Month: December 2003

Well, there is a little blue sky showing up there and the sun is peeking out on occasion. The snow seems to have abated for the nonce and I will attempt to get the USS Lincoln out of the parking lot at the shop today. My first stop will be Napa to get a new battery for the Wagoneer so that I don’t have this problem again.

Right now I’m waiting for Jack to show up and give me a ride over there.

Last night was beautiful and I was up till about 2 am trying to draw what I was seeing. The sky was perfectly clear (so it was *COLD* out there) and the moon was very bright. With all of the recent snow clinging to everything and all the people holed up in their houses with flickering fireplaces, the whole world looked like a massive Christmas card. Everything was a remarkable shade of blue to white and everything with an edge sparkled like it was dusted with diamonds.

It was truly beautiful.

Well, the water is boiling for my morning tea so I’d better run and get it before Jack gets here.

Have a great day out there.

For those of you out there who are winter-impaired I offer you a photo:

Today’s word is SNOW!

Yep, it’s coming down in buckets outside. Since a little after 7 this morning, when it started, I’ve got about half a foot on the front deck.

Now, as always, there was a bit of humor injected into my day already. I left the house at about 9:30 in the USS Lincoln to get to the shop by 10am. First I couldn’t get the car out of the driveway, then I inched my way out to highway 6 where I got stuck for two lights as the road was so slick and I could do nothing but spin the tires. Well, once I got going, I made it to the shop with minimal fishtailing and car dodging to discover a neat “feature” of our new location; one has to go down an incline off of highway 6 to get to the parking lot. Basically customers check in, but they don’t check out.

Once I arrived at the shop Jack came in and we collectively agreed that there wasn’t any real reason to be open today. So I climbed back into the USS Lincoln (which in the span of ten minutes was covered in about 3 inches of snow) and attempted to get out of the parking lot… about a dozen times.

During these attempts I was nearly hit three times by folks going way too fast for the corner and ending up in the ditch next to the entrance. After which they would slowly slide down into the parking lot with everyone else.

Something of note: Usually when it even –thinks- about snowing up here the plows are out in force and they just drive around looking for errant flakes. Today on the other hand this storm came in so fast and dumped so much that they are just now getting out there to make it safer… Seriously, at 7am it was sunny and blue sky out there.

Anyways, Jack drove his little jeep and was able to get us out of the parking lot. He dropped me off here and we’ll go get the Lincoln when things clear up a bit, like Wednesday.

Normally I would have taken the Wagoneer as it’s built for this sort of weather, but the battery in it is dead. I guess I need to get over to Napa and get a battery Wednesday.

A couple more pics for posterity:

We’re getting some good snow up here today which will make the tourists very happy.

Today is a drawing day. I have to get started on the latest ADE project so with the snow and the cold I suppose today is as good a day as any to get started. Well, maybe I’ll go see the 1pm showing of “Timeline” first. The movie looks just campy enough to be fun.

Also, I got a new cell phone. The old phone is fine, but the number attached to it got out to far too many random people up here and I wanted a newer (cooler) phone. Over the thanksgiving weekend I got no less than 20 different phone calls from people I didn’t know wanting me to give them fish in regards to their computer.

You know the old saying: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for life… Well, none of the ridiculously rich folks up here want to learn to fish, they just expect the fish to be delivered post haste and it’d better be a damn good fish!

So anyways, those of you out there that need to call me call the old number and I’ll give you the new number. Or you can drop me an email and get the same effect.

The new phone is pretty cool. It’s this matrix-ish slide-open job with all the bells and whistles… Well, ok, it doesn’t have a camera in it, but it’s a phone for Pete’s sake. I have a few nice digital cameras and I don’t need one in my phone.

Here we are, another weekend and another two days of music and musing. Today’s events will include some writing, finishing up the third book of “The Dresden Files”, and maybe if time permits, some Shadowbane.

I had dinner with Scott, the boiler repair guy, and his girlfriend last night. It was actually a house call to take a look at their computers with dinner being the bait, but it was delicious none the less; chicken enchiladas. They have two really cool cats named “Tick” and “Tock”, both are black as pitch, the size of a small dog, have thumbs, and Scott called them “Ozark Mountain Cats”. At any rate they were both really friendly and were just very neat cats in general.

The computer repair was easy, as usual; just a case of too much spyware again. Adaware should give me a percentage for all the copies I’ve sold over the last year.

I guess people in general just click on anything that pops up on the screen when they’re online. Something like 60% of the repairs I’ve done over the past year have just been getting rid of gator or any of the other 1×10^32 variants that people’s kids download with Kazaa…

At the store Jack and I have gotten both the snow board rack and the ski rack finished. We should be open for real business next Monday.

Other than that it’s a beautiful day up here in the thin air. I might go for a walk while the sun is still up before firing up the fireplace and finishing my book.

I just got two emails from friends and it seems that folks are hearing in the news that it’s cold here in the Rockies; it isn’t. But, according to the weather man, I’ll be having the last cookout of the season next week. 🙂

To prevent future confusion I present to you the Colorado High Country temperature conversion chart:

At 50° Fahrenheit (10° C):
Californians shiver uncontrollably – Denver folks plant gardens – Mountain folks gripe about the heat.

At 40° Fahrenheit (1.6° C):
Floridian cars won’t start – Denver folks drive with the windows down – Mountain folks, still in the t-shirt and shorts mode, go play Frisbee with the dog.

At 32° Fahrenheit (0 ° C):
Virginians get frozen under several inches of ice – Denver folks wonder why it’s raining – Mountain folks get a distinct feeling that fall has arrived.

At 0° Fahrenheit (-17.9° C):
New York City landlords finally turn on the heat – Denver folks start thinking about snow tires – Mountain folks have the last cookout of the season.

At -20° Fahrenheit (-51° C): Canadians say “Like, it’s cold eh?” – Denver folks agree – Mountain folks start wearing pants.

I hope this helps to clarify the various opinions of “cold” found across the USA. 🙂

The new store is about 90% done now. I finally got tired of waiting for the phone company to show up and finish the job they started almost two weeks ago and have just finished the tone out and punch down of the inside lines… No small feat either. The space the store is in now used to be the regional printing office for the Denver News Agency and as such there are 2 25 pair trunk lines run into the building and a 40 wire internal wiring job including several frame relay lines to Denver… Figuring out which line goes where took several hours all by itself.

At any rate it’s all up and running now hence the fact I can post from work again.

The alarm system is also finished with new magnetic door sensors on everything that opens to the outside, 5 new motion detectors, and a new keypad and alarm box connected to the alarm company.

Jack and I have gotten almost all of the winter equipment organized and out on display now. Today we will be building a display rack for the skis and another rack for the snow boards. Both of these require custom racks as there is just no real good way to display them in/on equipment you’d find at a store furnishings place.

So, it’s a power tool kind of day: We’ll be hacking up 2x4s and plywood, running gas powered nailers, and industrial screw guns till 3-4 pm most likely… Hope our new neighbors don’t mind…

In other news I put in some overtime last night and got the OMFUXS web site updated as well as updating my web site with some photos of Château D’Isaster. The OMFUXS site now has 20% more spiffiness as compared to the original 13 page design!

Ooops, gotta run. Jack is ready to go now,

Later…

It’s a bright sunny day outside with a flawless blue sky; a little chilly which makes it jacket weather though. It’s warm enough that the snow is melting a bit on the hill sides which make the whole world smell like pine tree mixed with a little wood smoke from the fireplaces around here. It’s silent; the world still sleeps under down comforters or slowly goes about its morning routine. There’s no traffic on highway 6 to disturb the peace and the only things moving are the deer on the golf course across the street. I stand here on the back deck soaking it all in and having my morning cup of double bergamot Earl Grey and realize this is why I like it here.

As the sun comes up over mountains to the east there is a magical moment when the light lances through ice crystals on the pine trees and the whole mountain side explodes in a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors for a few seconds. The low light makes everything look very sharp and contrasted; you could probably count the trees as they all stand out so well from each other and the colors are so saturated and surrealistic.

I stand here until the light line across the valley makes it all the way to the bottom of the mountains and lights up Avon. I can imagine people down there griping about the sun coming thought the window and waking them rudely… Well, if you’d just got up a bit earlier, you would have been ready for it. 🙂

This has to be my favorite time of the day.

Ok, one more post for the night:

I just got back from a trip over to WalWorld to get the X:2 DVD for my evening entertainment and this struck me as funny:

Highway 6, between Dowd Junction and Eagle, has to be the only stretch of Highway in the US with a minimum IQ to drive. Seriously.

First there are the rotaries to negotiate which always succeed in confusing the out-of-towners and causing then to orbit some bronze horse statue for up to ten minutes. See, the locals don’t even slow down for the things having planned their merge timing, speed, and direction they want to go 30 seconds before they got there. Also, locals *never* use the inside lane which is unofficially reserved for the aforementioned orbiting flatlanders.

Second are the chaotic speed changes on the road. You get off the highway in Dowd Junction to a 45 mph speed limit around a few decent s-turns along the Eagle River and though the store row of Eagle-Vail. Then the speed limit suddenly drops to 30 for no apparent reason right as you cross under I-70 and back up to 45 about a mile later. Roughly 500 yards after the 45 zone it drops to 20 right before the 15 mph roundabout for WalWorld, then back to 45 through a school zone that might be set at 20 random times of the day for about 100 yards right in the middle. Then it’s 35 as you enter Avon, 15 around the Avon roundabout, back to 45 to Arrowhead where it goes up to 55 for about a half mile then back to 45 as you enter Edwards where its 35… This all happens in about 8 miles and is guaranteed to give out-of-towners a seizure as they try to get to Beaver Creek or Arrowhead to ski.

As you folks out there know; I’m not much of a media person: I don’t do TV, the news papers that Larry has delivered here go straight into the trash can when he’s not here and I find the radio to be, at best, annoying.

Well I stopped today and turned on CNN for a bit, just to make sure the world was still out there (and that I still found it, at best, annoying) and was simply shocked to see how popular my little neck of the woods has become.

In the 20 or so minutes I had the TV in the kitchen on whilst making dinner I heard about how great the snow is on Vail Mountain, how a local fireman and his to-be wife will be married in primetime and how they are the biggest thing since sliced cheese, an interview with Tom Hanks while he’s here at Beaver Creek, yet more about Kobe Bryant over in Eagle, and a story about the little debacle over at the Vail post office…

The thing at the Vail post office is actually kind of funny. See, a local group put recycling bins in the lobby over there and the junk mail people got all bent out of shape about it. Amazing how something so seemingly simple as a recycling bin in a post office lobby can turn into an issue of endless complication requiring a congressman to help straighten things out.

This became a “policy” issue recently when regional bureaucrats decided convenient recycling at the post office was all too messy and needed to be trashed. So the edict came down, and the bins were tossed.

Apparently the connection between recycling and junk mail was a mite close for comfort, though an awful lot of us would gladly sign up for the plan that sends junk mail automatically there and saves us and the Postal Service the trouble of sorting.

But all’s well now, thanks to U.S. Rep. Mark Udall having a chat or exchanging messages – presumably by mail – with the “everything must have a rule” group running the Postal Service.

Now they have a “pilot” program for similar bins across Colorado; maybe they’ll even win an award.

Sheesh.

Maybe Santa Barbara could take it from here? We’re tired of being little California…

Well, the turkey-day weekend is now behind us. Whew… Next stop, Christmas Chaos!

As usual I didn’t do much with the time off besides relax and unwind, which is what most people should do given time off. This penchant people have these days for using the time off to work on other things besides work is going to kill them.

I didn’t make it anywhere for the feasting though I was invited to several events. Wolf and Lyon invited me down to Denver but with the USS Lincoln still out of action they would have had to come get me which is a four hour round trip. Besides, the roads, highway, and passes were all but impassable Wednesday night and Thursday due to inclement weather that caused several car/semi altercations and stopped traffic for hours. I was also invited over to Tina and Rick’s place to have T-Day with themselves and Jack, but I’m just not a big holiday kind of guy and declined by saying I was going to Denver.

So T-Day dinner for me was “Festive Nachos”, made with ground turkey rather than ground beef. We’ve got to stay in the spirit of things after all. 🙂

All in all I probably had a better weekend than most due to the lack of huge amounts of tryptophan in my diet.

I spent some time reading, writing, and doodling… Nothing earth-shaking to report, but it was nice to let the old imagination wander for a few hours here and there. I also spent some time in Shadowbane with the high level thief I play in a guild of cut-throats called “Nemesis”. We did some guild warring and whatnot and if that wasn’t going on I was robbing entire cities blind then running from the inhabitants of said city… A fun game, really.

Playing what amounts to a non-combat character in a game based on Player vs. Player combat is a challenge in of itself; playing that character well is doubly difficult. Fortunately Nemesis is not only a very powerful guild, but also very good role players with an excellent grasp of the game’s back story. There are a lot of racial tensions built into the game and it all centers on the “Game of Thrones”, so even the “Quake-ers” (players from FPS games who wouldn’t know RPing if it fell out of the sky, landed on their face, and began to wiggle) eventually get into it.

One thing that keeps Nemesis running is that the ruling class right now is a troupe of Minotaur warlords; virtually unstoppable 15 foot tall bull-men wearing full plate and wielding massive two handed axes. They can tear apart buildings with their bare hands, but are slow and not very bright being created by the Elves for labor and shock troops… Well, since the Minotaurs broke free of the Elven Empire there’s been a bit of a feud going on between them so we are at war with several Elven cities.

Right now I’m playing an Irekei thief. The Irekei are kind of an unknown race that lives in the deserts and might have some racial ties to the Elves; but mention this to an Irekei and you’ll usually wind up taking a dirt nap. The nice thing about playing Irekei is that they don’t like much of anyone as a general rule and only really appreciate folks who can offer them something. This leaves me, as a player, pretty much free to sneak up and back stab anyone I want.

And trust me, I do, and I’m damn good at it too.

If the racial tensions aren’t enough, there’s also a bit of a god war going on. A new being of great power which the humans call “The All Father” has recently arrived on the scene and has brought the humans up in power greatly. The Centaurs are divided in this, with some following this new god while the others still follow Kenaryn the Hunter. We Irekei, being the enigma that we are, follow something called “The Dragon”… We know what this is, but no one else does, so they aren’t sure whose side we’re on. Meanwhile the Minotaur, being a created race, have no one to follow; but rumors are spreading that a Lord of Chaos has offered them, as a race, his power in exchange for their servitude… Some time in December (with the expansion pack) the game world will see its first Minotaur clerics. This has me worried as an unstoppable mountain of muscle is bad enough, but if it can smite you with the power of chaos, that’s really bad.

That explains why I like it so much. 😉