Journal of a Sysadmin

Yes, they are home and Home they are.

jhb and little J are home again, home from Hawaii after a 3 month extended vacation. When middle C and I left in January they had intended on coming back at the end of February but instead opted for the middle of March.

And they are Home, with a capital H. It feels so much better having them here. LIttle J has grown so much, is madly crawling around the house and contains so much BOY that it’s hard to keep up with him. Everything shiny or with a light or that looks like it might taste good gets touched! I might even have to rethink the CO detector on the second floor that plugs into the wall, not to mention the night light that I bought right after buying the house. It’s gone already and a safety cover replaced it.

They are both (of course) having problems adjusting to the timezone, so little J was up until about 1:30am last night and no one wanted to get up this morning. Good thing I took a couple days off work for this!

And this concludes our Hawaii vacation 2006/2007. Have a nice day.

Hawai`i

Red earth on my runners.

Hawai`i smells on my shirts.

Sand on my sandals.

We landed yesterday after spending 23 days in my beautiful wifes home. My head is still filled with the feeling of the warmth and the humidity and the smells and the sounds. Now we have Longs Drugs and Times Supermarkets shopping bags in our house, cookies, macadamia nut treats, and gifts. I so wish I could have brought everything else too.

I’ve slept, finished unpacking, checked my mail and checked in with work, started some laundry and still I have a feeling tugging at my heart. I miss all of the `Ohana there, most of all Jaime and Jonah who are there until the end of February (luck and planning should have it that she’s on mat. leave until the end of June).

We arrived at night on December 20th, picked up the car then Puna and Papa lead the we to our first vacation hale, Schrader’s Windward Country Inn. If they have the space and you are there for either a short or long stay you should check this place out. It has decent sized beach house like units very close to the water, ours was actually on the water and the lani was situated so we could sit and have our breakfast and morning coffee looking out over the waves.

Our second hale was equally as beautiful with a view each morning of the mountains and a great quiet run right outside our door. Auntie Nancy’s Plantation Hale was just down the street from Puna and Papa’s house and is in a quiet neighborhood which is still close to the main highways and Temple Valley Mall.

On `Ohana, I have to say thank you to all of them. They have welcomed this socially awkward white guy (who miss pronounces most of the words in their language) and one of his sons with such open arms and kindness it is too wonderful for words. I love you all and will miss you all so much. The spirit of giving and love is so strong in all of your family, it is my privilege to be a part of it. Mahalo to all of you.

I won’t even pretend to remember all off the things we did but the ones I can remember are the most notable. We spent Christmas Day with Jaime’s family, New years eve at here grandparents for fireworks, New years day at her parents again with all of her family, and on the sixth of January Jonah was Baptized and we went out to celebrate that and Jaime’s birthday (25th I think she said).

We went to Diamond Head where Jaime hiked all the way up with Jonah in the sling, we saw Byodo In, Punchbowl, the lighthouse at Makapu`u (which we almost got to just after the light came on but had to turn back to prevent our car from possibly being held hostage by the state overnight), the USS Arizona Memorial, `Iolani Palace, Bishop Museum, The Polynesian Cultural Centre (PCC), Pali Lookout, Ala Moana (Shopping Centre), Hawaiian Waters water park, Sand Island Park, the Dole Plantation, North Shore (including Matsumoto’s for a shave ice of course), Haunama Bay, Swap Meet, and snorkeling on more than one occasion with Papa and Kimo.

That’s a big list. The snorkeling was the second last thing we did (last thing was a good bye dinner in Kaneohe) where Papa did catch a muhe`e (squid, but really an octopus) so that Connor could see what it was all about.

I think of all the things we did the most fun ones for me personally were spending time with family and friends. I know right now that it’s only a matter of time and I won’t be able to resist the want to never return.

For now we will live in a place where for about 3 months of the year it’s nice, 2 months it’s cool but pretty, and the rest of the year is frozen tundra. But at least we have snowboarding and mountains to make up for it.

Home again, Home again.

Back from 4 days on the road visiting my mother in Halkirk Alberta (see middle of nowhere for reference). While enroute home we toured the well known and very busy towns of Donalda and Bashaw, the area where I grew up. While in Bashaw we had planned to see our friends Warren and Tammy (Warren and I are best friends and grew up together) at their place outside of Bashaw.

It’s a beautiful farm, surrounded by Canola fields with a long drive and huge yard. We talked, had dinner, talked more. Their kids and my youngest played, Warren and I played (he is an electronix geek and has a lot of really really neat toys , Tammy and jhb chatted and missy G and their dog Buddy chased each other around the yard.

And a good time was had by all.

We didn’t arrive home until about 4am, and didn’t actually get to sleep until about 5ish. The drive is a long one and in total we clocked about 908km on the car with just this one trip.

Happy Birthday to me!

So, today was my birthday. I turned the ripe age of 37.

To celebrate jhb and I went for a bike ride from our house, down to edworthy park then over to 14th St. W. then back again. It was a great ride and even at our pace was less then an hour and a half long.

For the trip and for my birthday we bought bike computers. These things are cool (jhb has an Echowell F7 and mine is an Echowell F2) and measure speed and distance as well as keeping track of riding time, average speed and maximum speed (the F2 also does cadence as well). Installation is really nice but their tye wraps (otherwise known as zip straps) blow goats. I broke 4 of mine just doing them up with my fingers so now I’m forced to carry extras with me just in case…

At any rate this also means that for my own docs I’m going to start logging on the date, stats, and weather of all or our bike trips (not counting rides to work and back of course). Thought this would be a good thing to keep around and see if I’m improving at all!

Dropped off the kids with their mom (as happens every second weekend) and we went for All-You-Can-Eat Sushi at the Sumo Lounge. Mmmmm, good stuff. One thing I love about living here is all the great food, which of course in other ways is a bad thing.

I’ve started a kind of diet. Just watching what I eat and how much (no, the sushi didn’t help but wasn’t all that bad) and how much exercise I’m getting. I’m hoping to lose about 20 lbs. by December, as all the weight/height charts tell me I’m at least that much over weight for my frame size. This kind of makes sense because I was 190 lbs from the time I was seventeen until I was thirtyfour when I first stopped smoking. I then proceeded to gain 40 lbs and topped out at 230 lbs. At some point after that (I think just after I bought the house) I started biking to work and biked all that fall and winter. I ended up in a lot better shape and had dropped 30 of the 40 lbs I gained but also started smoking again and then lost the biking (just stopped for some stupid reason).

Now with the recent additions to my bike I’ve determined that I have to use it more. jhb and I are going to be biking more this summer anyway and I’ve decided the bike to work is a must again! So, my birthday present to myself is fairly simple. I want to be healthy, fit, and strong.

I’ll report back next year on if it worked or not =)

More boarding and…

So we took the kids to Nakiska today. The local CO-OP has this deal on that for $99.00 you get 4 lift tickets and rentals which makes it cheap enough to go.

So we go, get the youngest a lesson because he’s never been to the hill before and spend the entire day going up and coming down (I think we did 5 lifts and runs today).

At any rate we came home, the kids fell asleep on the way home and we got home and went for a 15 or 20 minutes bike ride just because we felt like it! I think the working out, the snow boarding, the eating new foods, the stopping smoking, everything really has really started to pay off. I like it =)

And now for the news

So, what happened exactly that I can’t lift my left arm?

Well, it all started on Saturday. jhb and I first were looking at our boards and I tweaked both of our bindings (my feet are so large I had to adjust my bindings toward the heel of my boot to centre my foot more on the board and jhb’s feet are so small that I had to adjust hers the other way) then we decided we both needed stomp pads.

Stomp pads are made of metal, plastic, or foam rubber and you put them between the bindings on your board to give your back foot something to step on when you’re “skating”, meaning your back foot isn’t in the binding but you push yourself with it like on a skateboard. See, this helps a lot when coming off the chair lift as you can then put your foot on the pad and glide off, still using your back foot as a rudder, to steer you clear of any obstacles like fallen or dumb people in your path…

So, at that point we hit about 5 different stores looking for the foam rubber ones (and 2 of the stores we were pretty sure wouldn’t carry them) and spent more money of course than we should have. At the same time we bought a MEC membership (something I’ve wanted to do for a while) and dinner stuff for saturday night (from a Korean store down by MEC).

So we arrive at home, laden down with Clif bars, sippy cup inserts for our Nalgene bottles, a book on mountain biking in the Canadian Rockies, boarding gloves for jhb, miso soup mix, and other oddities INCLUDING stomp pads. Saturday night we turn in early to get a good start on the day at Lake Louise.

We arrived at Louise at about quarter to nine am (lifts open at nine), unload, change our shoes, put on our ski pants and wind breakers, get a locker (one of the great bits of Louise are the $4.00 a day, multi entrance, full sized lockers), then get our boards and head to the gondola!

We first went down the backside of Louise on Pika to the Ptarmigan chair, then down again (second time I dropped over a small black cutoff that joined the top and bottom of one of the switch backs) on Pika to the Ptarmigan chair, and finally back up and down Eagle meadows and Wiwaxy to the Lodge for lunch. It was good with only a couple bad spills.

One of the things about boarding is the transition from your toes to your heels then back again. You have to be very very VERY careful to not dig in that downhill edge (if you transition to your heel from your toe and your toe side edge grabs for example) otherwise you end up either on your ass or your face. VERY careful… Good fun, huh?

So, after lunch jhb decides to take a break and I went up the gondola. I dropped down the backside on Old-Ptarmigan then back up and down to Wiwaxy again. I was concentrating on linking my turns (transition from heel to toe to heel and back again). This is kind of like Tacking or Gybing a boat because you do a heel slide then a toe slide and it not only checks your speed but also allows you to control your direction.

So I was working on linking my turns, and transitioned from heel to toe (this I find is the harder transition) and guess what? My heel edge caught. I was actually moving fairly fast at this point so as you can imagine with my left arm pointed down hill, my heels (and the heel edge of my board) facing the slide when the edge caught and all 210 pounds of me flew very ungracefully through the airs above the ground. I lit on my left shoulder with my left arm under my side.

It knocked the wind out of me so badly that I had to sit there and recovered for about 10 minutes. Wow, did that hurt. The snap on the removable sleeves of my shell left me with a bruise on my elbow, and the force of my arm under my side seems to have pushed my ribs around enough that it hurts to cough.

I made my way to the bottom, then radioed jhb to find her on the gondola heading back to the top. Back on the horse I say and up I went to meet her. We came back down Wiwaxy and both of us made it to the bottom safely so all was good.

On our way home we stopped at The Grizzly Paw Pub for some offsales beer and dinner. Home again by 9pm to cats, dog, painkillers and the sofa.

So after a good sleep it feels better, but still sore. Assisted by my right arm I can lift my left arm above my head alright and my chest still aches from the pounding it took. Even though there is pain, and the fact that I know it will likely happen again, it IS worth it.

If you ever have the chance learn to snowboard do it.

I’ve been skiing now for almost 20 years although at times not that much I didn’t lose the ability at any point. Snowboarding looks like a lot of fun and it is. It may be a bit harder to learn (there’s more to it then skiing) it’s all the same from begining to end.

With skiing you start to learn by snowplowing, then you learn to keep your feet together and slide into the turns (completely different and you have to learn it again) then when you advance to the blues, blacks, and double blacks with bumps (moguls) you again have to learn how to lift your ski tails, then dig into the moguls and bounce out again to dig into the next one. Always learning new stuff.

Boarding on the other hand is fairly straight forward once you learn the basics. Heel slide, then toe slide, then transition toe to heel then transition heel to toe then link toe to heel to toe to heel. That’s almost it and with those basics you can go a long long way. Flat and steep or a glade it’s all the same, toe to heel to toe to heel to heel switch to heel to toe to toe switch etc (switch is when you board with the back end of your snowboard going down first and leading with the wrong foot).

So it’s easy to see why with boarding it’s harder to learn (that transition is a hard one to grasp) but once you get there it’s all the same and you keep getting better and better because you’re always doing the same things. Skiing, although easier to learn at the start, is much harder to get really really good at. It’s not uncommon to see someone boarding that’s only done it for 2 years looking like a complete pro and 2 years on skis you still look like someone that’s been on skis for about 2 years (turns are loose and such)… Some people naturally catch on faster but still…

At any rate, next weekend is Nakiska with the kids. Maybe one day maybe two days. We’ll see when we get there! I still want to get at least 3 or 4 more runs in this year.

It only hurts when I move, news at 11.

I crashed but now I’m tired and sore. Really sore. Think, I can’t lift my left arm above my head…

Someone told me after that the 3rd day boarding is always the hardest, by the 5th I should be getting it… gah, I hope. 2 or 3 more days like this and I’ll never walk again!.

Snowboarding, or free chiropractic in the snow.

So, my second-day-ever-in-my-entire-life of snowboarding is complete and I still have (one two three four) four working limbs and no casts. It’s a difficult transition going from skiing to snow boarding; going from being fairly proficient and capable of taking on most of the runs on a hill to not being able to manage a single run down green runs or get off a chair lift without falling.

Humbling for sure. Bone jarring for second.

But at any rate jhb and I made it back from the mountains as yet another day passes and we both get just a little bit better at riding down steeper-than-you-should-go-down hills on 1/2 a 4 foot long toboggan strapped to the bottom of both feet at the same time.

See what I find most difficult about this is, it seems like you have to not only stand (not walk) on a tight rope with your feet actually tied to the wire, but also the tight rope has two very large body builders on each end jerking and tugging at it.

Your feet go this way, go that way (sometimes unexpectedly) and you must keep your balance lest you fall forward or backward while still maintaining that forward momentum. It actually made for some really good drop tuck and roll drills for me today. But like I said, except for bruises and some sore muscles everyone is home safe.

Sunday will be here soon enough and I don’t know if I have enough time to heal before then!

Snowboard Purchase!

So I bought a snowboard today. It’s an Anthem Anarchy 154cm board. I also got boots and bindings with it, all for the low low price of $127 CDN.

Buying used is the right thing to do =)

So, we also bought two lift tickets each for Sunshine and Lake Louise and plan on going to both on Friday and Sunday respectively. It will definitely be a good time.

And a good time was had by all

• 4 people with gear
• a car with 1640km to drive
• 3 seperate ski resorts
• 5 days

That’s what it has been since last Thursday. Yesterday we finished our last (and suprise) day at Sunshine as a fantastic ski vacation came to a close. Each morning we drove to the ski hill of the day and each evening we drove back to Calgary to eat and crash at the house.

Day 1: Nakiska
We skied Nakiska which is a small hill about an hour outside Calgary. The hill was a bit icy in places, but as the sun warmed things up the top of most of the runs broke up and it became more decent. It was a good place to start, get used to the skis and jhb could practice her boarding. The temperature was about 12C and it was sunny. I did manage to also take some photos of the day as well.

Day 2/3: Lake Louise
Having never skied at Louise I didn’t know what to expect completely. At 11am we were supposed to meet a co-worker at the bottom but unfortunately I missed him. Sorry Mrrrr, one of these days we will get together at a hill! I really enjoyed Louise as it has long runs and a lot of them. On day 2 I skied mostly with jhb while dwmw2 and phooka skied on their own. The green runs are really long which is good for beginners as they can then right once up (a gondola) and then come down at a slow pace for a long time. I did manage to get a few good runs in and even on the front side of the main mountain it was really nice.

Day 3 was amazing. jhb took a rest day and dwmw2, phooka, and I skied all over Louise. From the Larch area you can easily see Chateau Lake Louise on the other side of the valley. The runs were really good, even the bumpy ones =).

Day 4/5: Sunshine
Day 4 at Sunshine was really good. I have to admit that my favorite is Lake Louise but, Sunshine is almost as good and is about 50km closer to home. I spent 1/2 the day sking with phooka and dwmw2 and 1/2 the day skiing with jhb. The sking was really good, a bit icy but overall well worth it.

Day 5 was a suprise day (sorry no pictures, too busy skiing). dwmw2 didn’t have to be on a plane until 8pm so, instead of sitting around Calgary all day we went again to Sunshine. Instead of using my Salomon Prolink EXPs PR8s (210cm circa1999) I rented a set of parbolic Salomon Crossmax Pilot mid range 175cm skis (108,62,102 17R.). These things rocked! It was like I was a completely different skier. Instead of having problems in the moguls and rough terrain I was able to navigate anything I tried (perhaps with less finesse then others but still I could do it). Where my larger and heavier skis had difficulty these shorter lighter skis would carve into the bumps by just leaning back and into the bump. In a word, WOW. So now I’m convinced I need to buy some of these new skis in a 175 or so length. I should also then get newer boots as the ones I currently own are really old and heavy (less weight means easier on my legs =).

Over all the 5 days of skiing were great. There wasn’t a single thing I didn’t enjoy and driving to the hills, packing lunches, and making dinner at home saved us all a lot of money. Cost, including lift tickets was less then $350 CDN for 5 days. You really can not beat that.

We’re already planning our next outing and will be taking the kids I think, likely to Sunshine or Louise in the very near future (if of course we can afford it). If you have a chance, go! Sunshine or Louise offer really really good spring skiing.