Your guide to the perilous waters of the internet

9-22-08

It's Monday and I got back from my 12 day trip to Yosemite last Thursday around 10 AM. We'd left the valley at 6 the night before which made it a 15 hour drive. Chris D. did an amazing job of driving 12 hours straight through the night starting around 10 PM all the way to Tacoma. I would have driven, but Christine (ever the cautious doctor) worried that I'd have a drop attack or dizzy spell and wreck her car. Never mind that I'd been swinging leads with her on desperate routes all over Yosemite for 12 days with only about 4 minor dizzy spells, all of which I climbed through, she still didn't trust me enough to drive. But whatever, still, I think I would have been safer than Chris D. who was getting pretty buzzed on cafeine by Tacoma. It nevertheless an amazing feat of driving.

I don't have the energy to write down the whole trip report as the story is better told with pictures which can be found here. We left on Friday the 5th at 10 AM and arrived at Lover's Leap at midnight. We climbed Surrealistic Pillar with Christine taking the first pitch, and Chris D. the second. On the way down, I spotted a lovely 5.8 called the groove and did a clean send of that. It had some committing layback moves mixed in with mantles, but the pro was awesome. The last pitch was very runout, but really only one 5.7 move off the double bolt anchors which was quite safe. The rest was mellow dike hiking. In retrospect, it would have been safer (or at least quicker) to rap off rather than walk off to climbers right.

The next day we led the 3 pitch bears reach 5.7. I led my middle pitch (the crux) slightly dizzy. My head would spin each time I looked up or sideways, but it didn't stop me from climbing it cleanly, I just put in more pro and climbed more slowly. By the belay I was feeling fine. I had about 4 more dizzy spells over the course of the trip, two on routes, and one in the morning. All were very minor and my partners probably didn't even notice my unsteadiness, though I complained out it. The vertigo heel vitamin controls and minimizes the spinning very well and I always carried them with me in a small plastic container.

We drove to the valley after that climb, leaving at 4 PM and arriving around 9:30 PM. That first day we climbed Lena's Layback to start and everyone led it clean. It was cool to see us all leading at the same level. That was Christine's first 5.9 gear lead, and the first time I'd led it clean in several years. For the rest, I'm going to just let you view the pictures.

9-4-08

School ended a week ago. The new grading system works so well I finished all my grades before I left the office on the last day of teaching. That was a Wednesday. On Friday, I got a steroid shot in my ear that is supposed to help control dizzy spells for up to a year. I'd been having minor dizzy spells every other day or so. Rarely would a day go by without some symptom. Usually they would be quick little tipsy spells of just a dozen seconds that wouldn't even stop me from my normal activities of teaching, climbing or driving.

Things went well during our Squamish trip and Sue and I climbed a ton of routes, including Quarryman (one hang) and the 5.9 to the right (two hangs). My new modified shoes are very precise, though I could tell I'd been careless on the heels and would have to smooth them out with padding.

Sunday night I had a nagging dizzy spell in the grocery store that took an hour to go away. I was able to walk around and all, just a bit unsteady. Monday morning I racked up to discover another dizzy spell coming on. I said to hell with it and climbed Mosquito 5.8 cleanly, despite being dizzy. By the top of the climb it was easing off, but the dizzies made it harder than it should have been.

At lunch, I had a brief pulse of dizzyness, here and gone in 30 seconds. Then, as I was driving home on the way into Seattle I felt another one growing stronger and had to pull over to let Sue drive. That one lasted a solid hour while I tried to walk around REI looking at backpacks. I was weaving a bit on my feet, and it was challenging to step around the throngs of people without tripping. It finally eased off after about 2 hours of distress. I just laid my head back on the car seat as Sue drove us home.

Tueday I woke up moderately dizzy and stayed that way all damn day. I was able to change the oil , but it wasn't a lot of fun. I took a long nap and tried to wish it away. Very, Very frustrating! I'd promised Lisa that I would go on a bike ride with her as I wouldn't see her much for a while, but I was too dizzy to ride.

Wednesday I wasn't dizzy at all, it was a very productive day organizing my rock gear, repairing my backpack, working on the rock shoes and reveling in a steady head. The doctor said that the steroid shot would take 3 days to a week to start to work, and that the needle hole in my eardrum would also take a week to heal. So perhaps it's all starting to settle down now. I can only hope.

A contributing factor might have been my infected fingernail, which was very swollen and oozing pus. I got that on Toxic Shock up at Index. I think the crack I was finger jamming in had some evil moss or lichen that lodged under my nail and caused the infection.

Today I had a prospective student email me about job placement figures. I'm going to include my responce here so I can find it later:

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Hi Lillian,

 

I can only speak for the web design program, and I believe that about 20 percent of our students get full time jobs. Another 70 percent will get part time jobs, or work as freelancers.

 

The media design program is broken into three specialty areas, web design, Video, and 3D animation. To get employment figures from those other two areas, you will have to contact the instructors for those programs: Scott Blattman, and Austin Iverson.

 

http://www.cptc.edu/web/contact.html

 

We tend to get a lot of dreamers and artists in our program. These can be very creative people, which is important in the design field, but many of them do not have the work ethic needed in our industry. We also get a lot of people right out of high school for whom the media field looks cool because you get to make "pretty things" on computers and it seems like it would be a "really cool" job. 

 

What these kids don't realize is that this is a very competitive industry, and you have to work really hard to succeed. Instead, these kids only come to school half the time, and then they wonder why they can't get jobs.

 

Even for the serious students, and we get about 7 of those in each group of 20, they must have some innate creative talent to find work. If they don't, our staff has developed techniques for teaching creativity.

 

For the serious students who have some creative talent (they paint, have a photography hobby, or have some programming experience) probably 96 percent of them will get jobs in their chosen field.

 

I always tell new students that if you want a guaranteed job, get into the medical field, not the media design field. My son just graduated from the nursing program at TCC, and 28 students out of 29 were already hired. The one person who wasn't hired simply couldn't decide between offers yet.

 

But most of our students know this already. They don't want to be nurses, or x-ray techs, they are "wanna' be" artists, and they want to make creative things on computers for a living, and they are willing to take a chance with their education. Many of them use our college as a stepping stone to further education at a larger college and we lose touch with them after they graduate.

 

We have found that older students who have spent some time in the work force (people in their 30's and above) make excellent scholars, and probably 90 percent of those will take advantage of our knowledge and our teaching and will get jobs. They know how hard it is to make a living out there, and are willing to work hard at learning the skills.

 

But the young kids just out of high school, many of whom have never even worked at a McDonalds, and just think it's cool to hang out with their friends, and come to class once in a while, they won't get a job at all, which accounts for our low overall placement rate.

 

On this page, I have links to the webpages of my graduated web design students. These are all serious students who either have jobs, or will get them shortly:

http://www.websterart.com/html/links.php

 

Feel free to contact them via their contact forms and ask them about our web design program

 

You can also contact Janet Mosterdyke at the  instructor page above. I should warn you that we are all on summer break right now, and you might not be able to reach the instructors at all until shortly before the quarter starts.

 

Hope that helps,

Mark Webster

 

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