New Gear!

I'm so excited! Sara let me purchase some new gear. I found a product that gets great reviews and the cost was so good I just couldn't pass it up. I got eight new Durango cams which are a copy of the Trango© Flexcam®. And because I bought them on sale, and they were having a special they gave me an extra cam for free! So I got nine new cams for climbing.

Having the new cams will fill out the remainder of our rack and we should be able to safely climb and build anchors and all the important stuff. Now I just have to find a way to stay focused until the weekend.

We are taking the first week of April to climb with a group of great kids from the climbing team. These kids can out climb us any time. It is still going to be fun though. We are doing a few days at Smith, and a few days at Vantage, and I'm hoping (fingers are crossed) that we'll get a day out at Leavenworth.

Yeah...climbing outdoors and new gear.

Get in Line!

I am an "old man" driver. I put my cruise control on and sit in the right lane. When there is another driver who is even slower than me, I check my left, change lanes, speed up to pass quickly, and then move back to the right lane and sit on my cruise control. So what is up with these @$$ holes who pass on the left going one mile faster than the guy on the right? Really? Are they worried they are going to get a speeding ticket? Then get in line! One mile an hour more won't get you there significantly faster. Put your damn cruise control on and relax already.

These people retard the flow of the freeway. If some guy wants to go 100 in the 60 zone, get out of the way. Quit controlling traffic, you're causing a hazard for everyone else. You are! If an incident occurs more people will get caught up in it because both lanes of traffic (or more) will be involved.

Sure you'll be speeding -- that is the point anyway right? Since just about 99.9% of all drivers are going at the limit you must not care about going a bit faster? Otherwise you'd be in the right lane with your cruise control on...

End Rant.

My Chocolate Addiction

I have been attempting to quit chocolate. I know that seems crazy, but I find it exceptionally difficult to do -- I have a chocolate bar stuck to my whiteboard with a label that says "Just say no ..."

My office buys bags of chocolates from Costco that I have requested many times that we don't get. I'm actually surprised that they (those controlling the funds) don't use that as an excuse to save money. Seriously, every time they do an order they spend $40+ on bags of chocolates. And don't get me going on all the soda that they buy too.

The other day I was in a meeting and there was a big jar filled with mini chocolates (42 calories) and I reached in and had the little mini chocolate in my mouth before I realized -- I am on a chocolate diet! I found it difficult to not eat another. So I did.

Now, I wouldn't compare this to being an alcoholic as that has an aspect of diminished returns. The more you drink the less your brain works correctly, you endanger your health, and potentially the health of others. Chocolate -- well if you eat it in large quantities you may have some serious health issues as well, but driving wouldn't be a problem. Anyway, I definitely know what it is like to not have the self control when you are surrounded by your vice.

The good news? I've lost three pounds in the last couple months.

The buzz in my brain

Do you ever have those days, weeks, or months when you sit at your desk and you try to get something accomplished, but you seem to only check your e-mail? I've been stuck in that rut for a few weeks now. I get more done than reading my e-mail, but I don't get the work finished in a way that it feels "done." I don't know if that is because the task isn't clear, or that so many tasks are popping up and changing the priority, or maybe it is just busy work.

My brain has been wandering in and out of thoughts all this time too. Partly work related, but often not on what I'm should be focused on. Even when I get home I'm looking for distraction. I will read part of a comic book, or a few pages of a book (or multiple books.) Yet, I never seem to keep a focus that would let me complete even the distraction. I have managed to help clean the kitchen with Sara, fold laundry, and make the bed -- busy work.

I was really glad to climb yesterday, big surprise for you I'm sure. I was really focused and my brain was idle for a bit. It makes me wish that we all valued free time more. I'm sure we'd all agree that we need more time for holiday and travel, but I'd bet we'd all put in more office hours to save for the future. Okay, before I get distracted again....done.

What is wrong with Honda?

If you could get a SUV with all wheel drive that got 42.2 mpg or you could get the same SUV with 23 mpg, which would you choose? I'm guessing you would probably choose the SUV that gets 42.2 mpg. So, what if you were not allowed to have the SUV with the higher performance engine?

I'm am completely dumb founded as to why Honda has both of these vehicles but won't sell the higher performing vehicle in the United States. In the UK the CR-V comes with a CTDi diesel that gets nearly twice the performance as the American model without the diesel engine (Oh and the UK non-diesel that gets 34 mpg.)

How does it make you feel that Honda tells you that there isn't a market in the USA for a high mileage SUV?

Please write to Honda and your state Representatives and let them know you want the CTDi available in the American Honda vehicles.

American Honda Motor Co., Inc.
Honda Automobile Customer Service
1919 Torrance Boulevard
Mail Stop: 500 - 2N - 7D
Torrance, CA 90501-2746

Pull Down 2007

Our local gym has a bouldering competition every year. It is a series of three comps and you add the top five scores from each comp. It is fun to work the problems, but what was really impressive was that Sara was second in her group. I did okay, but the boys are very hard to compete against. Most of them are much stronger climbers than myself. And I don't work the short hard problems as much as the roped climbing. Sara's group was very strong too, giving the guys a good run for it.

I was really proud that I managed to work out one particular problem. I have gotten much stronger and so for me to stick to the problem until I figured out the moves was kind of a big deal. I'm working on being more patient on my climb and not just lunging for something I know I cannot stick.

Sara had to leave the final comp early for a fancy dinner, but even with climbing just to get her points she still managed to whoop me. I was just excited to win a door prize. We both won small prizes in the raffle -- I got a huge t-shirt, and Sara got a mug that she can put her coffee in on the go. I never win door prizes so even a t-shirt was pretty cool.

Now for a rest day.

Cold Bones

Since our last climbing trip, I have been very impatient to get outdoors again. At the end of February we'll be heading down to Smith Rock for a weekend outing with a few friends. The problem is the weather has been very cold. Some mornings have been in the low teens, and the day doesn't warm up until after noon. Hopefully by the last weekend of the month it will have warmed up enough to climb all day. I think after Joshua Tree, I'll be able to handle the cold nights. This time I have my ultra warm jacket, and I'll make sure Sara has our third sleeping bag to double up in case she gets cold at night.

I think this year, we are going to be weekend warriors. It won't be every weekend, but I think any weekend that isn't wet, we are going to be someplace that warm and has stone to climb on.

This spring and summer I'm going to spend as much time cleaning up my yard too. It has been a number of years since we have taken care of our yard. We've done a few improvements -- new windows, doors, but now I'd like to make a garden and work on some of my projects.

So not much has been going on. Sara and I have basically been lazy. We did have a nice visit with my Dad last weekend. Hana got to swim and play on the beach and took several days to recover. Her tail didn't have a full wag until Tuesday.

Okay, that is enough of my random ramblings.

Five Things Meme

So my friend Cam hit up Sara for the meme. This then led Sara to ping me. So here you go:

Five Things you may not know about me.

1. I believe in Ghosts. Or Guardians, Angels, whatever you want to call them/it. Seems kind of strange, but it started when I was ten years old after my uncle died from cancer. Sometime after I had a dream, and my uncle told me something. I don't remember what he told me, but I do remember waking up thinking, "What did he says? I need to write it down." I fell back to sleep and couldn't remember the details in the morning. So that was my first "encounter." A few years later I was over at a friends house, and we'd been playing all day. In the afternoon we stopped to make lunch and relax on the couch. While sitting on the couch we heard a huge crash in my friends bedroom. When we walked back to the bedroom we couldn't find anything at all that could have crashed to make that sound (not even in the closet.) As we walked back to the couch we saw someone run out the door. The part that freaked us out was my friends younger brother was outside on the side walk playing with some action figures but he swore that no one had come out the front door. The next time anything like this happened was a few years ago. My martial arts instructor past away from a heart attack. I woke up after a dream where Sa Bum Nim Zoppi had a conversation with me. This time I had disturbed Sara and she made me get up and write down what I could remember of the dream.

2. I am highly susceptible to visual information. Television, or Movies often come back to haunt my dreams. When I was 19 years old I had a medical condition and the doctors gave me Demerol. Demerol is very similar to Morphine and helped me with the pain I was in. Up until that point I never remembered my dreams. I knew I had them, but I didn't remember them, hence not writing down my first dream of my uncle. After the Demerol I started to remember dreams, particularly scary dreams. I once woke Sara up after watching X-Files screaming "Scully, Scully, Help Me!" And not too long ago I put a nice bruise on Sara's leg as I kicked her in my sleep after watching Battle Star Galactica.

3. I was a senior in high school before I ever read a book cover-to-cover (on my own without the help of others.) The book was "Nigger" by Dick Gregory. Up until then I was never be able to finish a book in the time allotted. In fact, I had tried to read All Quiet on the Western Front three different times in the eight, ninth, and tenth grades. I have not yet gone back and re-read it. I am still a very slow reader, but I do enjoy reading very much.

4. I hate swimming pools. As a youth I was a very good swimmer. When I was 14 I was nationally ranked in the top ten in my age group. Now, I don't like to swim in a pool. If I'm going to swim, it is going to be in warm tropical water with a snorkel and fins.

5. I have never tried or used illegal drugs. Never. Not once.

Now I am suppose to ping five more people, but I don't know if I have five friends...David, Chad, Scott, Alex, Kari

Joshua Tree

I finally got some pictures up for you to view. Here are the pictures from Joshua Tree 2006.

Happy Holidays!

Sara and I returned from a trip to Joshua Tree, where we climbed for five days. It was an amazing trip. We are both completely worn out though. We'll likely have more pictures up later. We wish you all happy holidays. I know for some this time of year is difficult, but I hope your families bring you happiness.

Going Public

A company I used to work for went public on Friday. I now have 180 days to wait until I can sell the shares I own. If it stays in the $20 range it won't be much but it will give me some seed money for additional investments. The initial offering of $13 opened at $25, if fell to $23/share but that is still nice. I have to admit I'm dreaming about selling at $100, but the reality of that happening is pretty slim. I will likely be lucky to sell for $5.

The unfortunate thing is that my few shares have already been cut in a 1/2 reverse split. Even though, I'm happy to see potential. Life could be much worse...

Meeting Fred Beckey

Fred Beckey was at a holiday party that Sara and I attended. I don't have much to say about him. He actually didn't say much. His attention was easily distracted, but he was friendly and kind.

I guess I'm suppose to be in awe. To some extent I am, but really I'm just thankful for people like him who pioneered the sport I've come to cherish. Without them we would have bulldozed this country flat. I guess I'm just lucky. It isn't often we are in the presence of a legend.

Honda's 2.2 i-CTDi

Have you ever heard of it? That is because you cannot get it in the United States, or in all of North America. What is that? It is a cleaner, quieter diesel engine. It can run on biodiesel. It can get 40+ mpg (some reports are as high as 70+ mpg), and it has a hauling capacity so you could even hook up your boat. Why don't we have it in North America? Probably because Americans are stupid.

I'm tired of hearing that the market place doesn't support bringing these vehicles to the U.S.A. I think that is out right bull sh!t. If you marketed a vehicle that would get 40+ miles per gallon, and is cleaner, and can run on renewable fuel that is cheap to make -- no, no, not likely the market would survive. We Americans are so stupid we couldn't possibly have want a vehicle that would be better for the environment, better on our pocket books, and better for our economy. Yes, better for our economy -- we'd finally be pushing our local companies to compete with the worlds great manufactures.

LAME!

Snow!

We are having our first snow of the season at sea level. It has been coming down all day really, and has sure been messing up my satellite television. Sara is making bread and soup and Hana is begging for outside time. With the way things are going it doesn't look like tomorrow will be a day for working at the office.

We have had a fairly nice four day weekend. Sara and I hung out at the gym and even took her parents and sister climbing. Her mom and dad did excellent, I hope we get a chance to bring them outside in the spring.

What's a philosophy?

I have an eight year old nephew (well not yet eight, but soon) who likes to ask big questions. I was a bit stumped when he asked "What does philosophy mean?" We pulled out a dictionary and went about trying to explain it. Not easy when every word you want to use has to be explained as well.

Sara and I had a nice visit with the family in Denver. The nephews were more than a handful on Saturday, but they shaped up pretty quickly. After some sassing back to grandma the older nephew got the shake down from Uncle Chris. The boys were very well behaved after that and we had a very good time with a quick science project. We went into the bathroom and the boys looked at their eyes in the mirror. I turned off the light for 30 seconds and then turned it back on. This of course causes the pupil to constrict and the boys thought that was cool.

We visited Breckenridge, which is a nice ski resort/tourist trap. We would have liked to spend more time but such is the way things go. We also had a great time on the way to the airport. There is this monster store called Outdoor World, and it had a shooting range (with lasers, not bullets) and the boys also got to climb the indoor rock wall. That was pretty neat. We probably could have played for a few hours. Even Sara had fun in there shooting at the range.

We had a bit of excitement at the airport in Denver. Going through security we got pulled aside. Sara apparently had our Leatherman in her purse. Why this wasn't caught at Sea-Tac we have no idea, but none-the-less it was a big surprise that we had this knife with us on the plane to Denver. So $8 and three to six weeks later we'll get our Leatherman back. Fun stuff to have security going through your purse. We cannot remember why the Leatherman was in Sara's purse though...we figure it must have been from our camping trip to Redwood National Forest.

So the family is well, and the nephews are growing tall. Mom has settled into Denver, and seems to be very happy with the weather and altitude. Sara and I just need to become wealthy enough to visit more often. Colorado is a great place to visit.

Hmmm, interesting results.

I didn't see that coming. Seriously, I was almost 99.9% certain that the GOP would hold the Senate. And seriously, I figured Missouri would be much closer than it turned out to be...I mean despite the exit polls and weekly trends showing a Dem win there...didn't expect that it would actually hold to reality.

So, I hope that now there is a clear change of power in our political system, we don't fall asleep and let the Dem's become as corrupt and dirty as the GOP's became. My hope is that both parties do some serious work on setting the ethical standards of our politicians. And I hope that the GOP can find its way back from the lunacy that has gripped them for such a long time. Focus on politics that actually impacts the people, not this gay bashing, tax cutting for the rich, anti-abortion stand. Middle class America needs to focus on keeping our civil liberties, providing education so we can compete in this global economy, keeping people employed with good paying jobs, and making sure we can have reasonable health needs met.

And hopefully we can get away from these bills that amount to doing nothing. It makes no sense to say we are going to "leave no child behind" if we are not going to fund these bills.

Okay, it is nice to see the bully humbled.

Keep your video camera's powered on.

Holy Cow! Thank you all who have taken your video cameras and focused them on the polls, and have made it next to impossible for the election to be twisted and undermined. Yes, there are some very, very close races and we will likely have to wait until the morning to see the end results, if not longer. However keep your eyes on Missouri and Virginia. The weekly polling, the exit polling show there is a favorite, and so far it is looking suspicious. We knew Virginia would be tight, but Missouri ... well 60% of the votes are counted and it should be much closer than it currently is being reported.

Earn your citizenship!

Go and Vote. If the odds are overwhelming they can try to cheat all they want...

Prepare to have your Democracy undermined...again.

Well there are really only two and a half days left until the votes are cast and counted. If you are paying attention, the media is already minimizing the position of the Democratic party. My first thought was "This cannot be right!" So I started doing my research, and sure enough it looks like the media is reporting on selective polling that shows the Democratic Party to not have the leads that weekly polling has been showing.

Why is this important? Well most polling has a plus or minus three percent. So if you put the Republican candidate within that 3% then you flip the results so the Republican wins and then you can say it was within the margin of error.

So the media is preparing the Democrats for disappointment. This is what they did in 2004, 2002, and 2000. The pattern of deception continues. The media claims to be "impartial" but they fail to report the facts, or if they do they minimize the time of presenting factual information. If you pay close attention you'll catch a few comments like "This is the only poll that shows the tightening of the race, but no other polls are showing that. (paraphrased)"

And then they keep playing up the John Kerry comments which if you actually watch the video, the whole video, it is clear and the audience knows it is clear who the jab was directed at -- George Bush. People who claim otherwise are lying to themselves.

So just pay attention. The deception before us is not well hidden, but so many choose to ignore the truth.

Dogs Dogs Dogs

I'm waiting for it to be November 1st in Korea. That is about three hours away, and while I wait for the seconds to pass, I sit and watch Vertical Frontier while Hana stares at me, Leroy watches the yard outside (certianly dreaming of having someone scratch his bum), and Apple is curled up sleeping. It is a great day to hang with the puppy dogs, and watch some interesting history of climbing. I've watched it before but somethings never get old.

I should probably get my chores done for the day...