Troutmaster

Waterskiing At Lake Don Pedro

We got back from Lake Don Pedro a little earlier today. We camped near the lake and rented an 18 foot Four Winns boat yesterday. We took the boat out on the lake for some swimming, fishing, and attempted waterskiing. I say attempted because we all tried it, but none of us were able to get up on the waterskis. I'm not sure what we were doing wrong. But at any rate we had fun and that's all that matters. When we left for home today it must have been around 100 Degrees F. It made me happy to get home where it is a nice 73 Degrees F right now. So much for July. August here we come!

Camping At Lake Don Pedro

Scrap the San Jose Grand Prix, instead we are going to go camping and fishing at Lake Don Pedro.

More Fighting For Brains

Here is another article talking about the fight for brains in the search space. This time it is Yahoo grabbing people from IBM. This trend will probably cause IBM executives to lose some sleep at night.

Just Win Baby

Just about every Wednesday Timber has a softball game. Her team's name is "Just Win Baby", and they do. In fact, I have yet to see them lose, and they usually throttle their opponents. Tonight's game saw her team win 22-8. I hate to say this, but at some point I want to see them play a close game or even lose to see how they handle the pressure.

You Get What You Pay For

I found this article today. It seems that Independence Air, the airline that I took to the east coast last month, just got dinged by the government for not performing maintenance in some planes when it was supposed to. I guess you get what you pay for.

San Jose Grand Prix

This weekend we are going to have the first ever San Jose Grand Prix. I think Timber and I will head downtown on Sunday to check it out.

Transformers Movie?

I heard about it today and I'm having a tough time visualizing it. But apparently, Transformers is coming back to theaters.

The Fight For Brains

Ah, intellectual property and people. Isn't this interesting? It appears that Google and Microsoft are fighting over a research engineer. Now what is all this about a noncompete clause? Basically a noncompete clause means that you can't take the trade secrets you have from company A and walk across the street to company B and start doing the same exact thing for them (that is assuming they are competitors in the same field). A lot of tech workers have to sign these things. But they are hardly ever enforced. I recommend that they start treating prized engineers like professional athletes. You sign a contract for a specified period of time, you can sign free agents, trade engineers, cut engineers, and there is an order in the draft (whichever companies did the worst that year get first pick). That would be cool. You can call it NEA (National Engineers Association), MLE (Major League Engineers), National Engineers League).

Bogie The One Eyed Owl

Timber contacted me today about an owl that needs a ride to Fairbanks. She sent me this link, which I checked out and read about how the owl was injured and how they found a home for it in Fairbanks, Alaska. Since we are going to Anchorage in September she asked if we could make a little detour to Fairbanks to drop off Bogie. I said sure. So now we're trying to work out the details to see if we can really bring Bogie the one eyed owl with us to Alaska and drop him off at his new home in Fairbanks. I know this sounds weird...

Not That Sore

Suprisingly I'm not as sore a few days later as I thought I would be. Maybe I'll do another long hike this weekend... Sike!

Mission Impossible Accomplished

I think my thirst for challenging day hikes has been quenched for a while. I did the Mount Whitney trail yesterday, which is a 22 mile hike, round trip, to the top of the tallest mountain in the lower 48 at 14,497 feet. The total elevation gain was roughly 6000 ft. I wouldn't call the trail difficult or tough per se, but the toughness really comes from the distance. Here are some interesting stats from my trip:
Distance (round trip): 22 miles
Duration (including breaks): 18h 14min
Average Heart Rate (including breaks): 128 bpm
Calories burned (including breaks): 11,232
I don't see myself ever doing this again as a day trip because of the distance from home (roughly 750 miles round trip) and the time it takes to do it in a day (roughly 18 hours). On top of that you have the altitude which gets a lot of people and the propencity for bad weather. I'm glad I made it to the top, but I think I'll stay around the house and make myself handy for the rest of this month.

Amazing Race, Chicken Coop, And Camera

I was supposed to be out of town by now on my way to climb Mount Whitney on Monday. Instead I'm staying in town so that I can go with Timber to interview to be on The Amazing Race. I seriously doubt we'd get picked for the show because we're too boring, but imagine taking 30 to 40 days off of work (that alone is good enough), getting to see lots of different spots around the world, and winning $1M if you're the first team to arrive at the end. Now THAT would be cool. After we're done with the interview tomorrow I'll head over to the Eastern Sierras to catch up with Forrest & Co. Tonight Timber and I tried out the Sonoma Chicken Coop. Overall it was pretty good. The highlights are that they have their own beer, the food was decent, and it didn't cost that much. We also got to take a few pictures with my new camera. I'll have to write more about the camera later...

Mammoth Fossil Found Nearby

I live in a very interesting place. A few months ago, the Wendy's that I go to the most was the one that had the finger in the chili incident which made national news. Now someone has found a Mammoth Fossil not far from where I live. The Bay Area kicks ass. I think I'll run down to the site sometime in the next few days and take some of my own photos of what is going on.

A Month Later

Well it has been a month, but I've finally finished my trip page from my Hetch Hetchy backpacking trip. You can also see the photos here. Now I have to work on the DC-NYC trip page and get a page ready for the Whitney Trip.

Whitney Trip This Weekend

I'm going to climb Mount Whitney this weekend with Forrest and the rest of his crazy crew. We are going to camp out in the Eastern Sierras over the weekend and do Whitney as a day hike on Monday. My plan is to be back to work late in the day on Tuesday. That part is going to suck but I guess I'll live. You can follow the status of our planning here.

Clouds Rest, Kind Of...

Today was a long one. In the picture included with this entry, you can see Timber and me with Half Dome way in the distance and Clouds Rest closer to us in the background. We attempted to hike to Clouds Rest today, but we ran into a lot of snow and as a result decided to not go all the way to Clouds Rest due to the time factor. We calculated that with the extra time burnt sloshing through the snow that we would just barely get back to the car by the time the sun went down. Not a good option. Instead, we took a nice and relaxing break with a great view and some good snacks and then headed back to the car. We had to ford a stream and wade through a lot of snow today, but it was fun. If you are planning to do Clouds Rest yourself I recommend waiting another 2 weeks to a month for the snow to melt.

Hit By A Golf Ball

I had to run an errand at lunch today and on my way back to work I had to drive by a golf course. I was almost all the way by it when I heard a WHAM!!! on my left side. Something definitely hit my truck and when I looked down I saw a golf ball bouncing away. I couldn't believe it. I drove out of the danger zone and checked out my truck. I couldn't find a dent in the body so I think my hub cap was hit with the golf ball. I got lucky this time. Next time this happens I'm going to find who hit my truck and get them signed up for lessons.

Took The Day Off

I took the day off yesterday and enjoyed having a 4 day weekend. I went for a run in the morning, and I think I'll try to do that every morning. I also played golf with Timber. We had a friendly bet going and she ended up beating me by one stroke. All in all it was an enjoyable day off and I look forward to the 3 day work week.

Happy 4th Of July

Happy 4th of July Everyone! We're doing what most other Americans are doing today, grilling some food (tri-tip & halibut in our case) and relaxing. We decided not to go out of town this weekend because of the epic traffic in and around the Bay Area.

I Am A Statistic

Minnesota Government Shutdown

Apparently the state government of Minnesota was not able to come up with a new budget. I wonder how many other states this will happen to? Once again, management needs to get fired. In most companies there is some politics that contribute to these sorts of problems, but at the end of the day everyone is on the same team. In politics, it's all politics and you'd like to think they all play on the same team, but apparently not everyone feels this way.