Your guide to the perilous waters of the internet

8-31-09

A ton of stuff has happened in two weeks. Climbed with Craig and Sue Sunday at farside, exit 38 and I cruised up everthing. Ellies felt like a 5.8. Sue even followed a 5.9 down at Off Ramp cliff.

I did a great painting at Kalaloch 2 weeks ago. It's on facebook, but I've not posted it here yet. My 5 year old Toshiba started getting a green tint when it booted, and it was running slower and slower. I did some research and found that the best laptop these days is a macbook pro based on quality/money/longevity.

My brother John has been singing their praised for years, and when I asked around, many people who I respect are using them. While I was dithering about buying one, I got offered tenure, which means a substantial raise. Sue ok'd the purchase, and with the wife's blessing I drove to Best Buy and bought a macbook pro 15". I also spent $200 on Vista home basic, and $80 on Parallels 4.0 which is what allows vista to run on the mac. Grand total was around $2200.

Kirk S. gave me some much needed assistance tonight, met me at Edgeworks and I now have what I need. I think all new laptops seem awesome when they are new, but this one comes with the added bonus of giving me the opportunity to learn a new operating system, while still keeping my windows security blanket.

I'm almost done grading, just have to submit them. Spent the entire day today building a padded hardshell aluminum case for my new mac. It will survive a 20 foot drop down a cliff. Went to bed at 1am, woke up at 5:30 couldn't sleep. A lot of stress right now, but it's good stress, I think. I loved making the hardcase. Nothing like turning off your computer for a day to make you feel good.

8-16-09

Here we are, Sunday morning 8:33 AM, driving out to the ocean. Sue has got her way finally and talked me into going to the ocean. I've been enslaved to climbing in hopes of improving to the point where I can run with the young bucks, but I failed. So off to the ocean we go where maybe I can do something well.

Well has a very broad definition in this context. I'd like to do something that makes me feel good. Climbing didn't work. I continually beat my head against the 5.9 wall, and it didn't budge. Oh, I can get past it when I am on vacation and climbing full time. But then only briefly and just barely. I usually hang on 5.10's, even on vacation.

what is troubling me is that the young bucks (and does) that I run with do not have this problem. Even Fletch, who is my age, does not have this problem. Al of them, even Fletch are easily leading 10, 11's and the occasional 12, cleanly. I suck at climbing, always have. Oh, I can handle most eights, on a good day, but any monkey can figure out an eight in a few weeks of full time climbing.

So off to the ocean we go where I can demonstrate how much I suck at painting. Did I mention I'm in a bad mood? I'm chipping away at my second 30 hour teacher training class.in 3 weeks. Should be home working on it right now instead of driving to Aberdeen. Hope the airbag doesnt go off because this laptop will hit me in the face, but Sue is a pretty good driver.

My classes are going reasonably well. I have some great students in each of my classes: drawing, Illustrator one & two and Photoshop 3. I sort of suck at Photoshop 3. I've never made anything nice in Photoshop, other than web page interfaces. I can work the metal/plastic exercises, and know my layer masks, but beyond that I don't have much use for it. It edits photos but the higher end artsy side of the software has never interested me much. For the students sake I should look into it, maybe check out a book on making some knarly textured photoshop artwork.

8-10-09

The 90 hours of online classes I have to take in 2 months are wearing me down. The first week was survivable, but the second week was tiresome. I'm looking at the rest of the month and not liking what I see. These classes may have been why I climbed poorly Saturday. Sue, me, Chris and Fletch went to index. I led Sue up Aries, no big deal. Then I led toxic shock and thrashed it. Must have hung 7 times. This is a climb I've led cleanly, except for the start, which is usually muddy. It was dry, and I hung all over it. Really disgusted with myself. Chris and Fletch are floating like butterflies now. Austin, Kyle, Craig, everyone I can think of who takes this sport seriously is climbing better than me. I'm getting worse, except on bolts, which isn't real climbing.

On the drive home, Fletch and Christine were sitting in the front seat glowing with positive energy about their fantastic day. Christine had led Sagitarius, a vertical to overhanging layback crack rated 10A. Fletch had led several 11's. Chris also floated up toxic shock, the route that spanked me. This is the same girl who I taught to place trad gear last spring. She is soundly spanking me on cracks now. The student surpasses the teacher and then some.

Fletch: "That was a full value day!"

Christine: "Ah yeah, that was really nice. I'm sore, but it feels really good."

Fletch: "That hit the spot didn't it?"

Christine: "Oh yes, that was an awesome day, so glad I did Sagitarious clean!"

I'm sitting in the back thinking: "God, I really suck at climbing. They are getting better and better, I'm getting worse and worse. I hated that day. I thrashed every climb I did. I'm ready to start painting again and give up climbing forever...or at least a couple weeks. Beating my head against my lack of talent is not helping."

I can remember the drive home from many climbing trips when I was the one glowing about my marvelous day. I knew what they were feeling and I wanted it, but I couldn't have it.

Insert large sigh here.

Time to give it up and go painting for a couple weeks, which I will suck at too. Needless to say I'm not in a good mood today. And I'm fat. Up to 169 this morning. Now I need to do some client work before starting in on my latest online teacher training class. Saw dad, mom, Brent, Connie, Ginny, John and John yesterday for their 60th wedding anniversary. Mom is in a wheelchair now, and....old, very, very old.

I did get my spire rock books published. That's good news. I had jnd print 50 to start with. We'll see how that goes. I put so much time into them it's almost guaranteed to be a money losing operation, but I'm ok with that. It was a labor of love. When I was at jnd Stacia told me that the clean up crew had recently erased my whiteboard hand drawing. It had survived 7 years. The pressroom guys were very upset. I was surprised that anyone cared about that dumb old hand drawing on the whiteboard. I've done hundreds of those, on sketch books, white boards, boxes, napkins, everywhere. It's neat that it lived that long based on it's beauty and meaning. I remember doing it late one night when I was working swing alone in the building. I was lonely, and thought it would be a nice sort of "message from the night crew" to draw a nice hand self portrait on the board. It only took me 10 minutes during my break, and it was done with an erasable marker on the same board where they wrote bullet points during company meetings. But it lasted 7 years. Cool.

8-2-09

Spent half the day sewing a rope bag from scratch. I patterned it after Clint's Metolious rope bag, which I thought had cost around $60. It turned out really nice, and I only made two major sewing errors, so it's very functional, but shows my amateur sewing talents. I logged into REI to price it and found that it sells for $40. So, I just spent 8 hours sewing a bag I could have bought for $40. If I'd spent that time working on client projects, which I've been ignoring, I would have made several hundred dollars. Sigh...

But, working on clients projects wouldn't have been fun, and sewing the bag on my new Juki sewing machine was fun. I love making things from scratch. Just getting off this damn computer is lovely. Clint, Sue and I climbed at headlight point, exit 38 yesterday. I climbed "sweet ellies kiss", and the 10 to the right of tunnel of love very cleanly, no hangs, no falls, not even any long pauses. I simply flowed though them like they were 5.6's. It's awesome to get my lead head back on. Climbing with family is so relaxing. They don't care what I climb, don't tell me I'm climbing stuff that is beneath me, don't tell me I should be on 10c routes, they are just happy to be out there having fun.

Clint was thinking about leading Ellies Kiss, but after staring at it for a while, he chose to follow again. I'm glad he is a cautious leader. I have no desire to see him jump the nines and start in on tens before he is good and ready. I'm going to go read a book. Tired of computers!

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