Lucious leftovers

We had five inches of fresh yesterday but unfortunately I just couldn't make it out. I did get out for a couple of hours in the middle of today to enjoy the leftovers and it was still very, very nice, especially Shadows and Flying Z.

Here's the GPS data.

Vuvuzelas

As I mentioned previously I was in South Africa for the 2010 soccer World Cup.

A few people have asked me what I thought of the vuvuzelas. This sums up my feelings on the matter perfectly.

Broken finger

I broke my finger yesterday; not skiing (I didn't go out yesterday) but at the gym. If you've ever wondered who wins when a finger clashes with a 20lb dumbbell I can tell you that it's not the finger.

Fortunately the busted digit is on my right hand and I'm left handed; nevertheless even with only one finger on you non-dominant hand immobilised a lot of tasks (including typing) are surprisingly awkward.

I did ski on Saturday. I had an all day clinic with my coach Jamie which was great to fine tune my skiing so that I don't get back into bad habits. I went out electronically naked - no GPS or heart rate monitor or video - so I don't have any data, but it was about a 16,000 vertical ft day. There's been just enough new snow since last Monday's dump to keep it soft and buttery so it was a surprisingly good day.

Talking about last Monday, here's another video from that epic November powder day to keep us motivated for the next one. This run beneath the Four Points chair is one of my favorites to hit early on a powder day - jump on the Four Points chair when it opens at 8:45 am and fit in a run like this before the Storm Peak Express opens at 9 am. Watch for the drop off a rock into a deep drift of powder around 1:06. Whoa!

The cure for Monday mornings?

12 inches of fresh powder! It was certainly one of the most epic November powder days ever.

Fresh tracks were to be had everywhere but nowhere better than this run down one of Steamboat's (and the world's) best tree runs - Shadows.



Here's the GPS data.

Back in the groove

I didn't ski Friday because I pulled up sore from opening day which is not surprising given a break of nearly eight months and the fact that I skied too hard and not particularly well.

Yesterday I was much happier with the way I skied and it was such a beautiful day. Best run of the day was definitely this non-stop bump run down Whiteout. The nice thing about this video is that with sun behind me I can see how I'm skiing and note the corrections to make next time.


If you are wondering what the blur on the left side is, that's some snow stuck on the lens. I'm not sure how it got there since I didn't fall. Or if I did, it's been edited out. You'll never know. More importantly, neither will Marie. It seems she wasn't happy seeing the fall on Thursday's video.

Here's the GPS data.

Finally it's here

The 2010-11 ski season it is. It's less than eight months since I last skied but it seems like forever.

This year we've opened with top to bottom skiing after several very snowy weeks.

I acquired a new high definition helmet mounted camera a little while back, so here's the video of a sweet opening day run through the trees of Closet. Yes, I did fall. Did I mention that it's opening day? So I'm a tiny bit rusty.



It was cold out today - below 0F - but the sun was out and there was no wind so it was actually quite bearable. Especially when the pay off is opening day tree skiing!

Another hard drive fail

Yesterday my network attached drive failed. Unlike last time, I had all the data backed up.

It was easy enough to run down to Staples and get a new one. I couldn't get the same brand/model, and whilst all network drives do much the same things, they all do it slightly differently, so I had to spend a couple of hours getting it configured and all of the computers mapped to the right virtual drives so all my backup routines would continue to work correctly. It should have only taken 15 minutes, but the user guide was next to useless. The people who wrote it obviously have no concept of stepping the user through key concepts or common tasks.

The trickiest part was installing the client software on Marie's netbook which doesn't have a CD drive. The instructions included the following "if your computer does not have a CD drive, go to http://www.seagate.com/goflexhomesupport/" which I did, expecting to be able to download the software. No sign of it, or anything else that would help me solve the problem. So I had to copy the CD to a USB drive and install it that way.

Not a big deal really, but this is supposed to be consumer grade technology. There's no way the average consumer (i.e. someone who doesn't like to play with computers) could install this correctly.

Big fat soft flakes

That's what Champagne Powder is made of and plenty of it has been falling from the sky in the past week. With only ten days to go until opening day, it's looking like a much better start to the season than last year.

There's not quite enough snow yet to get an early start on the season by hiking for some turns, but certainly plenty to play in so yesterday we decided to go hiking in the snow up Emerald Mountain.

What's French for spam?

I've mentioned before how much I detest comment spam. But this one made me laugh:

Salut à tous,

Voulez-vous gagner des objets facilement?

Le site web xxxx.ca est un un site web facile d'acces qui vous permet de remporter de fabuleux prix sans investir beaucoup!

According to Google this roughly translates as:

Hello all,

Want to win things easily?

xxxx.ca website is a website easy access that allows you to win great prizes without investing a lot!

Is there anything anywhere on this blog to indicate that I, or my readers, are francophones? Well my wife Marie is, having been educated by French nuns through grade 9, but you can't tell that from my blog (at least until now).

Plus it was attached to a post about Aussies in Hollywood. Since it appears to be a French-Canadian website, it might have made at least a little sense if it were attached to this post which mentions a hotel in Ottawa with a French name.

The scary thing is that as dumb as spammers are, there are even dumber people out there who give them money!

Customer service in real time

This morning I left some slightly negative feedback about a purchase on the Amazon website (the packaging overkill issue I blogged recently).

Within a minute (literally) of clicking submit the company that fulfilled the order called me to address the issue.

One of the most critical parts of delivering good customer service is to actually listen to your customers; that's the only way to learn about problems so you can fix them, and it has the added benefit of making your customers feel valued.

You'd be amazed how many companies don't get that (like the hotel I blogged about yesterday, who haven't bothered to respond to the email I sent them).

Onecall.com clearly get it. I'll happily order from them again knowing that if there's a problem they'll be on it faster than Usain Bolt.

What does guaranteed mean?

In the thousands of nights I've stayed in hotels I've never needed or wanted a room with two beds.Well once, about 15 years ago when I shared a room on a business trip with my good friend Raj, and he hasn't stopped talking about how restless I am (stillness is not my karma).

Hotel rooms are small enough without half the space being taken up by a bed that you are not going to use. So one of my pet hates is booking a room with a king bed and finding at check in that they only have rooms with two queen beds available.

This is annoying enough at hotels that primarily serve business travelers, but it is inexcusable at hotels that attract couples wanting a romantic get away, like the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in Ottawa which seems to have a constant stream of unhappy couples (yes, including us when we stayed there) checking in only to find that for 300 plus dollars a night (room only) they'd be sharing an old fashioned double bed instead of the king bed they'd requested.

One of the reasons I prefer Marriott hotels is that they track rooms with king beds and rooms with two queen beds as separate inventory, so that if they have a king bed room available when you make your reservation, they guarantee it.

Or so I thought. I received an email today from a Marriott that I was planning to stay at tonight saying "We wanted to let you know in advance that based on our occupancy, your bed preference might not be available today during your stay."

I'm sorry, but which part of guaranteed do I not understand correctly?

Facetime

I just tested out Facetime, the video calling technology built into the iPhone 4, with my friend Rob.

I've used a number of video calling technologies before (e.g. Skype) but this is the most natural by far. You immediately forget the technology; it just feels like a face to face conversation.

The only problem is that it's a closed system; you can only call other iPhone 4 users. Let's hope Apple open the technology up. Otherwise it will be the same old story; due to the network effect an inferior but open technology will come to dominate the market.

Fall winter storm

Steamboat was hit yesterday with what the weather service calls a winter storm. But there's a difference between a true winter storm and a late fall storm; the snow is much wetter and heavier than it would be in a true winter storm, and many of the trees still have their leaves (and berries), so it looks quite different. Still beautiful, just different.

The unfriendliest place in Steamboat is...

... the Post Office parking lot. Something comes over the fine citizens of Steamboat Springs when they are on a mission to collect their mail; they'd rather drive right over the top of you than stop than let you back out of your spot (even if you're 3/4 of the way out)!

Packaging overkill

I ordered a product online recently which arrived in this box.


Here's what was inside.


And here's the actual product.


Here's a comparison of the actual product and the mailing box. I calculate you could fit approximately 200 of these in this box.


If you are wondering what this is, I'll explain it in a forthcoming post. Hint: it fits on a helmet and I'm going to use it during the ski season.

First snow

To remind us that it's only 47 days until the opening of the ski season, Mother Nature delivered us our first dusting of snow on the mountain today.

Perfect rainbow

Driving back from downtown this evening we saw the most perfect rainbow I think I've ever seen framing the ski mountain perfectly.


Within the limits of my iPhone camera I needed to take two shots to get it all. You can see that my photoshop skills are limited!

Traditional publishers are idiots

Look closely at the pricing on Amazon for this book. The hardcover is $7.99 and the Kindle edition is $9.99!


Electronic books cost less to produce and distribute than physical books, there are no costs for inventory or returns, you can't lend them and you can't sell them when you are done. So they should always be priced lower than the physical book.

This is not Amazon's fault. The initial Kindle pricing model was that Amazon would set the prices. The publishers disliked that so much that they threatened to withdraw their books from Amazon with this very publisher, HarperCollins, leading the charge.

You might wonder what HarperCollins' agenda is. I can only surmise that they hope that they can sabotage the move to electronic books and maintain their current business model. Of course they would think that, because resisting digitalisation has worked so well for the entertainment industry!

When Amazon write "this price was set by the publisher" I don't know how they can resist adding "who are complete idiots and deserve to go the way of the dinosaurs."

Update: 6 October. I wrote this before I saw this article on the same subject in the New York Times.

The article discusses two specific examples and the publishers are quoted as saying "...those two books were the first they knew of that cost more as e-books than in hardcover on Amazon." Not only are they idiots, but they are either liars or completely and utterly clueless. I've seen dozens of examples on Amazon including some where the electronic book is more expensive than the paperback!

Hopefully enough pressure is building on publishers to stop this nonsense. By the way, I think the New York Times is much less imaginative with its headlines than I am!

Hiking Emerald Mountain

Marie and I hiked Emerald Mountain today. It's a 5 mile round trip with a 1,400 ft vertical rise, so it provided a very good two hour workout. Here's the route.


Emerald Mountain is directly across the valley from the ski mountain, so this is the view half way up.


And this is the view from the top!


There's also a great view from the top of the Flattops to the south.

Hard drive fail

The hard drive in my work laptop crashed yesterday. For some reason it was the only one of the several computers in my house that wasn't backed up. Yes I know, dumb, dumb, dumb.

It could have been worse. It actually happened whilst I was visiting the office, so Jeremy our IT guy did a great job installing a new hard drive so I at least have a working laptop, even if it is without my data (fortunately the most valuable documents were stored online.)

The other silver lining is that after a not so good day, I got to come home to Steamboat (and Marie). That's always good. Actually it's good squared!