Another powder Monday

For the second week in a row Monday is a powder day. Of my 12 powder days (out of 29 skiing days) so far this season, five have been Mondays! I could actually get to like Mondays if this keeps up!

Due to the Martin Luther King holiday today it's more crowded that it was last week but the storm that has been sitting over Steamboat since noon yesterday has dumped enough of our wonderful light and dry Champagne Powder to go around and it's forecast to stay until tomorrow.

There was a huge line at the Gondola when I arrived at 8.20 am so I headed straight for Pioneer Ridge where it's usually a lot less crowded. I wasn't disappointed. There was plenty of untracked powder - deep enough on the steeper pitches like Royal Flush for some face shots - and some great tree skiing on Nash Junction and Fetcher Glade.

After several steep, deep and very energetic runs I needed to go a little easier on my legs so I headed up to The Ridge and Big Meadow via the Storm Peak Express and Morningside Chair.

On the way home I had heaps of fun on the bumps of BC Liftline and Mother Nature. These are usually pretty tough but bumps with a foot and a half of fresh powder are so forgiving.

I ended with two runs on See Me while waiting for my ride. On the last one I fell at full speed (the most dangerous words in skiing are "just one more run"). As my left ski detached I landed on my back and slid some 30 or 40 metres down the hill and in the process lost one of my poles. Unfortunately when these things telescope into lots of deep, soft snow at high speed they can end up anywhere, so I'm off to the ski shop a little later to see if I can buy a matching pair (they're only new this season) so I'll still have a pair when I lose the next one!

I thought for a little variety I'd try providing a visual overview of today's runs marked in yellow (click the images to enlarge).




Update: I forgot to mention that this was the driest, lightest snow I've ever seen. Not just Chamapagne Powder but $250 a bottle French Champagne Powder!

Cultural imperialism? No worries

A lot of people around the world worry that with the dominance of American television, films and businesses their cultures will somehow become "Americanised".

But the shrinking world is a two way street (there's a mixed metaphor!) Parents in America worry that their kids will pick up Aussie accents from The Wiggles*, Aussies are invading Hollywood, and now I'm noticing a few American's saying "no worries" and friends who work at our local college say it's widespread amongst the students.

Clearly it's time to launch my campaign to reintroduce "fortnight" into American English to replace the confusing and inelegant "bi-weekly". Then it's on to four weeks annual vacation, driving on the left and playing Aussie Rules...

* They shouldn't worry. Aussie kids have largely been unaffected by watching Sesame Street, apart from the occasional pronunciation of the last letter of the alphabet as "zee" instead of "zed", but we quickly beat that out of them once they start school.

Another bluebird

Day 28 of my 2005-06 season was another bluebird day - blue skies, perfect packed powder, no wind and warm for this time of year (forecast maximum of 37 F).

I started out about 9.30 am and was surprised at the length of the gondola line, but once the crowd dispersed at the top it was fine. It was a little more crowded today than during the week but nothing like the holidays.

I started out down Vagabond and then the bumps of Surprise and continued on to the Pony Express. As I suspected there was virtually no-one on Pioneer Ridge. I took Longhorn and Wapati back to Buddy's and Tornado Lane.

If you live in the US odds are you'll have a least one friend called "Skeeter" and today the odds caught up with me. I met Skeeter on the Storm Peak Express and since we were both out solo we decided to ski together. Down to the Morningside Chair and then The Ridge to Big Meadow and Buddy's back to the Storm Peak Express.

From there it was Storm Peak, upper Rainbow and Moonlight to the Sundown Express and High Noon, Two O'Clock and Daybreak. By this time thirst and hunger were beginning to kick in so we took Elkhead Chair to the bumps of Norther and then Blizzard to ride the Four Points Chair to the Four Points Hut and some refreshments.

After refueling it was Cyclone and Tornado Lane to the BC Chair and Norther again before traversing Rudi's to Vagabond, Betwixt and Between to the Bashor Chair. Then a run down the right side of See Me (the left side was closed for the Steamboat Winter Sports Club race training). The Christie Chair and Lower Valley View finished off the day and my legs.

The forecast is for a front to come through tonight and bring more snow. The clouds are beginning to form now so I'm hopeful for a powder day tomorrow. The season's been so good to date I almost feel guilty wishing for more. Almost.

Cubans are special

...and we're not talking about cigars.

Under a long standing policy, Cubans who reach land in the US are allowed to stay while those who are intercepted at sea are sent back. In case you hadn't noticed, the whole policy lacks a certain consistency with the way we treat illegal immigrants from, well, everywhere that isn't Cuba. And it's also ridiculously arbitrary as shown by a recent case in which some Cubans who managed to landed on an old bridge in the Florida Keys were sent back because part of the bridge had fallen down and the piece they were on wasn't joined to the land.

Here's a version in the style of Dr Suess that drives home just how ridiculous the whole policy is. I'll give you a small taste and then you can go read it all for yourself:

Your foot, My foot…Wet foot, Dry foot

There were two Reps, Rep Two, Rep One.
Both Reps did not like anyone.
They did not like ones not from here,
For they were Strange and caused them fear.

...

He said there could be no mistake,
They must be here for jobs to take.
"I do not want them small or tall,
I do not want them in my mall"
Rep One did not want them at all.
So his idea--He'd build a wall.

...

There was another Rep, named Three,
He came from lands called Diz in Nee.
A land where everyone was free,
Though many were called refugee.

One day some Strangers got a boat,
And on the ocean they did float.
Hoping to come upon some land,
That they could touch with just one hand.
But a hand could be a foot,
If on dry land that foot was put.

...

And though they spoke in words quite strange,
These Strangers though, could now remain.
Rep Three had always liked that law,
He used it many times before.
The Strangers would get off their boat,
And for Rep Three they'd give their vote.

Powder day vs the dentist

Does it cancel out if you ski powder in the morning and visit the dentist in the afternoon? I tested this today and the answer is "no" - it's still a powder day! Only six inches of new snow overnight according to the official reports but as always it was deeper than that in spots.

Day 27 of my 2005-06 season and I skied with my wife today. Marie got her first taste of untracked powder on Big Meadow. "It's like riding a wave" was how she described it. Other than that we skied Rudi's, Lightning, Buddy's and Vagabond a couple of times. Got started a little later than I hoped but I still found some nice powder lines along the sides of these runs.

No to Alito

I don't generally have a high opinion of USA Today but this opinion piece is spot on.

As the writer says:

...when it comes to reviewing government abuse, Samuel Alito is an empty robe... Alito's writings and opinions show a jurist who is willing to yield tremendous authority to the government and offer little in terms of judicial review — views repeatedly rejected not only by his appellate colleagues but also by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Which is a real concern because:

This country is facing one of the most serious constitutional crises in its history. President Bush has claimed virtually absolute authority to act in contradiction of federal and international law... Alito would supply the final vote to shift the balance of power toward a president claiming the powers of a maximum leader.

Just have a look at a couple of cases:

...Garner v. Tennessee. In that case, a police officer shot and killed an unarmed 15-year-old boy when he fled with $10 from a home. Alito supported the right of the officer to kill the boy for failing to stop when ordered.

...in Doe v. Groody, Alito wrote a dissenting opinion arguing that police officers could strip-search a mother and her 10-year-old daughter, despite the fact that neither was named in the search warrant nor suspected of crimes.

If these are not abuses of government power against which the courts in a supposedly free society should protect the people then I'd love to ask Judge Alito what is.

Forget for a moment about the constitutional issues (as important as they are) and ask yourself, do you want to live in a country where the police are free to shoot your unarmed 15 year old son or strip search your ten year old daughter? Or perhaps you're working on the mistaken assumption that this will only happen to someone else's family?

Mid-week blues (and blacks)

I felt my skiing today was a little flat, a lot like the light, or perhaps I am simply making the mistake of comparing today with the awesome day I had on Monday.

Looked at objectively it was actually quite good. The snow is in good condition, it wasn't particularly cold, and the holiday crowds are well and truly gone. I rode every single chair today by myself. I was out early and tenth in line for the gondola and I did ride with some other people, all of whom were locals, but I barely saw a soul for most of the time I was out.

I started out on Rudi's and Lightning to the Four Points Chair and then took upper Rainbow and Moonlight to the Sundown Express as it opened. A high speed cruise down High Noon took me across to Westside which I can see clearly from my home office window so I made a point today of stopping and sighting my house.

Back up the Sundown Express and I decided to head over to Morningside to see if I could catch a little more sun. It was not to be as the sun quickly disappeared back behind the clouds but I did find some stashes of untracked powder off to the right of Cowboy Coffee.

From the Morningside Chair I took The Ridge, Buddy's and Tornado Lane and then BC Chair. Heading home I took Norther, Rudi's, Vagabond, Betwixt, and BC Skiway, but then decided to make a couple more circuits on the Christie Chair via See Me and Vogue.

Wine or Champagne?

Champagne powder that is. I missed four inches of fresh snow yesterday because of too much wine on Saturday night (not a lot, but just enough that I didn't feel like getting out of bed early). But today made up for it because it was a champagne powder day in Steamboat, I was up early and in the gondola line when it opened.

I started out on upper Vagabond where I got fresh tracks to Surprise and the BC Chair. On Sunnyside I got fresh tracks again in six inches of fresh snow over the top of perfectly groomed corduroy.

Then on to the Storm Peak Express for the fun to begin. The mountain report said ten inches, but in places it had drifted and was closer to a foot and a half. I got first tracks on Kuus' Cruise and then across to lower Three O'Clock. Back up to High Noon and Two O'Clock then through the trees to lower High Noon. Once more on the Storm Peak Express and into the trees of Shadows and Lights Out.

Then from the Storm Peak Express I decided to take Hot Cakes into Morningside where I did a circuit and then down The Ridge to Big Meadow. Then down lower Buddy's and Tornado Lane to the BC Chair.

Then my favourite bumps on Norther, across Rudi's to Vagabond and Betwixt to Mother Nature which is normally the mother of all bump runs but was groomed two nights ago and with the fresh snow was a delight. Lower Concentration took me to the Thunderhead Express and then upper Concentration where I still found plenty of fresh powder lines on the right hand side under the chair. Finally, Between to Shortcut and the Green Line bus which I managed to time perfectly to end day 25 of my 2005-06 season.

Monday mornings don't come any better than this!

Rocky Mountain vista

It was cold today in the valley so I added an extra layer, not realising that we had an inversion and it was actually 15F warmer at the top of the mountain. But better too hot than too cold.

I started out early to avoid the crowds of college kids who fortunately party hard and sleep late. Joined the opening line at the Gondola then down a perfectly groomed upper Vagabond to Surprise. The bumps were not so soft and forgiving today, but the key to improving is to push yourself outside your comfort zone so I went for it and did OK.

Next the BC Chair and first tracks on the corduroy of lower Rainbow and down to the Storm Peak Chair and across to Morningside to catch some morning sun. I was feeling energetic so I even hiked up to Alarm Clock (below).


Unfortunately what looked from a distance like powder was crust so it wasn't really worth it, but I can use the exercise anyway.

I also took a couple of panaromic shots from the top. This one is looking north where you can see Wyoming on the horizon and that's the shadow of me taking the photo in the bottom left.


This one is looking east.


And this is the Storm Peak Laboratory where the Desert Research Institute does atmospheric research. Yes this is some very lucky person's office at 10,500ft above sea level!

After that I took The Ridge to Buddy's and Tornado Lane. Back to the Storm Peak Chair and then across to High Noon and Sunshine Lift Line where I did some high speed carved turns. Back up the Sunshine Chair then High Noon to upper Two O'Clock, along Duster and then down lower Three O'Clock.

Next to the Elkhead Chair and down Elkhead Lift Line and back up the same chair to the bumps of Norther, across Rudi's to Vagabond, down Surprise to the BC Chair to do that again, but this time I continued down Vagabond to BC Skiway and home.

A simple question for Judge Alito

Any American who believes in liberty ought to write to their Senators and ask them to put one simple question to Judge Alito during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings:

What are the constraints on the President's powers in time of war?

If he answers none, which seems to be the view of his friends in the administration, then clearly he's a man who has no place on the team that should be our last line of defence against tyranny.

It's ironic really that 200+ years after fighting a revolution against a (King) George who thought his power was absolute we now have a (President) George who thinks the same way. They both seem to have the same definition of 'the rule of law' - "I'm the law and I rule".

Sunshine, sunshine

Day 23 of my 2005-06 season and it's a truly glorious day in Steamboat. Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath of wind and the sun shining on several inches of fresh snow where from the right angle the crystals twinkle like stars.

I took a mid-day break to ski with my wife so we spent most of our time riding the Sunshine chair and cruising the groomers in "Wally World" and exploring a few stashes of fresh snow in between the trees.

The college kids are on vacation and it seems most of them are in Steamboat this weekend, so if I do go out over the next three days it will be early enough to beat the crowds.

Getting high

I normally get my high from skiing but today I got a whiff on the gondola - some young guys in my car were smoking something and it wasn't tobacco.

We only had a couple of inches of new snow overnight, but the snow cats were busy last night so almost everything was groomed. I started out with a run down Rudi's, Blizzard and Ego while waiting for the Express chairs to open at 9am. After riding the BC chair I got first tracks on Sunnyside. Perfect corduroy with 2-3 inches of powder on top so you could clearly see your signature in the snow. Smooth, sinuous, seductive curves. Skiing as a form of artistic expression. Poetry in motion. Awesome.

After that I circulated on the Sundown Express while taking care of the nicely groomed afternoon hours (Three O'Clock, Two O'Clock, One O'Clock) in the morning. Then a traverse across to Storm Peak and Rainbow to the Storm Peak Express followed by upper Buddy's, Big Meadow and Tornado Lane.

Today's a working day so as much as I would liked to have stayed out and played in the quickly accumulating new snow, it was time to head back in. BC Chair to Norther where I absolutely nailed the third set of bumps, across Rudi's to upper Vagabond then a quick run down Betwixt and Shortcut just in time for the Green line bus home.

I'm hoping it keeps snowing all day and tonight and we get a full on powder day tomorrow.

What does "RIPE" mean in Spanish?

I went to my local supermarket to buy an avocado and found a plentiful supply all beautifully displayed. This is one of the marvels of our modern economy - that in the middle of winter in a Colorado mountain town I can simply expect to be able to buy tropical fruits. But we take that for granted. What really caught my attention was that every single avocado had a sticker attached saying "RIPE".



Here's the thing - not one of them was even close to ripe. So unless "RIPE" means something else in Mexico where the avocados are grown, shame on you Safeway.

Blizzard

No, not the run next to Lightning. It's snowing like crazy outside right now. Check out the size of those flakes (click the image below to enlarge for best effect).

You want me to wait how long?

I just tried ordering some new shirts from an online vendor. I've shopped with them before and I love their stuff but clearly they have really serious supply chain management problems. The items I wanted were unavailable for anything from one to three months. It's particularly dumb to tell me I can't have a turtleneck until April 28; in case they hadn't noticed, that's spring by which time I won't be needing it even here in Steamboat! I wouldn't wait that long for delivery of a new car let alone a shirt.

You've really got to wonder how this could happen. In this age of global supply chains, fast moving firms in the fashion industry can identify a new trend, design a product, have it manufactured in China or wherever, ship it to the US and have it in the stores in less time than that. Perhaps they should change their name from LL Bean to LL Bean-less. Or at least fire the executive responsible.

Anyway it's not my problem because Lands End had men's shirts in stock at the same prices. They got my order.

Heavy snow

That's heavy not in terms of the amount (only six inches of new snow) but the consistency. Our weather is currently being dominated by the same system dumping lots of rain on California and that always means warmer than average temperatures and heavier snow.

It was still quite cool when I started out this morning, and a little windy at the top, but by 12.30 the sun was out and it warmed up quite quickly, turning into a beautiful day.

I skied today with Vicki an Aussie friend who winters in Steamboat and her friend Chuck. We started out on the Sundown Express and went looking for some shelter from the wind in the trees of Twilight followed by "Vicki's Line" (to remain secret under pain of death).

It was heavy going and we quickly got quite warm so after riding the Sundown Express again we decided to cruise down High Noon and One O'Clock which was quite sweet (even if it wasn't groomed as it said it was on today's grooming report).

Once more up Sundown Express where we warmed our insides with a small bottle of Grand Marnier that Chuck pulled from his jacket (thanks Chuck!) and then Hot Cakes to the Morningside Chair to access The Ridge and Buddy's followed by Drop Out which had been nicely groomed last night.

The Storm Peak Express took us to Storm Peak (duh) and Rainbow followed by the BC Chair, by which time my stomach was well and truly rumbling so I took the bumps of Norther and then across Rudi's to Vagabond (which was wonderfully uncrowded) and then BC Skiway. While I waited for my lovely wife to pick me up I did a final circuit on the Christie Chair, Sitz and See Me to finish day 21 of my 2005-06 season.

It was much quieter on the mountain today than last Thursday (and I'm not even going to try to imagine what the crowds were like on the weekend.) Now that the bulk of the tourists have left all we need is for the weather to shift to the north bringing some of that cold Canadian air and more of Steamboat's famous champagne powder!

Update: I removed details on the location of "Vicki's Line" - she said it was too much information even though I'd used an old KGB trick (disinformation) and described its location incorrectly!

The evils of minimum wage legislation

An excellent post at The Liberal Order on the evils of minimum wage legislation.

It's always tough arguing against something like raising the minimum wage since it seems like a decent thing to do if you don't think about it too hard. You risk looking like a heartless bastard. But the difference is I have nothing personal to lose or gain from changes in the minimum wage. The true heartless bastards are those like labour unions who do stand to benefit at the expense of others.

Wages are nothing more that the price of labour. For those who missed Economics 101 if you raise the price of something you reduce the demand. It's as simple as that. And it's the poor struggling sorry bastards who are only just productive enough to justify being employed under current minimum wages that end up out of work (often replaced by a machine).

So at the end of the day raising the minimum wage amounts to taking the very lowest paid people in the workforce and giving them the pink slip. Does it still seem compassionate?

More snow, but not from here

It has been snowing in Steamboat, but I've been taking it easy over the New Year weekend and avoiding the holiday crowds on the mountain. So instead of photos of Steamboat or more about my skiing exploits, I thought I'd post this photo of my wife's cousin Ghassan and Jimmy (the car, as in GMC Jimmy) enjoying the snow at Feytroun in the mountains behind Beirut, Lebanon which was taken earlier this week.

Still more powder

Day 20 of my 2005-06 season and I skied today with my former neighbour Dave V (not to be confused with my former neighbour Dave W).

It was quite closed in and windy on the upper moutain so we headed for the trees where we found a suprising amount of powder still around from Tuesday's fall. Here's what we did:

Sundown Express, High Noon and One O'Clock
Sundown Express, Shadows, Lights Out
Sundown Express, the trees between the Priest Creek Chair and Three O'Clock (as far as I can tell this run doesn't have a name but it was definitely the best run of the day) then lower Three O'Clock
Sundown Express, Twilight, Daybreak
Sundown Express, Traverse, Storm Peak, Cyclone, Drop Out
Pony Express, Royal Flush, Ambush
Pony Express, Middle Rib
Pony Express, Half Hitch, Flying Z, Tornado Lane
Burgess Creek Chair, Norther, Vagabond, BC Skiway.

The only down side is that the mountain is now quite crowded. I think I'll wait until the visitors leave on Monday before heading out again and catch up on some things at home in the meantime (unless of course we get another powder day!)

Unexpected powder day

Day 19 of my 2005-06 season. After the spring-like conditions of the last few days the last thing I expected today was another powder day but that's exactly what I got.

I was out early, not because I expected eight inches of powder, but simply because I had made plans to meet my friend Jeremy who is only here a week and was therefore keen to get started.

Our best runs of the day were the Pony Express lift line where we found plenty of deep untracked powder and Shadows / Lights Out where we enjoyed some of the best of Steamboat's famous tree skiing. Skiing fresh powder amongst the aspens where the light and sound are like nothing else is a surreal experience.

I'll post some photos as soon as Jeremy emails them to me.

Birthday ski party

Today was my wife's birthday (age classified) so apart from dinner at a nice restaurant tonight (the Cottonwood Grill) we celebrated by skiing my wife's favourite runs including High Noon, Sunshine Lift Line, Quickdraw and Flintlock.

The weather was gorgeous and the snow perfect. As the day progressed it became more crowded as visitors flew in from near and far and made their way to the mountain, but still a long way from crowded by the standards of most resorts.

We'll do the same again on my birthday which also happens to be the last day of the season. In the meantime there's a lot more skiing to be done!

Christmas Eve spring

It's Christmas Eve today but it sure doesn't feel like it. It's warm and sunny outside, the quality of the snow is excellent and the mountain is not at all crowded.

Today I felt the need for speed. Lots of high speed cruising on the intermediate runs and fast GS style turns on the groomed blacks, although I did throw in a trip through the trees and some bumps. So here was today's program:

Gondola, Rudi's, Lightning, Ego
Storm Peak Express, upper High Noon, Spike
Sunshine Chair, upper High Noon, Two O'Clock, Daybreak
Sundown Express, Shadows, Dawn, Sunset, Moonlight
Sundown Express, Storm Peak, upper Rainbow, Hurricane, Ego
Storm Peak Express, Triangle 3, Cyclone, Tornado Lane, Ego
BC Chair, Tower, Norther, upper Vagabond, Betwixt, middle Concentration, Between, Shortcut

I skied the bumps on Norther today like I've never skied bumps before, like the skiers I've always envied when I watch them from the chair.

Episode 100

I just noticed that this will be my one hundredth post on Steamboat Dreaming and since it's bang smack in the middle of the ski season it is of course going to be about skiing.

Today was a big day out. I spent the morning skiing by myself but as I was considering calling it a day I got to talking to an English couple on the Thunderhead Express and spent the afternoon skiing with them.

We had a very weird mix of conditions today - spring-like on the lower mountain with soft, slightly slushly snow, packed powder higher up and then on the highest elevations very strong winds creating a wind blown crust. At one point I had my skis pointed straight down the hill and was hardly moving the wind was so strong.

Since I didn't have to work today I skied so much I'm not sure I can remember it all, but here goes:

Gondola, Rudi's, Lightning, Ego
Storm Peak Express, Frying Pan, Cowboy Coffee
Morningside Chair, Over Easy, upper Buddy's, Calf Roper, Tornado, Ego
Storm Peak Express, Buddy's, Drop Out
Pony Express, upper Longhorn, Chuckwagon, Vortex
Sundown Express, upper High Noon, One O'Clock, lower High Noon
Elkhead Chair, Sunnyside
Elkhead Chair, Tower, Norther, Vagabond
Thunderhead Express, Rudi's, Lightning, Ego
Storm Peak Express, Buddy's, Tornado Lane
Four Points Chair, upper Rainbow, Velvet, Moonlight
Sundown Express, Sunshine Lift Line
South Peak Chair, lower High Noon
Elkhead Chair, Heavenly Daze, Sitz, Vogue

I finished my day at the Slopeside Grill enjoying a few beers with my new friends Jeremy and Jill from Devon. Interestingly Jeremy's sister lives in a small town in Australia (Kingscliff) which is less than ten miles from where I grew up (Pottsville Beach). Small world.

Winter solstice

The winter solstice - the shortest day of the year - is upon us in the northern hemisphere. Here in Steamboat the day is only moderately short at 9 hours 7 minutes of sunshine (from sunrise at 7.28 am to sunset at 4.45 pm) compared to some places like Helsinki which only received 5 hours and 50 minutes today (when I was living in Singapore I discovered through a colleague who is married to a Finnish woman that there are about a thousand Finns living there. Can you guess why?)

Back in Australia it's the summer solstice. Christmas is in the middle of the summer holidays so things really slow down for three or four weeks. Sport dominates the headlines (especially the Sydney to Hobart yacht race and the Boxing Day Test), and the beach is the place to be. Here the Christmas / New Year break is over just as you're beginning to relax. Much as I like a White Christmas, I've decided I really do miss that slower pace for a few weeks when no one really expects anyone to get things done.

There's always tomorrow...

...and the day after tomorrow. Yesterday I wrote that one of the nice things about a season pass is that there's always tomorrow. Well I should have said there's always the day after tomorrow, because today was even worse. The same wet snow and cold air creating a layer of ice on the goggles but instead of nice dry powder under foot it was wet and heavy today. In the end I basically did a single circuit - from the base to the top and back down again via the Gondola, Rudi's, Blizzard, Ego, Storm Peak Express, Sunshine Lift Line, South Peak Chair, Westside, Elkhead Chair, Tower, Norther, Vagabond, BC Ski Way and finally the Green line bus.

Still I'm one day closer to my goal: 15 days down, 85 to go.

Jane's Dell Hell

Jane Galt at Asymmetrical Information has posted on her journey to the ninth circle of hell via Dell. In general terms the experience sounds familiar - being strung along by a series of people who tell you half a dozen different and mutually exclusive stories and in the end not receiving the product you ordered and the company thinking that because you got your money back you should be happy even though they've wasted massive amounts of your time and emotional energy.

I did find it a little surprising that Dell were unable to track a package worth $850. But having said that, I ordered a product worth $100 earlier this year from another company that sent it via ordinary mail. They had no way to trace it when it didn't arrive and in the end they had to send me a replacement which makes a couple of extra bucks to be able to track the package seem like a good investment.

One area where I strongly disagree with Jane is on relating this problem to the fact that Dell has some of its call centres overseas in places like Latin American and India. In my experience there is absolutely no correlation between the location of the call centre and the quality of service. In fact the very worst call centre experience I have ever had was courtesy of my good friends at Comcast and their call centre right here in Colorado (Denver.

I know from first hand experience that there can be real benefits in offshoring (not only cost savings but also things like being able to provide 24 hour service without making people work in the middle of the night). I work with an offshore software development team in India who do great quality work, but its success is heavily dependent on us doing our job of defining the requirements at this end properly. The lesson is that if companies are not committed to implementing well designed customer service processes it doesn't matter where the poor schmuck holding the telephone is located or whether his name is Ray or Raj.

The other thing that surprised me was that she seemed to think the only place she could buy an affordable computer for her aunt was from Dell. My advice would be that unless you are a real power user, go down to Wal Mart or Best Buy or Circuit City and buy whatever they've got on sale. I had a look at Wal Mart earlier this week and you can get an eMachines desktop for less than $600, which I'm sure would be more than adequate for the typical aunt, or if space is a consideration I saw a Toshiba laptop for $699.

Update: It turned out in Jane's response to one of the comments on her post that the real problem was that her aunt's son (her cousin I suppose) is a gamer. I decided around the time that the original Playstation was released to keep my gaming platform and my computer separate, something I've never regretted. The total cost of a standard computer plus a game console is about the same as a highly specced PC (you can buy the desktop I mentioned above and still have $250 left which wil get you a Playstation 2 or xBox and a couple of games), and it's a whole lot less troublesome and lets one person play games while the other uses the computer.

A frozen view

Day 14 and the first time this season that I wished I had given in to my natural laziness and waited until tomorrow. Another eight inches of fresh powder couldn't make up for the fact that the snow was just warm enough to stick to your goggles and the air was just cold enough to freeze it there.

I started with the Gondola (big line today even at 10:15am) to upper Vagabond and then took the bumps on Surprise which were so soft and forgiving that I just loved them. Storm Peak Express to upper Buddy's and Calf Roper to Cyclone. By this time I had a solid coating of ice on my goggles that I couldn't possibly see through. So I lifted the goggles and continued with my glasses (I have really dry eyes so I can't wear contacts) up Storm Peak Express and down High Noon and Two O'Clock cutting through the trees across to One O'Clock (maybe I should call that One Thirty) where I found some really nice powder.

By this time my glasses were completely frozen too. Elkhead Chair and the home down Heavenly Daze and Vogue where I had to resort to stopping every 200 metres and using the only warm liquid I had available (saliva - yuk!) to unfreeze them so I could see enough to get home. At least today the Green bus came when it was supposed to.

Anyway it's still snowing, so I'll try again tomorrow. That's the beauty of a season pass!

Another snowy Sunday

Day 13 and I over slept this morning meaning that I missed the best of the eight inches of new powder and had to go looking in the trees. Fortunately I was skiing with my buddy Dave who is a bit of a tree skiing (well boarding) freak. I struggled to keep up with him at times, but in the end was happy that he pushed me to try some really great lines.

The basic pattern was the Sundown Express and then One O'Clock, Two O'Clock, Three O'Clock and the trees in between. It was way more crowded today than it has been, but as Dave says, most of those crazy tourists don't go in the trees.

It's still snowing so I'm going to aim for an early night and an 8:15am start tomorrow. At least that's the plan. A bit challenging for a night owl like me, but everything has its price. Powder skiing doubly so.

A dozen days of skiing

Today was day 12 on the slopes for season 05-06. I was skiing with my wife again today so it was mostly pretty tame. Finally the Sunshine chair was open so lots of long carved turns on easy blue runs. Here's the program:

Gondola, Spur Run, Sundown Express Chair, Sunshine Lift Line, Sunshine Chair, Tomahawk, South Point Chair, Westside (I can see this run clearly from my office window - I really must stop next time I'm on it and look out for my condo), Sundown Express Chair, upper High Noon, Sunshine Chair, Sunshine Life Line again (this is my wife's favourite), South Point Chair, lower High Noon, Elkhead Chair, Heavenly Daze and Vogue.

Then the Green bus line - eventually. Today we waited 40 minutes for the bus. Much as I hate to criticise anything in Steamboat (and usually there is not much to complain about), the bus service this year has gone to the dogs. Normally in the winter it's a 20 minute service, but this year they couldn't get enough drivers so the City has continued the off-season 30 minute service. They used to get a lot of seasonal drivers from Australia and New Zealand, but since September 11 our protectors at the Department of Homeland Security have made that too difficult, which is good, because we all know that Aussie bus drivers are notorious terrorists. But what's worse is that even though the buses are not working as hard they keep breaking down. Twice this week.

Eleven down...

...89 days to go to hit my "stretch goal" of 100 days this season. Out of a possible 115 days remaining, that means I have to ski 77% of all remaining days, or a little over three days out of every four. Somehow I don't think I'm going to make it (and it's just beginning to sink in to my brain just how much skiing 100 days really is), but I am on track to hit 84 which would be double the 42 days I managed last year. I've also managed six powder days so far, which is twice what I managed all of last season!

We had about 8 inches of fresh powder yesterday and last night so I was at the Gondola at 8.15am anxious to go after spending the past three days resting my legs and catching up on some work (I've got a major proposal due next week, so the pressure is on).

I started with a quick run down Vagabond while waiting for Storm Peak Express to open at 9am. I don't know why they have a 30 minute gap between opening the Gondola and opening the express chairs (Storm Peak and Sundown) to the top of the mountain.

Anyway, there couldn't have been more than 50 people ahead of me in the Gondola line, but by the time I got there it was pretty much tracked up (of course everyone else is waiting for the upper moutain to open too). Back up Thunderhead Express and then down Rudi's and Lightning and finally on the Storm Peak Express. Down upper Buddy's where I found some nice powder in close to the trees (not to mention shelter from the wind), across Calf Roper and down Cyclone.

Back up Storm Peak Express and then I decided to switch to the other side of the mountain taking High Noon and then Two O'Clock. At that point I suddenly found the rhythm on my short turns and my skiing stepped up a level. Down Daybreak, up Sundown Express and then One O'Clock and Lower High Noon where I put together my sweetest ever set of short turns in the powdery edges of the run.

By that time the pressures of work got the better of me so I headed up the Elkhead chair fully intending a quick run down Heavenly Daze, Vogue and home. But that didn't last long, so I gave upper Vagabond another try connecting with Betwixt and Lower Concentration before riding the Thunderhead Express for another round. Then it was Heavenly Daze and on to probably the best run on the lower mountain - Vertigo - which I had entirely to myself and looked like it had been little skied with two feet of soft stuff in places. But by the end of that my legs were shot. Now I have to go shovel a path to the hottub!

Advertising run amok?

Our friends at Google have revolutionised the world of advertising with their technology for displaying ads based on the content of the web page.

But this seems to me to have taken the principle to the point where it has become almost a parody of itself. I use Google's new Gmail service and I love it. But I was flabbergasted to find that when I open the spam folder it displays links to recipes containing spam!

I'm not sure whether this is cute or just plain ridiculous...and no I haven't tried any of the recipes!

Moonrise over Steamboat

I didn't ski today - my legs need a rest and I've got too much work to do anyway - but that doesn't stop me looking out my 'office' window at this beautiful landscape. Check out this view of the moon rising over the ski area as the sun begins to set. That's the gondola building in the middle. The run below and to the left is Heavenly Daze and in the middle is Valley View.

Celebrations

Today my wife and I celebrated 17 years of marriage and her youngest sister Aline who is visiting this week celebrated her 34th birthday (meaning we got married on Aline's 17th birthday).

We started the day with some skiing. It was a lovely day for it although the mountain was a bit more crowded than yesterday, and we had some mechanical trouble with the mountain bus at the start. Here are my skiing companions waiting for that unreliable bus - my wife is on the left and her sister on the right.


My legs are feeling it now and I think I need a couple of days rest. It seems the first week of skiing deep powder worked completely different muscles to the past two days of tearing up groomed runs.

Anyway, we finished the day with dinner at our favourite Steamboat restaurant.

Another perfect day

It hasn't snowed since Tuesday so there was no powder today. But it was still perfect. Reasonably cold (around 15-20F) but no wind and full sun.

It was mostly groomed packed, powder today - snow so dry it squeaks when you walk on it - and there was not a lift line anywhere so I covered a lot of ground in a little over two hours. Here's today's installment:

Rudi's, Lightning, Ego, High Noon, Westside, Sunnyside, lower Rainbow, Ego, Buddy's, Tornado Lane, Buddy's, Big Meadow (some untracked powder there, but not quite steep enough to fully enjoy it), Buddy's, Big Meadow, High Noon, Two O'Clock, Daybreak, Tower, upper Vagabond, Surprise, Ego, north Storm Peak, Sunset, Duster, upper Vagabond, Betwixt, Between and Shortcut (and finally the Green Line bus!)

I rode one chair with a couple of other Steamboat virtual workers. An Englishman who consults in the oil and gas industry and an Italian guy who writes novels. So here we were, an Aussie and Englishman and an Italian (sounds like the opening line to a joke) who all choose to live in Steamboat but work wherever.

I also saw Sherman Poppen out and about today. He was the inventor of the snurfer, widely credited as Jake Burton's inspiration for the snowboard.

How cold?

How cold was it here in Steamboat last night? Well this is the heated side of a modern, double-paned window.


According to my temperature gauge the low last night was -22F or about -30C.

Another powder day in Steamboat

Well another six inches over night and at least six inches during the day and it's still snowing.

It was a slow start today since I was with my wife and sister-in-law who were both taking it easy on their first day for the season - a few circuits on Thunderhead Express / Vagabond and one trip before lunch up the Storm Peak Express and down Buddy's and Tornado where there was still some good powder - not completely untracked but it was snowing so hard the tracks were almost covered.

Thunderhead / Vagabond again after lunch and then we finished the day with a run down Heavenly Daze (and a nice head over heels fall - that's why I wear a helmet!)

Unfortunately it is forecast to be bitterly cold tomorrow so I'm not sure whether I'll be brave enough to sample tomorrow's powder installment. But then it's meant to warm a little later in the week and I'm sure there will still be enough powder hidden amongst the trees to keep me happy. It's not terribly busy yet, but most of the direct jet services into Hayden start this weekend or next week and then of course the Christmas break will bring more people.

So far I've managed 8 out of a possible 12 days. At that rate I'll only achieve 91 days for the season rather than my goal of 100, but that would still be double what I managed last year.

Perspective on the Middle East

My wife's youngest sister Aline is visiting this week to sample some of Steamboat's powder delights (and because she likes us. We like her too, even though she's a snowboarder).

She lives in Amman, Jordan where she's an international lawyer working on promoting the legal status of women in the Middle East. She previously worked in Basra and Bagdhad helping to re-establish the Iraqi judicial system and also spent some time in Ramallah in the West Bank supporting the Palestinians in negotations with Israel. If you are in Steamboat this week she will be speaking at the Mountain College on Thursday evening: 7 pm at Bogue Hall Room 200.

Now back to our regular broadcast - powder, powder, powder. It's snowing again and I need to hit the slopes!

I wasn't imagining it

It seems my perceptions about the awesome start to this season have been confirmed by some hard data. According to this report in our local newspaper, our snowfall total of 83 inches for November was the highest on record. What's even more amazing is that this is the total at mid-mountain - the total at the top of the mountain would be at least 50% more. And the snow has continued. In the first four days of December we've had another 2-3 feet and it's still snowing.

The Sundown Express chair finally opened today, making the north side of the mountain a whole lot more accessible and relieving the queue on the Storm Peak Express. So after Rudi's and Blizzard my first run from the top of the mountain was 3 O'Clock, followed by Sundown Lift Line then High Noon/2 O'Clock/Duster. After riding the Elkhead chair I took Norther/Blizzard back in to the BC bowl and rode the Four Points lift to avoid the wind at the top of the mountain before my best run of the day down Twister which presented an interesting combination of knee deep powder over bumps which I felt I skiied quite well.

It was cold today - in the teens (F) - but I was working so hard that I barely felt it until my final run of the day down Vagabond, when my face suddenly began to feel quite numb.

Season 05-06: Day 6 of 9

It snowed all day yesterday and a little last night, so I was keen to get out early today and into a little powder. Unfortunately today is a little warm (around 34F/1C down here in the valley at 7000ft) so while there was plenty of snow it was just a little bit heavier than earlier in the week. Don't get me wrong - I still had a great time skiing some deep stuff, it's just harder on the legs!

I started off down upper Buddy's, across Calf Roper and the down Typhoon where there was some nice soft stuff.

Second run was through the trees on Storm Peak South, through a nice stash of untracked powder on the side of Dusk and then across Rainbow and down Hurricane where as I was coming over the lip of a catwalk a guy on sit ski shot past me and did a twenty foot jump. Here's a guy who can't use his legs but is still a better skier than 95% of the people on the mountain. Awesome. I think it was this guy.

Third run was back through the trees on Storm Peak South (can you tell I liked that one?) but this time all the way down Rainbow.

Then some bumps on Whiteout, down upper Vagabond and some more bumps on Surprise.

Finally all the way down Vagabond and home for the mandatory apres ski hot chocolate.

We've got a cold front coming through and snow forecast all night, so I'm hoping for some truly awesome powder skiing tomorrow. Apparently Warren Miller and his crew are here filming this week so you never know, you just might see me on film. I'll be the one with the ear to ear grin.

Distortion is rewarded, that's why it happens

Quite by accident I ran across an interesting article today by Edward Tufte. If you are not familiar with Tufte, he's probably the world's leading authority on how to present data for maximum impact with minimum distortion. I purchased a copy of his seminal work The Visual Display of Quantitative Information many years ago from a brick and mortar bookstore but you can conveniently buy it at Amazon.com.




Anyway, Tufte was engaged by the Congressional investigation into the explosion on re-entry of the space shuttle Columbia. In the article he is quite critical of the use by Boeing consultants of Microsoft PowerPoint to communicate the findings of their investigation into the inital collision on launch of a piece of insulating foam with the wing of the shuttle (which ultimately led to the disaster).

As bad as the Powerpoint presentation is, and all of his criticisms in the article are perfectly valid, I think he misses the point. PowerPoint is simply the medium. I don't beleive it caused the mis-communication, it simply facilitated it. (1)

I say this because I stumbed across the article after a day spent frustrated at a similar phenomenon (which not co-incidentally also has as its source a government agency), and it's not the first time I've had this type of experience.

Imagine trying, as I have been, to design a complex hardware and software system which must balance multiple competing objectives (cost with functionality with usability with security with compatibility and so on). A system which will cost millions of dollars, be used by thousands of employees and affect hundreds of thousands of the agency's clients and be distributed across hundreds of locations nationally and globally.

Now imagine being asked repeatedly, as I have been, to reduce your design to a single PowerPoint slide. What's more, imagine being asked to avoid using any of the standard notations that the software industry has developed to ensure semantic precision in its models, but instead to limit yourself to the standard slideware pallete of boxes and arrows.

In doing so you have to ensure that your slide communicates the complex design patterns that you have adopted to incorporate everything the software industry has learnt in the past 40 years. But you also have to keep it simple because the people selecting this multi-million dollar system don't have any knowledge relevant to evaluating your design.

Here's my point. In the end people sell what people buy. The Boeing consultants who created the PowerPoint slides that Tufte so rightly criticises did so because that's what their market demanded. The root cause of the problem is systemic and has to do not with deficiencies in the people doing the analysis, but in the processes which weed them out in favour of those who can spin a line to those too ignorant to know better, but unfortunately empowered to decide.

Had they wanted to use PowerPoint to communicate a clear message that forced people in positions of authority to make hard decisions they certainly could have. The problem is you only get to make such a presentation to politicians and their lackies once.


(1) Having said that, let me add this. Anyone who uses one of the standard PowerPoint outlines for a serious presentation is an idiot. I've used PowerPoint a thousand times, and I've yet to have a message to communicate that fitted one of those cheezy outlines. Perhaps when I start selling real estate (and hell freezes over) that will change, but until then create your own outline, one that logically follows the train of thought that led you to whatever conclusion you want to present.

A new challenge

My first run today was down the upper section of Buddy's which was very windy, across Calf Roper and then down Tornado which brought a new challenge - a hard wind blown crust atop a foot or so of soft snow. It definitely challenges your technique as you alternate between skiing on top of the snow and in it. I managed OK, but didn't by any means nail it.

To avoid the wind I moved to the BC bowl and worked on my bump technique on Norther, BC Liftline, Blizzard and Surprise. The soft powdery bumps were lots of fun and quite forgiving.

The sun even showed its warm (well warmish, or at least not so cold), glowing face for a while, but I timed my day perfectly because the snow and wind have just moved back in with a vengeance.

My goal this season is to ski 100 days. Five down, 95 to go. I don't know if I'll make it, but this time last year I'd only been out once and was waiting impatiently for it to snow. What a start to the season so far!

Update (3.30pm): I spoke too soon about the weather. The sun is out and the wind has stopped. I should be back out there skiing, not in here working. Hold on a minute. What the hell am I complaining about?! There's always tomorrow...

Too much of a good thing?

I never thought I'd say this but maybe we've had too much snow in the last couple of days.

"What? How can that be?" I hear those of you not blessed to live in Steamboat asking incredulously.

Well I got to the top of the mountain this morning and pointed my skis down what is admittedly one of the easier black diamond runs, but it's still fairly steep, and basically I went nowhere. The snow was so deep - at least half way up my chest - that there was simply too much resistance.

Of course when I did find a really steep pitch and managed to get moving it was an absolute hoot. But you really, really, really don't want to fall over in this stuff because if you do you can spend hours trying to find your skis and poles and then trying to reattach them. I wasn't that unlucky; my skis didn't release, but just trying to untangle them and stand up was exhausting enough to finish me for the day.

Powder day!

Only two days ago I expressed a hope that the first powder day for the season might not be too far away, but today exceeded my wildest dreams. Only day four of the season and we had waist deep champagne powder on the top of the mountain!

I managed to find good stuff all over, most notably on Buddy's, Storm Peak North and Rainbow, but the best of it was definitely amongst the trees on Closet.

And it's still snowing, so it looks like there'll be more of the same tomorrow!

Season 05-06: Day 2

Another beautiful day in Steamboat! It was surprisingly warm in the sun even though the air temperature was still low enough to make snow, which you were reminded of as soon as you got in the shade.

Today some runs on the top of the mountain were open so I tried Buddy's and Rainbow. I started off on Rudi's and took Blizzard for a little more challenge on my way down to the Storm Peak Express. Blizzard is one of those runs that looks OK for a lower intermediate but it has some awkward spots which quickly lead to lots of sliding and scraping. With a thin cover that means plenty of sticks and rocks poking through. Definitely one to avoid until it snows some more.

I found some soft deep stuff off the groomed trails, but it was a little granular and fairly heavy so I came unstuck once or twice. Definitely not the "champagne powder" Steamboat is famous for (but not nearly as bad as that wet, heavy 'Sierra cement'), but the weather forcast for tomorrow and Sunday is for snow, so the first powder day may not be too far away!

Opening day

Well it's opening day and so the countdown clock at the bottom of this page has done its thing and will count down no more (at least until I feel inclined to reprogram it to count the days until the end of the season, but it's way too early to think about that).

There's more snow than there was for opening day last year although not as much as some earlier seasons. However the nights have been cold so they've been busy making plenty of the artificial stuff, laying down a solid base for the high traffic areas.

Only about 10% of the mountain is open today but another 10% will open tomorrow including some runs on the top of the mountain and before we know it there'll be a ton of snow and more skiing than I can handle in a day.

So for today a few runs on upper Vagabond, Rudi's and lower Rainbow (which had the perfect combination of sun and snow texture) and my legs were done.

Welcome back ski season and happy Thanksgiving!

Real cowardice

According to Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R), "Cowards cut and run".

Well no.

What cowards do is attack the integrity of others who have made far greater personal sacrifices for their country.

What cowards do is refuse to be straight about what it really means if we "stay the course"

• How long it is going to take? One more year? Two? Ten? Twenty? Will our grandchildren still be dying in Iraq?
• How much is it going to cost? $300 billion? $500 billion? A trillion? Will we mortgage the future of every generation to follow?
• How many more lives will be lost? Another 1,000? 5,000? 60,000 or more like Vietnam?

What cowards do is continue to sacrifice the lives of others to a lost cause because they can't face the political consequences of admitting that they've screwed up and the situation is beyond saving.

So who are the real cowards?

Here but not here

I received an email from a relative in Australia last night which included the line:

"It's Monday here but I suppose it's still Sunday there."

(When you have family on the other side of the international date line you're constantly asking "what day is it there?") To which I replied:

"Well not really. It's Monday here as well, at least for me."

Huh?

Through until December 22nd I'm working on a proposal for a customer in Australia. I declined the invitation from my team in Australia to haul my body across the pacific for a fifth time in something like seven months to help them with this, having returned from Australia only six weeks ago. Instead I promised to work on Australian Eastern Summer Time for the duration of the project so we could interact in real time. Which means that on Steamboat time I'm working afternoons and evenings, Sunday to Thursday.

I'm not complaining since it frees me to ski in the morning once the mountain opens on Thursday! Plus I'm free to ski all day on Fridays which are less crowded than Sundays (not that crowds are a big problem here except on the major holidays, and even then our idea of crowding is relative.)

Have they no shame?

It turns out that not only did Sony implement a criminally intrusive copy protection scheme but in doing so they violated the copyright of others! It seems their copy protection software incorporated open source software without complying with the open source licensing requirements.

Sony's reaction to this whole episode as been light on humilty and heavy on the sanctity of intellectual property. If they can't respct other's intellectual property why should anyone respect theirs? All I can conclude is that these guys are shameless hypocrites.

Screwing your customers is never a sustainable business strategy. Will the major record labels and movie studios figure this out before they are consigned to the dustbin of history?

I don't like soccer but...

...I'm still excited that the Aussie national soccer team has qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 1974.

Soccer is a poor relation in Australia to other forms of football (Aussie Rules, Rugby Union and Rubgy League) with its main base in the Greek and Italian communities. Nevertheless Aussies are sports nuts, so being the fourth most popular football code still means plenty of participants and supporters. The home leg of the qualifying round against Uruguay drew a crowd of more than 80,000 to the former Olympic stadium in Sydney.

There are plenty of Aussies playing at the top level in Europe so it isn't so surprising that the Socceroos would be at least competitive on the world stage. I don't have any expectations of Australia winning the World Cup, but I'll be more than satisfied if we get to beat England along the way.

Calm after the storm

A cold front passed through Steamboat yesterday, bringing with it plenty of snow and near blizzard conditions for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon.

All is calm now and the sun is out, although it's deceptively cold outside. Things are looking good for the start of the ski season in a little over a week!


P.S. this is the view from my home office window. Makes it hard to concentrate on work!

Goodbye Peter Drucker

Noted management writer and thinker Peter Drucker died last Friday aged 95. The world will be a poorer place without Drucker who virtually invented modern management theory in the 1930s.

What I most admire about him was that he represented the triumph of substance over appearance. Long after he became famous he remained at a small college where he could focus on his work, he was never interested in the received wisdom or popular theories but instead had his own deeply considered views on things and he was much more interested in understanding the daily grind of making a company efficient and profitable than the cult of leadership that infects modern business.

And of course he managed to stay active and engaged and continue to make an real contribution at an age when most of us are long gone (if not physically then at least mentally). A wonderful role model for anyone who believes in the importance of ideas and intellect.

Netflix delivers eventually

Further to my post on my initial experience with Netflix, my first DVD arrived on Thursday - that's four days not one.

In the meantime I reported it missing. They have quite a neat facility on the site for doing this and it seems as long as you don't report an unusually high number of DVD's missing, it's factored into their business model.

Interestingly, the replacement DVD was shipped on Thursday and arrived today, which taking account the fact that the Post Office was closed yesterday for Veterans Day, meets their one business day target.

It's only a sample size of two with a mean of 2.5 days. I suspect as I collect more data it will eventually settle around 1.1 or 1.2 i.e. 80 or 90% will arrive in one day with the occasional one taking longer. It probably was just bad luck that it was my first DVD that took the slow boat/train/plane/truck or whatever.

From this experience I've decided that their one DVD at a time plan is a waste of money. I've upgraded to the two DVDs at a time plan so I can always have one to watch while the other is in transit.

There is hope yet

I am greatly encouraged by the news that the good citzens of Dover, PA threw out all eight members of the school board who were trying to slip Intelligent Design into the science curriculum.

I suspect more than a few parents were worried that little Johnny and Jenny wouldn't have a chance at a good job at Microsoft or Boeing or GE unless they learnt some, you know, real science.

Interactive Mountain Cam

It's now less than two weeks (or a 'fortnight' in the British English speaking world) until the Steamboat ski resort opens, so now is the time to start anxiously monitoring the state of the mountain. For those who can't simply look out their window like I can (yes, I am trying to make you jealous) check out the new interactive mountain cams. Here's an example I just captured.


Apart from normal camera controls (pan, tilt and zoom) there are also presets that allow you to quickly zoom to a favourite view. You may have to wait until the previous user is finished 'looking around' (each time you grab control you get 40 seconds) and you'll need to have java applets enabled in your browser security settings.

As a computer geek who loves to ski, as far as I'm concerned this is way cool.

Somewhere there is a plumber...

...I'd like to beat the crap out of. Actually, it might not be one plumber, it's more likely to be two or three different people.

Let me explain. We recently moved to a new condo. One of the faults our building inspector detected was seepage around the base of both toilets, something which we asked the seller to rectify and which was agreed as part of the purchase contract. Their idea of fixing it was to caulk around the base, sealing the water in temporarily but not fixing the underlying problem. After a couple of weeks the water seeped under the tiles and up through the grouting, necessitating further repairs.

It seems the problem goes back to the construction of the building which is only five years old. The drain pipes were installed too low, so that when the tiles where installed the flange sat below the level of the floor so that the toilet didn't make good contact with the wax ring that provides the all important seal. Whether the problem was one plumber or two, it's inexcusable. It's obvious a bathroom floor is going to be tiled, so the person installing the pipe should have allowed for that, and then it would have been readily apparent to the person installing the toilet that the flange was below the level of the tile and therefore a double wax ring was required.

Whoever you are, shame on you. A plumber who can't install a toilet so it doesn't leak is about as incompetent and pathetic as you can get. I'm a computer geek who's not particularly handy, but having installed a grand total of one toilet before, I know how to do it right.

Shame also on the developer, Wintergreen Homes, who ought to hire competent people and supevise their work.

As for the previous owner, who lives in a condo with two leaking toilets for five years? Gross.

Finally, thanks to Matt at Mountain Resorts who fixed the problem right. If any of you other guys what to learn how to install a toilet properly, I suggest you give him a call.

The last line of defence?

I've avoided weighing in on the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court because unlike Harriet Miers he appears to at least have the basic qualifications required i.e. a demonstrated capacity for jurisprudence and / or legal scholarship. Beyond that I don't believe the confirmation process should be about trying to "stack" the bench with activist judges who will distort the law to favour policies they approve of (I'm not naive enough to believe that's what will happen - I'm talking about how it ought to be).

What concerns me a great deal more is that both Roberts and Alito are simply the latest installment in a long line of judges that fail to appreciate that the US Constitution creates a Federal government of limited and enumerated powers and that Supreme Court is the only real defence the individual citizen has against the inevitable tendency of all governments to want to accumulate a much power as possible to themselves. What we really need are justices who err in favour of the liberties and rights of citizens. What we are getting are justices who have a history of finding in favour of the power of government, something that the current Supreme Court really doesn't need more of.

Netflix fails to deliver

I signed up for Netflix on the weekend. I decided to start out with their cheapest plan - one DVD at a time for $9.99 a month to see how it works and quickly built myself an impressive queue of DVDs using their very user friendly site (which owes an awful lot to the "recommendations" technology pioneered by Amazon.com).

They claim that the DVDs will typically be delivered in one working day. I created my queue on Saturday but my first DVD didn't ship until yesterday (Monday) afternoon which of course wasn't early enough for delivery today. Sure I live outside a major urban area, but I'm only 160 miles from Denver which according to their map is one of their warehouse locations.

I won't go so far just yet as to say "shame on Netflix" but I'm already considering whether I'll continue past the free introductory period. The biggest problem I see is that these guys don't appear to work on the weekend. I know the post office is closed, but they ought to be there 9 am on Monday when the doors open ready to ship the weekend's orders. Otherwise if I watch a DVD on Wednesday night, post it back on Thursday, they receive it Friday afternoon and don't ship the replacement until Monday afternoon, I don't receive it until the following Wednesday. Which clearly isn't going to work.

Update: It's Wednesday evening now and I still don't have my first DVD. I'm less and less impressed. At this rate I'd be lucky to be able to watch more than two DVD's a month.

Pearl Lake

My parents are visiting from Australia at the moment so we took a trip out to Pearl Lake today. It's about 30 miles north of Steamboat in the Elk River valley.


The combination of the snow by the water's edge and the sun reflecting off the water and flitering through the trees gave it a magical look.

Steamboat snow and sunrise

A few inches of snow overnight and now the sun is coming out. Can it get any more beautiful than this?

They breed 'em tough...

...in Bentonville, Arkansas. No wonder Wal-Mart, which has its headquarters in this town, is unstoppable. Check out this story about a guy killing a deer with his bare hands.

Call me a wimp, but if I ever find a deer in my bedroom, I'm closing the door and calling someone with a gun to take it out!

Take your Digital Rights Management...

...and stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

It seems a certain major music label has been caught out invading the inner workings of users' computers in order to lock down usage of their copy-protected CDs. If you want all the gory technical details, read this article by the guy who detected the offending program. For the less technical, what you need to know is that when you play one of these copy-protected CDs on your computer, it installs software which comprises your operating system at the lowest level, creating all sorts of new vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit, and is virtually impossible to uninstall.

This is just the latest installation in the long running saga of the major labels and studios trying to screw their customers through unbelievably restrictive licensing agreements. But this one approaches the level of criminal stupidity. I'm not a guy that uses intellectual property created by others without paying for it since I'm in the business of selling my own intellectual endeavours. I've got nearly 400 purchased CD's in my collection but I can tell you one thing. I will never, ever, ever buy another CD from Sony BMG.

Lake Marie

Today we took a scenic drive into Wyoming (Steamboat is only 40 miles from the state line). The highlight was Medicine Bow Peak and at its foot a lake that shares my wife's name - Lake Marie. Words don't do it justice so here's a picture (in order to appreciate the full beauty, click to enlarge).


You'll find it along Wyoming route 130 on the Snowy Range Scenic Byway about 45 miles west of Laramie. But unless you can go soon, you'll need to wait until the spring since this road will close for the winter in mid-November.

Special thanks to the extremely helpful lady at the Carbon County visitor's center in Riverside WY, who recommended this route.

Local musical talent

We attended a performance tonight of the musical play Nunsense. I saw a professional performance of this show some 15 years ago, but I don't remember enjoying it nearly as much as I did tonight.

What I found really amazing is that despite the fact that the production was sponsored by the drama department of the Colorado Mountain College four of the six cast members - Emily Stockdale, Jessi Houston, Emily Stout and Erin Lewis - are still in high school. It does our community proud to be producing such talented, passionate and confident young adults. Congratulations also to Molly Handley who was the only CMC student in the cast.

Finally, congratulations to Michelle Hess, our local elementary school music teacher who played the lead role. Michelle is a member of our church choir but church music clearly doesn't do justice to the power of her voice which was fully revealed tonight, as was her passion for musical theatre. I don't think I've ever seen a performer so clearly and thoroughly enjoying themselves as Michelle was tonight.

The quality of the performance is even more remarkable because as reported in our local newspaper, the intention was to perform the musical Chicago until all the potential male cast members dropped out and they had to find an all female show at the last minute. Looks like the men of Steamboat have well and truly been put to shame by these ladies.

It was inevitable

...that the Administration's determination not to let the facts get in the way of their obsession with removing Saddam - along with their incredibly childish world view that you are either with us or against us - would end up where it has, with key White House insiders committing what amounts to treason in order to silence their critics. For a President who has basked in the mantle of keeping America safe, the indictment of one or more key aides for blowing the cover of a CIA operative is more than just embarrassing.

It was inevitable too in the sense that Bush's ability appear as more than he really is couldn't be sustained. Any competent statistician would have predicted a "regression to the mean". Given enough time the real George W. Bush was bound to emerge and that's what we are seeing as this Administration implodes.

Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive - Finale and Episode 6 (contains spoilers)

I finally got around to watching Episode 6 and the Finale (I'm in the middle of moving house so things have been hectic).

Perhaps it was the fact that I had already watched Episode 7, but Episode 6 was something of an anti-climax. In this episode the crew decided to abandon the celebrities and watch how they would do on their own. The usual people stepped up to do the work - Alex, Alexander, George, Noah and to a lesser extent Shanna - while the others responded to the challenge by being their true pathetic selves, none more so than Haley Giraldo who was focusing on her tan rather than the job at hand (and how I wish she would get rid of those ridiculous bug-eye sunglasses).

More surprisingly, the Finale was also something of a let down. Perhaps the series had reached a point where there was nothing new to discover about Fabian's megalomania, Haley's bimboness or Alex Quinn's womanizing. There were some good shots of downtown Steamboat, but they don't really do the place justice, so if you're tempted to visit after watching this show, don't just think about it, do it!

Previous posts: Introduction, Episodes 1-4, Episode 5, Episode 7

Going Postal

Being a resort community, many of the condo buildings in Steamboat are primarily occupied by visitors rather than temporary residents, so the postal service chooses not to deliver mail to them.

Those of us who do live permanently in such buildings are therefore forced to have post office boxes. I don't mind that so much - in many ways I find a post office box more secure, especially since I travel a lot so the last thing I want is my mail piling up outside my front door announcing to the world that my home is unoccupied.

But since I'm being denied the basic mail service that 99.9999% of residents of this country receive, I don't think it would be too much for the post office to be able to redirect any mail sent to my physical address to my box. A big proportion of the customers at the Steamboat Springs Post Office are in the same situation, so I find it inexcusable that the local post office hasn't bothered to work out a process to do this.

And while I'm 'going postal', I just have to add that American post offices are the most grey (literally) and depressing retail outlets since the days of GUM.

Shame on you, USPS.

Hotel switch and bait

Don't you think it's a little deceptive to have a certain standard of product or service in your advertising but to then offer the customer something less for the same price? Hotels are masters of this type of switch and bait.

On our trip to Australia last month we stayed over in LA in each direction at the same hotel both times. On the outbound trip we got the room they advertise complete with the Sleep Number Bed which I really loved because I generally find hotel beds too hard. But on the return trip we got one of their old rooms that hadn't been upgraded and it was lousy.

But what really irks me is when hotels treat a request for a non-smoking room as optional. They know how many non-smoking rooms they have, and they know how many bookings for non-smoking rooms they have. If the number of requests already matches the number of rooms then tell me so and I'll book somewhere else. I know that's not what the hotel wants but it's my call, not the hotel's, whether I am willing to sleep in a room someone has been smoking in.

Shame on you LAX Radisson.

Snow and earthquakes

"What's the connection between snow and earthquakes?" I hear you ask. Well nothing except we seem to be having a bit of both in Steamboat lately.

It snowed again last night and today. It was only a light dusting - nothing like the 20 inches they had in some parts of eastern Colorado - but enough to prompt us to put the snow tyres on the car (in the sense that we paid someone to put them on).

We also had a small earthquake on Sunday night. Only 2.2 on the Richter scale. It sounded and felt like someone slamming a door. According to our local newspaper and verbal reports from some of our friends, there was also a larger one (4.1) on September 30. We missed that one since we were back in Australia.

The only other time we've experienced a quake was December 12, 2000 in Manila in the Philippines. That one was a 6.5 and I can tell you that when you wake up at 2am totally disoriented (OK I had a few drinks at the expat association Christmas party the night before), the room is moving backwards and forwards a foot in each direction, the floor is undulating and everything that is not nailed down is falling over, it's terrifying. Definitely the longest 20 seconds of my life. But believe it or not, we had a couple of friends who slept through it!

Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive - Episode 7 (contains spoilers)

Due to a problem with my TiVo while I was away, I've missed episode 6 so until they replay it and I can record it again, I'll jump straight to episode 7, "Cowboys and Villains".

What an amazing study in group dynamics and the use and abuse of power. If you've ever wondered how evil men come to power, watch this episode and see how Fabian manages to manipulate, intimidate and bully everyone - but instead of becoming the outcast he manages to align most of the team behind him. It's a profound demonstration of the principle that power is too easily gained not by those most deserving of it or capable of exercising it responsibly, but by those who have what Nietzsche called the "will to power", that is those who are most willing to do whatever is necessary to seize power and use it to their own ends.

The only celebrity who comes out of this episode with any dignity is Alexander. When Fabian turns on him he shows enormous maturity for his age (at 19 he's the youngest) in not taking Fabian's bait. Later the others decide that Fabian's behaviour was out of line, but like cowards they all fail to come to Alexander's defence when it mattered.

If there is any justice in the world, once Fabian's wife sees him on television molesting basically all the women on the drive she'll divorce him and take all his money. If they ever have an award show for the biggest a..holes on television they should name it the Fabians.

As for Haley Giraldo, her warmly expressed admiration towards Fabian is astounding. There are people like her in the history books. They stand behind men like Hitler and Stalin telling the world how wonderful their heroes are as they slaughter millions of people. Worse than being dumb (which she is in spades), she's a complete moral vacuum.

Previous posts: Introduction, Episodes 1-4, Episode 5

Scenic flight

We were fortunate on Monday that our flight from Los Angeles to Denver took us right over the Grand Canyon, the weather was fine, and we were sitting on the right side of the plane to get the best view. From 35,000 feet, it's impressive enough. Now I'm very motivated to see this up close. This is what happens to the Yampa River after it flows through Steamboat Springs, on to join the Green River and then the mighty Colorado River.


By the way, if you look closely at the horizon in the picture, you can see the curvature of the Earth. What a wonderful world we live in!

What's yellow, green and white?

Mt Werner after a fall snow storm.

Taken today around 9.30 am.

He's done it again

Just to reinforce my point, our anecdotal President did it again in talking about the possibility of mobilising the full-time army for future disaster responses. In considering the possible downsides of the move he didn't quote something important like "history tells us that once the military starts policing civilians you're on the path to dictatorship" but rather something trivial from his own experience. As Governor of Texas he wouldn't have liked the Feds taking over was the best reason against overturning a fundamental principle of liberty.

The other thing that was interesting about his speech was that if John Kerry had given it, saying there are reasons for and there are reasons against, he would have been labelled as a "flip-flopper." Now I know that John Kerry's weakness was that he was never able to move beyond reasons for, reasons against and make a decision, but wouldn't we be a whole lot better off if George W. had said any of the following:

• there are reasons to invade Iraq, and there are really good reasons not to
• there are reasons to lock up American citizens without judicial review, and there are really good reasons not to
• there are reasons to appoint unqualified cronies like Michael Brown, and there are really good reasons not to
• there are reasons to appoint to the Supreme Court a lawyer who is well qualified but has absolutely no judicial experience, and there are really good reasons not to

I know that Bush weighs the political downside of his decisions, Karl Rove makes sure of that, but I'm talking about something more profound. I'm talking about having the judgement and maturity to say "as tempting as it is, in the long run this won't be good for America or Americans." I doubt Bush has ever done that. They say discretion is the better part of valour. So make your own judgement.

First snow of 2005-06

Today we had our first snow for the season. Yesterday was a beautiful fall day with the high temperature in the 70's F (or 20's Celsius), but today was much cooler. Around midday we had some hail and then solid rain set in for the afternoon. By 5 pm the temperature had dropped enough for the rain to turn to snow, and by 7 pm as we left our class at the Mountain College we were greeted by a sweeping view of the mountain blanketed in white and shrouded in cloud.

The National Weather Service is predicting 2-6 inches above 9,000 ft, so I hope to get some good pictures tomorrow. I also hope to get some shots in the next few days of the fall colours which are just about at their peak.

Although the snow will all melt in a day or so, winter is definitely coming. According to the countdown clock at the bottom of the page, it's only 50 days until the ski mountain opens!

Update: Looks like my neighbour Dave has beaten me to it. Here's his pic of the mountain taken at 6.30 pm.

The anecdotal President

The announcement of President Bush's latest nomination for the Supreme Court has crystallized in my mind the real problem with the way he thinks. I don't think he's as dumb as some would like to suggest, but I do believe that he thinks in a fundamentally flawed manner.

The problem is with his epistemology. "Epistemology?" I hear you say. Yes, epistemology, the field of philosophy that deals with knowledge. George W. Bush's fundamental problem is his model for how he decides he knows something.

Take the nomination of Harriet Miers. How did he arrive at the conclusion that she was the best candidate for the job? Not through any process of research, reference to independent authorities or systematic collection of data, but simply through personal experience. For George W. Bush, you can only know something by experiencing it first hand. He prefers a personal sample of one to an impersonal sample of thousands or millions and he prefers anecdotes to large bodies of unbiased evidence.

So the President really does believe his nominee is the best person for the job. Sadly, he simply can't conceive that there is any way to know that a candidate is suitable other than knowing them personally. In his mind, appointing his long time friends and associates to incredibly important positions is not cronyism. He really does believe that he's selecting the best people. He just doesn't understand that his epistemology restricts the candidate lists to people he personally knows.

Australia to LA and four movies later

We flew in to LA on Sunday on the direct Qantas flight from Brisbane and I managed to watch several movies on the long flight.

I would recommend Batman Begins, although if you're a devotee of the franchise be warned that the movie sacrifies consistency with the later / earlier Batman movies in order to delve deeper into Batman's psyche (although with so many different actors playing the main character, continuity is probably already shot).



I admire Johnny Depp's ability to completely become his characters which he demonstrates again as he becomes Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Notwithstanding his brilliant performance, (and an excellent supporting role from Noah Taylor, one of the many Aussies invading Hollywood) I have to agree with my wife; Gene Wilder is Willy Wonka and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a classic that should not have been remade.

If you haven't seen the original then your childhood is incomplete. Plus you've missed one of the most useful quotes in cinema history: "So much time, so little to do. Strike that. Reverse it." So here's the link to the version I think you should buy. Sorry, Johnny, nothing personal mate.



Cinderella Man has received more coverage incidental to Russell Crowe's stupid hotel antics than in its own right, which is a pity because it's a very good movie based on a true and very insipring story with strong performances from "the hotel guest from hell formerly known as Russell" and Renee Zellweger. There are several quite realistic boxing scenes, and I have to admit I'm not a big fan of watching two men beating the crap out of each other. Nevertheless the rest of the movie is more than good enough to make it worthwhile .



The final movie I watched was Mr and Mrs Smith. I was a bit sceptical at first of what looks like nothing more than a remake of 1985's Prizzi's Honor but I enjoyed it well enough. However in the end it doesn't really add anything to the concept of a hitman and a hitwoman married to each other and each contracted to take the other one out to be worth paying money to see. Wait for this one on cable.