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I picked up Christopher at Sea-Tac today. The above photo is one I snapped as he emerged from behind the security cordon at Alaska Airlines’ D-concourse.
It was wonderful to see him again.
Here he is talking to his mom on my cell phone while we wait for his bag.
More info later… right now we’re just enjoying being reunited.
I stumbled upon this on my hard drive. It is from a few years ago. Nick had a school project where he had to make a video about “how to” do something. He chose “get ready to go skiing.”
We set up a camcorder in the family room and Nick had all his ski gear and narrated choice bits of info about the equipment and such while I read him the outline, ran the camera, etc. After we gathered the footage we sat down and created/edited his movie, which we then put back on tape and sent off to school with Nick.
I deleted the actual main part of the movie for presentation here… but left the even longer collection of out takes I compiled at the end of it. To me, that was the most enjoyable part of the whole project. 😉
Two packages arrived from Chile this week. Mostly books which Christopher has read and doesn’t want/need to carry them back home in his luggage. It also contained a memory card from his camera, filled with almost 500 pictures. Unfortunately, it appears his camera was damaged not long after he arrived in Chile, and the focussing mechanism isn’t working well. Most of the photos are blurry. 🙁
There are a few choice ones though, and I’ll share them here.
Above: Christopher about a week after he arrived in Chile, and camping on the beach with his host family
Above: This is Gerardo, Christopher’s host father. “Yayo” as he is known, speaks very good English and he and I have conversed a lot over the past several months. Gerardo was an exchange student himself, in North Carolina, when he was in high school, so he understands a lot of what Chris is experiencing. I owe a great debt to Gerardo, as from what I can tell he is doing a wonderful job with Chris.
Above: This is Yayo and Lorena. Lorena is Chris’ host mother. She speaks about as much English as I do Spanish, so the one time she and I spoke on the phone was… hilarious. We both spoke slowly and loudly, and neither of us understood a word, other than “Christopher” and “Gerardo”. 😉
I have bought Chris another camera, which I will send down to him next week, along with his memory card. I think I also need to provide a little long distance Art Direction, as most of his shots fail to capture what people want to see. Of course, I look at my photography when I was 17, and it wasn’t much better. But then again, I had some people teach me how to compose and what not, so now is the time I guess. I do really like the shot at the top here of the sand and sun. It is a very evocative photo for me. Looking at it in context of the pictures taken at the same time though, you can see that it is a happy compositional accident… just one image in a series of sweeping panorama shots. The key to good photography is SEEING what is in the viewfinder as a complete image. We’ll see how that concept can be transmitted 10,000km via email!
I will post the rest of Chris’ photos from Chile later on today, with a password protecting them, to share with friends and family.
I took the afternoon off work today to travel up to Mount Vernon to watch Nick run at a track meet. He ran the 7th grade boys 1600 meters (roughly equivalent to a mile, about 19 feet short of one in fact). He made a time of just over seven minutes, which beat his last time by forty-eight seconds. He was in a very fast crowd though, and finished fifth. The first place kid literally almost lapped the field… he was VERY fast.
I told Nicholas that all that hair is obviously slowing him down… it is like strapping on a parachute. 😉
Nick also threw the discus, with his best throw just under 50′.
I could walk, ice skate, or ski 1600 meters no problem, but if you pressed me into running it I’d likely fall over dead. I hate running.
A few weeks ago we spent a long weekend up at Whistler, BC. It was Nick’s Spring Break, which happens too late in the year for us to visit my parents in Colorado (their snow is usually bad, or gone by then.) This year one of Sue’s law practice clients traded her some time in a condo in Whistler as partial payment, so we took advantage of it. The snow was fantastic, and we had three sunny days of skiing, and one very cloudy one. Nick & I skied together for two days… Sue’s back gave her trouble so she could not ski as much.
If you are a skier, and have never been to Whistler, make a point to do so before too long. After the 2010 winter Olympics the secret will be out and it will likely be too expensive, and too crowded.
The two mountains there are truly HUGE. The runs are all phenomenally long. The really long runs in the Rockies are merely “average” here. I’ve never skied on the east coast but the runs there must be mere hops compared to the leg-busting monsters on Whistler & Blackcomb. This photo was taken about 1/3rd the way down the far run on Blackcomb’s “skier’s right”… meaning Blackcomb Glacier, and down to the top of the Gondola.
Here is a trail map for reference
From the top of the Showcase T bar, you climb up to the entrance of the Blackcomb Glacier, then traverse out onto the steep upper slopes, and down the bowl to this spot. That alone would rate an awesome run anywhere in the world. The day that Nick & I went down and I shot this photo above it had snowed about a foot of powder on the glacier. Visibility was poor, but the snow was awesome. By the time we reached this point my thighs were on fire and I needed to lie down and rest. Nick, being 13 years old was ready for more! Ah to be young! After the rest, we then ran for what seemed like miles down the cruiser run that leads to the top of the gondola. I swear this lower part was as long, or longer than Vail’s longest front-side run, Riva Ridge. We could have continued down to the village, but instead opted to download on the Gondola. It was our last run and we were pretty worn out. “Spring Conditions” ruled on the lower mountain, which means that it was slick and hard since the snow had gone through countless freeze/thaw cycles and who knows how much rain for good measure! The day before I had skied the “Peak to Creek” route on Whistler… in 25 minutes… so I don’t think I could have done the Glacier to Village run at Blackcomb and survived.
You can see all the pics from the trip here.
It was a fun few days, with the only real bad thing being Sue’s sore back and Nick having his rental skis mistakenly “stolen” the last day at lunch. He and I came out of the Roundhouse on Whistler and his skis were missing. We searched everywhere for them and finally found a nearly identical pair one row closer to the building than where he left his. When he tried them on they were just a hair too short, so we know that whoever took his was releasing out of the bindings all the way down! We ended up downloading instead… very bummed out. The rental shop was very cool about the whole situation thankfully.
The drive home was interesting, as they are tearing up all of highway 99 to get ready for the Olympics. They have a real challenge to get that road done before 2010! I miss the old 2-lane harrowing cliff-side road up Howe Sound’s stunning fjiord. Hard to see a challenging road fall to the inevitable “progress” of safety and ease of travel. Sigh.
I was looking for a VERY old bit of software in order to open some very old files over the weekend, and I stumbled upon a CD-ROM that was an image of a 120mb hard drive out of my Mac IIsi… which I haven’t seen since 1994 or so. Back in 1994 or so I worked for a Fortune 500 company (IIRC it was #50 on the list that year.) I actually worked for a department of a division of that company… but anyway we had big budgets to spend on IT gear, and I was the IT guy. One of the things we had was a CD-ROM burner, which back then was a very exotic “bit of kit”, at the Brits say. We archived our work on CD-ROM and so we bought a burner. Thirteen years ago CD-ROM burners cost about $20,000 and blank discs were around $20 a pop. I remember being thrilled when we were able to buy them in bulk for $17 a disc. Well, I’m happy to say that unlike today’s CHEAP CD-ROM burners and media, the high-dollar Kodak burned media lasted the thirteen years quite well! I have a complete and readable copy of a hard drive from that old Mac IIsi. So I started looking around that old data, and I figured I would share some.
First off, is that photo above. I’m the guy on the right in case you didn’t recognize me. 😉
The real question for you pop-culture mavens out there is: can you name the location? If you are of a certain age, it should be plainly obvious. Everyone in that shot is 30-something then, and is 40-something now, so think back to our teen years and take your guess in the comments section.
I also found some old emails. Some humor is timeless, and here’s an email joke from the past. If you are offended by clinical terms to describe anatomy, stop reading and grow up! If you are a geek of a certain sort, have a look at the ASCII context surrounding the message body and unearth the hidden contextual nuggets. Feel free to quiz me about them in the comments. Don’t worry about the revealed email address… Robert Hess is quite dead, so he’s unlikely to get any spam due to my posting this. I was one of Robert’s beta testers for his wonderful AppleShare admin tool “Shaman” or as it was later known “Sharing Stone”. Robert was a uniquely funny guy, but I doubt this joke originated with him. He and I were very different people, but I enjoy having friends who are very different from me. I really enjoyed the emails we exchanged… both as dev/tester, and as journalist/unnamed source. 😉 There are a group of us that gather every year at Macworld Expo… the roster changes slightly every year. Robert & I always met up for lunch the first day… usually made entertaining by a wild ride in his car. It was shocking when he died so suddenly… at least not in a fiery car crash. Anyway… here is a blast from the past:
Item 6557845 17-June-94 17:10
From: ROBERT_HESS@MACWEEK.ZIFF.COM@INTERNET#
To: KUECHLE1Â Kuechle, Scott
X0357Â Microspot, World HQ,GB,IDV
CDA0858Â Laser Expressions, N Soltz,PAS
EL.GRANDEÂ -> DAVE.WINER UserLand SW, David Winer,PAS
JMPDUDEÂ Puckett, Mike
THEBONMARCHEÂ The Bon Marche, C Goolsbee,APD
SEIWA.PUBLSHÂ Seiwa Computing Sys,JHAlexander,PAS
SANTORINIÂ Santorini Consulting & Design,PRT
SLIPSTREAMÂ Slipstream Solution, A J Alt,PAS
INTERNET# Document Id: 199406171609.AA13005@ncrpda.curtin.edu.
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Sub: Why The Internet Is Like A
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Mail*Link(r) SMTP Why The Internet Is Like A Penis
It can be up or down. It's more fun when it's up, but it makes it hard to get any real work done.
In the long-distant past, its only purpose was to transmit information considered vital to the survival of the species. Some people still think that's the only thing it should be used for, but most folks today use it for fun most of the time.
It has no conscience and no memory. Left to its own devices, it will just do the same damn dumb things it did before.
It provides a way to interact with other people. Some people take this interaction very seriously, others treat it as a lark. Sometimes it's hard to tell what kind of person you're dealing with until it's too late.
If you don't apply the appropriate protective measures, it can spread viruses.
It has no brain of its own. Instead, it uses yours. If you use it too much, you'll find it becomes more and more difficult to think coherently.
We attach an importance to it that is far greater than its actual size and influence warrant.
If you're not careful what you do with it, it can get you in big trouble.
It has its own agenda. Somehow, no matter how good your intentions, it will warp your behavior. Later you may ask yourself "why on earth did I do that?"
Some folks have it, some don't.
Those who have it would be devastated if it were ever cut off. They think that those who don't have it are somehow inferior. They think it gives them power. They are wrong.
Those who don't have it may agree that it's a nifty toy, but think it's not worth the fuss that those who do have it make about it. Still, many of those who don't have it would like to try it.
Once you've started playing with it, it's hard to stop. Some people would just play with it all day if they didn't have work to do.
R.I.P. Robert.
If you recall, last December we had a huge windstorm that felled a 103′ tall Douglas Fir tree in our back yard. This happened literally days after we finished the cleanup from the big snow storm a few weeks before. That storm had most of our trees breaking branches off and falling (due to the weight of the snow) and we hired a landscaper to come saw them up and put them into a huge pile. We tried to do it ourselves but it was just too much work and we are short on time and the tools required.
The tree was another matter. My friend and coworker Shawn Hammer came and sawed up the tree into manageable chunks a couple of months ago. The remaining work is to just split and stack it to dry for use as firewood (for next time we lose electricity for a week!) I can do this job myself. But unlike other jobs, where it was important for issues of safety or whatnot to get it done swiftly, this job can be done at a leisurely pace.
An odd fact about me is that I don’t really like power tools. I’m not a luddite by any stretch of the imagination, I just don’t really mind using hand tools for a task like this. I was thinking about this while I was splitting these very heavy logs with an axe, a splitting wedge, and a 5lb short sledge hammer; we invented power tools to make human effort scale to meet commercial need. Power tools enabled us to get things done more efficiently. In this case, efficiency would be a luxury, not a NEED. I don’t have to have this wood split and stacked anytime soon. It could literally wait forever. My family might not want to have this stuff littering our yard, but in reality there is no pressing need to get it done. So why haul in some gas-powered splitter or something? The physical act of using hand tools to do the job is so much more engaging for me mentally. Looking at the wood grain, and knots and finding the just right spot to place the wedge. That moment of Zen-like calm as I relax, adjust the grip on the handle of the Collins Axe as it dangles behind my back… concentrating on the spot of wood that I wish to strike, before snapping it through the arc and (hopefully) through the log just right. The rhythm of the hammer on the wedge, and the tell-tale changes in pitch as it digs deeper into the wood, and then changes again as the pressure releases and the splitting starts. You cannot get this sort of VARIABLE connection to a task when just feeding a machine. The rhythms of feeding machinery can be theraputic, but it isn’t quite the same as doing the work by hand.
So I wandered out after breakfast and spent the better part of the day splitting wood. After I started I thought it would be fun to capture it in a timelapse; so I went and set up my laptop and iSight camera on the deck and fired up iStopMotion and got what you see above. That is about four and a half hours of work, condensed into a few seconds. Sorry about the out of focus-ness about it, but the iSight is obviously not really meant to be a long-range lens! My duct tape “tripod” also failed me, as you can see the camera shifted over time.
You can see the logs vanishing from the lower right and the pile of split wood growing in the upper right as the day goes on. Each log segment would yield about eight bits of firewood after splitting. I vanish about a third of the way in for a while… off to the barn to sharpen the splitting wedge (with a Dremel tool… see I’m not completely averse to power tools!) I’m also joined by Nick & Sue later in the day, and eventually they convince me to stop and go inside (but not until I split two more logs!) Sue brought me some iced tea at one point, and she runs the mower for a while too. Nick helps collect and stack the wood for me. The dogs just wander around being useless… and occasionally steal bits of wood to chew on. Christopher is no doubt very happy to be six-thousand miles away right now, or he’d be helping me too!
I managed to get over half of it done, so maybe next weekend I can wrap it up. Then we’ll have to stack the big pile.
The camera is pointing SW.
You would think that I’d be really sore, but I’m not. We’ll see what tomorrow brings! It helps that I’m ambidextrous (another little known fact about me: I can do just about everything with either hand. I write right-handed, as for some reason when I write left-handed I write backwards. The handwriting looks pretty much identical, but just backwards. I can draw, paint, play sports, swing a hammer or use other hand tools, operate a mouse, etc with either hand just fine. I usually go months at a time using the mouse with one hand or another… then suddenly switch. Lately I’ve been mousing lefty.) For me there is a sort of mental switch of gears when I change hands… it is really an adjustment to how I SEE things more than concentrating on my arms and hands. This allows me to work longer at things like swinging a hammer as I can just swap hands if I get tired. I never told my dad that when I was a teenager though. Funny how that works. 😉