:: Troutmaster blog :: June 2003 archive

:: Sunday, June 29, 2003 ::

I got back from the half dome trip at about 2:30 this morning. It was a pretty exciting trip with things going on from the beginning all the way to the end. I'll put together a trip page for it later. I'm pretty tired right now, but I've been trying to catch up on my sleep today and get things done around the house. I'm dogsitting Cartman today and that is going pretty well. He's a pretty well behaved dog. But he is so quiet that when I woke up I had to look around for him.
:: Tom 5:35 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Well it is almost time for me to leave town. Christina is going to Santa Barbara for the weekend with Jenny, Shelly, and Christine. They are going to hang out with Jackie, play some golf, and do some other stuff. I'm going to climb Half Dome in Yosemite tomorrow. The plan is for me to drive to Forrest's Mom's house in Manteca tonight. Then Forrest, Doug, some other people, and I are going to get up around 5 AM and drive to Yosemite, climb up to the top, come down, and then come back home. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day. But hopefully I'll get a chance to take some picture. I'll spend Sunday recovering from the hike.
:: Tom 8:38 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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It is almost time for me to go home. Today I stumbled across a thing called userve at work that allows us to host our own websites inside my companies intranet. I setup the infrastructure for that website and I also created a blog for it. There is no point in including a link from my personal blog because no one from outside of my company can access it anyway. But it is really cool. It is basically just a jar file that I have running on my linux box that does everything for me.
:: Tom 6:16 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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As Tom Hanks in "Castaway" might say, "I have enabled comments!" It wasn't really that hard, but I finally did it. Hoowah! Comment on that...
:: Tom 5:56 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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I just checked the temperature outside and it said 100 degrees F. Yow! Or is it now Yao? I guess it is time to bake banana bread outside. It was pretty hot yesterday (high of 94), but when I got home it was only 80 degrees inside. So we haven't really had to run our AC yet. That's good because that means lower electric bill. The people across the sidewalk from us have their AC on morning, noon, and night. I'm guessing their bill is going to be huge. Maybe I'll go jump in the pool when I get home. That would be nice...
:: Tom 4:07 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Well my training last night consisted of hacking at a golf ball for a little while, then going over to Jenny and Rong's house and having some fried chicken and boston creme pie. Not exactly the kind of stuff that will get me ready for an adventure race. I have ot make sure that I don't have any more "bad" days this week. It is time to get serious.
:: Tom 10:07 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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We did some training yesterday evening for our upcoming adventure race. We went to a county park near Christina's work, and it was Christina, Forrest, Patty, and me. We ran (and walked) somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 to 6 miles. After we were done with our training we went to Jamba Juice. Patty bought all of us wheat grass shots because we had never tried it before. A wheat grass shot smells and looks like someone cut their grass and then put it into a juicer. Here is what Jamba Juice's official web site says about wheat grass shots -> "It’s like liquid sunshine... with so much to rave about in one little shot! Loaded with 23 essential and non-essential amino acids, vita-min K, folic acid, potassium, selenium, vitamin C and other powerful antioxidants to neutralize free radicals. A healthy, all-natural detoxifier, wheatgrass is loaded with essential amino acids, enzymes and phytonutrients.". Here is what Forrest had to say about the wheat grass shot -> "dude, what was in that grassweed? My stomach was making all kinds of
sounds last night!", and Christina had this to say -> "Me too! It was like I had gas, without the gas!!! I thought my stomach was
going to explode!", and Patty replied with -> "I don't
know about you, but I'm feeling really good this morning, so light and
happy, like I lost 10 pounds!! Wheatgrass is our friend :)". So there you have it, everyone should go out and try a wheat grass shot and tell me what they think.
:: Tom 9:52 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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I just got a chance to read through the Supreme Court Decision on G rutter v. Bollinger. I know this is going to sound lame, but this is the fi rst Supreme Court decision that I have thouroughly read through. I decided to d o this because of the news reports that I saw about it today. It seemed to me t hat people on the left were celebrating this as a continuation of affirmative ac tion and people on the right were decrying this decision as racism. So I decide d to read it for myself and make up my mind. This case had to do with admission s into the University of Michigan School of Law. In this case, the court decided that the University of Michigan did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They said this because it was proven to them that the law school did not have a racial quota system. Instead, the school considered race along with many other factors in deciding whether or not to admit students to its law school. The decision went on to state that if the use of race is narrowly tailored to ensure diversity in the student population then it is permissable. The reasoning behind this was that if students are exposed to different backgrounds and viewpoints, then it will help them become more tolerant of others that differ from them and make them more capable of functioning in a world that is growing more and more diverse. I can understand that. From my own experience I can see that I have more tolerance for other viewpoints and opinions due to my exposure to other cultures, religions, ideas, and ideals since moving to California where the population is significantly more diverse than Alaska. If I didn't move here I probably would not have ever tried chicken feet! But I can see from the court's decision that any use of racial quotas would get struck down. I think the court is probably doing the right thing in this case and the precedent that is being set is that they will consider the circumstances and take affirmative action on a case by case basis. So I don't think Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition should break out the bubbly just yet. If you check their website you can see that they are putting more spin on this decision than David Beckham puts on his free kicks. There's no shakedown for you to have here Jesse. And watch your back...
:: Tom 10:44 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Today I wasted nearly 3 hours getting my oil changed. I was pretty frustrated by the time I left because I wish that I could get my oil changed and tires rotated somewhere a little more convenient and a little faster. I don't like being away from work for so long.
:: Tom 8:08 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Sunday was training day for the adventure race that we are going to take part of. And since I'm the alternate I have to train right along with everyone else just in case any one of the three team members can't be part of the race. We did some mountain biking and we played basketball for our training. After our training was done Christina had to go to work and I stayed at home and did chores and caught up on some reading. I still have a lot of reading to catch up on.
:: Tom 10:29 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Today has been kind of boring except for a small good deed that I did. I was taking some mail to the mailbox around noon today when I saw a small yorkshire terrier running around without a collar on and looking lost. I dropped off my stuff at the mail box and came back home. I talked to Christina about it and she suggested that I go and look for it. I found it and brought it back to our patio and talked to Christina about what to do next. We decided that I should walk around our condo complex and see if it belonged to anyone. That was ultimately unsuccessful, so when I brought it back I decided to see if my condo complex had any procedures on their webpage for what to do. So I did a google search for California Maison and here are the results that I got. I then clicked on this link. From here I clicked on the Barking Dog and Stray / Loose / Vicious Animal Complaints link. From that page I got a phone number to call and called it. I told them that I had found a stray yorkshire terrier without a collar and asked them what I should do. As it turned out someone had reported a yorkshire terrier missing in this area yesterday. I gave them my contact information and a little while later the owner called me and came and picked up her dog. Her yorkie's name was Meo. Here's a picture of him. She was very glad to see her dog, and her dog was very glad to see her. Yet another way that google will save the world. :-)
:: Tom 3:55 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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I ended up making 2 loaves of banana bread. One had 2/3 cup of chocolate chips and the other had 2/3 cup of chocolate chunks. The jury will decide which is better. In other news I'm still working on writing my code for the evening. I think the next backpacking trip will be to Desolation Wilderness. We shouldn't have to deal with much snow there. But so far not many people have responded to say they want to go along. What a bunch of wimps.
:: Tom 12:47 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Here's the recipe if anyone is bored enough to bake along with me. This is open source baking! :-)

Banana Nut Bread::
1/3 cup shortening
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups All Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1 cup chopped walnuts

Bake this mixture @ 350 degrees F for about 50 minutes or until done.
:: Tom 7:49 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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I am going to spend a little bit of time this evening baking banana bread. But one loaf will have chocolate chips while the other will have chocolate chunks in it. I'm not really sure how much to put in the recipe, but I guess I'll learn by trial and error. I should also vaccum the upstairs and do some laundry. This is domestic bliss at it's best! I guess I could write some code too. :-)
:: Tom 7:37 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Work is going along as usual. Just when we think we will have a little down time things pick up speed again. Our sys-admin will be on vacation next week, so I'll be doing the sys-admin duties for our production system next week. Nothing is quite as fun as coming into work at 5 AM. I doubt I'll have to do that much, but I will need to wake up that early and check on the system from home. I still have to work on automating the testing of our system. This is easier said than done. Since I'm not familiar with the test tools that I have to work with, it is going to take a while. I'm reading up on UML right now. It seems pretty cool. I'm looking forward to actually applying it to something. I'll post more about UML after I find out more about it.
:: Tom 10:59 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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I only have one more trump card for getting the pictures onto a computer. My linux box! I have to get it out of storage and get it running, but once that is done it should work. I tried downloading the usb drivers for my camera to my laptop last night but it didn't work because they don't write the driver for Win2k. Son of a bitch!
:: Tom 3:28 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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I'm having a hell of a time getting the pictures from the trip onto a computer. I tried getting my laptop to read the disk. No dice. Then I tried hooking up the USB cable from the camera to my laptop. That didn't work because I would have to install drivers for it. But I don't have the Win2k disc, so no dice there either. Then I tried putting the disc into the iMac. No luck. Then I tried putting the disc in my linux box at work. That almost worked but no dice there either. Then I tried hooking up the camera via USB to the iMac. Once again no luck. I will find a way to get those pictures onto a camera. I've got to...
:: Tom 11:45 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Well I made it back home in one piece last night, a day ahead of schedule. I'll post more about our Mount Shasta adventure later...
:: Tom 1:13 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Woohoo! My blog is finally working again. There was some sort of problem yesterday. Anyway, I got the wireless network up and running yesterday. Now I am free to sit stay online during all my waking hours. That's sick! I wouldn't really do that anyway. I'm leaving for the Mount Shasta trip today after work. Here's a short itenerary...

Today (Thursday), June 12, 2003::
Leave work around 4:30 PM, go to Forrest's house to pick him up, then drive north to the trailhead at Bunny Flat. The total drive time from my house is about 5 hours via Yahoo! Maps. So I plan to be up there by midnight tonight. At that point Forrest and I will sleep in the back of my truck.

Friday, June 13, 2003::
Wake up early and go to the Ranger Station to get the summit passes and go to the gear rental shop in the city of Mount Shasta to get the crampons and ice axes. Then head back to the trailhead and start up the trail until we get to Helen Lake. We will camp there.

Saturday, June 14, 2003::
Get up around 4 AM (sunrise at 5:35 AM) to attempt to summit Mount Shasta. It should take us no longer than 6 hours to get to the top from Helen Lake. If the weather is permitting we'll hang out at the summit for a little while and try to look for the gas vents that were mentioned by John Muir. After that is done we plan to go back to base camp at Helen Lake and camp for the night.

Sunday, June 15, 2003::
We plan to get an early start to the day. We'll pack up at Helen Lake and head back to the trailhead. From there we will probably get something to eat and start heading back toward the bay area. I plan to be home no later than 10 PM on Sunday night.
:: Tom 11:17 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Finally!!! About a month after moving into our new townhouse I got the wireless network up and kicking. This is a mixed blessing. This means that I'll actually be able to work on this website and get it to where I want it to be, but this also means that I might not be able to unpack much anymore... We'll see how it goes. In other news I went to REI and I got the last gear that I needed for the Mount Shasta trip. I got the REI Aconcagua, a compression bag for my sleeping bag, some straps, and two new fuel canisters. REI should give out awards for most valuable customers. I would definitely get one. I'm not buying anything else for the rest of the year...
:: Tom 11:58 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Here is what I found out about our most likely route this weekend. Notis that it says that should be snow from trailhead to the top. I'm wondering if I should bring my snowshoes or if I don't really need them. hmmmm...
Route Info:
Avalanche Gulch Route (Regular Route) via Bunny Flat Trailhead: This route is in good shape, especially if you climb very early in the morning (4am) start from Lake Helen 10,400’. Expect to be on snow from the parking lot to the summit. The Red Banks are in good shape now through the chutes. In between the Red Bank and Thumb Rock a small bergschrund is opening and this traditional route is NOT recommended. There has been some rock and ice fall due to the warm temps, so keep an eye open and warn other climbers by yelling ROCK! A helmet is highly recommended! Be prepared to travel on snow from the trailhead. Over the snow travel equipment is a good idea! You will have to melt snow for water on all routes right now, so carry extra fuel. At Horse Camp, the spring is dug out and it’s mainly snow melt that is running, so we recommend to boil, filter or treat the water until it’s tested later this summer. Always anchor your tent well so the winds won’t make a kite out of your tent. Carry the Ten Essentials. Learn more about mountaineering skills by reading (Freedom of the Hills published by The Mountaineers) and practicing before your climb or TAKE A SNOW SCHOOL CLASS. Three outfitter-guiding services offer classes and guided trips on Mt. Shasta, and their links are on our homepage.
:: Tom 2:36 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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The planning for the next trip has already begun. It is my pleasure to unveil our next magnificent trip:: Mount Shasta! That's right boys and girls, I've won an all expenses paid (by me) trip to Mount Shasta where Forrest and I will attempt to brave snow, ice, and gravity to summit the 6th highest peak in California. It is also the 33rd highest peak in the US (counting Alaska). What does this mean? This means that I've got to get my gear together soon because we are leaving Thursday night. More to come later...
:: Tom 10:06 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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My mom came and went this weekend. On Saturday we went to the SF Giants game. They beat the Detriot Tigers 7-5. Later in the day we went to see an art exhibit, did some sheet shopping, and had dinner in North Beach. Mom was looking for a place that made meatball sandwiches but we were unsuccessful. On Sunday we worked on the curtains for the house and ran a few more errands. All in all her visit was much too short. I wish she could have been able to stay longer. But hopefully I'll get to see her again soon.
:: Tom 10:50 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Yahoo! News - US Justice Department forbids Gay Pride event at headquarters The son of a Pentecostal preacher, Ashcroft has long been an outspoken social conservative, opposed to abortion and gay rights, and supporting the death penalty and few restrictions on gun ownership. Is Ashcroft being inconsistent in whom he allows to use DOJ property for club meetings? If he is doing that, he knows better.
:: Tom 2:16 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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I finally got the captions in place for my photos from the Lost Coast. Huray! It tooke me long enough. Here is a link to those photos -> http://www.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=67b0de21b33df84f0592

I am also going to add a photo section to this blog...
:: Tom 6:01 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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I was totally going to ride my bike to work today, but I woke up too late. Dammit! Since my mom doesn't arrive until late tomorrow night I'll try riding my bike to work tomorrow. In other news, I got Friday June 13th off so I can try to summit Mount Shasta. Huray! I hope Christina can get the day off and go on this trip. But before the trip I would like to get a backpack instead of always borrowing one from Forrest. I've whittled my choices down to two backpacks. One is the REI Aconcagua while the other is Kelty Satori 4700. Does anyone have any suggestions? If so, email them to me since I don't have comments enabled on my blog yet. :-)
:: Tom 11:27 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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I tried one of the new McDonald's fancy pants salads today. I have to say it was ok. I guess it is hard to mess up a salad, and I was expecting McDonald's to do just that. I got their chicken caesar salad with grilled chicken. I would eat it again...
:: Tom 5:21 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Rational - XDE Tester
:: Tom 1:13 PM:: [View/Post Comments]
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Uh oh! My mom is coming to town this weekend and we are planning on going up to SF to watch a Giants game but I saw online today that the Caltrain will not be running this weekend. She's not going to be happy about that. I guess we can always take Bart instead. Hopefully that will be ok with her.
:: Tom 11:29 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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The DSL got installed, but we haven't gotten it to work yet. This weekend we moved boxes out of the garage and got it cleaned up enough to be able to park Christina's car in it. On Sunday we went up to Emeryville to IKEA to look at furnature and home decor crap. We didn't buy anything and that place was crawling with people. I felt like I was in Tokyo or something. But we hooked up the cable TV yesterday and today we'll hopefully work on the DSL a little bit. So many things to do...And I still haven't had time to work on a web page for the Lost Coast Trail backpacking trip.
:: Tom 10:45 AM:: [View/Post Comments]
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