An offer I can't refuse?

I just received this very attractive email from United offering me unbelievable deals on a skiing holiday.


Lots of places I can choose from, including Steamboat.


Hmmmm, maybe it's an offer I can refuse. It seems a bit excessive to fly from my house to the lifts!

Powder chaser

Today was one of those days where there's a few inches of new powder on top of the previous day's big fall and you go chasing the leftover stashes. I found some good deep snow on the skiers' right of Tornado and likewise on Cyclone (including face shots), all over Triangle 3 (great because it was closed yesterday) and in the middle section of the Bar-UE Liftline.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 11,268 vertical ft and a season total of 38,078 vertical ft (or 3.8% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).


Hopefully we'll soon have enough snow to open more of the mountain. As much as I like some of these runs, I'm itching to ski some of my other favourites, especially Shadows and Twilight!

Update: I forgot to mention that it was much colder today than yesterday. It was about 10F (-12C) when I went out at 8.30 am "warming" to 15F by the time I finished at 10.30 am. Also, check out this picture of yesterday's action from the front page of today's newspaper.

Powder day

Two days ago it was like spring, but today it's definitely like winter, the very best of winter. A major storm rolled in last night and brought with it 8-12 inches of Steamboat's famous champagne powder.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 11,530 vertical ft and a season total of 26,810 vertical ft (or 2.7% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).


I followed a pair of instructors down BC Liftline for first tracks and was embarrassed to fall on my second turn, but I felt a lot better when one of the instructors fell a few turns further down. Most of the rest was tracked up by the time I got to it because the normal quota of powderhounds was squeezed into about 10% of the mountain, although I did find some very nice lines on Hurricane which only opened later in the morning.

It's still snowing and forecast to continue well into tonight, so it should be more of the same tomorrow, only better!

November spring

The conditions on the mountain right now are like spring skiing which is fine, except that it's November! Today was much like Friday only a little bit more. Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 9,020 vertical ft and a season total of 15,280 vertical ft (or 1.5% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).


And now, since it's already Monday in Asia, I need to get to work.

Back on skis

Steamboat's 2006-07 ski season opened yesterday and today was my first day out. Unfortunately all the snow we had in October and early November has melted because it's been so warm the last few days. They've done a great job with snowmaking but it really needs to snow in the next few days.

While there's not a lot of people here it was still a little crowded since everyone was packed into just a few runs. Upper Buddy's was nice and the bumps on Whiteout and BC Liftline were surprisingly good - perhaps because the warm weather had softened them.

My skiing was also much better than I expected given that once again I failed to stay fit during the summer and that I'd only got off the plane from New Zealand yesterday.

Objectively today was only one star, but it's so good to be back on skis that subjectively I'd have to rate it four stars!

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 6,260 vertical ft.

Incompatibility

If you want to understand the key to programmer productivity (and any other task that involves the manipulation of a large number of inter-dependent ideas) read Joel On Software.

What it comes down to is this - interruptions are really, really, really bad for productivity when you are doing this type of work (because every time you are interrupted you need to reassemble all the ideas you were holding in your head in exactly the relative positions they were at the point you were interrupted). The lack of interruptions is one of the main reasons I like working from home (the other reasons are being close to my espresso machine, my wife and the ski lifts, but not necessarily in that order).

However when I'm visiting one of my company's offices I usually end up working at a cube in what we call a 'business centre'. The idea is widespread in big consulting companies now and is usually referred to as 'hot desking'. It's driven by bean counters who believe that it saves money which on the face of it is true because you can squeeze a lot more people in the same amount of space. Of course it's only a saving if you completely ignore productivity, which in my experience is about 25% of what it is when you have a quiet private space (like my home office), at least if you measure productivity in terms of producing the stuff that we deliver to clients and actually get paid for as opposed to 'busy work'.

But someone in our office in Wellington, NZ has taken the concept to new levels of stupidity because the 'business centre' is also the coffee break room. Try preparing a presentation to a client to close a multi-million deal while a dozen people are taking their lunch break around you. I really wonder how the guy that came up with this can justify taking a salary.

I love snow but...

..this is ridiculous. I'm in Canberra, Australia where the summer solstice is a little over a month away. I lived here for most of the 1980's and it snowed twice. And yet right now it's snowing!

Storm warning

The snow we had earlier in the week was well on its way to melting when a major storm moved through Colorado last night.


That's about eight inches here in the valley which usually means at least a foot and a half on the mountain. If only the ski mountain was open, today would be a powder day!

We will be in Australia and New Zealand for the next few weeks, so at least I won't have to watch it snow while I wait for the ski season to start!

Snow and sun

It's been snowing the last few days in Steamboat. The great thing about the weather here is that you still get plenty of sun.


And if you can find yourself a spot in the sun and out of the wind, you can sit outside in a t-shirt quite comfortably. Really.

Talk is cheap

Very cheap. I've posted before about my VOIP phone service which gives me unlimited calls in North America and Western Europe for $21.95 a month and three cents a minute to Australia.

Well Lingo has just added New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and yes, Australia to the list of countries covered by the free unlimited calls! That's right, I can call my family on the other side of the world every single day and it doesn't cost a single cent extra (but Mum, that doesn't mean that I'm actually going to call you every day, OK?)

As well as my Lingo service which has an adapter which allows me to plug in a normal phone handset, I also use Skype on my laptop which has the advantage that I can take it with me on the road. For $4 a month Skype also provides me with a virtual phone number in Canberra, Australia which allows my client and colleagues there to call a local number to contact me wherever in the world I am.

To give you an idea how clueless the traditional telcos are, Qwest (the incumbent carrier in Colorado) is now offering a VOIP service in an attempt to compete with the likes of Lingo before they completely lose all their business. Not only is the monthly rate higher, but for that you pay five cents a minute for calls within the US and nine cents a minute to Australia. Doesn't really compete with free does it?

Shopping trip

We took a trip on the weekend to Glenwood Springs to buy some furniture and to the Home Depot at Avon (near Vail) to buy some new light fittings. It reminded me once again how beautiful Colorado is and how lucky we are to live here.

We started out taking CO 131 south to join Interstate 70.


Then we followed I-70 through Glenwood Canyon.



And then back to Avon where the aspens were at their peak.



Sure it was a 250 mile round trip, but are your shopping trips this scenic?

Winners are grinners

I mentioned back in June that I was travelling to New Zealand's capital city (Wellington) to present a proposal to the government there. I received word last night (that's Monday morning New Zealand time) that we won the project. I'm sure it was my presentation that made all the difference!

That means two trips across the Pacific this year for two wins. That makes the pain of the long haul travel a little easier to take, although it means at least one and probably two more trips before the year is over. Unfortunately I don't know if I can squeeze in both trips before the ski season begins in just 58 days.

Hopefully my recent travels to Hong Kong and Beijing, China will also result in wins. That would make for a very good year.

Pardon me but your outsourcing is showing

I decided recently to change my cell (mobile) phone carrier. I've previously mentioned my dissatisfaction with my current carrier Verizon, but that wasn't the reason because I figure the other guys will be just as bad.

I travel extensively in other countries where they use a different standard (GSM) from the common US standard, so I wanted a handset and number that I could use for international roaming. That meant changing to a carrier that uses GSM.

What I got at the end of the process was "the credit department says you'll need to pay a $250 deposit." I could understand that because even though I now have a solid credit rating unlike two years ago when I basically didn't exist as far as the credit bureaus were concerned, you can quickly rack up a very big bill with international roaming and it's real money that your carrier owes the other carrier whether you pay your bill or not.

What floored me was the rest of the statement:

"...and we don't have any way to take a deposit."

Who the hell designs a business process that requires a deposit from a potential customer and then doesn't have a mechanism to actually, you know, collect the deposit? My guess is that either or both of the credit department and the call centre are outsourced. So to save say a buck fifty on the cost of handling the call, t-Mobile has lost a potentially very lucrative customer. Yes, I'm still with Verizon.

This one is close to the dumbest, most baffling business process I've ever seen. Ah, but they have Catherine Zeta-Jones on their ads, so I suppose that's OK.

More snow

Today is supposedly the official end of summer (the autumnal equinox). But winter is keen to get started here in Steamboat.


The run you can see in the centre of the picture is Westside and you can just see a little of Rolex to the left of that.

First snow for the season

Two days ago it was 80 F (26 C). This morning it was 35 F (2 C) in the valley and less on the mountain. This was the view from our window that greeted us around 8 am.


Unfortunately the annual rubby ducky race which raises funds for the hospital was cancelled due to the surge in the river from the run off. The local boy scouts who have to wade in to the river to retrieve the ducks as they cross the finish line would either have been washed away or snap frozen. I wonder what sort of badge you'd get for that?

A different sort of flying

Today I went out with my friend Michael flying radio controlled planes.

First we had to get the car loaded. It's quite tricky arranging all the pieces while leaving enough room for a couple of folding chairs, a thermos of coffee and all the other creature comforts.



Then we drove to the field out past Tharwa on the south side of Canberra. The yellow biplane (above) is an old one he kindly took along for me to practice on. Here's Michael with his plane. Note the plane behind him, you'll see it again soon.


Take off.

In flight.


As impressive as the models are (and they are, because they have an incredible power to weight ratio) , they're engineered to be cheap and fast. The little plastic guys in the cockpit aren't afraid of dying, so safety is not a consideration. So there's plenty of things that can go wrong, and when they do it can be quite spectacular. An aileron servo gave way in mid flight on one of the other planes (the one behind Michael in the photo above) and the result was a complete loss of control and finally a spinning dive into the ground at full throttle. The owner of the plane was suprisingly willing to have the results displayed here for all the world to see!

Beijing

After three days in Hong Kong we are now spending two days in Beijing. Unfortunately most men in China smoke. Not in the office, but definitely at lunch. So while I was locked away in a smokey dining room being slowly asphyxiated by my Chinese colleagues and customers, Marie was out visiting Tian'anmen Square (we've been here once before and already visited the two most popular sites, namely the Great Wall and the Forbidden City which are both fantastic).



Tonight we're going out with my colleagues to a local reasturant for - what else - Peking Duck!

More old friends

We live in Colorado and our German friends Bert and Claudia live in Switzerland. So what would be the chance of meeting them on our flight from Brisbane to Hong Kong? About 100% it seems. So here we are out to dinner together in Hong Kong along with their kids Julian and Laura.


We had some great Chinese food, despite the fact that nobody in the restaurant seemed to speak any English, something which seems be more common in Hong Kong each time I return.

Hong Kong

We're back in Hong Kong this week, a year since we were last here. From Brisbane it's only a two hour time change and an 8.5 hour flight which is considerably easier than getting here from Steamboat.

We usually stay at the Excelsior Hotel in Causeway Bay and because we're regulars (including a ten week stay in 2001!) they often upgrade our room. This time we have a room with a wonderful harbour view of Kowloon. This was the view when we checked in last night (click the photo to enlarge).


And this is the view this morning.

Old friends

We have some friends who live in Madison, Wisconsin that we've been meaning to visit for the past five years without success. But we finally managed to catch up with them today - on the Gold Coast (for my US readers, that's in Queensland, Australia, a very long way from either Colorado or Winconsin)!


Dan Bromley is an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin. I haven't yet read his latest book. Trouble is, if I buy a copy from Amazon it might take another five years before I see him again and can get him to autograph it!