Freezing in the Devil’s Playground

Predator enjoying some powder

Last weekend I had the opportunity to ride some powder at Devil’s Head Ski  Board Resort in Wisconsin.  Unfortunately, my wife was unable to go due to illness, but some of my friends were able to make the trek up there with me.  We actually headed up Thursday night in order to beat some of the weekend crowds on Friday.  A mere 4 hours from our house makes this a very bearable trip.

Slopes

Although it was pretty cold out, the real danger was the weaponry that was being deployed.

Back Country Warning

…. what?  I get the sense you are not buying this.  Fine, I’ll come clean, the previous pictures were not from Devil’s Head.  I didn’t take the camera with me so I went ahead and threw in some pics from our Colorado trips a few years back.  What gave it away, the fact that Devil’s Head is in the Midwest (think flat) or there would actually be a back country there?  Anyway, we had a great time.  The first day (Friday) temperature was not too bad during the day session (~24 deg), but the wind was cranking through in the 13-15 mph range making the exits off the lift rather blistering.  In fact, we could put our arms out and the wind would blow us uphill to the start of the adjacent runs.  The temperature started dropping pretty quick after noon and was darn cold for the night session.  Luckily we know to keep our board edges razor sharp in the Midwest in order to cut through the ice – nothing like transferring edges and noticing that yellow hue signifying solid ice (no, not THAT kind of yellow snow).  I had fallen pretty hard on a mogul run earlier in the day due to being all ice in between the mounds.  Everyone with me fell on that run as well, but only I ended up with the third knee – translated… a huge swollen welt on the left side of my left knee.  It didn’t seem to affect the motion I needed to board so I brushed it off.  This injury coupled with my shoulder that had a cortisone injection a few days before forced me to curtail my rail activities.  Linda cautioned me to take it easy this time because she couldn’t drive me home like she usually has to.  So very little of this:

Grinding the rail

A little more therapy on the shoulder and some ice on the knee should have me back on the rails next time we go.

My observations from the week follow the jump

Continue reading Freezing in the Devil’s Playground

Rockin’ with Angus in St. Louis

Hey, it’s my birthday today and as a special treat I am giving everyone a three day weekend!  No, I am not revealing my age.  I wanted to actually make this post a few days ago so it would be fresh in my mind, but I ended up getting bogged down in some other things I had to get done before the big holiday weekend.  Luckily the event left a pretty lasting impression on me.  So, the topic today is… My wife and I had the opportunity to see AC/DC in St. Louis MO last Tuesday.  They were in the midst of their latest tour to promote their new Black Ice album.

AC/DC Black Ice Tour

follow the link to read just how good of a time we had!

Continue reading Rockin’ with Angus in St. Louis

Book Recollection: Warrior Soul

SEALsEver since reading the Lone Survivor I have been interested in what it takes to be an elite in our military.  If you have not had to chance the read that book, you owe it to yourself to pick up.  In fact, I have given it to all my friends at work and keep the hardcover on my desk to remind me that no matter how back it gets during a day… it is nowhere close to what Marcus Luttrell and his fellow SEALs had to endure.  For Christmas I received a couple of new books related to the SEALs.  I just finished one entitled Warrior Soul.  This particular memoir focused on the events faced by Chuck Pfarrer as member of America’s Navy SEALs.  Based on the reviews and book jacket, it sounded like an exciting perspective on the dangers of covert operations and nail biting suspense as he battles the evils of the world.  My expectations were not met.  I may be that the Survivor book has tainted my perspective or the government decided to restrict the juicy stuff.  In either case, I recommend passing on this particular one unless you want to read about how they were almost seen while doing a reconnaissance run, how he basically put his men into jeopardy when he was given the chance to lead, sat on a runway surrounded by Italian soldiers (nothing happened) and eventually wrote some screenplays.  I had to endure pages of his marriage infidelity, his ego stroking resistance to higher ranking military leaders who are obviously not as smart as he is and how much chicks dig him.  Fortunately, there were a few tidbits that made my time worthwhile.  Follow the jump for my list of recollections:

That’s the Rooster, she stole my two dollars

roosterThought I would just throw out a couple of quick observations over the last week or so.  My favorite so far has to be something overheard during the Jan 1st Outback Bowl featuring Iowa Hawkeyes vs. the S. Carolina Gamecocks.  Iowa is a heated rival in my household since my wife is from the state of Iowa and I went to the land of Chief Illiniwek (you can strong arm it out of our weak university governing boards, but you are not removing it from the hearts of those who attended there and understand the difference between a mascot and a revered symbol).  However, since the Illini didn’t pull out the juicer at the end of the year, we were stuck watching from the comfort of our living rooms where Hersey was cheering from the sidelines in Tampa.  It was basically playing in the background as I did some odd work around the house when the game must have hit a low point. This forced the announcers to look for something else to talk about.  Once again, I failed to set up my PVR on delay mode in order to review or capture things that catch my attention.  This happens all the time with headline news and I keep promising myself I’ll get that set up.

I am unable to remember exactly where in the game the discussion occurred, but the producer panned down to the field where I think Rob Stone was standing next to the Gamecocks’ mascot which happens to be a rooster named Sir Big Spur.  Rob proceeds to place a mirror in front of it where it responds in the expected manner by pecking at the opposing rooster.  This continues on for what seems like eternity… rooster pecking, pecking, pecking, pecking … against the mirror.  Rob proceeds to explain how this particular bird would continue this fight until the death.  More pecking, pecking, pecking and then either Sean McDonough or Chris Spielman (my money is on the latter since he has a history of similar statements) says something like “[how long are we going to have to see this rooster…. he or she what is it Rob?]”  Again, I wish I had it on PVR to be more accurate.  I will let you think about that for a minute before I spoil the fun.  Did you put two and two together yet?  Rob hesitated a little (probably trying to figure out the appropriate response) and issues “well, it is a rooster so it is a he otherwise it would be called a HEN”.  If I can track down the accurate quotes, I’ll update this post – so no, I didn’t mess up the title to this post.

Lastly for today, my wife was walking through Kohls right after Christmas and passed by a kid that was extremely excited about his Kohls gift certificate he received.  He was eager to spend it and was busy telling the people he was with that he had $38 to spend.  Linda thought that was an odd amount to get a gift certificate for (and the reason she mentioned it to me when she returned home).  I had to agree and spent some time trying to figure out a combination that makes logical sense.   One person giving $2 short of $40, two groups going in for $19 a piece, a group of 7 each giving $5 and 3 of them throwing in an extra $1, a group of 38 each giving $1.  It just seems odd, but I am sure I just missing something glaringly obvious.  Before I get the comment on $38 is a lot of money for a family etc. etc., that is not the point of the observation.  It is a very nice gift and the child was clearly excited about it.  The strange amount is the part that is throwing me off.  $2 more gives it an even amount and I doubt that amount is going to break anyone shopping at Kohls.  $3 less makes $35 and I am guessing that would be just as exciting to the kid.  The only thought at the moment is the kid new exactly what he wanted already and the parents included the tax etc, for that particular purchase.  But I would expect in that case, my wife would overhear comments about the specific item he was going to obtain as opposed to the dollar amount that was going to be spent.  It was an odd scenario and that is what we are all about here.

That is all for now and stay away from those female roosters.

From the Eagle’s Nest – Part 2 of 2

Okay, I am watching another blowout in the Rose Bowl and to be honest, the most annoying part is having to listen to the most biased announcer in the lot – that’s right, I sleep with my USC teddy bear Brent Musberger.  Rather than put myself through anymore of that misery, I’ve decided turn off the TV volume and crank out the second part of the post on the Eagles.

Bald Eagle - A Majestic View

Last I left you, we were viewing an elegant bird preparing to rip the innards out of a recently plucked from the river fish,  I figured I would provide a little better shot of the final pane of that collage to give you a perspective on that powerful beak.  For PETA’s sake I am sure he gently messaged it to sleep before he ripped right through the scales and started munching down on the nutrients.  Maybe if we ask him nicely he’ll switch to a steady diet of alfalfa sprouts.

Eagle eating a recently captured fish

Follow the jump for details on the actual catch.

Continue reading From the Eagle’s Nest – Part 2 of 2

Happy New Year from the Eagle’s Nest – Part 1 of 2

Hey, we made it to another year in spite of Nostradamus.  A few quick edits a new edition through the press and they will be good for at least another year of doomsday prophecy.  I hope everyone had a safe and fun Eve and kept the roads dry for the safety of others.  It is another year and true to my previous summary, I am going to continue with this little side project for sometime longer.  Keeping with my new goals (it is still early in the resolution season), today’s topic is more graphic.  Actually, it was so graphic the post was broken into two parts.  Unfortunately, the second part has some images of graphic violence but I think they you will still like them unless you are from PETA and don’t understand that violence in nature exists every day – hunter vs. prey has been around since the world decided plants taste like crap.

On the first day of 2009, I bring you America’s Pride:

American Bald Eagle

While Linda and I were in Davenport, IA over the holidays, we stopped down at the Bettendorf locks to snap a few shots of these majestic birds.  Every winter they migrate down (think that is right) to the Quad Cities area to feed off the Mississippi River.  It is absolutely stunning to witness these birds first hand and not have to look at an injured one through glass or chicken wire.  It is obvious they know they are at the top of the flighted foodchain.  Here is a view from the side that gives a better perspective of the weapon that obviously demands respect wherever they roam.

American Bald Eagle from the side

Since I have a lot of pictures today, I’ll go ahead and let you follow the jump to see the rest of them instead of overwhelming my home page.

Continue reading Happy New Year from the Eagle’s Nest – Part 1 of 2

It’s My Blogging Anniversary

Okay, it is officially tomorrow, but it will be my 1 year anniversary of committing to this whole blogging whim.  If nothing else, I get to check another thing off my life list.  I held myself to completing at least a year of this with a determination at the end of that time to decide to continue or not.  For my own selfish reason I decided to provide a summary of this year’s output (data includes this post):

  • According to the WordPress Stats: Total Posts 99 and 27 comments
  • Total pages (according to MS Word):155
  • Total number of words (according to MS Word):66,172
  • Post topics (some posts had multiple categories)
    • Birds:9
    • General:9
    • Observation:59
    • Ramblings:6
    • Recollection:10
    • Service:13
    • Uncategorized:0
    • Wildlife:0
  • Blogs by month (numbers did not come out right – think WordPress was reporting wrong by month
    • 12/0:1
    • 1/08:12
    • 2/08:7
    • 3/08:9
    • 4/08:7
    • 5/08:13
    • 6/08:7
    • 7/08:6
    • 8/08:6
    • 9/08:6
    • 10/08/:10
    • 11/08:7
    • 12/08:7
  • Writing style: conversational
  • Most common grammatical error: using “to” instead of “too”- Word loves to point this out to me
  • Number of WordPress uprades:1
  • Number of reference links used:45
  • Number of images used:81
  • Languages uses: 2 (English and a Greek word)
  • Completed Life List Items: 4
    • Ran the Steamboat 15K – toughest in IL
    • Purchased apiece of art
    • Blogging for one year
  • Maintained convictions:2
    • Never giving Metallica a penny of my money
    • Ban from RIAA backed musicians (and I won by the way – RIAA has decided to stop suing their customers – await upcoming post on this topic)
  • Posted 85 more items than my brother over at Dead Reckonings (he clocked in at 13) – yeah, he has me on quality by far… really far actually, but I like to harp on my tiny infrequent wins over my parent’s favorite 8^)
  • Personal Revelations:
    • I actually read more books than I thought this year
    • My disposition is clearly on the sarcasm side
    • Pet peeve – bad service
    • I remember more than I thought from my childhood
    • Clearly interested in marketing and economics – ironic since those were my worst subjects in school
    • Definitely leveraging all of his elective psychology classes
    • Enjoys nature

I must admit, I enjoyed my time blogging and I am pretty pleased with the end result.  It strange being able to look back and actually have snapshots in time with aspects that impacted your life along with your person reaction or reasoning at that time.  Since only a year has passed, most of my viewpoints have not changed a great deal, however, it may be interesting to review this content in 5 years or so to see if my disposition has changed or life experiences have altered the way I look at certain situations.  As of now, I have decided to continue with this effort, but I want to change a few things in an effort to improve upon the output:

  • Infuse a more graphic perspective – what probably has not come out in all this is my interest in photography and all things related to art in general.  You probably caught a little bit of that with the art purchase post and the photos of wildlife etc.  While creating this summary, I was shocked at how skewed it was to the textual side.
  • I need to get caught up with my observations.  I still have a large number of items written down that I want to post on the blog.  If nothing else, I want to be sure and capture the thoughts associated with those occurrences when they happen.
  •   Branch out into some additional topics.  This year I focused on the bird side of the wildlife (and thus why it had its own category).  Being out in the country, I have a great variety of different insects and animals that I get to observe just about every day including; deer, snakes, spiders, coyotes etc.  I also want to add a new category on the topic of stupid engineering.  I am getting tired of poor execution on product delivery and have a growing list of examples I would like to share.
  • And finally, and to be honest, the most apprehensive goal is to increase viewer numbers and comments.  I purposely left this site unadvertised and somewhat private as I navigated through what I wanted to do with this site.  I was also struggling with the ramifications of knowing others would be viewing the content and might be offended or think differently of me if they did not agree with a position I took or a comment that was made.  This is still a concern of mine, but the only way I’ll get an answer to this is to simply try it.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone that did take the time to read my ramblings and especially appreciative of those who invested time to add comments.  It has been fun and looking forward to continuing this in 2009.

Merry Christmas To All

Just wanted to take a quick timeout and wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  Hope you got everything you were wanting (and admit it, clearly did not need) and if you’ve been partying a little too much, slide those keys to someone you trust as a true friend.

Now back to my new ION Drumset to improve my under 300 world ranking on Rock Band.  Thanks Santa!

Not A Creature Was Stirring, Not Even A Mouse

I must admit, today I was utterly surprised.  Every Christmas Eve, I head out to the shopping malls and popular stores.  No, I am not a procrastinator and usually have all my required gifts already purchased (maybe not wrapped yet, but that is whole different story).  No, the only reason I do this is for the sheer entertainment value from watching holiday shoppers.  The best time to observe people is always at times of stress and there is not too many other days that rate higher on the stress meter than the day before St. Nick breaks into our homes and showers the good with presents.  I can remember the numerous occasions of people attacking line-cutters, angry shoppers engaging store employees, customers wrestling for the last Furbie and the all too common denial of credit card.  For a people watcher this is good as gold and since I was not in any time constraints I could slink back into the crowd and take it all in.

So, off I went today anxious as to what I might observe.  First off, Best Buy.  I wanted to do a quick check to see if there were any last minute reductions on laptops and figured I would check if they happened to have a gift for Linda someone had mentioned a few days ago (again, just a bonus since her shopping has been done for awhile).  There was the usual traffic cop directing traffic through the ridiculous single entrance to Cub/Lowes/Best Buy stores, but he really was not doing that much.  I was not even stopped or delayed once all the way into the parking lot.  This was definitely an odd occurrence.  Once parked, in a semi-filled BB lot I headed into the store expecting to see people defending their finds.  Again, nothing.  Some people were milling about, but that was about it.  I checked out the gift idea and there it was sitting on the shelf and nobody even looking in that direction.  I decided to go ahead and grab it and would instead have fun watching all the people get extremely annoyed in the checkout line.  When I arrived up front, I noticed they had recently put the blue line guides on the carpet and had snaked it out into the store for optimal capacity.  For clarification purposes, I had NO PROBLEM noticing it because I could see it clearly the entire time as I was walking straight up to an empty cashier.  Only two other people were checking out in the 3 other open registers.  This was an absolute first.  I disappointingly paid for my items and walked out of the store in disbelief.

On my way out, my wife called and wanted me to get some driveway salt for her mother who was having difficulty locating it in the Quad Cities.  Excellent, another opportunity to see the mad dash for last chance gifts for Dads.  This soon became ominous when I ended up parking about 8 spots from the door and that included the protection buffer I keep to protect my doors from those who apparently have no appreciation for others.  I crossed over the door beam and walked into a nearly empty store.  I counted no more than 40 people as I walked through the various aisles.  I located in the salt, found some lithium grease for an upcoming blog topic and again walked directly up to the cashier and paid for my items.  This is totally unbelievable.  In fact, I was so amazed, I ended up calling my wife to relay my disappointment.  Luckily she mentioned the dogs probably needed a couple more items for their stockings (don’t laugh, they are treated better than most kids) so I headed down past Cub to the local PetSmart.  This looked more like it.  I had to park pretty far out into the lot (buffer still included) and had a significant walk to the door.  There were definitely more people there than at Lowes, but there was definitely a more low keyed if not joyous atmosphere as people discussed how cute a particular collar was or validated the squeaker actually worked on a particular stuffed animal.  I had my first chuckle of the day since I validated a previous observation I had been working on.  Based on my findings, almost all people will check a squeaker no less than 2 times before they are satisfied that it actually works.  This testing process rarely goes past 4 squeaks because I think people start feeling self-conscious at that point because about then people in view start to stare.

I continued looking around, but could not find a single instance of any stressed out people.  Even the dogs were being nice to each other.  I grabbed a few stocking stuffers and headed up to the cashiers.  There was finally a small line at the registers and by that I mean each of the open registers were checking out a customer.  Finally, I could experience a wait scenario which usually breeds grumpiness.  My chance had finally arrived… NOPE.  A lady walks around the corner and asks to check me out in the register a row over.  So reluctantly, I moved over to that counter and completed the transaction.  She was even very nice indicating that she had not had her fill of unruly pet owners for the day.

Drats!  A complete waste of time.  Where is everyone?  Are the holiday shopping activities really this bad?  Has the economy in Peoria finally caught up with the rest of the States (as of last month, our housing market was still going strong)?  Has the recent Caterpillar announcements on layoffs and pay freezes significantly dampened the holiday festivities?  I doubt everyone has done their shopping early this year for that would be in out of character for the previous 18 or so years I have been making the Christmas Eve run.  For now, my best guess is the bad economy has hit everyone hard.  I will be interested in seeing the final revenue statistics from the local merchants.

Oh well, best wishes for a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Look at all the Deers and Gooses

Holiday Greetings everyone.  I am still getting back on my feet after experiencing the network issue which eventually degraded to an all out rebuild of my system(s).  I am still experiencing an annoying problem with my FTPs into GoDaddy.  I am not sure if it is a Satellite Internet problem or an incompatibility on the GoDaddy side.  Unfortunately, this is limiting my ability to upload images, but I hope to have this resolved soon.  In the meantime, I thought I would share some recent observations on the language front.

The other day, I was in Best Buy looking at some laptops they had on sale.  For some reason my hearing attention was instantly drawn to a lady employee assisting another couple out.  I honestly do not know what the actually conversation was about, but what struck me immediately was her comment “Oh, you wanted to check out the mouses as well”.  Before we go any further, I will quickly put a disclaimer that I am not the most English language versed individual out here and if you read many of my posts, I do make some grammar and spelling mistakes from time to time.  This is likely a result of choosing physics and computers over English in college.  I did have a number of electives in English Literature which I enjoyed tremendously, but in an elective and non-career situation only.  I actually asked my wife if she heard the same quote and she actually asked if I was referring to the mouses.

Unable to make a decision regarding the laptop, we headed for home only to turn around again to quickly purchase a gaming console HDMI cable at Target.  I finally found what I needed and was putting my my item on the checkout counter when I hear “Where he now”.  That officially makes two language errors in different stores within the same hour.   I can just imagine how this would go in the texting crazed world – “O U wantd 2 chck/o mouss” and “? he nw”.

On my way home I tried to understand if this was a global phenomenon or whether I was more sensitive to it that night.  It then occurred to me that there was probably a catalyst to all of this based on an observation that happened a couple of weeks ago.  I was coming back from reserving a Wii Fit and passing through the Alta residential area.  In one of the driveways, there was a large white pickup truck sitting in a driveway just off the road.  The back of the truck had giant white letters that spelled “You’re In America Speak English” (I was going too fast to verify the punctuation).  Interesting, here was an individual that was extremely sensitive to non-English conversations – so much in fact he needed to announce it to anyone he drove past.  I almost doubled back to get a picture, but decided it was too cold to be wasting time.  The part I found ironic was the very next day we were invited to a coworkers house for a late lunch/early dinner gathering.  These people live no more than 2 blocks from where the truck was sitting and are on assignment our European facility.  The guy I work with speaks fluent French, Portuguese and English (probably more as well) and his wife speaks French, Portuguese and a good amount of English.  They also had some friends over to share the event.  For the record, he was from Wisconsin and spoke Portuguese and was working on learning French for a new assignment overseas.  I believe his wife was from Brazil and spoke fluent Portuguese and English (also working on learning French).  We had an absolutely wonderful time and at various times we heard both French and Portuguese depending on who was communicating to who or if some clarification was needed regarding a translation or explanation of a particular experience.  What was astonishing was how well they had grasped a fairly difficult (strange rules yet by their experience basic on the verb/subject combination) language.  I would bet that they could give the truck owner a run for his money on any language skills competition and even knew to keep the tricky ‘s’ at the end of multiple deer.

In summary, I think I was more attentive to the spoken word having seen the truck visual and having recently experienced a multilingual dinner.  It is more likely that Americans need to spend a little bit more time listening in class and a little less time worrying about losing our national language.  If we cannot use it correctly, how can we expect others to willingly adopt it?  What was probably the most disappointing aspect was the fact my 3 years toiling away in Spanish class did not provide any help at dinner.

Ciao!