Anyone speak Swedish?

If you do, I'd like to ask the Nobel Committee the following question:

What the f... were you guys thinking?

That's my reaction to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Price.

I voted for the guy, and whilst I've been bitterly disappointed with his economic policies, I generally think that on foreign policy he's on the right track. But if this were a 400 metres race, he wouldn't even be through the first turn.

Things are better in Iraq but it's still only the sort of peaceful where people die every day in political violence.

Afghanistan is going the other way. It's one hell of a mess on the way to being a disaster of biblical proportions.

North Korea and Iran are still making nuclear weapons. Burma is still run by a repressive military regime. People are still being persecuted and dying in Darfur.

Obama's approach on all these issues is measured and considered and patient (unlike his predecessor who showed all the patience and consideration of a teenage boy), but it will be quite some time before he's achieved anything lasting and substantial.

Update 10:30 am Mountain Time: Ok, it seems need to translate "What the f... were you guys thinking?" into Norwegian. It seems that the Peace Prize is awarded in Norway, unlike the rest of the Nobel prizes which are awarded in Sweden.

Thank you Comcast

Those are words I never thought I'd speak. Comcast have been my cable TV provider since 2002 and my high speed internet provider since 2004 and in that time have managed on many, many occasions to annoy the hell out of me.

But last night they redeemed themselves. I was able to watch the Australian Football League ("Aussie Rules") Grand Final live on ESPN360.com which I only discovered earlier this week is available free to Comcast subscribers.

I have a computer connected to my big screen TV that I used to watch it, so apart from the occasional jitter it was as good as watching it on TV back in Australia (apart from being the middle of Friday night instead of Saturday afternoon, but hey you can't have everything).

To obtain this level of performance ESPN must mirror the feed from Australia to the US and then serve it to end users from here, because I've tried streaming football video from Australia before and it's been unwatchable (bandwidth across the Pacific is lousy).

So once again for the record, just in case there is any confusion; Thank you Comcast.

First snow for '09

It's 66 days until opening day for the 2009-10 ski season and we had our first snow last night. Only a light dusting but it still counts (there was still snow on the rooftops when I got up at 6.30 am). There's probably more at the top of the mountain but right now you can't see that for the clouds.

Terrible jet lag

We arrived back in Steamboat on Wednesday after four weeks in Australia. For some reason we're suffering from jet lag far worse than we ever had before; awake until 3 or 4 am and then sleeping until 10 or 11 am.

It normally takes at least a week to adjust to a time change this big (eight hours in the northern summer), but by now we should at least be sleeping a bit better, yet last night was still a shocker. Hope it improves soon - I've got a trip to San Diego on Tuesday, with a 9.30 am meeting on Wednesday morning!

The best hot chocolate. Ever.

Last year I wrote about discovering the perfect cappuccino.

Today I had the best hot chocolate I've ever tasted. Not best by a little bit, but the best by a long way. If this was a ten, the best I'd had before was a five.

Where was this? In Canberra, Australia at a place called Koko Black.

Winter?

It's still summer in Steamboat with highs around 30C / 86F, and it's supposed to be winter here in Brisbane, but yesterday it was 36C / 96F!

Lions great escape

I went to a Brisbane Lions game last night for the first time in two years.

At quarter time when we were 47 points down I wondered why I bothered.

But the only thing better than watching a game that you know from the start your team is going to win, is watching a game that looks lost but ultimately isn't. The Lions looked a different team after quarter time and whilst they didn't hit the lead until well into the last quarter, by half time I was confident that they would get up.

Final score: Brisbane 16.11.107 d Port Adelaide 14.8.92

Go Lions!

Yale is a joke

If the fact that George W. Bush is a graduate wasn't sufficient evidence that Yale's claim to be a world class institute of higher education is a joke (motto "if your daddy is an alumni or has enough money, or better still both, we'll graduate you"), this act of moral and academic cowardice seals it.

Why would anyone spend money, let alone serious money like thirty or forty grand a year, on attending such a place? Sure some employers will continue for a few years to be sucked in by the brand, but if you're actually worthy of an Ivy League education you'll spend the rest of your life knowing that you're associated with a sham.

By the way, here's those notorious images. Like WTF is all the fuss about? And screw you Islamic fundamentalists. And Yale. Seems like I've got more courage than you.



HT: Coyote Blog

Balloon Rodeo

This weekend was Steamboat's 28th annual balloon festival.

I've blogged on this before. But I never get tired of walking out on a beautiful cool and clear summer morning to see the colour and drama of a mass balloon launch.

Last snow

I've been watching the last of the snow on the mountain melt over the past couple of weeks. The last tiny little patch located near the bottom of the Chutes appears to have melted since yesterday. That's OK, since it's only 145 days to next season!

My nephew the photographer

I've previously posted excellent photos taken by my nephew Julian, but now he seems to be getting very serious about the art. Check out this fantastic shot of the Gold Coast.


Here's his technical commentary for those who understand such stuff - it's completely meaningless to me; I've not mastered anything more complex than an auto-focus point and shoot digital camera.

• "Taken using a 1976 Pentax SLR... looks like the 30 year old shutter mechanism and light meter are working perfectly... :)"
• "It's exactly what I wanted, dark contrasts, bright borderline over exposure that brings out the highlights and reflections.. I ran every shot at just above neutral values..."

United still sucks

I've blogged before on how hopeless United Airlines are.

I've just returned from a one night/one day trip to Washington DC. I managed to use some miles to upgrade to what US carriers insist on calling "First Class", but the experience still managed to remind me how bad these guys are.

In United's defence let me begin by at least admitting that the attitude of their staff has generally improved over the past couple of years. I think they've finally woken up to the fact that their jobs are on the line. I should also add that this is the first trip I've taken in ages when every flight was on time, no connections were missed and no bags were lost (the latter helped by only having carry-ons)!

But the cabin environment and especially the food continue to put United at the bottom of the heap (right at the bottom now that Northwest have been absorbed by Delta). On the way out dinner consisted of a salmon salad which was basically some very sad looking lettuce leaves and what looked like the lowest possible quality tinned salmon. On the way back "dinner" consisted of a ham sandwich on the driest most unappetising bread roll I've ever seen.

Watering the cat

Two things to conclude from this photo: my sister-in-law's cat is weird and very spoilt!

Oxford

We visited Oxford today; lunch with some friends and then a bicycle ride around town which is the best way to see the town, especially the areas around the university colleges. Fortunately we had good weather, not something you take for granted here in England!

What global economic crisis?

If there's a global economic crisis going on right now (not to mention a flu pandemic scare as well) then nobody told the hordes of tourists who overran London this past weekend. Sure it was a three day weekend, but there were plenty of Chinese and Indians amongst the crowds and I'm pretty sure they didn't just pop over here after work on Friday.

We were part of the horde as well (here for a little longer than a three day weekend, on my way back from South Africa). On Sunday we visited the War Cabinet Rooms where Churchill and the British War Cabinet ran the British war effort during the worst of the German bombing. It's one of those fantastic sites where you really have the feeling of walking in the footsteps of history. The fact that much of it was simply closed up on the last day of the war and left that way until the mid-1970's, unseen and untouched, is amazing.

Where's the cloaking device when you need it

Only our homeland security overlords in Washington DC could be stupid enough to think that flying a 747 over New York was a mission that could be kept secret. Or perhaps the cloaking device they borrowed from the Star Trek set didn't work...oh wait, that's science fiction and we live in the real world, but clearly someone in Washington doesn't.

More Pretoria rugby

I attended another Super 14 Rugby match in Pretoria last night. This time it was the Bulls vs the Waikato Chiefs, again from New Zealand. The score was close right to the end, which is always good for maintaining interest. The home team won, which is also good for keeping the crowd in a good mood!

The weather was ideal, until one minute from the end when there was an unseasonably late thunderstorm. Not quite like the awesome summer thunderstorms here, but we still got soaked walking back to the car. It was still a fun evening though.

Thanks to Pieter for the ticket and the company.

Paying an eToll in a rental car

I noticed this sticker on the window of the car I rented today to drive from Steamboat to Denver to get my flight via London to Johannesburg.


(apologies for the quality of the image; due to the slope of the window it was difficult to get a shot without the sunlight behind the subject)

I wish Avis in Australia did this. Sydney in particular is a pain with a rental car because there are toll roads everywhere and all of them are electronic payment only. If you don't have an eTag unit (as you wouldn't as a tourist) there is a process to register online to pay the tolls, but the user interface is lousy and in my personal experience it doesn't actually work; the one time I used it, I received an unpaid toll notice even though I'd registered.

New countdown

The counter at the bottom of this blog page has been updated.

Only 226 days to the 2009-2010 ski season (but who's counting!)

And so it ends

Today was closing day for the 2008-09 ski season here in Steamboat.

I went out on principle, expecting it to be mediocre at best, but I must say despite being a bit damp (being warm enough to rain at lower elevations) it was OK. It's wasn't great, but it was good enough to ski Closet, which is not bad for April 12.

Here's today's track for 10,374 vertical ft.


And here's the consolidated track for the season, a total of 450,000 vertical ft in 35 days of skiing.