I patiently wait...

If you have read this blog in the past you have probably picked up on the fact that i'm obsessed with snowboarding. Yes, it's kind of a sickness. But it makes me so happy. I love being up in the mountains. I like the cold. I even like the wet. But most of all i like carving big lines through untracked cold fluffy powder snow. And not the 32 degree kind of powder, but the 24 degree powder or colder. and not the kind that sits on top of a sheet of ice. right now there is 17" of cold dry powder sitting on top of some fresh snow that fell over the last few weeks. and i sit here and wait patiently. my bag is packed and my clothes are laid out, and much like a fireman i'm waiting for the call and i'll slip on my clothes in one fell swoop and slide down the firepole. i wait for the people who don't love snowboarding as much as me who drive 4 wheel drive vehicles that will never see anything remotely offroad. it's very sad. if you want to stunt with a flashy ride that sits on 22's buy a car that isn't made for offroad or live somewhere where you can't go offroad. and to all the peeps with jeeps, you know who you are and you have no excuse, let's go out and do the sport we all enjoy. with 17" of snow sitting on top of fresh snow, it is your duty to be up there. so patiently (or maybe not so patiently... ) i wait. surfs up you bitches, let's ride....

snow report
road report

Flickr hacked?

All of the flickr feeds in my RSS reader are popping up random peoples photos in my and others peoples feeds. Could Flickr have been hacked?

I need a ride to the mountains tommorow

For some reason i feel compelled to give a snow report. After what was a really dissapointing season last year, this season is really shaping up. it's dumping up at the pass. D-U-M-P-I-N-G. I felt like i should just dig a snowcave and camp out for the night but i decided a hot shower seemed pretty compelling. If anyone wants to go and has something that will get us up there, i'll drive it, let's roll!!!

Powerbook overhaul

yay. it's finished!

Sling rider

I shit u not, I just saw some little kid with his arm in a sling stomp a
360 off of a backside railside at the snopark at sumit central.
(Dumbfounded, shaking my head)

SF Day 4 and WRAPUP

Took BART back to SFO and back to Seattle. Rain. Ugh. Cold. Ugh. And i missed all the big snow dumps up in the mountains and then it got warm. more rain, but in the mountains. ugh. nothing like 9 feet of fresh powder with a little rain on top. ugh. great little adventure in SF, so that's the tradeoff. I'm definately heading back there.

San Fran Day 3

I love WIFI, it's means more blogs from more places. I'm sitting in the back section of the Ritual Roaster down in the Mission (take the 22nd street stop on the BART and make your way over to Valencia and then backtrack a couple of blocks). It's supposed to be where people come to do techie things and drink coffee. i'm hear to see if it's true. It's got a russian theme, with sort of a 60's futuristic flair. To conserve power on the weekends there is a little plate that goes over the power outlet under my table that say "NO OUTLETS ON WEEKENDS", so if you want to hang out for a while bring some extra batteries and maybe a book. this place is way better then the internet cafe/juice bar across the street from my hotel and next door to the asian spa. where i thought it would be cool to grab some juice and check my e.mail this morning. I walked in and there were some old dell pcs on folding tables and there was a homeless man passed out with his head on the keyboard. I turned around and walked out. some guy, who appears to be watching a movie on his ibook just got busted for being plugged into the wall. The barista who is wearing one of those little green communist hats with the little bill, just walked over and made him wind up his cord and put it back in his bag. JESUS DUDE DON'T YOU KNOW THERE IS NO POWER OUTLETS ON THE WEEKENDS, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? she then walked over and made sure i hadn't violated the ritual of no_power_outlets_on_the_weekends. she just walked out and is taking a smoke break outside. i'm pluggin in.

Last night was fun. IODA people you party like it's 1999. I haven't been to a party like that since the glory days of the internet boom. If i ever start going on about how great those years were, i'm probably pretty drunk. just slap me.

Spent most of the Day walking around SF. Hiked up to the COIT tower. Scoped out North Beach and bought a Jack Kerouac Book at City Lights (it's a tradition), VANITY OF DULUOZ. My feet are killing me. This city has one of the greatest transit systems in the world, and for whatever reason i end up beating the feet on the hard concrete.

The Golden Ticket

MAC WORLD, I SEEN IT! This guy down at the apple store gave me the inside that the bookstore across the street, CODY'S ON STOCKTON STREET was giving out free passes to macworld. the catch was that you had to wind your way through all of the books to the basement information desk. this is a brilliant way to get people to come through the store and hopefully buy some books. i didn't need any books, sorry cody. but i am giving you a plug on the blog (you're welcome and thanks for the pass!). So at macworld i made a few new friends and saw a bunch of things that i think i need including the new macbook and the new itv. I ended up buying a little something while i was there and will unveil that in a later blog after i get it going.

San Francisco - Day Two

I was walking down the street last night out in front of my hotel and there was a LOT of blood splattered on the sidewalk. I'm not a forensics expert, but from what i saw someone got jacked. SF is very similar to Seattle with little pockets of blocks that are bad. I am staying in the equivalent of somewhere between 2 and 3rd on Pike. there is an asian spa across the street and a carl's jr. on my block. what's strange is that across the street or within view of my hotel is Nordstroms where the lame buy plaid facconable shirts with color matched undershirts. I'm not bothered by grittyness, i welcome it. Had a dinner last night and caught up with some friends i made at the podcast hotel and the portable media expo who are doing vlogging. The food was absolutely terrible. The conversations were enlightening. You would think that you could get some badass chinese food in SF, or at least one would think that. Avoid Henry's Hunan, it sucks (sorry henry but i gotta call you out on this one). pay attention henry: Salt does not make terrible food taste good, it's still terrible food. I'm at the apple store right now jacking a little wifi. it's really slow. that's kind of makes me sad. the suns's out i'm going outside.

San Francisco Day One

I had a decent flight down here. It's surprising how it's only two hours, i always think it's . i guess i'm used to that 5 hour flight to DC so anything thing seems quick in comparison. I am averaging an exit row seat about 98% of the time, i'm a tall guy i could use the legroom. Here is a secret for all my readers. You want the exit row, just take your ticket up the counter and let them know you're pretty strong and a born leader in the event of a plane crash. generally if a plane crashes you more than likely arent going to have to worry about opening the door, so just lie if you have to. I decided to skip the 40 dollar cab ride into the city and took the BART (SF mass transit is awesome so you might as well take advantage of it) it was $5.50. With the $34.50 I saved i think i could almost get drunk off that tonight! yeah! I really hate the smell of cabs and usually you get a cab driver who talks to his buddies the entire time in a language you can't understand. nothing i hate more then feeling like i need to wash the back-of-the-cab-scum off me and getting out of the car completely irritated. the bart has got some pretty deluxe seats in it and i only felt "slightly-scummy", the only drawback was the little kid that was whining in the seat in front of me, yet much better than listening to a cab driver talking about the hot girls he's been tooling about the city. the hotel i checked into is kind boutique-y. more posting later i need to get to a vlogger dinner. not that i'm really a vlogger, wait scratch that, technically i've posted video on the internet so i guess i am. SF sweeeeeet. vlogging... sweet.

Rotten APPLE

DAMMIT, I'm on my second trip to the apple store to try to get my machine fixed. Yes that's right my machine is not booting up. After taking my computer over to IanK (thanks dudebrah) who runs circles on the powerbook he told me i was pretty much stuffed, so i took it to the GENIUS bar last night and William (very knowledgable at the U-Village Apple Store if you need anything look him up) he told me the same thing about being stuffed. So i'm here yet again. Somehow the OS got corrupted, bummer. I am actually kind of amazed that i have become more and more computer agnostic lately and am able to blog and do all of the same things that i do from my phone and any computer hooked to the Internet. If anybody wants to know the essence of Web 2.o i think it starts with being able to continue your workflow from any machine or device. That might be the dumbest thing i've ever said. or maybe not. This is going to be a long day. Damn You APPLE. DAMN YOooooooooou!!!!!

TAGS: apple store, DAMMIT, hosed

Update 1 - if you have filevault turned on, you will not be able to recover the data on your machine. lesson: unless you are a government employee with data that could get the entire country killed DO NOT TURN IT ON. GAWD DAMMIT

MORE TAGS: filevault, GAWD DAMMIT

Update 2 - After an archival and install (Ryan hooked me up with some disks, which somehow got lost, thanks Ryan) My Powerbook is up and running again. it's slow and it needs to be completely wiped and reformatted. SUPERGAWDDAMMIT (i am finding the word dammit ALL CAPS for some reason today really amusing). Good news is that the computer works, it's just slow. It might be the hard drive which is making this thing so slow and that would suck because then i gotta mail this bad boy back to APPLE and be completely with a computer for a few days. I had a hard enough time being with out it for a little over 24 hours. I might have to book a trip to fiji or somewhere remote and just take a vacation while that happens, i'll put it in an expense report and send it over to Steve Jobs. Don't worry Steve i'll be sure to take it easy on the mini-bar.

EVEN MORE TAGS: fiji, SUPERGAWDDAMMIT, steve jobs

The Chronic of Narnia

Stumbled upon this on YouTube. The site looks like it has some interesting DIY content on it complete with tagging and comments, but... and this is a big BUT... The playback kind of sucks on most of the videos and there doesn't seem to be any fast forward or rewind functionality, just a pause function. I think until they solve the problem of playback i don't care how compelling the content is and how much of it youtube has. i snagged this video and if anybody has a comment on how it plays lay it down for me!

San Francisco

When i was little my dad gave me his old scouting books from the 50's in hopes that i would follow in his footsteps and and go the way of the boyscouts. i used to pore of those books teaching myself first aid and how to tie knots and survive in the wilderness. when i was old enough for cubscouts i joined up (he was pretty proud). Scouts was a great bonding experience with my dad and we ended up winning the pinewood derby one year with the aid of a windtunnel and some wind resistant aircraft grade paint (you're the best dad). in addition to schooling people in the pinewood derby, i enjoyed a variety of crafts including underwater basket weaving (which is hella fun by the way if you've never tried it) and learned some important carving techniques for making weapons out of sticks with my ivory handled (plastic) cub scout knife. so what i learned from those golden days was that with a good bit of scouting something out, you will be prepared to take on anything that comes your way. so with that being said, i'm taking a trip to SF where the action is in web 2.0 to make some new friends and to reconnect with some old ones. If you want to kick it while i'm down there drop me a line at brentv@tmail.com. I arrive at 1pm on thursday and leave at about the same time on sunday. FYI - Bill Gates was an eagle scout and he's pretty damned prepared if you ask me.

KRS ONE on IODA Promonet

I had the chance to see KRS ONE live at Chop Suey a couple of months back. Yes, he's still around and his flows are still straight butter! Small venue, LOTS of energy, the guy is animated. KRS ONE if you are reading, keep making those rhymes!

Keep Right

KRS - ONE
Grit Records

• Buy at iTunes Music Store


• Buy at eMusic


• Download the mp3 of "Illegal Business"

Flickr Portfolio

My PORTFOLIO of work is now up on Flickr and i'm busy adding tags to all of it. Pass it along to all your homies and make sure to subscribe to the FEED. It's a work in progess and there is much more to come, but as Spamstan says "80% and GO!"

January 006 love

it's officially 2006 and doesn't that sound super futuristic? when i was in 2nd grade if you had asked me what would be happening in 2006 i would have told you that i would be cold kickin it with my best friend who just happened to be a robot that enjoyed skiiing. I think i must have been inspired by the Jetsons, but i don't think i had even seen it. I wrote a book about my best friend the robot and submited it to the library book contest. i was a goofy ass kid. Shel Silverstien, author of Where the Sidewalk Ends, read my book and signed it, i still have it. so proud. i want my robot in the oh oh six.