Jan23 Music Appreciation ~ Just Cool Covers 30Jan23

I'm back in America, so I can offer cooler covers... choose as your interest suggests - these are very fine IMO... and they are covers ~ so not my wheelhouse.

Jade Bird - American Pie - Jul22...

Gundersons - Helpless - May15...

 

Molly Tuttle Helpless - Sep20...

Cowboy Junkies Helpless - Feb21...

Reina del Cid & Josh & Cameron Hotel California - Feb23...

boygenius Cowboy Take Me Away - Mar19...

Cowboy Junkies Sweet Jane - May89...

Lake Street Dive Handle With Care - Oct22...

Whitney Houston I Will Always Love You...

Anya Taylor Joy Downtown...

Brie Larson Black Sheep...

Fiona Apple - Across The Universe - Sep22...

Scary Pockets ft Lucy Schwarttz - MMMbBop - Jul19...

Molly Tuttle & Linsay Lou - Sound System - Nov17...

Solid Arlo Update ~ After The Shock Of EOL 25Jan23

Today I jumped the barrier from free Arlo multi-account subscriber to paid single-account subscriber. This was prompted when I was sent an EOL notice from Arlo suggesting significant deprecation and loss of functions in my camera-based security systems lest I buy subscription services of $10/mo/location... WTF? I am pissed because my initial analysis as to pricing (sure ~ 7 years ago) was based on free video storage in the cloud and real time motion detection notifications on my iPhone. BTW, it has worked very well in two locations (via 2 "free" accounts with <5 motion-detecting cams each) I've monitored for many years. Cam & hub hardware with free back end service was pretty unheard of and therefore a decent value on prior analyses... but that's over as back end does cost, and especially if not rightly amortized in the hardware costs; what's a product manager to do? Well, they implement an improved UI/service and tell me to jump off the boat or begin paying monthly ~ I would've done the same. I analyzed ~6 alternatives; I need multi-location security and my Arlo cams are sunk cost. The product manager knew this too and priced decently but not cheaply. My only other cheap alternative was to add drives to the Arlo hubs for local storage of the videos - which I've trialed in the past. The issue is that playback is by detaching the USB drive from Arlo and attaching it to a PC for playback - mostly a useless scheme. So...

The actual re-implementation took a call to tech support. I tried many permutations of "add location" but found nothing. I perused all the Arlo communities and FAQs, some written just this month, but nothing led me to the procedure recommended by Arlo's tech support on their chat. I quickly exhausted the chat-bot and was turned over to a human. To access a bunch of new capabilities and a new UI one needs to "upgrade" from the backend/account I was using to a new "security system" back end... getting to that point was not at all obvious. I had to login normally but then "add" the security system. Whatever, soon enough the system at the Nest was updated to the new "security system" and I had a new UI on the browser and the app. Fortunately no manual intervention was needed as I was in COS and therefore remote from the Nest. I was then able to "remove" all the COS-based cameras and their hub and associate them with a new location, Blodgett, under the upgraded account. I now have two locations all monitored comprehensively with a motion, people & package detection AI, cloud storage of recordings, and solid notifications on my phone.

It's $20/month more than $0 now though.

Summit Stuff With Kala 20Jan23-23Jan23

Kala joined me in Summit for some days. We hit our fav brewery, Outer Range, and grabbed January's 4 pack from the club, ORB 6, their 6th Anniversary hazy, was very good. We watched a weekend of routs and good games from the NFL, and hit the Dillon Rez trails on the lake for some XC skiing. We caught a kite skier shredding it out there. We actually moved back to COS when the daytime highs were forecast to be only 5°-15°... brrr.

Back To The Rockies 14Jan23-19Jan23

With a nice storm pending I headed to Summit, despite it being MLK day weekend. A number of friends were there or inbound so I was ready to ski with them after a month near sea level. Wise? Arrived Sat PM, as did Matt DB, and DD and we met for a beer at ORB. Tasty 6th Anniversary hazy IPA. One & done... tomorrow is a ski day. We discussed NZ fishing a bit and notable was a gift from Matt to his Dad of 1500 new ties in a cool box. ORB was packed AF as it was a Jerry Day celebration with outdoor company booths and new brews.

Since I was stag, I did get to listen to loud music on the Nest Theater before retiring ~ Sweet Pill was awesome "live." There wasn't any new snow Sat night or Sun so I stayed at the Nest for some surprisingly close NFL Wild Card games... Bolts blew a great chance but the Lawrence comeback was amazing ~ Jags could be trouble. On Sun night-Mon we did get some snow and Steve & Richard and DaveS & I all met at Keystone for a day of shred. Good to see & ski with folks again. I picked up "Last Chance" on the way home.

I dined fine with Steve & Richard on a great meat loaf and fresh salad ~ always a bonus. I slept well with somewhat achy quads - given I haven't ridden a bike or skied in a month, especially up @ 10Kft. Tue was another dry day so I passed on the skiing. It's worth wondering why again I am growing out the 'stache, now an infant handlebar, but grooming and icicles are an issue.

Wednesday was epic... we'd laid a plan to hit Keystone no matter what happened as to snowfall overnight, but as we awoke, Keystone reported 10"! Keystone almost never wins the overnight but did on this occasion. DD & I and Steve & Richard met up with other of the "Minneapolis Mafia" like Scott & Glen at Mtn House Free Parking and snagged some early chairs... even the ski down to Montezuma (from the top of Peru) for the summit ride foretold of great snow and skiing ahead. We completely enjoyed runs all over Outback all morning... most often leaving fresh tracks in knee deep powder. The trees are just really good @ the Outback. The conditions were some of the best we've had in a couple years and it wasn't even crowded despite the KS "win." My fortune to ski with DD mid-wk was simply due to his needing to handle issues at his home here in Silverthorne. There were issues he managed but he was pleased to be able to catch the big fluff with us during a weekday. What a blast. I refused to hike to North Bowl but Bro Brown & DD were all about it. Everybody but me heads to their main homes tomorrow.

Kala's on the inbound... woohoo. I took care of a broken zipper on my Arcteryx ski jacket. One's just gotta have YouTube and be fearless. The main zip on my jacket broke off its loop & puller yesterday (yielding no good way to zip or unzip). I looked up the zipper product and got replacements on Amazon in the cart, but then thought "I have gear with this part # probably" and found some pieces I didn't mind debilitating. I first attempted to simply replace the missing loop and puller but doing so often destroys the loop ~ well, anyway, that's what I did, and it would not click down into place. So, my 2nd attempt was to pull the entire slide piece off of existing clothing and then find a way to get it on the ski jacket. YouTube again aided in showing the "hacks" to remove a slide from an existing zipper and put it on another one (one has to burn/clip off the stops). I found another piece of old North Face stuff sporting YKK 5VS zippers and extracted the slide in tact. I then hacked the #5 top "stops" and removed the old slide and installed my retrieved one. Some paracord to complete the pull and voila; it is as good as new.

New Zealand Christchurch Chill & College Championship Then A "Final" Family Gathering 10Jan23

We chilled @ Ken's in the AM while he did code reviews and wrote & submitted his last few tickets of the current sprint. He's still a big contributor to the app he helped pioneer, Finding Rover, an app for finding lost dogs, which he wrote and then helped sell to Pet Smart. He never wrote great code in a rush... so they even still need him to interpret what he did. ;) At 1:30pm CCH time on Jan 10th we hit Dux, kindof of a sports bar, meeting up with Cole (dad to Curtis & Chelsea, no pics). Continuous keen street art on the walk over. This place was one of the only spots in a town of 400K carrying ESPN, and willing to display, the US college natl championship! We were the only 4 at our table with a private screen for the affair. Disaster matchup in the CFB championship however - who took the under? - a couple of hazies and we were "out," as were the horned frogs. We headed over to a concept hall of many restaurants and enjoyed meeting Curtis's lady Tyler and Chelsea's mate Kyle. Great kids. We were fortunate to be able to acquire a beautiful hand-turned kauri bowl from Kyle, an engineer with a wood-turning artisan flair. Recall kauri is the dense, astoundingly huge, endangered (he used downed wood), legendary tree of New Zealand. We were fortunate to hike to a 12 meter diameter one on our first day in NZ. So cool... on the inbound and on the outbound (recognize that dates in Kiwi are d/m/y).

We're headed home tomorrow... landing before we takeoff... looking for snow storms... see ya southern hemisphere... New Zealand is very cool and other-wordly.

New Zealand Castle Hill, Sheffield Pie And 5th Street Restaurant Team Rager 09Jan23

We briefly gave Ken a bit of a rest from hosting us and drove out to Castle Hill Natl Pk west of Christchurch. This was a strange set of rock outcroppings nearish the base of the Southern Alps at this latitude. We had a nice hike through the area. We observed a Maori carving/symbol representing this gathering area and of the giant eagle pouakai, long extinct. This giant eagle once was the largest eagle in the world. The hike back to the car also captured views across the valley of another impressive, rock covered mountain range.

As we headed back to Christchurch for a nice dinner outing with our hosts we passed through Sheffield where the "world famous in New Zealand" Sheffield Pie shop is located. We stopped and enjoyed an unusual Camembert/apricot/chicken pie (we still sense the standard steak & cheese is better). I heard the funny world famous phrase a number of times on this trip.

We primped and headed back out for an evening with Gill & Alan at the excellent 5th Street restaurant. Killer food was accompanied by beers and some fine NZ Hawke's Bay reds. On the way Ken parsed an app on his phone to ultimately get some of the street art in CCH to interact ~ so he said.

The debauchery continued when we found live music on the way home. Ken & Alan explained to expect little but I'd found precious little live music on our trip around New Zealand. Yet, we were granted some great performances from nearly the front row with hardly anyone in the house. Even the house sound was pretty good from our spot. We found out later that we were at a wake and that a local musician friend of this night's performers had died. Bummer... but the beers and bands were good. There were three main bands with the first two also playing a song with stand-in friends. Band #1 was just plain good. Band #2 kicked out some keen SKA; with the stand-in they played Jethro Tull. Band #3 leader was the dead musician's closest friend. We were very lucky and NZ was on the map for me as to live tunes.

We stayed all night without regret ~ but for any early rising on the next day.