Backcountry Bust

I had grand backcountry plans for today. I met my brother Erik at his house in Breckenridge bright and early so we could hike up Peak 10 and ski down 4th of July bowl - an opportunity to put my avalanche gear to use for the first time in years. We geared up and rode the Falcon Express lift to the top of peak 10 and encountered howling winds and white-out conditions. On top of the questionable avalanche danger, it was miserable, so we nixed those plans and instead drove across the valley to Baldy Mountain. We hiked a few miles to a spot where the wind was tolerable, but unfortunately the snow was not. Terrible, wind-packed slab, a.k.a crap. At least it was some good high-altitude exercise, I suppose.

The good news is, I got a snowboard for the price of a 12-pack. I've been wanting to learn to board 'cause I'm convinced it will be more fun in the powder, and Erik is going to let me use his old board and boots to learn to be a knuckle-dragger. I gave him a 6-pack and his buddies in the ski shop a 6-pack in return for a full tune-up. Not a bad deal!

Running and Reading - the Key to Life

Have you ever wondered what the key to life is? Could it really be as simple as running and reading? Maybe that's a bit of an oversimplification, but there's a lot of truth in what Will Smith says in this video. If you learn how to keep running when that little voice inside tells you to quit, "you will learn how to not quit when things get hard in your life".

A for reading? "There's no problem you can have that someone hasn't already solved and wrote about it in a book."

Another gem: "The person that works the hardest wins."

The Yeti beard

For no particular reason, I've let my beard grow for the past month. This is a fuzzy picture taken from my phone, showing what I look like after skiing in knee deep powder and falling into the fluffy stuff a few times.

So what's your vote on the beard? Should it stay or should it go?

Last harvest?

Raspberries in late October? Yep. I checked our backyard raspberry patch yesterday - October 20 - and found 3 very nice, ripe golden raspberries in our raspberry patch. There are a few more unripe berries on there, but with the colder weather moving in today, I suspect that was my last harvest this year from our garden.

Employee no more

I officially became an independent contractor today. My former employer, IP Commerce, eliminated my position as part of a reorganization. They did offer me a contract, however, as a technical account manager, which I accepted, but the contract may last only a month or two. I'm a bit disappointed because I really enjoyed my job and my team. I'm also a bit excited because this unexpected change has provided me the motivation to pursue some of my own business ideas, and to venture into the world of contracting.

I'm looking forward to the next chapter of my professional life.

Fire on Green Mountain

Lightning started a grass fire on Green Mountain on Monday afternoon, and the fire burned right to the edge of our neighborhood, about half a mile from our house. Fortunately no homes burned, but it got pretty tense with some evacuations. Our house smelled like smoke Monday and Tuesday, but most of the smoke odor is gone. This is the second time in 2 weeks we've had a fire in the open space on Green Mountain. The last one was much smaller.

Buckets and Tap Shoes

Amy and I took the kids to see a performance by Buckets and Tap Shoes on Wednesday evening. These guys have a unique and entertaining act mixing drums, bass, some guitar, lots of tap dancing, and yes, banging on buckets, all with a good funky groove. It was fun for the kids and adults. They even invited all the kids in the audience to the stage for the last song to bang on drums and buckets. See them if you have the chance!

Lemongrass Creme Brulee

If you're looking for a restaurant with a unique menu, I'd recommend Zengo. The Latin-Asian fusion dishes are definitely out of the ordinary, and quite tasty. We went there for Amy's birthday an Tuesday night and sampled about a dozen different appetizers, tapas-style, instead of ordering entrees. For dessert, we had lemongrass creme brulee - an odd sounding flavor combination, but as it turns out, delicious. Very distinctive, too.

Bike to work

Today is bike to work day in Denver. I often ride my bike to the park-n-ride and put it on the bus, but this is the first time I've ridden to work since I moved to Lakewood. The main reason I don't ride more is because all the routes from my house to downtown involve some riding in traffic, which I like to avoid. I did find a route that's fairly direct and keeps me out of traffic most of the way, except for about a 1-mile stretch on Perry St, which I found out today doesn't have much traffic. I may just do this ride a bit more often.

Backstage and 3rd row for Big Head Todd

Amy and I had a memorable experience at Red Rocks Amphitheatre yesterday - a backstage tour, access to the sound check, and 3rd row seats for Big Head Todd and the Monsters. Our tour included a glimpse of the cave-like backstage dressing rooms and the tunnel from backstage to the sound booth - scrawled with graffiti from decades of rock stars and their crews.

The show itself was fantastic: great performance, perfect sound. It was 2 full sets of BHTM - about 3 hours of music. Hazel Miller made a special appearance on several songs as did a horn section. The encore finally was an extra-bluesy cover of Joe Walsh's Rocky Mountain High. The band filmed the whole show for a DVD they'll release later this year.

The 3rd row seats made the performance unforgettable. If you've never sat up close before, I highly recommed getting general admission tickets to a show and arriving early to snatch the good seats. It's well worth it. Here are a few photos and brief video clip.

Sound check: Todd and Jeremy

Tunnel under the seats at Red Rocks

IP Commerce announces $17M funding

My employer, IP Commerce, announced the closing of our Series C capital raise of $17M, which was led by Venrock venture capital.

First harvest 2008

Yesterday (May 30) we harvested our first vegetables from our garden: some spinach. We had spinach salad with our spaghetti, which was Andrew's request for his birthday dinner.

Shoulder MRI

Last fall while hiking with the kids and the DesMarteau family on Kenosha pass, Andrew asked me to carry him up on my shoulders, so I obliged. When I lifted him up, I messed up my right shoulder. The doctor suspects that I have a torn labrum, which is the soft tissue in the shoulder socket where tendons connect. After several months of exercises I regained strength, but every time I do something as simple as throw hard with my right arm, I re-aggravate it. Today I had an MR Arthrogram, and MRI with a dye injected into the shoulder joint to help show the injury. They start with CT scan, and then inject the dye. They had trouble getting the dye in the right spot so the had to repeat this about 6 times, jamming a needle into my shoulder each time. Then I spent about 20 minutes in the MRI. Now I'm left with a sore shoulder and wondering what the doc will tell me tomorrow. Most likely, I'll need arthroscopic surgery to repair it, and 2-3 months of recovery after that. I won't even be able to run for the first 1-2 months of recovery, so I'm planning to postpone surgery (if needed) til after the Pikes Peak Ascent in August.

Spring ride on Green Mountain

Yesterday I went for a bike ride after work on Green Mountain with Matt Good and his buddy Dom. It was a beautiful Spring day in Colorado with sunshine and 75 degrees, but the wind was howling at about 30+ mph. Riding uphill into the wind is a good workout. It's a good thing we got our ride in yesterday because by this afternoon, it's supposed to be raining and snowing.

The duplex is rented

Yesterday we ended our quest to find renters - we signed a lease and collected a deposit from a family that will move in on May 1st. They have family living down the street, so we hope that means they stay for a while. It's quite a relief to know we don't have to answer the phone and show the house anymore - at least not for another year. And thanks to craigslist, it didn't cost us anything to advertise.

Landlords

For a few years now, off and on, Amy and I have been looking to invest in real estate. We actually signed a contract for a 4-plex a few years ago, and the very next day I got laid off from my job when StorePerform decided to ship all of their software development to India, and then we all moved to China for a while, so that deal fell through. (By the way, StorePerform is now bringing development back to the US. Ha ha!) Recently we made 2 offers on a duplex in Lakewood and the seller finally accepted our offer. With a little luck, we'll be able to lock in a decent mortgage rate and we'll be landlords in about a month.

Caucus

Amy and I just attended the Democratic caucus for our precinct. Four years ago, 12 people showed up for our precinct. This year, we had 74, and we had to park a half mile from the caucus site (Alameda High School) where about 30 different precincts caucused. Our precinct supported Obama over Clinton by more than a 2 to 1 margin. We don't know yet what the state-wide results are.

Van Halen

I spent Friday night at the Van Halen concert at Pepsi Center with some friends from high school & college - Dominic, Bryan and Steve.

The review
It was a damn good rock 'n' roll show. Depite the various shortcomings which I mention below, it was a great nostalgic blast for the fans of the original VH. There were only 2 hints of the Hagar era: a few guitar solo riffs lifted from 316 and the "5150" tattoo on Eddie's shirtless back. These guys still know how to entertain a crowd even if their stage show doesn't exhibit the manic excess it did back in the day.

The crowd
Ten seconds into the opening song, You Really Got Me, a drunk guy directly behind us took a dive into my buddy Bryan, causing a domino-like chain reaction of people falling and beer spilling. In the process he got his foot stuck in my seat (the kind with the seat bottom that flips up) and spent the next two minutes struggling to yank it out. After that he kept his drunk ass snugly in his own seat until he disappeared about half way through the show. The average age in the arena was about 35-40 years old, but there were a surprising number of teenagers, many of them with their parents. I'd say 75% of the fans were male; it was a definite sausage party.

The set list
The song list was the same as every other show on the tour, which is fine. The played all the hits and dug deep for some surprises like "Little Dreamer" and "Romeo Delight". Every album from the Roth era was represented, with the first album dominating. The true fans were not disappointed. The capped it off with an encore of 1984 and Jump. I was disappointed, just like the last 2 times I saw the band with Hagar, that nobody played keyboards (unless you count the sound stage guy). For "I'll Wait", "Jump" and "And the Cradle Will Rock", keyboard music appeared from the ether while Eddie stood there pretending to play guitar until it was time for the guitar solo.

The sound quality
In a word: disappointing. I don't think acoustics are a strong point at the Pepsi center. "The Can" is a more appropriate name for this place as a concert venue. The sounds were muffled and it was tough to hear the guitar through the din. It was loud, like you'd expect a VH concert to be, but it wasn't ear-splitting, AC/DC-circa-1990 volume I feared it might be. They didn't turn up the amps to 11 this time around, thankfully.

DLR
Diamond Dave still puts on a decent show for an over-the-hill rocker, but he certainly can't hold a tune - or a scream - like he used to. He also went into a silly rambling reminiscence of teenage party times for what seemed like 10 minutes, while strumming an acoustic guitar and eventually breaking into "Ice Cream Man".

Eddie
Ed is skinny and was shirtless all night. He actually looked like he was having fun. His guitar solo was nothing new. It's the same incoherent mix of recycled riffs from Eruption, Little Guitars, Cathedral, Mean Street, and 316 that he's been doing for decades. As a guy behind us said during the solo, "write something new, Ed". Those are some damn impressive riffs, though. And amazing to see how effortless he makes it look.

Alex
Grandpa Alex is looking old these days, but he can still keep the beat. He still wears his signature karate-style headband. His drum solo was a furious few mintues of arms and legs pounding the skins and cymbals as fast as humanly possible, but with very little apparent rhythm. The huge gong behind the drum set was just begging to see some action, but sadly went untouched throughout not only the solo, but the entire show.

Wolfgang
It's disappointing that Eddie tossed Michael Anthony aside like one his millions of cigarette butts. But I can't hold that against Eddie's son and competent new sidekick. The kid can play bass and sing backup with the best of 'em. Probably sings a lot better than Lee Roth these days. He could use some coaching on his stage presence, though. Not much going on there.

World Series tickets

Along with millions of other fans and ticket scalpers, I tried my luck yesterday in the Colorado Rockies' online sale of World Series tickets. Like 99% of them, I didn't get tickets, but instead spent several aggravating hours failing to connect to the ticket vendors' overworked and underpowered web servers. The whole system crashed on Monday so they tried again Tuesday, after the Rockies made the absurd claim that their site was the victim of an attack. The only "attack" was the massive number of fans all trying to buy tickets at the same time.

The vasectomy report

I apologize if any of this is incoherent. I'm still a little groggy from the valium. I just got home from the vasectomy. It's rather strange to be laying in a doctors office with your pants off and have 2 female nurses prep'ing your privates to be cut open. I was supposed to get a valium drip, but the nurse couldn't get the needle in right - after trying 3 different veins. She finally gave up and the doc administered a shot of valium. I quickly felt the drug take over, and next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and it was all over. I was totally out of it during the procedure, and was quite surprised to learn it was done. I was also the most intoxicated I've been in years as I got dressed and plopped into a wheelchair. Amy wheeled my to the exit, pulled up the car and drove me home. Looks like I'll spend most of the next day on the couch with an ice pack on my crotch.