i’m a PC - and i do boring, ordinary, every day things.  please make me an operating system that works like I do.  make it boring, ordinary, and lacking in innovation. oh, and let is SHRED my hard drive on startup, too…i LOVE that. oh, i almost forgot! could you make it somewhat stable until about 3 months of heavy usage — then let all the applications start colliding in registry hell. oh and let it take 5-10 minutes to boot up then, too. that’ll give me time to drink the crappy office coffee before i can actually do any work

40+ folks showed up to “climb&clean.”  The Miramontes’ (Rob and wife Christina) passed out trashbags and even gave everyone a raffle ticket.  A few local climbing companies donated gear for the raffle.  I went up early Saturday AM with wife and baby.  This was Ava’s first trip up the mountain, and she did great.

I managed to tick 2 of the 3 climbs I wanted to do:  “Like A Virgin“, and “Standing on the Head of the Dragon.”  (the 3rd is “Methane“, but it was too hot to work on this problem).  Part of the “cleanup kit” included rubber gloves to cleanup…anything that we found that we didn’t want to touch.  I decided instead to use the gloves as part of a photo shoot in homage to “Like A Virgin.”

(please forgive the crude inuendo)

“Yeah,” he admits, a little defensive, “but the software is the only interesting part of this whole project.  All the rest is making license plates.”

That wakes her up a little. “Making license plates?”

“It’s an expression that my business partner and I use,” Randy says.  “With any job there’s some creative work that needs to be done — new technology to be developed or whatever.  Everything else — ninety-nine percent of it — is making deals, raising capital, going to meetings, marketing and sales.  We call that stuff making license plates.”

– Crytonomicon, Neal Stephenson

Despite the hectic schedule, I managed to find time for climbing.  Since it’s so freakin’ hot, the only option was to wake up at 5:30am and get to the boulders before it got too hot.

I usually hate climbing at Santee — I’m not a big fan of dime-edged feet and relying solely on the quality and stiffness of your shoes.  However, my buddy Jon took me to a new boulder I’d never climbed on: the “20 Point Boulder.”  It had a few very unique and gymnastic climbs — very rare for the area.  I ticked one v4 and began working on a traverse that a friend had told us was a v2.

My only guess is that the problem lost a foothold somewhere during a recent fire, because that climb was not a v2.  By the time I figured out the sequence, the sun was roasting the rock and I failed to finish.  Unfortunately, I then spent the rest of the day thinking about the climb…which meant another early morning trip to Santee.  I figured out some new beta and sent early Sunday morning.

20-Point Traverse.  V4.

I went out last weekend to the Tram and to Black Mtn and felt heavy and week.  V3’s were hard, and that made me sad.  So I broke down and decided to do some working out at home.

Behold!  My awesome home gym!!

I climbed a big rock.  Without a rope.  It was fun.

Emerald City from Jon McCartie on Vimeo.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/29/gas-powered-lawn-mower-gone-solar-via-3-step-mod/

But the kicker?  The mod costs $1500.  What?!  You’ll never spend that much on gas for that machine in its entire life.

Silly.  Just silly.