Car Photo Of The Day.

at least it isn't rossa corsa

I’ve often said I’m not really a “Ferrari guy” but that’s not to say that I don’t appreciate them. I just couldn’t see myself enduring the pain of actually owning one. Not that I have to worry about that though, as the IRS will confirm, I don’t have that sort of income. Or anything remotely close to that sort of income.

The thing about Ferrari’s is that Enzo Ferrari, the company founder and its heart and soul, never saw himself as an automobile manufacturer. Enzo saw himself as a race team manager. He built cars to win races, and sold cars to finance the racing program. His cars therefore are like race cars. They are designed to run like stink for X hours and then be completely torn down and rebuilt.

They are beautiful. They make wonderful noises that is in reality some of the most pleasing road music ever created. They have more soul than anything built by any other car maker. They are universally admired, lusted after, and worshipped. They are just so damn expensive.

This photograph was taken at the Kirkland Concours in 2004. That was the year that early morning rain set the organizers into a panic and they shuffled the cars off the Carillon Point and into the parking garage for fear of getting them wet. Of course the Northwest weather worked against them and the day turned out to be brilliant. Oh well. The cars were well arranged at least, with themes and in some cases approachable and informative owners there to talk to. Except of course the Ferraris… at least while I was looking. The most fun guys to talk to that year were the “Classics” folks. Those pre-war palaces of chrome and straight-eights. Great guys. They also were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Mercedes-Benz 300sl (aka “Gullwing”) so there was probably the largest presentation of 300sl cars that I have ever seen in one spot.

If you are in the Pacific Northwest at the end of the summer, I highly recommend a visit to the Kirkland Concours. (You will note they host their website with my employer, but that is a coincidence that I have nothing to do with! Really.) They really pull a great collection of cars, spanning a range of eras and interests. Normally they are presented in a stunning location on the shore of Lake Washington, so don’t let the above photo put you off.

Answers for the previous CPotD post.

WTF?

WTF2?

So that is the answer to the last Car Photo of the Day post. Yeah… I think it is ugly too. 😉

I guess they are famous GM prototypes. All turbine-powered. All painted silver. Each of them ugly as … well they are really ugly. I saw them on the field at the Amelia Island Concours a few years ago.

Here are some photos of the other two:

Thank god some visions of the future never come true.

Track Meet.

Nick on Track

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.

ski trip

a rest stop 1/3rd the way down Blackcomb Mountain

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.

Datacenter Caption Contest

sorry... no pretty geeks here

In the tradition of “Fake Steve Jobs I’d like to do a caption contest.

We have a very nice datacenter facility, and a local photography studio asked us to use it to capture some images for sale as stock photography. They spent a half-day in our facility with, models and lights, and a stylist taking over our conference room for makeup, plus one of us d.f geeks watching their every move in the facility to make sure they didn’t touch anything the wrong way!

I found it funny what they chose to shoot, and where they chose to shoot. For some reason they were obsessed with this particular part of the facility. It is a “hot aisle” meaning the backsides of the servers are all pointed inward here. The HVAC systems dump cold air on the front sides and a return removes the hot air from above. It is also the “ugly” side of both of the aisles. Power and network cables everywhere and of course all that hot air blowing on you. It is also a part of the datacenter where our “single server” colocation customers are housed. This means that the variety of hardware is astounding. This of course makes cable management a real PITA. I’m not particularly proud of this view, but what can I say? They took some good shots, which have ironically turned up in print advertising and websites of our competitors! Gotta love that. I’ll share more shots later, but let’s talk about this one.

Anyway, whenever I see stock photography in a “geek” context it really stands out to me. I mean NONE of the geeks that I know and certainly none of them that work at digital.forest are this attractive. 😉 None of them have clothes this nice. None of them have this level of … what shall we say… “personal grooming.” And most importantly, none of them have two X chromosomes.

So my caption would read “We are too attractive to work here!”

What would your caption say?