Winter Birthdays Out & About 21Dec17

Some of the CoWW gathered to celebrate winter birthdays, tell fishing lies and debate trips for 2018 and beyond. We pub crawled from Trinity to Cerberus to Iron Bird to Ute & Yeti. Here's an image, PC Daryle DeBalski, who was also wearing flannel, and BK was not.

When Will That Open 21Dec17

I did some more skiing at Keystone and Breck this week. The "storm" didn't really materialize while I was there, maybe tonight. None the less, the man-made was OK and there was a smidge of new mixed in at Breck today. Still, we are pretty far behind and very little is terrain is open. I did ski off all the open peaks in a whirlwind morning (6 and 10 are still closed), taking 2-3 lifts per peak. I even got busted for speed, probably just 'cause all skill levels are on so few open runs. Here I am wondering when the tops will be open. I also had to rearrange some vino in prep for a new cooler and found these cool bottles - Old Soul and Passive Aggressive - good names.

Ice In The Guides 19Dec17

I'm in Summit to catch the "storm" of 3" pending Wed & Thu this week... if you are here, hopefully there's more moisture up there. With dry & sun on Tue I hit the Blue in town. Among ~10 folks among 3 guides, which sucked - I did not get to fish my two fav holes;  I did manage to catch a couple of nice rainbows. It was 17° when I awoke so I dressed slowly while listening to Led Zeppelin. Whaaat? Yeah, I recently acquired the Page-driven ReMasters disc set... worth it. Maybe not for you 90's guys but Beatles and LZ are my definitive pop and rock & roll bands... it was still too super smooth in America. Anyway... I fumbled the big boy pic with cold and gloves and camera and landing but he was ~18"; I got the pic on the small one. Fun but crowded as I've experienced before here and it will put me off this water for an extended period. Still listening to LZ in HD - Immigrant Song - brought the internet down - it wouldn't be possible in "the non-neutral Internet." Game on.

Live California Punk & SKA [FB Repost] 17Dec17

Live California Punk & SKA... We caught the last tour stop of a fine lineup of bands from Cal including The Regrettes, SWMRs, and The Interrupters. It was excellent, enjoyed in a new (to me) venue in LoDo Denver ~ Summit Music Hall, among supportive fans. While I was in the mosh pit I did not participate in the wall of death/unity or the circle. The crew of Mary Yohanan & Jim, Leslie Wilke & Tom, Kala Marietta & I, Cody Hanson and Ross Nordstrom started with a good dinner at Kachina before the show. We all pined for our MIA mate Brian Wilke who came down with a bug at the last minute. Plus, don't get the wrong idea that Leslie or Tom joined for the concert. Really good music, "I'd do it again," with really good friends - not such good pictures, really.

The Derided Gift 16Dec17

I thought I was clever but Kala was unimpressed with her birthday gift of a skottle. The gift was even the butt of jokes during a past dinner party where I demonstrated its use as I prepared phad thai on it.This is an outside wok, for lack of better definition, and is a South African native cooking station. It's very cool IMO and will aid prep of a number of dishes when car/camper camping. The cook surface is fired from beneath using a normal LP tank and the entire thing cleans up quickly and breaks down tightly for storage. I was heartened though when Kala did use the skottle recently to prepare Kung Pao chix for us. Here she is "skottling" the meal... always improved while enjoying a Ruination.

IT Day 14Dec17

I ran out of space on the main 2TB server drive which held Plex data (TV recordings and associated metadata), our personal on-site server storages, and all our images and videos in raw and otherwise. There are already 8 drives on this Win7 Xeon quad-proc server (six Hitachi Ultrastars @ 2TB each and the system/OS/apps on a pair of Intel 500GB SSDs), so what to do? I got two new 4TB Ultrastars for ~$300 and migrated the primary server drive onto two 2TB drives - one dedicated to Plex and the other for images and our personal stuff. I then adjusted the Macrium Reflect backup strategy a smidge and added a 2nd 4TB drive for "other stuff." Performance up, capacity up - back online and complete after 4 hours or so ~ sure there were moments of panic. Anybody wanna buy some 2TB Hitachi Ultrastars? I use these drives due to reliability - they are from the old IBM group and still seem to have the best MTBFs. I am considering experimenting with a NAS box but that's at least another $300 for something that'd transcode video in real time and why do it if the Win7 continues to sing.

Falcon With Yoho 12Dec17

With little winter for skiing and still great weather in COS, Jim & I rode Falcon. Great trail with some mods speeding the upper downhill section since earlier... I haven't ridden here in a couple months. The Broadaxe was perfect with fewer big drops on the DH. Though the Thanksgiving poundage loomed large on the climbs even on the lighter hardtail. We did miss a turn at the top and did a cute little extra credit 1/4 mile loop. I was surprised to see the stream still flowing strong. You might also notice I scored a new MIPS full coverage brain bucket - at my age blah, blah, blah - plus, look at that uphill position (probably taken right before I walked the bike). What a blast.