Jared’s Blog

I first have to apologize for the extreme amount of time between posts especially since I stopped right in the middle of a series. I’ve admitted to several people that most of the trip has run together. But I’ll give it a shot here…

It was the final day of our ski trip and to be honest, I was getting a little burned out. As great as the skiing was, my body was getting weary. Louie was extra juiced about all the fresh powder Apex had seen overnight and couldn’t wait to get out to the mountain.

As with the other resorts, you have to take mountain roads to get there. They’re narrow, winding, and usually made of dirt. With the snow overnight, the mountain road was making me nervous. The final nail in the coffin was when we came to a stuck vehicle being towed. We pulled over and chained up the tires right away. Luckily, we only had a few miles left to go and things went smooth the whole way.

It didn’t take Louie long to get suited up and ready to go. I was having some toe/foot/sock/boot issues, so I just told him I’d meet up with him later. I knew I wasn’t going to ski hard that last day anyway. It was as if my equipment had known all along because it was almost an hour before I did make it out on the mountain.

I did meet up with Louie temporarily, but I think we only managed a single run before getting split up again. I came up with a project for the afternoon. Yes, a project on vacation. I decided I’d take some POV videos of me skiing down.

At first I tried to come up with a way to mount the camera to my person. That basically meant positioning the camera so the lens stuck out of one of my pockets. As it turned out, all of the pockets on my jacket were too roomy to get that to work. I had a brief thought about putting it on my boots or skis, but quickly realized that would most likely result in a broken camera. Instead, I opted to hand hold the camera. As you can see, they didn’t turn out too bad. I could’ve probably spent some time editing and cleaned it up more than I did.

There is a funny story about my attempt to be an indie film producer though. Getting used to skiing and shooting isn’t as easy as it sounds. First of all, I didn’t have anywhere to put my poles. Louie was off skiing elsewhere and I didn’t want them to get stolen or taken by mistake. That meant holding them behind my back or off to the side so they weren’t in the shot.

You also have to concentrate on the where you’re pointing the camera. The first time all you could see was the snow and it kept moving around. The next it was a better shot, but there was still too much motion. After a couple more runs, however, I was familiar with the run and how to handle the camera. It was time to make my masterpiece.

I flew down the first half of the hill, made some wide sweeping turns with the camera low to the ground, and then all of a sudden I caught an edge. Clothing flew. The camera included. I snatched it out of the snow bank as soon as I could and wiped it off. The lens covers would not close for a very long time, but after some breathing on it, I was able to clear the lens off (hopefully without any srcatches). The best part was, the camera was running the whole time. Here’s a clip.

It had been three or four years since the last time I had spent a day skiing, let alone on a mountain. Needless to say, getting up that second day was literally a pain in the ass. Nothing a little ibuprofen couldn’t solve.

This time we got an earlier start to our day and got out to Silver Star about an hour or so after it opened. The resort was set up sort of like a little town. There were restaurants, hotels, condos, shops, and gift stores. In a word: touristy. But we weren’t there for the shopping.

Again, Louie and I decided to try and start from the top of the mountain. Once again the day began with a black diamond and then a double black diamond. If you’ve had a chance to see my Flickr set, this is the double black diamond I am talking about. Frankly, it was too much for my already worn body. I was exhausted by the time I was only a third of the way down. From then on, I pretty much resigned myself to staying on the blue squares the rest of the day. It was the only way to not tire myself out for the rest of the trip.

At Sun Peaks, Louie and I mostly stayed together, but on the second day, I could tell I was only holding him back, so we split up quite a bit. It had been a long time since I’d done any skiing by myself and it was kind of nice to just take my time. Bringing my iPod with me turned out to be quite a good idea that day. I found that blasting some death metal while flying down the slopes at 50 mph makes the experience that much better.

At the end of the day, Louie met me at the truck and we headed for Penticton. I still don’t think I can say that without screwing up somewhere. It took quite awhile for us to find the motel we had picked out, but as it turned out, it was in a good location. We decided to find a pizza shop for dinner and as it turned out, there was a “Pizzaway” right across the street in a little strip mall. The place was just a small pizza shop with a few counters and tables to sit at, but they had a great menu. There was only one pizza, it cost $14, was large sized, and you got as many toppings as you want. As the man behind the counter put it, “We ain’t no Dominos.” He was quite the character. After doing some quick looking around the mall, our pizzas were ready and we headed back to the room. It really hit the spot after all the activity during the day. After a quick jump in the jacuzzi and a little Internet surfing, I zonked out. Louie stayed up and waxed our skis. What a nice guy.

One of my favorite Rails sites is Railscasts.com. They’re running a contest right now and below is my entry. They said I didn’t have to mention them, but I like them, so there you go. Now for some Rails tips.

Instead of hacking plugin code directly use the evil twin method.

Nesting resources more than 1 level deep can cause headaches.

Test methods must start with “test”, but making them start with “test_should” is even better.

If your tests are failing for what seems like no good reason, drop your test database and recreate it.

Hyper-sensitive about security? Stop putting your production password in your database.yml file. Instead generate the file during deployment.

The previous day was a filled with travel for both Louie and I. We both ended up sleeping in a little. We also both wanted to stop and get some breakfast. I’ve heard decent things about Tim Horton’s, and there happened to be one close, so we checked it out. It turned out they only have 2 breakfast sandwiches bacon or sausage. I went for the sausage, but Louie got all amped up about the bacon, but was let down when he found out it was really what we Americans call Canadian bacon.

With our stomachs pleased, we got on the road. After driving for a little over half an hour towards some mountains we realized we hadn’t seen any signs for the places we were going. Louie pulled into a gas station to find out where we were and came to find out we had missed a turn back near Kamloops and had driven 50 kilometers in the wrong direction.

Now headed in the correct direction, we made our way past the outskirts of Kamloops and on to Sun Peaks resort. The whole time we were driving, there wasn’t much snow on the ground. We were both relieved to see several vehicles headed the other way with snow on them. Soon enough, the snowbanks began to get deeper as the road got windier and more steep. We pulled into the parking lot late in the morning, but ready for some action.

After getting our free lift tickets (thank you Warren Miller), we headed for the lifts and straight to the top. Louie conned me into checking out a double black diamond and against my mind’s better judgment, I hurled myself down without too much trouble. After that, everything seemed to fall back into place. The skis I had rented, were a little slower than what I was used to with my racing skis, but it still felt great to be gliding down the mountain.

I’m not too sure when it started, but all of a sudden some clouds started rolling in further up the mountain and pretty soon it was snowing. By the time we got back up towards the top, it was zero visibility and it was snowing like crazy. We couldn’t have asked for better on our first day out. It snowed the remainder of the day and we got some awesome fresh powder skiing in.

After a bite to eat on the way out of town, we made our way towards Kelowna. Oh, but not before a quick stop at the dollar store and EB Games next to the restaurant. Though I didn’t buy it, the greatest find was some “2 Fast 2 Furious Shampoo.” Yea, because when I think 2 Fast 2 Furious, I think great hair.

The motel we found in Kelowna had wifi which made us geeks happy. Though, by the looks out their outlet situation, they didn’t plan on 2 geeks staying in the room. Still, being able to go through the day’s pictures and video was nice. As a departure from our original plans, we decided to get up earlier the next day and do Silver Star all day instead of trying to make it to Big White later in the day. That turned out to be a great decision.

No sleeping in for me even though I was on vacation. I had a date with an airplane at 11:45. Instead of paying for parking at the airport, or even the minutely less expensive park-and-fly services, I opted to park at my work parking garage and take mass transit to the airport. As it turned out, I was running a tiny bit late for the bus I needed to catch to get to the airport. In my haste, I hopped on the bus that was going west, not east. A helpful bus driver got me on a bus that connected with the light rail.

From there, I made my way to the airport with plenty of time. I hate sitting around waiting to get on the plane anyway, so it worked out. The flight out was smooth. Unfortunately, my laptop battery only lasted 45 min which made the 3 and a half hour flight a little more boring. I tried napping, but there was a crying baby sitting DIRECTLY in front of me most of the flight. Honestly, there should be adult only flights. I would pay a small fee (under $25) to ensure that never happens again. Between my iPod and the roar of the jet engines, it was almost enough to drown out the baby, but it was getting to me after over 2 hours.

Louie came to the airport to pick me up and we made a break for the Apple Store so that I could get a new battery. After that, it was off to the ski shop to rent some equipment for the week. I decided that it’d be easiest if I rented rather than bringing out my own equipment and worrying about it getting damaged. I also have outgrown my boots which means I’d be renting some anyway. The road was calling our name, so we made a dash for the border.

The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. We made our way to Kamloops. By this time it was after 11PM, so I knew finding a room might be a little tough. The first place we stopped at turned out to be a little to spendy. The second, however, turned out to be quite a bargain. The woman in the office explained that she only had 2 executive suites left, which cost $159/night, but she was willing to do $99. I agreed and by the time she got to printing the receipt, it was $89 (plus taxes of course). Quite the steal. The room itself was not all that impressive. Jacuzzi, fireplace, and a pullout bed. The most interesting thing about the room was actually the bathroom door which was mounted incorrectly. Louie and I had plans to get up early and hit the mountain, so it was time to call it a day.

In reference to the whole WikiLeaks takedown, John C. Dvorak said something on TWiT 134 that I’ve been saying for years. That is, the computer revolution started in the 30’s. The PC revolution started in the 80’s. We’ve pretty much all been around the Internet for 10 years now. Despite all that, these old fogeys that we elect (and the clergy they appoint) still don’t understand this stuff. How long is going to take before these people get a clue?

Look, I realize it’s hard to understand this stuff if you didn’t grow up with it. However, the more that computers creep into every facet of our lives, it becomes more important. Do we really want lawmakers putting technology-related laws on the books when they don’t fully understand them? Can we live with the fact that people might go to jail because a judge fails to full understand a computer-related circumstance.