50 years

My parents were married on this day 50 years ago. My dad passed away in early 2009 and my mum is fighting cancer, so there won't be any celebration, but it's still a milestone worth noting. Everything I know about loving your spouse completely whilst still driving each other crazy most of the time I learned by watching my parents!

Pro cycling comes to Steamboat

Professional cycling came to Steamboat today with the finish of Stage 4 of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge (and the start of stage 5 tomorrow morning).

All the top teams were there, including this year's Aussie winner of the Tour de France, Cadel Evans; so we had to be there at the finish waving the flag in support!

Krugman and space aliens

In an attempt to justify more Keynesian stimulus spending, Paul Krugman has suggested a strategy which has now most cleverly been dubbed Wag the Dalek - yes, a fake invasion by space aliens to justify massive government spending.

Actually, given the consistent Keynesian failure to understand that every dollar the government spends is a dollar not being spent by taxpayers themselves, I'm a little disappointed that Krugman didn't advocate a real alien invasion. Imagine the jobs created rebuilding our civilization once those helpful aliens blast us back to the stone age with their death rays.

It's all too bizarre for words. I do see the work of aliens here, but what I really think has happened is that the Nobel prize winning economist we called Paul Krugman has been replaced by an alien pretending (not very well) to be Paul Krugman. Seriously. How else can you explain this guy seeming to have unlearnt everything he ever knew as an economist?

Update: You can buy a (slightly geeky) t-shirt that makes the point:

Dinner with a show

The chef calls this one Mt Fuji!

Just one thing to get right

All a check in agent needs to do these days is get one thing right. When you print your own boarding pass and check in at a kiosk, all the agent needs to do is put the correct tag on your bag. Our check in agent today couldn't even manage that. It wasn't until our bags didn't arrive in DC and we looked at our baggage receipts that we realised that she'd put someone else's tags on our bag. Someone else who was going to Tampa Bay.

I've hated United so much for so long that I would have thought it impossible for me to hate them more. I was wrong. Very wrong.

Update 2.55pm, August 9
They give you a website to check the status of your bags (http://www.united.com/bagcheck) but all it tells you is that your bag has been found and is in transit to you. But you still have to call and talk to an agent to find out the specific flight it was put on and when you can realistically expect it. It's one thing not to have information on the website that they don't have, but what's the sense in having the website if it doesn't tell you the information they have and you want?

Awesome sunset

An awesome sunset last night.

The next manufacturing revolution

I've been watching developments in 3D printing for a while now with growing interesting and excitement. Having seen this latest video of the test flight of a model aircraft this was entirely built in a 3D printer. I'm absolutely convinced that this is the next revolution in manufacturing.


When I first starting following 3D printing the buzz was about being able to rapidly prototype components at a fraction of the traditional cost of manufacturing a one off item or being able to print complex shapes that traditional manufacturing couldn't produce cost-effectively.

The revelation from this video I watched recently was that you could print moving parts in situ.


But that's just a spanner or wrench. In this latest video they print the entire plane in a single operation. If you can do that you can print a car or a refrigerator or anything. My prediction is that 30 years from now everything that is manufactured, and I mean everything, will be manufactured in a 3D printer.

Wildflowers

One of the many nice things about hiking in Steamboat this time of year is the wildflowers.

If you are going to charge $5 for a cappuccino...

...you ought to learn how to make a decent one. This means you, Hyatt Regency Reston. For your information a cappuccino is one third espresso, one third milk and one third foam. It's not a cup of insipid, watery brown liquid with a little foam on top!

I officially do not understand airlines

Today we're flying from Ottawa to Washington DC (this post is brought to you courtesy of Ottawa airport's free wifi!)

We arrived quite early for our United flight so we asked about getting on an earlier United flight (same airline) only to be told that it would cost us $120 each.

We were also told that it was too early to check in for our original flight. So we had lunch and a cup of coffee and came back. At which time we were told (by a different agent) that we could get on an earlier Air Canada flight (yes a different airline) for no charge. In fact, because Air Canada does not charge for checked bags, we're saving fifty bucks.

I actually do understand what's going on here. It's all about the check-in agent. One decided to be helpful and the other one didn't. Simple as that.

Comment spam mystery

I get a lot of comment spam on this blog, which fortunately the Blogger comment spam filter does an excellent job of catching, saving you dear reader from endless ads for viagra, penile enhancement and pirated movie downloads.

I generally understand how comment spam works, even if I think comment spammers are low life scum who with every breathe steal oxygen that rightly belongs to the human race. What I can't figure out is why 90% of the comment spam is on this four year old post about rugby in Steamboat. Theories and explanations welcome in the (spam free) comments.

Of course I just realised that by mentioning viagra, penile enhancement and pirated movie downloads (twice now) this post is inviting even more comment spam!

Ticketing idiocy

No, not airline ticketing idiocy (although there's no shortage of that) but football ticketing idiocy.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a Brisbane Lions home game on Saturday night and doubly fortunate to see them have their first win for the season (after seven losses to start the season). But I was rather unimpressed that I was unable to buy a ticket for a decent seat, knowing that with the Lions in a "rebuilding phase" the ground would not be even close to sold out. As it turned out it was less than half full (19,000 in a ground that holds over 40,000 people).

So I bought the cheapest ticket I could ($25.50). Where do you think I sat; in my cheap and not very good seat, or in one of the thousands of empty seats in the area where I wanted to sit (where I was more than willing to pay $61 for a ticket)?

I don't know who manages ticketing for Lions games at the Gabba, but they are idiots who are leaving money on the table.

No airline executives were harmed...

Recently I wondered if I would need to ritually sacrifice an airline executive in order to appease the airline gods.

I'm pleased to say such drastic action seems to have been unnecessary. Last week I managed to fly from Denver to Chicago to Ottawa to Washington to Los Angeles to Brisbane without a single delay or disruption. I even got the best seat on the plane (1A) on the Qantas flight to Brisbane!

Seriously Amazon.com. Seriously?

I'm all for free services sponsored by advertising - the entire Googleverse for example. But receiving "sponsored screensavers" aka ads on my Kindle to save $24? You have got to be joking Amazon.com. This must be an April Fools joke that's ten days late.

This is doubly disappointing given the rumours on the tech sites that Amazon would soon offer the Kindle for $99 or even free to Prime members like me!

Sweet closing day

The weird weather, spring one day, winter the next, continues so after yesterday's spring conditions today it was winter again. It wasn't an epic powder day, but it was a powder day and on closing day, April 10, that's epic enough!

The 5am report said three inches but it was snowing hard this morning so it was at least six inches by the time I hit the mountain at 10am.

And it just kept getting better for the rest of the morning. I thought my first run down Triangle 3, with plenty of wind blown drifts, and skier's right of Tornado, where the hard bumps were filled in just nice, would be my best run of the day. Then I thought my run down a completely untracked Priest Creek liftline would be the best of the day, until it was surpassed by the 2.45 trees, then the 2.15 trees and finally by Shadows where I was still able to find fresh lines after noon.

My home run for the day and for the season was, fittingly, Vertigo. It was a little dust on crust but the new snow was heavy enough to provide plenty of grab, so it was definitely skiable. Not the best I've ever seen it, but awesome for April.

Here's the GPS data.

So that's it for the 2010-11 season. I managed 40 days which given my travel commitments and moving house in December I'm happy with. It's way less than the 116 days I managed last season, but I had more powder days this year with the awesome 400+ inch season we've had. Any season where you ski Closet on opening day and Shadows on closing day is a great season.

Today is also our seventh anniversary of living in Steamboat. Living the dream doesn't get any better than this!

A better birthday

Last year on my birthday I ended up at a South African Emergency Room. This year I went skiing. It's not hard to figure out which experience makes for a more enjoyable birthday!

I was out around 10am which was probably 30 minutes too early, so the first runs were hardpack, but by 11am it had softened nicely in a number of places. Best run of the day was my second attempt at Vagabond after the snow had softened.

Here's the GPS data.

Is it really April 6?

For the past couple of weeks the weather has been swinging wildly between spring and winter. Today it was both. More rain than snow at the base, but definitely snow and quite misty and chilly at the top of the mountain (there's a reason it's called Storm Peak!)

It started snowing in the wee hours of the morning, so there was 3 or 4 inches on the ground by breakfast time and perhaps 6 inches by the time I managed to get out at 11 am. But that was on top of a hard base from yesterday's warmth, so you had to pick your spot or it was very dust on crust. My first run down Whiteout was especially bad. My eyes saw powder but my skis felt nothing but hard pack, and my head hadn't yet resolved the the two. It got a lot better after that though.

Best run of the day was definitely this one down the Ridge - largely untracked and deep enough to not feel the crust underneath.


This run down See Ya on the way home was also fun and interesting. On the lower mountain the snow was wet and heavy so it was a completely different feeling skiing through it. And you can see from the water accumulating on the camera lens how wet it was down there.


The other brilliant thing today; being the last week of the ski season there was barely anybody on the mountain.

Here's the GPS data.

Sydney airport deja vu

I'm sitting in my home office in Steamboat listening to the the radio from Australia on the internet.

The Australian Minister for Transport is currently talking about the need for a second airport in Sydney.

I have two words for him: Badgery's Creek.

That was the name of the second Sydney airport announced by the Australian Government in mid-1989. It was a political sop back then. I know this because I was part of the small team that put the proposal together to provide political cover to get approval to build a third runway at the real Sydney airport (whenever I land on 16L/34R, I like to think of it as "my runway").

It's still a sop now. There are very few cities that successfully run more than one major airport. New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Chicago come to mind. All much bigger cities than Sydney.

One of the things the Minister was just rabbiting on about was that demand for slots exceeds supply. The best way to match supply and demand and to ensure a resource is allocated to its highest value use is via a very secret mechanism economists call price. In the context of airport slots that means auctioning slots off to the highest bidder. Of course that's not how it works. So I have zero sympathy for bleating about excess demand.

Angry airline gods

Clearly the airline gods are angry with me because in the past 2 months I'm 0 for 3 in terms of attempts to travel out of Steamboat without major disruptions.

In early February I attempted to travel from Steamboat to Dublin. It was supposed to be easy - direct flight from Steamboat to Chicago and then direct flight to Dublin. My flight out of Steamboat was delayed and I missed my connection in Chicago, so instead of the direct flight to Dublin I had to go via London which has the world's dumbest immigration process for transiting to Ireland.

In late February I attempted to travel from Steamboat to Washington via Houston. My flight from Houston to Washington was cancelled so I had to overnight in Houston.

Then today I attempted to fly from Steamboat to Washington via Denver. It was snowing hard as I left for the airport and half way there I received the email notification that my Steamboat to Denver flight had been cancelled.

Note that only this last disruption had anything to do with the winter weather in the mountains.

If anyone knows how to win back the favour of the airline gods, please feel free to comment. Do I have to ritually sacrifice an airline executive or something?

Update: 6.24pm: here's the report in today's paper on the storm and flight cancellations.

More than it looks

Here's today's GPS data.

It doesn't look like I did much - only 8,100 vertical ft in 1:46. But most of that was bumps, including three laps on Whiteout which totally jellied my legs. Which is why on Mother Nature on the way home I had my first proper ski came off fall in the bumps for the season.