October 31, 2003

Bendity Tendonity

Tomorrow I travel south to Bend, Oregon to see what I’ll be doing this winter.

I’ll write more when it doesn’t feel like someone snuck needles into my arms.



October 27, 2003

Rise

summit-sunrise-01.jpg

Words and more pictures are brewing, and will be featured in a new section of Brainside Out. Patience, patience.




October 22, 2003

Experiments with Electricity, Sales and Marketing

The guy trying to sell acid in the parking lot of my local grocer was an excitable fellow, and thus he became the personification of my evening. It is a cold, spitting rain outside that whistles through the windows and rattles the garage door. The Tri-Force of my universe is moving, working and summitting. My brain and bedroom are a complete mess as we all try to bolt off in different directions at the same time.

I swung by the grocery store to pick up produce boxes so I can start packing up all my stuff, with the intent of a) mailing some of it back to Minnesota and/or b) finding someone in Hood River with a huge freakin’ basement where it can hibernate for four months. It’s weird to think that I need to start taking this room apart, without any clear knowledge of where I’m going from here. The path is still dark and choked with brambles, but I anticipate that it will lead out of Hood River within the next month.

With rumors of my departure floating around the shop, work has since gotten a lot more interesting (repeated Internet and power outages have made work more interesting, but have also made work less work, and now that the Internet is up and the generators are off there is more work again). Before I leave I must tie up many loose ends with our website and our relationship with a leading online retailer, train someone to be just like me in my absence, and temporarily run shipping upon H20 Joe’s return to Utah. Add to this the moonlighting I’m doing for an important local client, the moonlighting I’m sadly neglecting for another client, and recent flare-ups of RSS in my poor paws, and I’ve got myself a full plate.

Blessed with a beautiful weather forecast for this weekend, we are going to attempt the summit of Mount Adams. Thus, it now behooves me to modify my boots so they won’t gnaw my feet to pieces, epoxy my pack’s cracked waist buckle, re-waterproof my rain jacket (which hasn’t repelled water since Ihduhapi last summer, where a kid puked on it and it rained for a month straight), refill my fuel bottles, find my snowboarding goggles (as if wind and snow starts flying upon our descent, sunglasses will be useless), borrow an ice axe, and drive to The Dalles to rent a pair of crampons. The current plan is to spend Friday night at Cold Creek, Saturday night on the mountain at Lunch Counter, and start out for the summit at 2:00 am on Sunday.

And we’re just gettin’ started, we is, we is.


October 21, 2003

All you speak are lies!

The Mt. Hood Trading Post has a Deli God on Tuesdays.

There is currently enough snow on Mount Adams to justify backcountry snowboarding.

This is going to stop us.

The hills are on fire with the sound of music.

I am moving to Minnesota.

I am moving to Portland.

I know where I am moving.

Evil Camp Tigerclaw is not ambiguously evil.

A dungeon master worth his weight in gilding would be caught without his twenty sided die.

This statement is false.

Subaru spells “Uranus” backwards.


I mean, duh.

This is an error report generated by the maintenance system for a leading online retailer. Can you figure out what it’s saying?

ERROR: The data you provided in your SOAP header does not match the data you provided in your XML header. As a result, we are unable to process this request. Please review your SOAP and XML headers and correct the error. Then, resubmit this feed. Your changes will appear with the next catalog build.

Give up? It means you’re missing a digit from the fourteen digit product number you’re trying to add. Doofus.


Theme From the Bottom

The Noble Hobo busts out his weblog grooves just in time to leave for Antarctica! Go over and wish him the best of luck in his travels.

five days and the long flights start.

minneapolis to

dallas to

los angeles to

aukland, new zealand to

christchurch, new zealand to

mcmurdo research base, antarctica to

south pole station, antarctica

total flight time: 30+ hours. total travel time: five to seven days.

and it all starts on thursday?