The Winter Olympics are over with both the US and Canada having very respectable showings (37 overall medals for the former, 14 gold for the latter), so now all these sports that people otherwise never hear about get to go back into the background until Sochi in 2014. However, in just two more years we get the likes of Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, and who knows who else in London for the next Summer Olympics. While the Winter Olympics are fun to watch, there are only so many interesting ways you can go down a mountain on skis or a snowboard. At least with the Summer Olympics, the sports involved are much more varied.
My calendar would indicate that tomorrow is almost a completely full day for me, but on closer examination, it’s more like a series of smaller things that just take place over the day (with the full time blocked out). Either way, I should stay busy which is all that I really ask for in a day of work. Sure, every two weeks I also appreciate the money that gets sent my way, but it’s nice to know that I’m earning it instead of just sitting in an office for eight straight hours, five days a week.
Personal - Seattle
Snowboarding today was fun: nothing disastrous happened (the falling references my style. not what I did all day), my friend probably ended up being better than me by the end of the day (he was much more willing to fall down after lunch than I was), and we got home far earlier than I was thinking (or we initially planned). If Stevens had no night riding, we would have effectively stayed the whole day (approximately 9:30-3:30). For my first time snowboarding in essentially 12 months (that’s a year for you conversion challenged people), I feel like I did well. As it turns out, I didn’t magically gain any new skills in that timeframe though.
Tomorrow, I’m going back over to my same friend’s apartment to watch the USA-Canada hockey game. Why? Well, it isn’t for my dying unprofessed love of the sport (even though my dad and I went to our fair share of Dallas Stars games before the lockout season), but it’s something to so on an otherwise boring Sunday that I would spend resting and recharging from the events of today. I may not have broken any bones, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not thoroughly exhausted as a result.
Personal - Seattle
Let’s don’t kid ourselves, I am by no means a snowboarding expert. Fortunately, neither is my friend, so while I’ll be “better” than him (presumably, at least at the beginning of the day), I expect both of us to be eating some snow throughout the course of the trip. Still, the weather should be more comfortable than it was in Park City (it should stay in the low to mid-30s), so I expect the day to be fun.
Legally Blonde (the musical – yes, there’s a musical version of the movie) is currently showing in downtown Seattle, and the theater has a special where anyone under 25 can get a ticket for $20 on the day of a show. Slightly inconvenient since I don’t live near the theater, but I think it’ll be a musical that I’ll enjoy so I’ll likely jump through the hoops. Of course, I could always just buy a normal ticket, but where’s the fun in not saving money?
Personal - Seattle
Most of the time PMs don’t actually do check-ins to the source control system, but I ‘m not the one to live by stereotypes. Actually, I am considering that’s how I’ve been living for the last 7 months, but I was explicitly told not to this time. For all eternity, “jguebert” now has code checked into the Windows codebase. Impressed? You should be.
Tomorrow is an extremely empty (relatively) day for me on paper, but I’m sure there will be no shortage of things for me to do. It would be awesome if my calendar was the master plan for my day all the time, but I’ve quickly learned that this isn’t the case. Since I always feel examples are handy, take this afternoon: 4 hours of “stuff” on my calendar, and what did I do? I sat at my desk, working on something completely unrelated to the numerous things I had on my schedule throughout that timeframe.
Personal - Seattle
When Windows Media Center on Windows 7 talks to Windows Home Server to import videos and then interface with an Xbox 360 (yeah, no Windows in that name) to play them back, you can’t really say that Microsoft isn’t tying all of its products together. In fact, to make life even more interesting, I downloaded another piece of software that interfaces with WMC to take all my movies and give them cover art, details, and display them in a nice scrolling manner. The TV show portion of my collection didn’t work out too well, but that’s something I can worry amount in the medium future. Hopefully I can find a nice solution that works well enough so I feel comfortable setting it up for my parents, but I’m not quite to that stage yet.
It seems like Stevens Pass is the location that has been decided on for this weekend, so I either need to get good paper directions or an address (surprisingly difficult to find) so that my GPS can navigate its way there. The one bad thing about going anywhere is that Saturday morning is going to require waking up like I’m going to work, potentially even earlier. Some weeks I’ll spend Friday nights watching a movie or a couple of TV shows (like Dexter), but this week I think I’ll have to pass on that unless I think the snow will make a comfortable pillow on Saturday.
Personal - Seattle
So now in addition to my snowboard jacket, pants, gloves, and goggles (all fairly compact), I’ve acquired my board, boots, and helmet (all not so compact). Dost thou forget, I am no longer living in a 4000+ sq. ft. house, so my storage options are slightly more limited. At Andrew’s suggestion, I’ll probably go pick up a snowboard bag tomorrow which are designed to be big enough to hold most of the previously mentioned items. It’ll also make life much easier when carrying stuff since it was hard enough to just get the three things today to my car and up the stairs, not taking into account the normal clothing load.
The weather looks like it will be favorable at either of our potential destinations this weekend, so it really just comes down to personal choice. Since none of us have been to either of them before, that then turns into effectively a coin flip. The one difference is that Stevens has night skiing, so even though it’s slightly farther away, we could spend more time there before leaving. Will that be the deciding factor? Well, as soon as I know, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Personal - Seattle
My snowboard stuff will have to wait until tomorrow morning to be bought because how was I supposed to know that you couldn’t buy Microsoft money with a credit card? After I was informed of this, they asked me if I had a check. Yeah, at my apartment… They then confirmed about two more times that I didn’t have any checks on me, despite my assurances (accompanied by a slightly confused expression) that I didn’t. I mean, I know I carry a lot of things around with me, but I’ve written less than 15 checks since I’ve moved up here. It’s not something that makes it into my daily repertoire of stuff.
My clear case for my Zune HD that I ordered something like three months ago finally arrived today, so now I don’t feel quite as apprehensive about taking it outside of the relatively padded world of my apartment. The reason I wanted a clear case was so I could see the design on the back (even though it was free for me, I still think it looks cool and didn’t want to cover it up). Now, the question will be how much use it sees once I finally get a Windows Phone 7 Series phone, but you can never really have too many extraneous portable media playing devices around.
Personal - Seattle
One could argue that aside from this site, I’ve tended to ignore the rest of my online world. JeffGuebert.com hasn’t been updated effectively since I started it, I have two Twitter accounts of which I use neither, and my numerous project ideas never make it out of the nebulous brainstorming stage. So, what’s a technology literate person to do? Great question, and I don’t have the answer yet. I feel like something should be done, but I want to make sure that it’s something I’ll get right and can potentially keep from falling back into the state that everything is right now.
The Olympics mean no Chuck again this week (and Castle is a repeat), but at least I have 24 to look forward to. Fortunately this only lasts for this week, and next Monday I should be back to my full Monday night lineup of shows to watch. Of course, between my DVR and other show match methods, my Monday night lineup could just as easily be a Wednesday morning or Saturday afternoon lineup, but I prefer to watch them relatively close to their air date in order to minimize the chance of hearing something before I get around to watching it.
Personal - Seattle
My expectation was that Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was going to stay pretty faithful to it’s source, and when taken in the context of the book, it was (anything but) a very good adaptation. It had (half of) the same characters, it had (some of) the same plot points, and it had (kind of) the same ending. In fact, you could say that the story told by the book and movie were (barely) the same. Given how much I enjoyed the book, a purchase of the DVD is (not) probable. My score: 7/10.
I went and picked out all my snowboard stuff today, and then I’ll actually buy it on Monday at the Microsoft store. The reason for this is that currently the whole complex where the store is at Microsoft is running a promotion where if you buy $50 in their currency you can only use at the shops/restaurants there, you get an extra $10. This effectively will knock off another $100 of the total price, and who wouldn’t want to save that much money? After that discount I’d effectively be doing the exact same as I would be online cost wise, but I’m getting much nicer boots and the knowledge that everything fits me as opposed to the guessing game I would have to play otherwise (with the potential of needing to play the exchange game).
Personal - Seattle
What was just a movie tomorrow has now morphed into a full afternoon of activities. My car has been yelling at me to get an oil change for a while (I’ve had it for over 6 months and still haven’t put 3000 miles on it, but it’s probably time for one anyway), so I’ll probably head to the Ford dealership nearby just to let them look everything over. Then, of course, I have my movie plans which I’ll now probably head to a different theater than the one I was originally planning on (the one down the street from me). Finally, I’ve been talking with some of my friends about going to either Crystal Mountain or Stevens Pass next weekend, so instead of renting a snowboard for the day as I was initially planning on doing, I’ll do my research to find out exactly what to buy. Sorry Bioshock 2 and Borderlands, but your place on my priority scale just dropped down a few notches.
In huge news yesterday (at least, that’s when I heard about it), Civilization V is coming out later this fall. It’s been a while since a “true” Civ game came out since Revolutions doesn’t count, and it’s definitely one I’ll be picking up. Perhaps once it comes out, Alex and I can finally get our multiplayer game going on without the game accusing one of us of cheating or just failing to work all together.
Personal - Seattle