Monday, November 30, 2009

Competition amoung Brothers

Thanksgiving weekend brought me four young lads from Arkansas. They wanted to ski and mom signed 'em up for four days of lessons. Nick, Blake, Nate, and Brad - brothers they are - showed up with plenty of enthusiasm. All are fairly athletic with a background in Tae Kwon Do. We started off at Mt. Bueler on the magic carpet. Once they picked up the fundamentals, off we went to Explore Peak 8 and Peak 9!



It was really fun to watch the competition between the brothers - both in the need for speed and on technique. As we progressed in our learning adventure, the first teen would 'get it' and start showing off for the others! All in good fun. Overall, a very good start to the ski season!

Sunday, July 5, 2009

History 101

A friend sent this via email - Enjoy!

For those that don't know about history ... Here is a condensed version:

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:

1. Liberals, and
2. Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.

Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the breeding wolfs into small yapping dogs, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.


Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, members of the military, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history:

It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it.

A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to tick them off.


And there you have it. Let your next action reveal your true self.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Peanut Butter

Rule number three in my class. IF anyone falls down, we yell, "PEANUT BUTTER" and stop, help that person get back on their feet and ski on! Snow can be sticky like peanut butter...

Thursday, February 26, 2009

More Bombers Week 6

Skiing with these kids has been such fun - can you see that HUGE smile on the cameraman???

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Bombers Week 6

Can you believe this weather? Sunny and warm - not a cloud in sight. We have ramped up the pace for bombers this week with some hard core black runs on Mustang and Appaloosa on the south side of Peak 10. We also hit the NASTAR race course with several kids winning silver and gold medals. The day finished off exploring terrain off 6 chair.



Having Fun in the Sun!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

A Letter to Congress

Dear Senator,

The Senate is set to vote to saddle me, my children and yet unborn grandchildren with over $1 trillion in debt for a Porkulus bill that will not work. Is it "timely?" Not according to the CBO which estimates that less than 50% of bills spending provisions will take effect before the
end of fiscal year 2010. Is it "targeted?" Not unless the targets are the National Endowment for the Arts, Acorn, studying Climate Change and Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Is it "temporary?" It creates nearly 36 new government programs and as President Reagan said, "The closest thing to eternal life is a government program."

The wasteful spending and government programs in this bill will become the new "baseline." Any future attempt to cut or even freeze this current level of spending will be heralded by Democrats and their Greek chorus in the Main Stream Media as "devastating cuts" that will "gut these vital programs" and "hurt most the people who can afford it least."

Why are the Democrats racing to pass this bill? Does anyone think that a week of debate and deliberation will unalterably destroy our economy? No. The Democrats know that if Senators and members of Congress and more importantly, the American people get to read this bill, the more support will erode.

What will work?

Tax cuts for people who pay taxes.

Reduce the corporate tax rate and the capital gains tax rate.

Increased unemployment and health benefits for those people who have lost their jobs.

Sincerely,

Brian, taxpayer.

from http://letsgetthisright.com/blog/view/id_585/title_over-10-000-e-mails/

Sunday, February 8, 2009

40 motivational speeches in 2 mins

Someone sent me this link to a terrific YouTube video:

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Bombers Week 4



Another beautiful day on the slopes. I have many many pictures but it has been a crazy busy week at my other gig, so I am only including two pictures of the group clowning around. I Will try and get the sideshow put together soon.

During this stage in our skiing adventure, we starting adding some flexing and extending moves to our technique. We want to extend, or get TALL at the start of our turns, and flex, or get a little smaller in the bottom of the turn to absorb the pressure. The amount of our movement will depend on speed and terrain.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

WSUS and SharePoint on the Same Server Part 3

Installing WSUS

Utilizing the Steps in this doc: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C8FA2FD1-72F6-4F19-A1B0-F689DAE14BE6&displaylang=en

1. Installed the sofware requirements
1.a. MS IIS 6.0 (Already installed)
1.b. Update for Background intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) (Already installed)
1.c. MS .NET Framework Version 2.0 (Already installed)
1.d. MS Report View Redistributable (Already installed)
1.c. MS Management Console 3.0 for Windows Server 2003 (KB907265) (Already installed)
2. Install Windows Server update Services 3.0 SP1 Setup
2.a. Mode: Full server installation including Admin Console
2.b. website address http://SERVERNAME:8530 #the installation detected SharePoint already and did not even give me an option to use the default website of port 80
3. Run Windows Server update Services Configuration Wizard.
4. Create and apply the group policy in AD. Makes sure to address the update server with the correct port.

Life is good! The client computers are showing up in the WSUS console. I am grouping 'em by department and creating one group as FIRSTINSTALL. I place one computer from each department in this group and apply the updates there, first. IF no issues I will roll out the updates to the entire enterprise.

Now, I need to spend some time customizing the SharePoint Helpdesk application.

More to come...

WSUS and SharePoint on the Same Server Part 2

SharePoint services has successfully installed. Walking through the steps to get the Helpdesk Application Template in place.
1. Expand the ApplicationTemplateCore.exe files to the hard drive. Open a command prompt to that location.
2. Run stsadm -o addsolution -filename ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp
3. Run stsadm -o deploysolution -name ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp -allowgacdeployment -local
4. Run stsadm -o copyappbincontent
5. Expand the HelpDesk.exe files to the hard drive. Open a command prompt to that locaiton.
6. Run stsadm -o addsolution - filename HelpDesk.wsp
7. Run stsadm -o deploysolution -name HelpDesk.wsp -allowgacdeployment -local
8. Using the Admin Configuration Site, Navigate to Team Site > Create > New SharePoint Site. Give it a unique name and select the Help Desk application template.

The new helpdesk site is up! No documentation comes with the template itself so I will continue making notes and post links as I find 'em.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

WSUS and SharePoint on the Same Server Part 1

Here are my summary notes on installing Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.01 and Microsoft SharePoint Services 3.0 on the same server. The server is running Windows 2003 Standard. MS does NOT recommend this configuration but hey, who says I gotta follow the rules ALL the time! I am installing SPS first which will give it port 80, then WSUS will need a custom port when it installs. Reference: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?Linkld=81199 Installation Guide for Windows SharePoint Services.

1. The server has some junk on it so I removed as much as possible including IIS and the application server role. The Machine is fully patched.
2. Added the Application Server Role which includes IIS. Be sure and select ASP.NET on the Application Server Options page.
3. Installed MS .NET Framework 3.5 Redistributable Package (35MB)
4. Installed MS .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Package (52MB)
5. Went to Microsoft Updates and the installed the following: KB951847
6. Using IIS Manager, verified ASP.NET v2.0.50727 is marked allowed.
7. Installed SharePoint Services 3.0 as a stand alone server.
8. Ran the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard.
9. Verfied the localhost site (http://servername) is added to the trusted sites list in IE 7
10. Verfied the Windows SharePoint Services Web Application service is running
11. Installed the SMTP service on IIS
12. Configured the SMTP service
13. Configure Incoming and Outgoing mail service.

So far so good; I have the basic site up and running. Next up: Apply the helpdesk template.

Monday, January 26, 2009

More Bombers Week 3 Pictures

Too much fun, that's all I can say:

Bomber Week 3 Pow Pow Day

A Powder Day! Talk about fun fun fun! We had fresh snow to explore. We continued combining the lessons learned from the first two weeks and applying the techniques in new and exciting terrain. Don't you just love the new snow on the trees?




We had the pleasure of observing the Breck Ski Patrol Avalanche dogs in action:



More fun in the Snow:

International Snow Sculpture Championships

Breckenridge, Colorado. Another great year with superb artistry and imagination. The various teams from around the world start with 12 foot high blocks weighing 20 tons. Even with a week of warm temperatures, the various sculpting teams created incredible works of snow art. Winners were announced on Sunday, January 25th but I don't have a link to the result yet. I liked the Bear and the Elephant sculptures. You can determine the massive size and scale from the various people in the pictures - many are fully 12 feet tall. Enjoy the pics!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Bombers Week 2

Another wonderful day last Saturday at Breckenridge! We explored new terrain on Peak 9 in the morning while continuing to practice our body movements. We added an understanding of 'tipping' our skis, primarily using our legs and ski boots to tip the skis on edge. We further explored differing amounts of tipping and what that does to our turns: small, smedium, medium, and large!



Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Advice for Tough Times...

Found this hanging on a wall at a client site, unattributed... Google search lead to www.tompeters.com and appears to be summary of a presentation from November 2008

1. Excellence. Get on with doing the business you have and see it through brilliantly. Stick to the basics. Keep it simple! the devil is always in the details.
2. Opportunism. There may be a lot of room for it - will pay off through speed off the mark and excellence in execution.
3. Visibility. March toward the sound of the guns. MBWA. People have to see who they are working for and who they are dealing with.
4. Transparency. Be absolutely straight with people, especially those at the front line. People who play the blame game in any way, shape, or form are straight out of here!
5. Demeanor. Banish "gloomy" from your persona, even if it kills you! But remember, "sunny" is pretty stupid, too. Who do you think you are kidding?
6. Paradox. Have a Positive Mental Attitude AND be ready for the worst (this recession might easily go on for 24 months).

Receipt Printers - No Two Alike?

A frustrating day to say the least. Had a POS terminal that would not print receipts. Fixed some windows errors, updated the service pack and various patches, reinstalled the primary application - still no joy. Installed a new printer driver (A generic "Vendor Thermal Printer" driver) and played around with the virtual USB port settings. And then, finally, it started printing! I don't even know what little check box or setting made it work! We compared a second working machine - same HP box, same POSx r500x printer, USB connections, same application, same Epson emulation - yet different drivers and configuration settings!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Thanks, JS, for help in getting the thing working.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Parker in RippARoo Forrest

Another gorgeous ski day at Breckenridge, Colorado. Sunny and warm, light winds, good friends. This is young master Parker, age 8, tearing it up on Peak 9.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Specatular Ski Day at Breckenridge

It doesn't get much better then this: A spectacular day at Breckenridge! Bluebird Skies, warm temps, lite winds, no crowds, fantastic snow! Had to pause and do the sweeping view from the Whale Tail saddle between Peak 7 and Peak 8 - about 12,650 feet. The view pans west over Copper Mountain, Mt. Of the Holy Cross, Vail Pass, and Gore Range, past Peak 7 to overlooking Breckenridge, Keystone, and the continental Divide to the east.

How truly blessed I am to live and experience sights such as this. I spent the morning skiing the T-Bar to Snow Alley to Imperial Chair to Whale's Tail to Peak 7 Y chutes loop.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Bombers Week 1

What a surprise! A sunny day to kick off 2009 bombers at Breckenridge. I have a talented crew of 6-8 year old awesome kids. Week one had the usual hiccups in organization and getting kids into the correct class by ability, age, enthusiasm, etc, but my class did great in going with the flow. After all, that's what skiing is all about.

Overall - a FUN day!



Clip 2

Monday, January 12, 2009

Windows 7 Beta

Loaded up Build 7000 of Windows 7, as downloaded from Tech net. Very fast install. Loaded on both a W2k8 Hyper-V virtual machine and as a dual boot on my Lenovo tablet computer running Vista Business. the look and feel is very much Vista like with regards to the UI. Oh, the required minimum HD space is 16 GB, but the program installed fine in 14GB, the size of my secondary partition.

I must say the OS is very speedy; fast boot up time, fast program start, etc.

I joined the laptop to my work domain and then experienced some interesting quirks with the UAC - the User Access Control. It asks for the Domain Administrator account and password, not my local administrator account and password. Luckily I have it, but that would not be the case with most business users. To install certain programs I have had to log on as the domain administrator to run the setup program (for Office 2007, and Mozilla Firefox, for example). Google Chrome installed just fine; didn't even ASK for elevated privileges. I tried to 'run as administrator".. no joy. Also turned off UAC as well as confirmed that my regular account is a member of the administrators group.

Still no luck.

Oh, really love the Beta fish wallpaper with gradient blue background (water?) very pretty.

More to come!

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Breckenridge Ski Day Saturday

A lovely snowy day on the slopes. About 4-5" fell during the morning while we were there. Took a few laps on six chair with nice snow but low visibility and, honestly, a little dust on crust - that is, the snow underneath is very thin and hard packed. Received a few dings on the skis. Also did laps the valley loop - Top of super connect to Boneyard, up E chair, down Peerless or Volunteer, back up the Super Connect chair. I find this path avoids the crowds as best as possible on a busy Saturday.