Well, the first back country back-packing and hiking trip through Rocky Mountain National Park was very enjoyable and was a rousing success. It was a great kick off to the camping and back-packing season. With the exception of starting off on the wrong “foot” err, stomach, it got better as the weekend progressed.

Saturday Destination: Fern Lake (PDF)
Fern Lake was a 3.8 mile hike in that started in the lower valley just west of the RMD Moraine campground. The first 1.7 miles was fairly flat and uneventful. The “Pool” area is a convergence of several trails and was actually the beginning of the main trail up to Fern Lake. Not feeling well did not bode well and the descent up was not good for me. Jodi and Dylan had not problems, but for some reason, I was struggling. Jodi swears it was the left over chinese food I’d had the night before. Anyway, I pushed on in spite of myself and had to stop ever so often. For most of the trail, I was okay. However, there were two times I thought I was going to loose it. However, I pushed on and once we got to our camp site, I crashed for a little nap.

Going up can be treacherous even when you’re feeling good. Fortunately, Jodi and Dylan were in good spirits and good shape, so they had no issue with the 1,300 foot elevation change over the course of the last 2 miles.

Our camp site was actually pretty unassuming. It was located a little off the beaten patch just to the south of Fern Lake up in the trees. So views were non-existant with the exception of a few peaks viewable through the trees.

Fortunately, it was near a running stream feeding Fern Lake, so we had plenty of water. However, for some odd reason the mosquitoes were in abundance.

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Posted: May 29th, 2006 under Back Country, Personal.
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Well, as posted earlier, I recently decided to get my own Mac rather than wait for my company to replace my other Mac. Unfortunately, I feel a little guilty regarding the other laptop as I believe it’s downfall was due to abuse on my part. Mainly in the fact that I think it was dropped from the back of our car on a ski trip.

So, rather than wade through the paper work of corporate and spending hours convincing my boss that I need a new laptop when we have several perfectly good DELLs, I chose to forgo all of the hassle and get my own. This way, a) I’ll tend to baby it (so far so good) and b) I can do just about anything on it without the guilt that I’m using a corporate asset for something other than, corporate minutia.

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Posted: May 18th, 2006 under theMac.
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Mothers day for Jodi was pretty laid back. This past weekend, Sunday the 14th, we decided to treat Jodi to a nice hike in the foothills with a packed lunch. Heil Ranch was our choice since it’s close to home and lower in elevation. Heil is good in early May. Mid-Summer it would be extremely hot.

The day was awesome. Mid-60s to mid-70s most of the mid day. Hiking up 3.7 miles was pretty uneventful. We noticed that the trail is geared or mostly used by mountain bikers and that most are courteous, but a lot are so self absorbed, that they fly by and are not good “multi-use” trail users. As hikers, we typically pulled to the side to offer plenty of room for the bike riders and many would acknowledge with a “thanks” or “thank you”.

After lunch, the return trip was, well, exhilarating and PAINFUL! Jodi and Dylan decided to “jog” or “litely” run the trail down. Basically this would be considered a “cross-country” jog or run. Even though I’m typically the Pack-Mule, IE the one that carries the back-pack, I decided to join them for as much as my knee could handle. I think I made it about 1.5 miles. The knee just wouldn’t cooperate after that.

Dylan stayed behind and hiked with me while Jodi continued to the end of the trail with a very impressive brisk pace that would make any runner proud. From our vantage point at several strategic points, it looked impressive to me anyway.

I felt good from the short distance I did run and found that I was in better cardio shape than I thought. Since Jodi has been training by running on the treadmill, she too appeared to be in excellent shape. Dylan, just coming off of a busy ski season projected to be in good shape.

We all made the same observation. When you’re running down a mountain at a good pace, we noticed that the bikers and hikers tended to pause and give you, the runner, ample room to get by rather than the other way around as previously noted during the hike up. Our take, the bike riders must think, geez, that’s much more strenuous that my work out, so I’m giving them a wide berth.

However, that exuberance came to an abrupt halt come Monday morning. We were all stiff and hurting. Even Jodi, who’s in the best shape noted, she could hardly move from the couch all day Monday. At the office, I believe I removed myself from my desk and comfy chair three times. 2 bathroom breaks and lunch.

Our tradition of over-doing it on a given holiday or observance continues!

-Shane

Posted: May 17th, 2006 under Personal.
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After having the oppurtunity to observe or attend a Bar Mitzvah, as usual, I tend to reflect upon my own beliefs and feelings. First, I have to say, I’ve become very tolerant or sympathetic to the belief that we all have the right to believe however we want and that we should respect and honor each others beliefs and feelings even if they’re not our own. Therefore, I make every attempt to instill in Dylan to honor and respect such ceremonies. It’s hard for a 12 year old who’s a bit synical to try and be still and not make fun of the unknown. Believe me… after 2 and 1/2 hours of the ceremony, Dylan was not that sympathetic to this notion.

That said, I have to say, it was an interesting experience and brought back many thoughts and memories of past teachings and religeous study I’d done during college and my earlier years. In college, it was a very common practice at Ambassador College to discuss other religions (Link is to the NEW AC, not the one I attended). Of course, the beliefs we were most interested, was Judaism.

It’s interesting being an outsider, but what’s more interesting is not adhering to any one particular point of view, religeously, I tend to observe rituals and practices with an open mind. I’m finding that more and more practices have common themes and common practices, but with different names, purpose and attention across the various “religeous” groups. I believe when you’re emersed in a particular specific approach, you are not as observant and much more biased. Therefore, the commonalities get lost. I was there, so I speak from experience.

All religions have a few common practices with variations and accompanying accessories and places of worship. Interesting.

Shane

Posted: May 10th, 2006 under Personal.
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Well, after messing around with the iBook for like an hour, I decided to look into getting my own laptop. So, I trucked over to the new Apple Store at Flat Iron Crossing and purchased a spanking new MacBook Pro. Didn’t get the top of the line, that was Jodi and I’s compromise, but still. Can’t complain.

It’s not perfect, but it’s working well. Wireless and heat are the primary issues. Wireless was (appears to be) fixed by running the latest MacOS 10.4.6 update manually, not through the built-in update tool.

Heat is still controversial, so, I’ll just wait for Apple to figure out what the “official” fix is and send mine in. I think. No, wait, I think I think I like nice warm soothing heat on my palms. Hm… maybe it’s a feature?

Shane

Posted: May 9th, 2006 under Gadgets, Personal, theMac.
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I’m killing laptops faster than I can get a post on my blog. After getting my old “faithful” PowerBook back from the shop where it’s sporting a nice new monitor screen, it decides to start acting up on me. One week of crashes, lockups and weird behaviour. Then, on the Sunday before a business trip, it decides to just stop booting up. I get the you’re F’d in 5 languages screen and attempted to boot it 10-15 time and the you’re F’d continued in different places during the boot process.

Unfortunately, I had my DELL Lattitude D800, big as a Mac truck, and decided to take it and the PowerBook on the trip. At the Hotel the first night, the PowerBook finally had one successful boot, YEAH!!! USB flash drive saved the day by copying all the “relevant” or “current” files I needed over to the DELL. Whew…

Resolved myself once again to have to rely on the old DELL to try and keep up with my work, all 9 POUNDS of it.

It lasted… a Week. The very next Friday it started over again. After finally giving up on the PowerBook, as Tad so elequently put it, it’s Toast Man, I’d decided to just try and get something done and had most of my backup files either on an old Mac or on a the old D800 from the last fiasco.

It BEGAN!!! Got home Friday night after shutting it down, the D800 decided to just not power up. Nothing, no lights, no chimes, no even attempting to do anything. Power must be completely dead. The Battery is fully charged, tried different power cords, different battery, everything. So, after refraining from taking it out into the street and smashing it into a million peices, I calmed down and went to a Bar Mitzvah. Yep, more interesting than my laptop saga, I can tell you that. Of course, that’s another blog by itself.

So… here I sit, Sunday morning, once again using one of our old faithful, hardly used iBooks trying to decide what to do. Plead my case to my boss that I need a new MacBook Pro, or just go get one myself because, cause if I finagle a new machine, probably reluctantly from my boss, it’ll be the lowest end because of “Cost Containment”… What to do, what to do.

Posted: May 7th, 2006 under Hardware, Personal, theMac.
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