy working on things around the house.

Photos And Trip Page From Desolation Wilderness Now Online

I've uploaded the photos here and created a trip page here from the Desolation Wilderness trip this past weekend. I've also added it to the trips and photos sections on the right side of my blog. Enjoy and please let me know if you find any grammatical or spelling errors.

Made It Out Of Desolation Wilderness

Timber and I got back from our Desolation Wilderness trip last night. The photo that was posted along with this entry was us at the top of Mount Tallac. Everything went well, we even found her a pumpkin muffin on the way home. And to top it all off it looks like I've lost 2 pounds from the backpacking trip. My backpacking diet is working. Perhaps I should write a book? ;-) I'll post a trip report and photos later this week.

Desolation Wilderness This Weekend

I'm taking the day off tomorrow for a trip into Desolation Wilderness. Thus far it is going to be me, Timber, Doug, Forrest, and Robin to go on this 3 day backpacking adventure. We're not sure about the itenerary at this point but we will most likely be starting out at Emerald Bay and then we'll backpack around Mt. Tallac. You can find a decent but non-topographic map here. I will take lots of photos and post them upon my return.

More Registered Voters?

This article talks about Americans registering to vote in record numbers. I think that is a great thing. Let me state it another way. I already know that I'm going to vote for Dubya in the presidential election, but even if all those people that register go out and vote for Kerry and Kerry wins I still think it is a good thing to have all those people vote. I'm constantly amazed by the low numbers of registered voters and citizens in general that actually go vote. I propose that we make the Presidential election a national holiday so that we can get higher voter turnout.

Future Of Search

Could this article give us a glimpse of the future of search technology and the wired world in general? I hope so because some of the functionality described in the article would be pretty cool.

Uses For Search Technology

Every week I get an email with the Yahoo! Buzz Index. I am always amazed at the top 10 search queries. They are::
10. Register to Vote
9. Paris Hilton
8. Nelly
7. The Apprentice
6. Mt. St. Helens
5. Eminem
4. Presidential Debate
3. Vioxx
2. Usher
1. Brittany Spears

Out of the top ten only four are actually useful. That aggrivates me because there are so many really intelligent people working on search technology and it seems that at least a large amount of this work is in vain. So that makes me ask, why are there so many stupid search queries? My answer is that there are more young people using the internet than old people. And that young people must be idiots. I can only hope that they eventually learn to use search engines for useful things.

Chicago Style Pizza

I finally talked Timber into trying Chicago style pizza. We grabbed "The Fridge" from Pizz'a Chicago. It was pretty good and I would order from there again.

Santa Teresa Park As A Substitute

Since we didn't make it to Half Dome yesterday we did a two hour hike at Santa Teresa Park today. The benefit of not doing Half Dome yesterday was that Timber's foot didn't get re-injured before our planned backpacking trip next weekend in Desolation Wilderness.

Half Dome Napalmed By Alarm Clock

Timber and I were supposed to hike Half Dome on Saturday with some of my coworkers. But instead of doing the Half Dome hike, I woke up at 5:30 AM as opposed to the scheduled wake up time of 3 AM due to my not setting the alarm correctly. When I woke up I woke Timber up and we decided that we would not be able to get out the door until 6 AM or 6:30 AM which would put us at the trailhead around 10 AM at the earliest which is too late to do the whole hike in one day. Because of that I called my coworkers to let them know that we wouldn't make it. I'm going to make sure to do a better job of setting the alarm next time.