Troutmaster

I Tried C2 and Photos Posted

I finally broke down and tried Coca Cola's new 1/2 calorie C2 beverage when I went to get my truck washed at lunch today. I had already tried Pepsi's Edge soda which is a direct competitor of C2. Overall I think Coke did a good job with C2. It tastes just like regular Coke without as much sugar and syrup. Pepsi's 1/2 calorie beverage on the other hand tasts like they just threw Diet Pepsi and regular Pepsi together and I think it tastes like crap. My logic is that if I'm going to drink something that tastes like crap I might as well go with Diet Pepsi and not take in the calories. So my recommendation is C2. Disclaimer, I own Coca Cola stock. Oh yeah, I also posted my photos from the Alaska trip. You can find them on the right side of my blog under the photos section. I still have to put captions on them, but for those of you that can't wait you're welcome to check them out.

Back to the Land of Fruit and Nuts

We made it back to SJ yesterday evening after an uneventful flight and a nice layover in Portland. The Portland airport is pretty nice and I think one of these days we'll make a weekend trip up to Portland to check it out. I was back at work today and I had a ton of email to catch up on, but I think I'm pretty much back up to speed now. Now I get to start planning what we're going to do this coming weekend...

Last Day In Alaska

I'm at my mom's house right now and I just gorged myself on some of the halibut that we caught yesterday. Timber and I fly out of Anchorage early tomorrow morning and will be getting back to San Jose just in time for rush hour. And then we get to go to work on Tuesday! How lucky for us. I'll try to post my photos tomorrow night and update the Denali trip page. All in all it was an awesome trip and I got to spend quality with my family. I'm looking forward to coming back at Christmas.

Made It To Anchorage

After what seemed like an eternity we made it to Anchorage. I'm not a big fan of long flights. After we got into Anchorage we saw my parents and my brother and his wife. Unluckily for me my suit case did not show up, and I was really upset about that. I was upset because that could derail our Denali backpacking trip. But we got the call this morning that the suitcase came in, and I was extremely happy to know that we were back on track. We spent most of today at Fred Meyer and REI getting everything we need for the backpacking trip. It is still pretty bright outside so we're going to go for a hike in a little bit.

Today Is The Day

Today is the day that I leave for Alaska. I realized something while Elijah was here. I came to the realization that the biggest difference between being a child and being an adult is that as a child you are always waiting for things to happen, but as an adult you MAKE things happen. As a kid I was always waiting for school to get out, waiting for a ride to soccer practice, waiting for dinner to be ready, etc... But as an adult in some ways you wait, but in general I make things happen at work, I make things happen at home, and I decide what to do with my time and resources. I guess another way to describe the difference between being a child and being an adult is that as an adult you are empowered. And as a young adult I am empowered to go backpacking in a place that has huge bears and roaming packs of wolves and I feel that I'll be safer than driving through Oakland. So here's to everyone out there that makes things happen.

Rentals and Black Widows

When I came home from my soccer game last night I was privy to a pleasant surprise. Our neighbors are moving out at the end of the month. I deduced that because there was a for rent sign up in front of their place. I think they are nice people, but in the year that they've lived there they have done a lot of banging on the wall and generally being annoying. It has been fairly warm recently and we've opened our bedroom window to let a little cool air into the house and we can hear our neighbors' tv blaring late into the night. I just hope the next people that move in are better. But I can safely assume that they won't know the parking rules or garage rules. Also, last night as we were leaving through the garage, we found two large black widow spiders on the outside of our building near our garage. I killed both and informed the management about them. Hopefully we won't start having problems with black widows. I hate spiders.

Harry Potter And Sirius Black

I went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban this weekend and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. This installment has a different director and you can see the difference in look and feel right away. I thought this was the best Harry Potter movie yet and I would even venture to say that it is the best movie I've seen in theaters since the last installment of Lord Of The Rings. I even thought they did a good job of adopting the book to movie form, even though I noticed some key differences between the book and movie. All in all, I usually rip movies like this to shreds because they usually don't measure up to my standards, but I would wholeheartedly recommend this movie to both Harry Potter buffs and novices alike.

Log from JMW Now Up

I've been pretty busy this week with a lot of things but I finally put together a rough final version of my log of our trip to the John Muir Wilderness. You can read about it here.

Weather Information For Denali

Our schedule for backpacking in Denali will be from June 20th to the 22nd. I did a little bit of research about the weather we'll enounter and here's what I've found:
Average High Temp -> 66 F
Average Low Temp -> 41 F
1 % chance of Temp over 90 F
75 % chance of Temp over 60 F
3 % chance of Temp under 32 F
43 % chance of Precipitation
22 % chance of a cloudy day
Makes me glad I got some good rain gear.

The Best Trained Dog I Know

Here's a story that illustrates the speed of the internet. Today at work I was automating some test cases and I had some downtime while tests were running so I checked out Yahoo! Picks which usually has links to some pretty cool websites. One of the websites that was listed was Dogster, which is basically Friendster for dogs. I checked it out and looked up some of the Lhaso Apsos and Corgies and then I told Timber about it. She told her friend Diane about it who immediately created a profile for her dog Kyle. I think Kyle is really intelligent and probably the best trained dog I've ever met. His two best tricks are (1) if you point your finger at him like a gun and then say BANG, he'll fall over like he got shot. (2) Another cool trick that he does is if you say BEEP BEEP BEEP he'll back up.

Photos Finally Done

I finally finished putting the captions on the photos from the backpacking trip this weekend to the John Muir Wilderness. You can check them out here.

California State Board Of Equilization Strikes Again

I got another letter in the mail yesterday from the California State Board Of Equilization. I got my first letter from them at the end of July last year. Both letters told me that I owed nearly $1800 in taxes. Last time I talked to Sophia Jackson and we sorted out that I wasn't the person they were looking for. This time, Sophia was out of the office for a while so I talked to someone else and I had to explain the whole situation all over again. At the end of the conversation I asked the guy that I talked to if they could send me some sort of letter confirming that I am not the person they are looking for and that they will not hassle me again. He told me he couldn't do that. So I expect to get another letter from them in about a year, and I expect to have to call them back again and explain to them yet again that I'm not the person they are looking for. Gotta love government.

Back From McGee Creek

I just got back from the backpacking trip up to Big McGee Lake (didn't make it there) via the McGee Creek Trail in the John Muir Wilderness. The trip went pretty close to the itenerary posted earlier with the exception being that there was not the great trout bonanza that I had expected. That happened because we went too early in the season and the lakes were still frozen over. But the brown trout here shows that I at least caught something. I'll post more photos and a trip log later in the week.

McGee Creek Backpacking Itenerary

I'm about to go to bed so that I can wake up really early in the morning to drive over to the Eastern Sierras and go backpacking/fishing in the John Muir Wilderness via the McGee Creek Trail. Here's my itenerary::
Right Now: Go To Bed.
6/5::
Wake up @ 1 AM
Depart SJ @ 2 AM
Arrive Lee Vining, CA @ 8 AM
pick up wilderness pass
Arrive at trailhead @ 9 AM
Start hiking @ 10 AM
Arrive at Big McGee Lake ~ 3 PM
Fishing rest of the day
6/6::
Fishing @ 5 AM
Depart Big McGee Lake ~ 10 AM
Arive back at trailhead @ 3 PM
Arrive SJ @ 9 PM

If I don't blog anything by Monday then everyone should start to worry. The closest Ranger station to call is the Mammoth Ranger Station at 760-924-5500. And I'm backpacking in the Inyo National Forest.

iPod Contents Unleashed

I found an application that will take the data from my iPod's iTunesDB file and generate an html file containing the songs and playlists that I have on my iPod. I like the application and I would like to add more functionality to it. In the meantime, here's my list.

Young People Are Idiots

I was listening to Bill O'Reilly on the radio this morning on the way ot work and from poll information that he had, he said that 60 % of people in the 18-29 demographic did not know who we were fighting in Europe during WWII. I find that hard to believe since most of the people I know are astute enough to know who we fought in all of our wars. But assuming this information is true, now I can understand why so many people in my age demographic don't vote, or better yet voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is sad.

Plans For This Weekend

The plan for this weekend is to backpack in the John Muir Wilderness from the McGee Creek Trailhead. You can find a short description of the trip here. The plan is to get there early on Saturday and then hike to Big McGee Lake so that we can fish in Little McGee Lake, Crocker Lake, and Golden Lake. We will then return home on Sunday.

World Wide Web Conference

Some of my collegues attended the WWW Conference. It sounds like some great papers were presented. I think I'll read through them as time permits.

Yahoo! Rocks

I bought some Yahoo! stock a while back at $31.08. Since I bought it, it has split and then come back above $31.08, which has doubled my money. The crazy thing is that it shows no signs of slowing down. As always, I freely admit that I'm not an expert and that I can and do make mistakes, but it is much more fun to point out the good decisions that I've made. Keep going Yahoo!

Fishing, Swimming, and Nintendo

We spent some time with Mary's nephew Elijah this weekend. On Saturday we took him fishing and then took him to Korea House for dinner, and on Sunday we took him swimming and he spent some time at our house playing Nintendo. We were going to try to take him to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Monday but it sounds like Mary is going to take him on Thursday. Overall it was a fun weekend.