silent matter

Whose line is it anyway?

2010-09-18T14:28:00.003-06:00

I recently picked up my guitar and have been playing it a lot more. I am doing some combination of music from my favorite artists and worship songs. Through painful fingertips, strumming patterns and word cadence, I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. Where I'm finding myself struggling the most, however, is with lyrics.

Through my bourgeoning acting career, I've been reminded over and over that I am terrible at remembering lines. I fancy myself more of a concepts guy, so I know what the meaning of something is, but I struggle with the exact words. This is painfully obvious when I butcher a movie quote and am corrected by one of my cousins who know the script better than the writer (and my line was still HILARIOUS!!).

As I am now re-exploring my rock star giftings, I am trying to memorize the songs instead of being a slave to the page. Brutal. I have already discussed my ineptness in memorizing. The second realization is that with some songs, I had no idea what the lyrics actually are. I attribute most of that to the fact that some of my favorite bands sing with the "marbles in my mouth" technique (I'm looking at you Radiohead). This is apparent while singing your heart out in your car only to be foiled by the mumble part of the song. While this is passable in a car as the lead singer can do his job and you can move on to ooohs and ahhhs, you fall flat on your face when the job of lead singer rests entirely on your shoulders. A little bit at a time I keep telling myself.

In the meantime, don't correct me. I know that I have issues and I might cry.

Big gulps huh? Well, catcha later… or something.

P.S. To show that I'm not blind to my own hypocrisy, I will admit the need to be vigilant in correcting someone else when they misquote a movie.

Apgar Lookout and the sore feet

2009-05-31T14:07:00.004-06:00

For those of you that follow my writings, you have heard about my crazy toe shoes made by Vibram called "FiveFingers". I've run a few times in them and really like them. Most surfaces are great, whether it be asphalt, grass, dirt, etc, but one surface makes me angry... gravel.

Two things you find out when you start wearing these shoes. Your feet are weak and wussy. I'm getting past the weak part, but my feet are still wussy. I'm trying to figure out if I'm willing to get past the wussy part, cuz there is a lot of pain* involved in that one. I found this out in full force yesterday.

We were going to go on a 5.5 mile hike up to Apgar Lookout. Problem is, they closed the road about a mile before the trailhead. Sooo we had a mile to get in to the trailhead on my favorite surface... gravel. Let's just say that by the time I got back to the car, 7.5 miles and much pain later, I was stoked to be done. The bottom of my feet are still sore today. Do I have what it takes?

McDonald Creek going into the Muddy Middle Fork

*The pain associated with these shoes is primarily associated with having your foot strike a rock on a hard packed gravel road... all other surfaces are fine. ;-)

Going "UP!"

2009-05-31T14:05:00.003-06:00

Met up with some friends the other night to watch the new Pixar movie, "UP!". Pixar hit another home run with the movie. Tugs at the ol' heart strings, has something to say without being preachy, funny... so good.

Anyway, it was my first 3D movie. We got to wear the sweet nerdy glasses. We decided (okay, I did) to take a pic of all of us sporting our new spectacles and it was spectacular! The 3D was really cool when things weren't moving very quickly across the screen, but when things were moving quickly it seemed a bit jerky, but I dug it.

I do see a bunch of movie shops deciding to have a 3D movie from a poor script and despite the novelty of 3D, it'll still be a crappy movie. "UP!" was just a good movie... the 3D just made it a cooler experience.

Adventure anyone?

2009-05-27T22:52:00.005-06:00

My Memorial Day weekend was tons o' fun. I could let you in on the whole thing, but I'll stick to just the biking portion on Memorial Day. (thanks Jamie for the pic!)

Chatted with Brandon on Saturday night where he mentioned maybe a ride in Glacier National Park was in order. I told him to give me a call, which he did. Monday came and Brandon, Katie and I loaded up the bikes and headed up there on a perfect day.

Meeting up with a few other friends at Lake McDonald Lodge, we had our peloton and we were ready to ride.

The ride was beautiful in the cool shade with McDonald Creek roaring, other streams trickling, birds chirping, the smells... oh so nice. Seriously, does anyone do it better than God? We passed the epicly huge avalanche that went in January and smelled like Christmas and then took the group photo at the Loop with Heaven's peak in the background.

We stopped at Big Bend to get some lunch and head back down.... that's when adventure struck. Just past the Weeping Wall, a rock decided that it wanted to rub shoulders with the sidewall of my tire which gave me a flat. Got that all repaired up and kept going down. We stopped at the car and decided that we should go a bit more. That's when the clock started ticking for the approaching rain clouds.

I didn't have it in me to beat them (the rain clouds), so I joined them and ended up wicked soaked. I was bringing up the rear and since we were heading all the way back to the West Glacier entrance, but people had to run shuttle, I decided that I had had enough riding in the deluge with hail as bonus and camped out under the ranger station checkpoint until I could be picked up... soaked to my skin. The strange part is, that I liked the adversity. Makes for a cool adventure. ;-)

3 hours on the bike, 47.5 miles

Jake Unplugged

2009-05-20T08:22:00.003-06:00

I get strange ideas all the time. My problem is that I act on them. This time, I had an idea of a sort of goofy ballad about the impending arrival of my new roommate. This sounded great in my head and I started writing the song "Josh in June".

When it came to actually recording it, I had a great time setting everything up and recording it. The problem arose during playback. Do I really sound that awful? So after struggling with it for a bit, I decided to get to bed and try again the next day.

I figured out a few things and changed the way I brought the audio and video in my computer. I also sang better and despite a dorkup in the middle of the song, I decided it was good enough. Enjoy.

Oh and Josh, welcome to my home. God help us all. ;-)

I'll get around to it...

2009-05-17T23:05:00.003-06:00

For those of you that know anything about my life, you know that I've been a bit busy. I've been filming a movie, making short clips of dorky characters, playing bass at church, leading a Bible study, meeting with friends, attending a financial class, generally having fun... oh and working a full time job to boot. Funny thing was that during all of this, the snow melted and my lawn woke up from the winter.

Now a bunch of my loving and observant friends let me know that my lawn needed mowing. Of course, I didn't realize this fact myself and appreciated the "help". I didn't see anyone volunteering which was strange, but I digress. Had I followed my father's advice, I would have not let this get into the herculean effort that it became. Approximately 4 hours spread over two days and 15 bags later, I finished mow #1 of the season. I found that I could make it about 100 feet and I'd have to empty out my bag (note the grass being over 10" for a majority of the lawn in the pic). The other frustrating part was that I didn't have enough gas to fill up my mowers tank, so I had to put it off until Sunday. Thankfully we got both weekend days full of sun.

I wished that I was just mulching. This next Thursday, I'm sure I'll be out there doing it again to avoid anything as silly as this escapade...

"Ask Jack" Episode 02

2009-05-07T22:01:00.002-06:00

After receiving many questions from the introductory episode, Jack is back to answer. Please comment below and continue asking more questions.

This was shot using my new helmet cam which I'm insanely stoked about as it shoots great, has manual settings and shoots in HD... in a helmet cam! (once the video is done going through YouTube's meat grinder, you should be able to select HQ for HD)

Out for delivery

2009-05-07T14:28:00.005-06:00

These three words cause my heart to skip a beat. After all the time of deciding what to buy, saving up for it and trying to decide if I should pay double for something to show up one day sooner, it's on the delivery truck and I'll have it that day. I've always found it curious that I can wait for something for months, but once I click "Submit" on a site, I suddenly wish I would have chosen "yesterday" delivery.

Today's "little something" was an HD helmet cam. I have wanted one of these F O R E V E R!! Seriously people, how much fun can you have with a helmet cam?! Now I can catch all of my adventures as well as crazy camera shots, sweet angles etc. You all are going to pay for this. It's Sony's new HXR-MC1. You can check it out online if you'd like, but you'll see what it can do right here on this blog... yes I'm smiling.

A good friend

2009-05-05T11:10:00.006-06:00

Everyone needs a good friend. I have been blessed with many that encourage me, push me, listen and laugh at my jokes.

Last night I was chatting with my good friend Seth and we decided to climb Big Mountain before work. We've done this a few times over the past handful of months and it's an awesome way to start the day. We chatted about work, life, being healthy, God and what we were going to teach at our respective Bible studies. We summited, changed gear, then skied down in some new May snow, then drove to work in the rain.

Days like today are good days.

Ask Jack

2009-04-25T13:05:00.003-06:00

I have all of these ridiculous characters and am adding a new one today. Meet Jack Squat. He is the host of a show called "Ask Jack" where you send in questions and he, well, answers them.... or makes fun of you. Feel free to comment in questions and stay tuned for answers to them.

Vibram fivefingers

2009-04-25T12:00:00.005-06:00

I recently bought a new pair of "shoes". Why the quotes? Look at the pictures. Essentially, I'm working on trying some barefoot running, but my feet are too wussy to do that. Of course I could go on about why I'm doing this, but you can check out the "why" by visiting the following link here.

So these shoes are really whack and cool and you should go look at their website to see the different models. The ridiculous story isn't just in the shoes though, but in the acquisition of them as well.

A few days ago, I read the article referenced earlier. I saw in the comments section a few people that owned them and loved them. The more research I did, the more I came across everyone loving them or at least seeing a lot of value in using them for training. I also found out that two of my coworkers had a pair and were in love with them. Cool, let's get some.

I found out that a local outdoor store carried them and I went down to go see them. They were in the water shoe section, even though that is only one thing that they do and not the primary purpose, but whatever. I chatted with the nice lady that worked there and we started working towards finding out the right shoe. After realizing that I needed to purchase a woman's size, I couldn't decide between the 39 or 40. I went back and forth on these shoes that are difficult to get in and out of, but finally decided on the slightly roomier 40 and went home.

I wore the 40s around for a bit (in my house of course), went on the site and thought that maybe I should try the 39s. I went back the next day to the store (visit two) on my lunch break and chatted with a guy who could have used a small dose of customer service skills. He gave me the pair of 39s that were the display models, not the ones that I had tried on that night. I left and got lunch.

Right after I was eating, I pulled out the new shoes and realized that the stitching was coming undone in one spot and went back to the store (visit three). I went up to Mr. Customer Service and pointed out the bad stitching. After acknowledging that, he said, "sorry but we don't have any more in that size." Knowing that I had tried on a pair of 39s the night before and hardly believing that in 4 hours of them being open, that someone could pick them up, I asked him if he could just check for me. Of course he was 100% sure, but decided to appease me. Lo and behold, they were back there and he said something about being glad that he wasn't 150% sure. Nice math skills.

I take these shoes back to the office and wear them at my desk and such and realize that the 40s were my size (I know, I'm ridiculous). I figure that I'll return these on my way home. I'm just hoping that the same guy isn't there, but on visit four to the store, he is. I tell him that I'm a dork, but I really want to get a size that works well and he concurs and he goes in the back and gets me some 40s... which weren't the ones that I had taken home originally and I head up to customer service again to swap them out.

I go out to my car and decide to look at them before I jet. Crap. They are men's 40s. This sucks. I have to go in again and tell him that he gave me the wrong shoes. Soooo I head back in.... again, and walk up to him. I know that he hates me by now. I try and make it a bit light and such because it's a combination of me being picky and him making a couple of mistakes where his pride is on the line. Of course, since I had returned the 40s earlier in the day, they are somewhere in the store. After about 10 minutes of searching a million places, he finds them, I get my shoes and want to disappear forever. Five visits... ridiculous.

I wore the shoes for a lion's share of the day yesterday and could definitely feel the muscles in my feet working. They're sore today, but by golly, I'm excited to get all crazy with barefoot running. Updates in the future... and don't make fun of me.

Casting Call!!

2009-03-25T23:10:00.002-06:00

We need some guys for our movie that's currently in pre-production. If you're a male that's around 5'8" - 6'3"-ish and you're interested (there will be guns), we'll be having a casting call:

Colter Coffee
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
3pm

Mark your calendars and enjoy the short video....

Preproduction meeting

2009-03-12T23:10:00.003-06:00

Corey and I sat down at Colter Coffee for another meeting of the minds to compare notes on the progress of our upcoming short film. It's going to be whacky, bizarre and fun... what else would you expect from us?

You know you're in Montana when...

2009-03-02T10:07:00.003-07:00

One of the things I love about living in Montana is that you get to have days where you see bald eagles, owls, elk, bear... whatever. It's cool. Today, I was chatting with a coworker when over his shoulder I noticed a couple of big critters out in the field just out of our office through the window and said, "Hey, that looks like a moose!" After a bit of running around getting the camera and telling everyone, I snapped a couple pics. I love this place.

Fresh Haircut

2009-02-20T07:48:00.002-07:00

Well it has happened. Thursday evening I went down to my sister-in-law's salon, "Kashay" to get my haircut and move me forward about three decades. In the process, the stache was sacrificed. Check out the vid for a little time-lapse video of the unveiling of a whole new me, set to Radiohead's "Bodysnatchers". Oh and if you ever need a great stylist, Amy rocks. The number for Kashay is 406.751.5206... shameless plug I know, but I really am doing you a service. ;-)

Mustache Festival

2009-02-18T21:01:00.005-07:00

I've now had this ridiculous mustache now for about a month. I didn't grow it for any particular reason other than I've never had one and thought it'd be funny. It's strange how self-conscious it has been for me... at least initially. I did get some good laughs when I was sporting it during an 80s birthday party and it looks like I'm going to be shooting a short film featuring it (although, we may need to do a fake one depending upon when it'll be shot.) For those of you who despise it, I've got good news. For those that love it, I'm sorry. I have decided to shave it off. But do not despair, I've one last hurrah with the stache in a short I'm calling the "mustache festival". Watch it and come back to my site to vote on your favorite character.

video + stache = good times

2009-02-08T23:59:00.004-07:00

Tonight I was having fun with my stache and some "accessories" I picked up over the weekend. Here's a little video blog for y'all and a pic to get you feelin' all good.

Too Brrr-eautiful not too!

2009-01-26T16:11:00.004-07:00

After church yesterday, I decided that I would totally kick myself for not going up and skiing a little bit up at Big Mountain. Two reasons: 1. It was insanely beautiful and you could see forever under the crisp Montana sun and 2. My friend Seth had asked me and it's always fun to ski with him. Sooo we braved the cold and experienced intense beauty. No regrets. We have an amazing God.

2009 Whitefish Whiteout Race

2009-01-24T15:36:00.003-07:00

I'm not a big fan of racing in general. Mostly because I'm competitive and I don't have a chance of winning races like 5Ks, ski races, etc. The other part is that you go the pace of the pack which is harder than you normally would, so you feel horrible most of the time. Why I decided to do this one required me to figure that out.

Yesterday, I skinned up the mountain (see previous blog entry for definition) part way and said, "I should enter into the race tomorrow." I think that I decided to race because in a strange way, the challenge is great. You know it's going to suck, but you are stretching yourself. We didn't stop and take a break the entire time which goes to show that I can do that, even though I usually stop more than I should. I also love the camaraderie that's associated with racing. You have a bunch of people that know what you just went through. I also like getting the shirt with the bragging rights as well as some free gear.

This year had an additional bonus of me going on a pedestal for third place in the Men's AT Rec division which totally cracked me up. Don't get me wrong, I was stoked about how well I did, but I guess if you keep breaking down the racers into smaller and smaller groups, a ton of people can win prizes. It was fun and I got some pics and some more free stuff. Woohoo!

And I just have to brag about my friends Brandon and Ben who absolutely tore it up. They are so fast and so humble about it... it inspires me to be better. (They won first and second place overall)

I think I should race more...

Up with the groomers

2009-01-23T11:28:00.003-07:00

Yesterday I decided that I wanted to get up to Big Mountain before work and skin* up to the top. This morning I crawled out of bed a little earlier than normal. I was super stoked that I at least got up and started hiking. I didn't make it all the way up, but got about 30 minutes of exercise and some early turns in the morning, then headed to work. Hopefully this next week, I'll be able to do the same thing, just a bit earlier and make it to the top before work.

If you are up on the mountain either really late or early, they are running these machines called groomers that make the runs all smooth and fast. It also helps keep them from being icy. Behind them, it lays down what we call corduroy which makes a "zip" sound while you're turning. You can see a couple of the groomers in the photo.

* back in the day, Eskimos used seal skins on the bottoms of their skis to travel around and be able to go up hills and stuff. Today, we use a modified version of that. One side has a sort of sticky glue that attaches to the ski while the other side mimics short hair. It works smooth going forward and resistant going backward because of the direction of the hair. Oh and usually clips at both ends. That coupled with special boots and bindings that convert going up and down allows us to ski mountaineer.

Facebook killed my blog

2009-01-21T22:27:00.004-07:00

Okay, so it wasn't totally facebook.... I did start to hang out with a gal for a little bit, but this is ridiculous. Now that facebook is around, that's how I've been communicating, but it's different. On my blog I can spread my wings a little bit. I can rant about how I compulsively check facebook throughout the day, but I won't. I'm not addicted. I can stop at any time.

One strange side note of facebook is that I had someone who I'd rather not have follow me around add me as a friend on facebook. No big deal right? Well it is if he comes up and asks you how often you log onto facebook and why you haven't approved his request.... AWKWARD!! Do I be honest with the guy and just tell him that he freaks me out or be cowardly (read: nice) and just approve him?

Banff Mountain Film Festival

2008-11-18T23:24:00.003-07:00

Every year I look forward to the tour of the Banff Mountain Film Festival coming to Kalispell, MT. It's an opportunity to see a bunch of filmmakers capturing various mountain pursuits and telling stories in their own way. One of my goals is to submit a film to the festival and one of my dreams would be to have it shown in Banff, win in a category and be played in Kalispell. I'd love to personally introduce it to the folks here in my hometown. We'll see how that pans out...

What's up with the picture? Well this year had an extra bonus. I won a door prize. The pic here shows me wearing my new patagonia R1 hoodie with the Banff Mountain Film Festival logo embroidered on it. Pay $12 for a ticket and win a $125 shirt that's going to be perfect for skiing. I think that Warren Buffett would congratulate me on my investment and returns. ;-)

Studio

2008-11-16T22:27:00.003-07:00

Tonight I had a friend come over so we could record a radio spot for his business. We had a great time and laughed a lot as we fumbled through the vocals and played with Garage Band's Jam packs and radio sounds.

Q: How cool is it to turn your living room into a recording studio with a Mac at the center?

A: It turns your house up to 11.

Just take a gander at the picture...

Construction!

2008-11-15T15:57:00.005-07:00

Our company is building a new datacenter to house all of our servers and such. This means that all of us computer geeks get to go to work and pretend like we have these rugged jobs instead of desk jobs for the next month. We all walk around with hard hats and safety glasses like a bunch of guys from the Village People. I'm hoping for the cop and the indian to show up so we can throw a concert. Oh and there are a couple of pictures of the new racks just to get your geek on a bit. "I said, Young Man!"

Paparazzi?

2008-11-13T19:38:00.006-07:00

Who were the targets of this crazy paparazzi madness? Celebs? Dignitaries? Zoo animals? Unfortunately, no to all of these things. Both the takers of the pictures and the givers of the pictures were family.

We have this crazy tradition where whenever my family gets together, there is this need to take pictures like we're a wedding party. All the girls, all the boys, all the sons and daughters with Grandma, all the cousins, all the cousins with their spouses... and it goes on and on. I am not kidding. To top it off, we don't have one camera, we have usually more than five and closer to ten on the big picture taking times, so you have to figure out which camera to smile at. (and yes, we trade all the photos afterward) Ridiculous.

Say "mozzarella cheeeese"!!

The day the server room died

2008-11-05T23:15:00.003-07:00

While eating my Trader Burger at Montana Coffee Traders up in Columbia Falls with four other coworkers, I noticed that the lights gently flickered in what appeared to be a slight brownout. It was similar to any other brownout such as when your fridge kicks on or something, but it seemed to last a little longer than normal. I was about to find out why.

At around 12:45pm, while finishing up my fries, my coworker got a call from the office letting him know that the power was out to the building, but the generator was on and we were cool. We needed to head back to the office sooner than later to shut down servers that were just on battery backup power which were test and development servers. We got back to the office and did that and as we were working on those, all the production servers just shut off. That's not supposed to happen.

The way our system is designed is that when the power goes off, our battery backup unit picks up the load, the generator fires up and then the system switches over to that until the main power is restored and it switches back. When a guy boring a hole for some conduit under our parking lot, severed the power to the building, it did the first two steps fine, then at some point, it thought that we had building power back and switched back to the battery backup unit which let the batteries drain, then went to standby and rolled to building power which was non-existent. Sweet.

So in a dark building where everyone was sent home, we scrambled around to get the servers back up and running so that the rest of the company could work on month end reports, land databases, clock in and out at mills, etc. That was all done and we decided to call it a day instead of try and work in a building without power.

Who knows what might happen on any given day in the life of a nerd. Sheesh!

Absentee blogging

2008-11-05T23:11:00.003-07:00

So I realized that I've not blogged for some time. I never wanted to do one of these blogs where you talk about your own blog and why you haven't blogged in some time. Soooo I'm sorry and I'll try to be better. I've got some material from the past month that I'll trickle out over the next couple of days. Try to keep up.

Rock Star on a leash

2008-10-27T14:34:00.003-06:00

So apparently if you have an inner rock star on a leash, you can unleash that inner rock star by purchasing Guitar Hero World Tour. Well, strangely enough, I do have an inner rock star that needs unleashing, so I did just that. We'll see how things go tonight. I decided to stick with the Guitar Hero franchise as I already had on GH guitar instead of buying the Rock Band kit.

Rock On!!

New arrival...

2008-10-22T10:27:00.003-06:00

My new baby has arrived and she's so beautiful. I almost cried when I took her out of the box.

Seriously though, if you don't own a Mac, you have no idea of what I'm talking about.

Get one.

Trust me.

They rock.

The end.

(15" MacBook Pro, 2.53GHz Core2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 320GB 7200rpm hard drive, OSX goodness)

Anticipation...

2008-10-20T09:46:00.002-06:00

So I ordered a new MacBook Pro when they were announced last Tuesday. It's funny to me how I can wait for something to be announced or whatever for months, then when I order it, it seems to be forever before it shows up... even though it's a couple of days. I upgraded the speed of the hard drive which delayed it a couple of days, but I made up for it by paying $10 more for 2-3 day shipping... I'm so American.

It's on the truck for delivery in my town now... I'm stoked out of my mind right now!!!

Chop it, shred it

2008-10-20T01:04:00.004-06:00

Every spring, my mother tells my father to not plant a garden. The fresh air and the excitement of summer trumps my mother and he plans on a small garden. This plan gets dashed as well and, ever since I can remember, my father has had an enormous garden from which we get ridiculous amounts of corn, peppers, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, green beans, asparagus, pears, etc. (it tastes amazing by the way)

When all is said and done at the end of the year, it's time to tuck it away for the winter as the frost has given the kiss of death to the plants with little to no fruit to bear. This involves chopping down corn stalks and asparagus stalks, uprooting pepper, squash, tomato, etc plants and running them through my dad's chipper/shredder that we've had for many many years and still runs amazing due to his diligence in cleaning and care in storing.

Once everything is turned into an easily mulchable pile, it's spread out over the entire garden and tilled under. This is the tradition that has been a part of my life now for at least 15 years. I've had a couple of years that I've missed, but I missed those couple of years and today was the day that we went out and gave winter another sign that we understand that it's on its way.

Spare time

2008-10-13T20:42:00.003-06:00

On my way home tonight, my little light stating that my tire pressure was low, lit up. Actually, it wasn't the first time. I found my rear passenger tire was low earlier and filled it back up, but it lost some pressure while I was at work. As I approached Reserve and LaSalle, I felt things go and pulled into a gas station. 25 minutes later, I had it all changed. Gotta love the adventure. I was so so happy that I didn't have anything going on right after work, so I could just take my time and get it done instead of stressing out about having to hurry up and go somewhere.

I might seem sick in the head, but it was actually pretty fun.

Tortoise and the Hare

2008-10-12T11:50:00.003-06:00

While in Florida, I was driving down the road and noticed a little bump in the road. As I zoomed closer to this object, I realized it was a little turtle making its way slooowly across the road. I dutifully missed him and I cried out in desperation to the unknowing logging truck behind me to miss the turtle. I'm sure that it worked... I keep telling myself.

Later that evening, I was driving back on the same road and all of a sudden, my headlights caught a creature in their beam of light. I quickly realized that, coincidentally, it was a rabbit and it was furiously busting it for the other side of the road. Because of his frenzied speed, it was of no consequence whether or not there was a vehicle behind me as he was cruising to safety.

Why am I telling you this? Because I thought it was funny that I saw both those animals on the same road on the same day and I connect dots like that. Also, I figured I might as well throw down and example of the difference between coincidence and irony. Coincidence says that I saw both animals, irony would say that the turtle makes it and the rabbit gets hit...

From the future

2008-10-02T21:54:00.003-06:00

So I'll be posting some entries outlining what's happened in my past, but that's for the future. What's from the future is this photo. I spent today with my friend Robin (Hi Robin!) who made an awesome tour guide. She's from Montana and now lives in Orlando and works for Disneyworld and is very familiar with the ways of the Mouse.

The picture here was taken as part of the tomorrowland ride or something like that at the epcot center which is in the big ball that looks like the aluminum foil balls you made after you ate pizza from the previous night. Anyway, apparently my future involves me looking like I'm on some very happy chemicals... go figure. I'll have more pics from my day there later.

For that adrenaline stank!

2008-09-16T00:29:00.003-06:00

Hey! Guess which store I was shopping at! Wrong! It was Costco!

Okay, so that was my adrenaline pumped lead-in for today's ridiculous product tagline. Here we have a deodorant that apparently "Responds To Adrenaline". Perfect. Because when Mr. Salesguy down the hall has been doing something crazy like, coming back from lunch when it's 95 degrees outside and he does this totally awesome saunter across the parking lot and starts up a sweat, this stuff kicks in. Why? Because of all the adrenaline of course! Or what about that time where Mrs. Secretary goes for an afternoon walk outside and comes back with adrenaline coursing through her veins from all the birds chirping, you know this stuff will kick right in!

Wow. You get my point. How about this tagline: "Responds to right before you stink".

So if you aren't planning on base jumping, playing a concert in front of thousands, running from a bear or talking to a girl, stick with something like "Old Spice". You can handle that. (besides.. the bear won't care what you smell like)

Many moons

2008-09-16T00:19:00.005-06:00

While standing out in the cool September night, some friends of mine and I chatted under a huge full moon. As we were saying our goodbyes, I overheard two gals talking about the full moon.

Lady 1: "Wow, look! It's a full moon tonight!"

Lady 2: "Oh man, that's why things are so crazy!"

Lady 1: "Yeah, there sure have been a lot more full moons lately"

Yes ma'am, there sure have been a lot more full moons lately... wow.

Bismarck Spider Monkeys

2008-09-15T11:28:00.003-06:00

So this year I decided to play fantasy football with some friends of mine from work. I wanted to last year, but realized it too late. My first week was atrocious, but this past week my team showed up! Of course I had to make some adjustments. For example, my quarterback was Tom Brady who was injured in week one.

I digress. After this week's performance, I felt inspired to actually name my team and create a logo. Out came Bismarck Spider Monkeys. Bismarck for the street I live on and Spider Monkeys because I like to climb around and monkeys are funny. Oh and don't get too close to the cage... you've been warned.

Scary-loo

2008-09-13T23:22:00.003-06:00

This toilet is in Starbucks in Kalispell. It scares me. Not in the normal toilet way. It's clean... for a toilet, but it's super loud. You know those kind that I'm talking about. The kind that you flush and it sounds like a fighter jet taking off. I think that it even sucks some of the air out of the room. If I ever wore a tie, I'm sure that it would flutter in the direction of this thing. I would have probably wet my pants because it scared me so bad, but.. um.. I couldn't because... um... why do you think I'm in here?

Okay, this just got weird. Bye.

React Accordionly

2008-09-11T23:35:00.003-06:00

Today my life changed once again... for the better. I was out in the parking lot at work when a coworker was transferring some stuff from one car to another to give to goodwill or something. I spotted this sweetheart and fell in love. Slow motion, music playing... total twitterpation. A child's accordion... total vintage, smells like grandma's attic, totally works, smaller than normal and I have no idea how to play it yet. I will use this. I've been working on some ideas for my future blogging and you can be dang sure that this will "play" a part in it.

Jake + kid's antique accordion = wicked awesome

(P.S. If you can't I'm super excited, you should never read my blog again)

Mt. Jackson video

2008-09-03T09:01:00.003-06:00

Apparently Youtube doesn't want you to have videos longer than 10 minutes (actually, I think as long as it's under 11), so I had to cut out some footage and re-export, so now you can see the video of our climb from this weekend in all of its 10 minute and 41 second majesty! (You can see it in higher quality if you click here)

Mt. Jackson

2008-09-01T00:02:00.004-06:00

Sore and tired. That's how I would describe myself today. Yesterday was my second attempt at Mt. Jackson. The first time I went up there, it was all socked in at the top and we got to the ridge and figured we'd made it, but we were about 25 vertical feet shy and the amazing views were elusive. This time, however, I stood at the summit cairn with a couple of coworkers, Rick and Jeff. Nice work gentlemen. Nice work. Video tomorrow.

Pic below is from Google Earth and coordinates from my GPS... kinda old hat for a lot of you, I'm sure, but still cool. Approximate trip stats are 20 miles, 5,000 vertical feet.

Death is Blue

2008-08-28T14:43:00.002-06:00

Being a Mac user working as a Microsoft Windows administrator gives me the opportunity to see why I have an elitist attitude. Today was one of those days. I got to reboot a domain controller because the antivirus was running it into the ground and two of my coworkers got the infamous "Blue Screen of Death" and had to reboot their computers. (actual coworkers shown with actual BSODs)

Yup, I'm an elitist...

Casual Friday

2008-08-22T09:48:00.005-06:00

It's Friday at work which makes me happy. The weekend's about here, we take a longer lunch than normal... and I get to wear jeans. It also is a great opportunity to see whether or not coworkers can wear "normal" clothes properly. One of my coworkers obviously can't.

Element is a skateboarding company. They make skateboards and skateboarding apparel. One of my coworkers walked by wearing an Element shirt. This in and of itself isn't that big of a deal... I mean, sure, he probably can't ride a skateboard (heck, I can't and I own an element shirt for goodness sakes), but how you wear it is important. He tucked it.

Don't tuck in the T bro. Please, don't tuck in the T. (pic intentionally blurry to help protect identity of subject)

Blob Experiment

2008-08-17T22:26:00.002-06:00

Okay, so this wasn't exactly an experiment.... we knew what was going to happen. It's just fun to watch physics at work. The crazy part about being launched like this is that I remember hearing the noise of Eric hitting the blob and then my brain kicks back in towards the apex of the launch... and I'm really high up.

This video was filmed at a college day at the lake and the nearby camp was gracious enough to send over help in order for us to use their blob. Enjoy.

Botanical Suicide

2008-08-14T21:32:00.003-06:00

I came downstairs to this horrific site. I would have screamed, but it was as if all the air was sucked out of the room. I'm not sure what made him do it. Maybe it was because he was in solitary confinement in my gear room with no plants to talk to. Maybe it was because I needed to give him some water and he was just too parched. Or maybe he just asked himself what was his purpose for living and found no answer. He didn't leave a note, so all we can do is speculate, but whatever it was, my angel wing begonia decided that he was going to jump from the 3 foot high bookshelf I store my backpacking gear and end it all.

(okay, so really I think that he just grew too much which jacked up his center of gravity... and yes, I'm going to chop him up and repot him as many other lovely plants...lemme know if you'd like one)

Morning Glory

2008-08-14T21:29:00.003-06:00

Wednesday morning I awoke to a room bathed in purple light. As I stumbled around into my living room, I looked out the window and saw that everything outside was purple and pink as well. I got my camera and headed back to my bedroom to capture this sunrise... Wow.

My sweet sweet Emily

2008-08-13T22:39:00.002-06:00

I have this brilliant friend named Emily who I have a pseudo-romantic relationship with. She is well read, very intelligent and totally random. The banter between us is a joy in my life. Tonight was a priceless bout of texting that I wish to share. Hope you enjoy...

Jake: Good night pookey! Just thinking of you. ;-)

Emily: I'll meet you in my dreams. You can play with my hair.

Jake: Me in your dreams and you in mine, together our hands entwine and the moonlight off your hair will shine.

Emily: I miss you so much i think i might dry heave. will you be my one and only?

Jake: After your display of affection on my car window, I'd be a fool to deny you

The display of affection was her planting her lips on my passenger window to which she said that I couldn't wash my car for a few weeks... which is what led me to think of her in the first place. After my last text, she called me and we were dying of laughter.

I love friends...

No, he looks safe...

2008-08-08T14:02:00.004-06:00

My parents came from the time when hitchhiking was considered a safe and normal activity.... not so much in my time. Now when you think about hitchhiking, you think of all of the bad stuff that could happen. I'm guessing that's why most hitchhikers nowadays fall into the category that involves immunity to nefarious activities.

While driving through Oregon, I passed such a hitchhiker the other day. He fit the stereotype quite well. Male that was older than say 25, facial hair, dirty clothes, bag of some kind, thumb, the ability to walk backwards, smelly (okay, I couldn't smell him from my car as I blazed past, but he looked like he carried an odor) and greasy hair. Some other accessories to complete the hitchhiker persona (but aren't mandatory) are a second bag, dreadlocks, smell like alcohol, walking stick, cardboard sign and a dog.

Here's my guess on the progression of hitchhiking, starting in the 50s. Hitchhike and pick up hitchhikers, then free love time which saw a huge hitchhiking rise for the 60s and 70s, then people doing scary and creepy things to hitchhiking making it dangerous, then the trend towards road hardened male dominated hitchhiking to thwart scary drivers, to hitchhikers becoming scary themselves making picking them up dangerous.

No I don't usually pick up hitchhikers and yes, they scare me.

Simply Cruisin'

2008-07-26T22:41:00.004-06:00

I have now found one of my new favorite things... cruising. Today I woke up, went for a run, showered, got my laptop ready and hopped on my new cruiser bike. With the farmer's market at the mall, the Art in the Park and an antique auto show on First Ave, people were milling all over the place and I just cruised around on a lazy summer's Saturday. I finally made it to the coffee shop to do some editing.

I ended up having to run home a couple of times which I didn't mind and finished up the day pedaling over to Brandon and Katie's house to pick them up and cruise on over to Dolce Villa for some great ice cream. We swerved around the road, put our feet up on the handlebars and pedaled through sprinklers on the sidewalks... just like kids.

(Oh and here's a better picture of my bike... I'll post nicer pics once I get my kickstand on there and prop it up in a scenic place)

Smile.

2008-07-25T23:12:00.001-06:00

That's what you have to do when you see stuff like this....

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Geraldo and I

2008-07-22T22:54:00.007-06:00

So my good friend Brian, made mention that I could pass for a younger version of Geraldo... all I needed was a big ol' mustache. I decided to see what Photoshop had to say about that. We've obviously got Geraldo and myself looking amazing. I then tried out putting his mustache on my face and then just mashing my face on his head and letting the mustache shine through. Enjoy.

Fight! After school, at the...

2008-07-21T22:18:00.003-06:00

Today at work we were talking about how every school had that "place". You know the place where the fights always took place? Where I grew up, it was the green bridge. All the action and suspense. "Johnny's fighting Ben after school at the green bridge!" Away from duty teachers and principals. Of course they were almost guaranteed lame (as most fights were) because someone wouldn't show up, people wouldn't be as mad three hours later, or it was just some wrestling crap.

Anyway, please comment on where it was for your school... should take you back a couple years on this one.

Parent's Day?

2008-07-21T08:58:00.005-06:00

Got this in my inbox today from one of Amazon.com's sub-vendors that I purchased from in the past. They were actually pretty good, however, there are three questions that I have about this little graphic that they had in their email:

1. What is "Shoping"?
2. Shouldn't "Parents" be possessive?
3. What the crap is Parent's Day anyway?!

The Cruiser Cometh

2008-07-20T22:37:00.002-06:00

Tonight I picked up the new cruiser. Mr. Michael Morris did one heck of an amazing job. More pictures to follow, but to whet your appetite...

Dark Knight

2008-07-19T08:56:00.005-06:00

I know I'm about the billionth person to blog about this movie, but it's amazing. Go see it. Definitely a theatre movie.

Aptly named

2008-07-18T11:11:00.003-06:00

What's the first thing that you think of when you pull next to this white truck? If it was "fast", then we're on the same page and I'm sure that's why they named this beauty, the Dodge Sprinter.

Seriously Dodge! What the heck are you doing calling this the Sprinter? Maybe the Hauler, the Mammoth, the Non-Creepy Cargo Van... something! Not the Sprinter!

Smile!

2008-07-17T22:08:00.004-06:00

Recognize these lights? That's where I went at 8am this morning. Today was just a cleaning and such which wasn't too bad. I decided to floss regularly some time ago and got one of those fancy Sonicare toothbrushes and let me tell you, it makes the dentist visit much more pleasant. They scrape way way less. ;-) They did warn me, however, that next time is the full mouth X-Ray deal. I hate those sharp things you have to bite down on, but I can't complain. It's better than a root canal.

Oh and if they use the foam fluoride soak stuff with the little blue styrofoam mouthpiece (pictured), I highly recommend the berry flavor. Quite nice.

On the shores of Galilee

2008-07-17T22:04:00.002-06:00

Okay, so it's not really Galilee, but it sure feels like what you read about in the Bible. I'm so blessed to attend a Bible study that meets at a place on Flathead Lake every Wednesday during the summer. Whoever is speaking, does it with their back to the lake and everyone is sitting on rocks and chairs and the ground looking at the speaker with the lake and mountains as a backdrop. I climbed up on a little knoll and took this picture as the moon was coming over the mountains. Of course a picture from a cell phone doesn't do it justice, but if it looked nice from the phone, imagine what it was in real life.

Mobile home

2008-07-15T22:37:00.002-06:00

As I was driving to grab a morning cup o' joe with a friend, I had to call him and apologize for my pending tardiness. "Yo. Hey, I'm on my way, but running a bit behind. I'm kinda stuck behind a house." Yup. They were moving a house. Now I know that to most of you, that's not something brand new or earth-shattering, but stop and think about that. Take a minute to think about the house that you're in right now and they just come on in and drill into the foundation or basement, throw some metal bars underneath, jack it up and start cruising the streets. You could be all hanging out of your bedroom window giving off your princess wave and stuff.

Okay, but seriously, it was crazy all the people involved and the trucks and cops. I also had not paid that much attention to how much room there is at a traffic light when you drive around them. They had guys pulling out speed limit and crosswalk signs, put them back in when they passed, then speed around the house to go take care of some more. Cops were directing traffic. Guys from the cable, phone and power companies were using bucket trucks, long poles and whatever to lift lines that crossed the street... and I just wondered, "What the heck am I doing up this early."

I'll do better... I promise

2008-07-12T00:35:00.003-06:00

After avoiding it yesterday, I did it tonight. I mowed my lawn. I know, you're probably thinking, "Big deal", but for some reason, things that I'm "supposed to do" end up as something to avoid, whereas things that you don't necessarily have to do can come much easier. Take, for example, the need to take out the garbage when you were a kid. If you saw that it was full and you thought, "Hey, it would be nice to do this for my parents" (just bear with me on my example okay), it was much easier to do. Now if your parents asked you to, you'd find so many other things to do except for that. Why? (okay, so it probably has to do with our independence, sin nature and all of those things, but let's just leave it rhetorical)

Anyway, thank God for a sweet mower that basically allows me to "mulch" when the grass comes up to my eyes. I'm pretty sure that I should have baled it. But don't worry, I won't let it grow for more than a week this time. I'll do better... right?

Sprinkles?

2008-07-11T09:18:00.003-06:00

The benefit of being a "regular" at a place is that you get called by your name, have an opportunity for stories and banter and can get little perks every now and then. Other than the fact that I enjoy the coffee at City Brew and it's on my way to work, I get all of the above... and today embodied this creed.

The first thing was that as I pulled up to the window and handed Jessica my mug, she refused my money which is nice once in awhile. Then Ashley gives me my coffee with some sprinkles on it and tells me to have a great day. Sprinkles?! Woohoo! How can you not have a great day when it's Friday, you're wearing jeans to work and the lovely ladies at the coffee shop comp a drink with sprinkles and tell you to have a nice day.

It's Friday. ;-)

(Sorry for the crappy picture. I had to hurry up and take it and my cell phone doesn't do well with closeups. Judging by the blurry "Loch Ness" quality of the picture and the outlandishness of my story, I'm sure that some of you will say that I'm a liar, but I know what I saw... I was there)

New word

2008-07-08T21:31:00.002-06:00

So I came up with a new word today to describe people in your life that you know, but they drain the life from you because they are always needy and you have to watch what you say, how you act or whatever. Basically they are high maintenance acquaintances... or as I like to call them:

An acquaintenance.

Now class, use it in a sentence.

Ahhhh, the good times...

2008-07-03T00:29:00.003-06:00

Okay, maybe the 80s weren't the good times for you... or for me for that matter, but it sure is fun to reminisce about them. For a video gig that I'm doing, their party this evening was 80s prom and it was great. Some of the outfits were to die for. I tried my hand at what I could and ended up at more of the "Saved by the Bell" sort of thing. Note the obnoxious silk shirt, pegged jeans and Nike hi-tops. (missing in the photo, which I added later, was a rolled up handkerchief that was tied around my leg just above the knee). Totally rad!

(Do I look as creepy in this photo as I think I do?)

Cowboy Up!

2008-06-30T08:32:00.004-06:00

Temperature wasn't the only thing that was hot at this year's rodeo down in Augusta, MT. The people watching was out of control. If you mix a small town in Montana with a rodeo you get all kinds of interesting things. Add alcohol into this mix and it's off the charts. Oh and the rodeo was fun. Good bull riding, bronc riding, calf roping, etc. They also had wild cow milking which was kinda bizarre. Look it up on the web.

The real highlight of my day, however, had to have been this guy. He was a member of some photo class that was there at the rodeo and a real treat for us all. Cowboy hat, shirt tucked into corduroy shorts hiked up as high as they'll go. All of this coupled with two pairs of wool socks and some good ol work boots make for a blogger's dream. Ride on cowboy...

I'm an addict

2008-06-27T23:56:00.003-06:00

I have a problem. I'm not sure when it started, but at some point in my life, I started using chapstick. We won't discuss the time that I took a big bite of the flavored chapstick... a little is good so more is better right? Anyway, I've tried stopping and found that my lips turn into a mess. I'm beginning to believe the chapstick conspiracy.

Back to my story. I'm sick of this gross aftertaste that I've been getting from my chapstick that has some good ol' SPF protection. I remembered at one point that I had tried a little product from a company called Burt's Bees. I'm back with them and I'm not turning around.

Mt. Rainier

2008-06-25T14:00:00.003-06:00

This weekend, I did one of the hardest climbs in my recent memory, but it was super cool. It was two days of climbing, with the second day, leaving at 1am from the campsite while the snow was frozen. It was my first time using crampons and very challenging, but it was incredible watching the sun rise on the slopes of the most glaciated peak in the contiguous states. I put together a little video... enjoy!

Busy outside...

2008-06-23T21:53:00.000-06:00

Spent the last couple of days summiting Mt Rainier. Weather was great. Here's a little video from my cell until I get my other footage edited.

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Gearing up

2008-06-19T23:01:00.004-06:00

Got my big mountaineering experience this weekend. I'm really glad that my feet are the same size as my climbing friend's wife, so I can borrow her gear and she can borrow mine. While she's using my skis, I'm going to be using her boots. I'm thinking that these yellow, plastic, mountaineering boots would make a great summer shoe instead of flip-flops.

Doesn't all that gear just get you amped? Backpacks, jackets, sleeping bags, avalanche gear, ropes.... Woohoo!!

Yeah that's better for you

2008-06-19T22:56:00.003-06:00

Wow, good thing you didn't eat the whole donut, you might have blown your diet. Now you'll just feel half as bad as you could have.

Carbon credits please

2008-06-17T22:19:00.004-06:00

Well it's that time of year where you can wake up and bike to work in the morning. Okay, some of you have been doing that for some time, but my distance of almost 19 miles and fair weather tendencies have stopped me thus far. So yesterday I prepared by bringing work clothes and leaving my laptop and backpack and such at the office and road in.

The ride in was amazing. I had to throw on my tights and arm warmers bringing my spandex count to ridiculous proportions because it was a little chilly. The air was crisp and once I finally got on the open side roads, it was awesome. Of course I was ridiculed like crazy when I got to the office. In my office of primarily males that talk about supercharging their turbos, chipping their diesels and holding mini-NRA conferences in my office, what do you expect.

The ride home was a bit more challenging. Since I had ridden to work and today was "back day" at the gym during lunch, I was a bit beat. Couple that with not enough calories and a strong headwind most of the way, my weary body was very happy to be home and enjoy a halibut steak and a huge salad.

So good exercise, cheap on the gas and no pollution. Happy times.

Mr. Wilson and I

2008-06-16T22:38:00.005-06:00

Two events happened to me recently that had me realizing that I really identify with a certain comic strip character... Mr. Wilson. Now that I'm 30 and still without children, I realize that I've got my perfect world and haven't had the wonderful opportunity of my own offspring to mess it up. I leave that up to others children. Two stories...

Wicked tired a few weeks ago, sick with a head cold, sore from my surgery and coming off of my pain pills. Do I need anything else in the mix? Apparently the answer to that question was yes, as a kid ran into my car with his bike putting a big dent in my front fender and two lovely scrapes with one that ran down all the way to the back door on the driver's side. Yay.

A couple of days later, a neighbor kid who is all of two years old or so pokes his beady little eyes through a split board along my privacy fence... let's call him Dennis. As I mow, Dennis starts leaning his little body into the board. Okay, Dennis, got it, I should replace it. Does he stop? If you guessed yes, you'd be wrong. He saw the weakness and just started putting all sub-50 pounds behind that board and put that board into submission. Yay.

Thanks guys for all the extra work. Parents, feel free to comment... anecdotes are fine, but please, none of the, "wait til you have kids of your own" comments. ;-)

Summit season

2008-06-15T22:14:00.007-06:00

With all the snow out there, summits are hard to come by without snowshoes or backcountry skis, but Saturday proved to be too beautiful to pass up, so we continued with plans to climb Columbia Mountain. 6 miles and 4,000 feet later, we made it to the top.

Before we even started, I was a little concerned about how my leg was going to do, but I was stoked about it and even ran a bit at the end. It felt super good. As far as everyone else went, I wasn't sure everyone was going to make it as we went along, but you'd be surprised how deep one can dig to get up to the top. (of course, I think that everyone was a wee sore the next day) Enjoy!

Amity looking up at Tom at Double Waterfalls

Double Waterfalls... about 2 miles from the trailhead

The trail for the last quarter mile or so... yup, still snow on top. ;-)

Digging Disney Dirt

2008-06-10T21:44:00.003-06:00

While dropping off my car the other day, I came across another disturbing Disney distribution. Now, once again, I will state that I really have nothing against Disney, I just want to warn you people out there with impressionable children.

Here we are with a little coloring book targeted to children ages 3-8ish and we want to have them immerse themselves in the bad guys?! Come on people! Shall we glorify them? All the Rage?! Wow, we need more evil kids. Not only is it a book dedicated to the nefarious characters of Disney stories, it happens to be one of those "Giant Book" editions... I'm thinking that we've got them all. Every power hungry, envious, devious, greedy, snaky, rude, ungrateful, spiteful, evil (and mostly very hauntingly skinny for some reason) group of drawings is represented here.

Thanks guys. Rage on. If your child is out of control, don't blame me, I warned you.

... but you're not fat!

2008-06-09T20:54:00.002-06:00

Ran into an acquaintance the other day at a coffee shop. I was relegating my hiking experience of the morning to her and spoke of some rehab and how I was looking forward to starting to run. She replied with a, "I didn't know you ran!" The truth is, I haven't much for about a year and a half because it's been painful, but I have been really wanting to start back up and am waiting for clearance from my doctor... but I digress.

She then went on to basically tell me that I didn't need to run and I could/should be eating very fattening things. What is it with people thinking that the only reason that one exercises is to lose weight? Have we really gotten to the point where we're actually that unhealthy? I'm not a huge guy for sure, but I've told people that I'm working out and they're afraid that I'll disappear or something. Wow.

So yes, I'm going to keep doing all of those things and I can only hope that I'll put a couple pounds of good lean muscle mass on.

Oh and the hike with my good friends Megan, Noah and Joe up to Apgar lookout was absolutely wet and rainy (with snow on top), but a load of fun.

Ready for paint

2008-06-08T22:40:00.003-06:00

"Wow, that looks so sweet" was heard many times at my friend, Michael's house this evening as we just stared at it with the new whitewall tires. I'm so excited about this bike as it's coming along great. We spent some time roughly putting some parts on it to make sure it was how we wanted it before we sent it off to get painted. Michael is the magic man. There were a couple of pits where he threw some welding on and smoothed it out.The only pieces we need now are a kickstand and a seat post clamp. He has also bent some metal, polished off some rust and built an aluminum shim for the seat post... just to name a few things.

The only pieces we need now are a kickstand and a seat post clamp. Michael's taking it down to get powder coated a sweet burgundy this week and then we'll put it all together and put some miles on the white wall tires. Mmmm hmmm! I'm joining the cruiser ranks.

Special notes

2008-06-04T10:28:00.002-06:00

After Bible study on Monday night at my place, a bunch of us took off to the local Dairy Queen where we took over about a quarter of the establishment. When I went home, I had a bunch of rocks scattered in my driveway and I thought, "What the heck?". I then realized that they were scattered, but carefully placed to display a message from my super fun friend Emily.

I love it when friends do little things to make you smile...

As advertised

2008-06-01T22:24:00.003-06:00

It's been some time since I was at the ol' Sizzler restaurant and I now know why. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either. The whole point of an all you can eat buffet is to cram as much food into you as possible so you feel horrible, but you know that you got your money's worth. Of course, they aren't throwing the best food your way.

What the real gem of the experience was, however, was the huge menu that they have hanging on the wall as you're going up to pay before you enter into "all-you-can-eat-land". The picture attached to this blog says it all. Right next to "Endless Shrimp", they have a little sign that says, "We are temporarily out of endless shrimp. We apologize for any inconvenience". I would have added, "To make up for the inconvenience, we offer irony".

Come again?

2008-05-31T23:07:00.002-06:00

A newfound friend of mine left a voice mail the other day in which he wandered around in his message as he tried to figure out what he wanted to say... and he eventually got there. Of course, I can follow a conversation that is rapidly delivered to me, unless it's giving me your phone number. I need to write that crap down. I know that you know your phone number. The subtle nuance, is that I DON'T! So please, please, please, don't rattle off your phone number, zip code or any other important number that you're giving someone like an auctioneer. For the love! (I seriously had to rewind the message three times to actually get it and verify that I had copied it down correctly... SHEESH!)

Back in the saddle

2008-05-24T15:03:00.003-06:00

After a few weeks of my schedule being atypical, I'm finally back in a rhythm. Two weeks ago, I was over in Seattle and this week I have had my surgery. I'm now back in Montana and my surgery went well. I'm bending my knee past 90 degrees, can take showers and can drive... it's fabulous.

Today I'm just chillin' at my weekend office, The Overflowing Cup. I'm meeting with a couple of friends for some business stuff and just random fun things as well as getting some training for my applications that I use. Feels good to be back home. ;-)

Post-op

2008-05-20T17:53:00.002-06:00

I'm now at my parents' house with my leg elevated watching a hummingbird perch out on the hummingbird feeder as it rains outside and my mom cooks dinner. My surgery went amazing. I really like the staff at KRMC. They were fun, professional and just did a great job. It was really cool to have my friend Amy roll me into the operating room. Dr. Stimpson asked me if I wanted to keep the rod and I answered, "Absolutely!" I mean, how can you pass up on keeping a 12 inch titanium rod that has a serial number?! I sure can't.

Anyway, as far as surgeries go, it went great. I have to give mad props to my anesthesiologist who was able to get me in and out of consciousness without feeling sick and heaving when I woke up. Yaaaaay!!

Now I'm just chilling out with my parents who are great caregivers. I'm hoping to be limping on it by tomorrow afternoon, but we'll play it by ear.

Pre-op

2008-05-20T17:30:00.005-06:00

A shade after 11am this morning, my friend Julie stopped on by to pick me up for my operation. (Thanks Jules!!) Operations are sooo flattering. I showed up in some ghetto sweats and a baggy tshirt, no spikey hair, no deodorant or anything that I would otherwise wear. You then get to make a major upgrade to the hospital clothes which basically look like bedsheets. You then throw on the hospital blue "cloak" for a more sophisticated look and polish it off with socks that have grippy stuff on top and bottom.... soooo good!

I think this new look is really going to be taking off. When I'm up for it, I'm going to find some old sheets and see what I can come up with... but I'll let you all be the judge.

rub a dub dub

2008-05-20T01:14:00.006-06:00

Well tonight I took a shower. I know, I know, congratulations Jake, you were starting to stink. Actually I got this really expensive new soap that I have to try out twice before my little operation tomorrow. I'm finally getting the remaining hardware out of my leg.

About 18 months ago, I had a little ski wreck that resulted in a broken tibia and fibula on my right leg. The fibula was just a fracture, but the tibia was a full on break. I've since had all three screws taken out and I'm now about ready to have them take out the 13" rod in my tibia. Good times. I spent something like six weeks on crutches and started hobbling around after that and by summer I was hiking like normal. Pretty amazing how fast things are these days.... all with no stupid cast.

Pictures below are the X-Ray in the emergency room and the X-Ray after my surgery the day after the accident. Notice the crazy staples in my knee and ankle and the break in my fibula.

Cruisin' right along

2008-05-17T23:21:00.003-06:00

Here we are with the first cruiser bike update:

I had taken off what I could of the bike and brought it over to Michael to see what was salvageable and tweak what we could keep. The seat post had been hammered down like crazy causing it to mushroom, but he performed some magic and got the seat post out and fixed the frame. It's looking nice as he's taking out some dents and whatnot. We chatted quite a bit today about what parts we're looking to order for it and I think that we're good to go and he's going to get them for me... I'm stoked.

One of the decisions was what color and another was should we use the old fork or get one that is called a springer fork which is an old suspension type fork. The fork in the photo is the original and I'm going with that paint... it looks sooo sweet. It's a kind of a burgundy with a silver base and should be way sweet. I think I'm also going to see if that original fork will work out... I'll keep you posted.

Oh beautiful days...

2008-05-16T18:03:00.006-06:00

So the nice weather is coming into the northwest and while Seattle was living up to its name as the rainy city earlier in the week, I took of the ol' rain jacket today. For lunch, we ran down to Pike's Place market to enjoy the weather. It's funny how inclement weather makes you appreciate sunny weather. Everyone was just out sunning themselves and smiling in weather that would be pretty standard for California.

This is the second time in as many months that I've been through Seattle and have been able to see Rainier to the top. That's the little zoom from my cameraphone that's pretty crappy, but let's you kinda see it.

MS Worthless 3.0

2008-05-16T00:31:00.003-06:00

I've spent the last few days over in Seattle doing some training under the tutelage of a boisterous hispanic man named Hector. He makes a great instructor for a handful of reasons. He's optimistic, entertaining, knowledgeable and flamboyant. The last one is very important for these classes, because when you spend a week learning about how the latest server technology has changed over the previous version, you sometimes need some help fighting off the after lunch comatose. Gotta love Hector. In regards to the actual material itself, there are a couple of thoughts.

Microsoft has made a few improvements that I applaud in their new server operating system, but their training materials remind me of why I type from an Apple Macbook Pro and am a sold out fanboy. Steve Jobs would explode if he saw what we were trying to learn on if it was from his company. The page numbers are all wrong and there are spelling mistakes galore (both in the printed materials and the instructors slides such as 512BM of RAM instead of 512MB of RAM and parition instead of partition which my Mac instantly recognized as a spelling mistake within the web browser). Okay, big deal right? Wrong. Frequently the instructor will reference a page and he can't tell us where it is because our page numbering has been 34, 35, 34, 35, 34, 35, etc. The locations to files referenced are completely wrong, so we have to figure out where files are located... if they are there at all. The instructions are vague at best and when you're learning a new product, that's fine for the lab, but tell us how to get there during the instruction in our books so we can flip back and figure it out. They'll also have you set up computers with one address for one server in a lab, then have you set up the same address for a different server later so it won't work. You'd think that an MS employee would check that crap out!!!

Okay, so when it's all said and done, I love Apple and this is one reason why. Microsoft has gotten stale and lazy. Quality has gone down and it seems as if they've lost direction trying to chase other's core competencies instead of their own. It's sad and I'm wicked frustrated. Don't be surprised if my career ends up focusing where I work with systems that "just work".

End rant.

Mama needs new shoes

2008-05-15T01:14:00.004-06:00

Okay, so I'm not mama and I didn't NEED new shoes, but that's what I kept telling my friend Rebecca so we went shopping. I've been out in Seattle all week for some computer nerd training and I figured since I wasn't back in good ol' Montana, it would be a good time to get some sweet new shoes for kickin' it around town. Rebecca obliged and after agonizing over what to get, these sweethearts said buy me and we obeyed.

I felt very Seattle as I purchased them as they are made with like organic cotton, hemp and recycled car tires... but they're super cool. The bottoms of them actually are real tire treads... you'll have to check them out. They do have a secret that I'm not going to blog about. You'll have to ask me about in person to find out about them... otherwise, it wouldn't be much of a secret if I talked about it here huh?

Our bathroom, your closet

2008-05-15T01:08:00.003-06:00

While visiting the main bathroom of the 28th floor of Two Union Square where I'm at for training all this week, I noticed hanging up in the corner was some guys' dress slacks and dress shirt. Wha?! Yup. It belonged to nobody that was in there as I was in there long enough for it to cycle through everyone. Apparently someone came in, changed, left their clothes and took off. When I came there at the end of the day, they were gone... he must have come back for them. My money is they belonged to a streaker, but then again, it's not the 70's any more.

Cultured... but not like cottage cheese Part 2

2008-05-15T00:38:00.005-06:00

Saturday brought my second cultured event in as many days. I was invited by my friend Angela to check out the local symphony, the Glacier Symphony and Chorale as they presented The Planets and had a special guest violinist by the name of Tim Fain.

I can't remember the last time I heard a symphony, but when they all stopped warming up and started tuning and their notes were all coming together, I just got chills. What an amazing sound results from the contribution of all the instruments. Then they started playing and the joy that welled up in my heart was amazing. I must attend more of these....

So they did the special guest section and that dude was impressive. I had never been involved in a symphonic encore, but we all stood up and cheered, he left, we cheered, he came back and then played three solo numbers that were off the charts. He was doing stuff with that violin that made my jaw drop. I'm not sure how hard it is to do on a violin, but judging by the reaction of the players on stage, they were duly impressed as well.

On with the Planets section of the show which was great as well. I love the sound of the double bass as the section just belted out the sweet low tones and the oboe would cut through every once in awhile like a haunting loon. And really, so much good stuff. I did have a bit of an issue with at least one of the french horn players as they were a bit pitchy (maybe I'm a bit harder on them because I played it in high school, but it wasn't awesome all the time).

Anywho, I'd totally recommend the GSC whenever you get a chance. Soooo good.

Cultured... but not like cottage cheese Part 1

2008-05-15T00:20:00.004-06:00

I got to attend ballet of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" down at a local theatre the other night with a couple of my friends and my mother (a little pre-mother's day evening) on Friday night. What a great time. I've seen the Nutcracker down there and it was really fun to see a little something different.

The first thing that I noticed was how startled I was by how loud it was. Loud, you say? Yup. Those little Pointe shoes make a bit of a clack sound when the girls land and it was a bit surprising when I first started watching, but it faded out as the story progressed.

The ladies were beautiful and while they're not professional, there is some real talent there... at least from my untrained eyes. Sure, they had a few stumbles here and there, but it was fun. The girl playing the impish Puck was very funny and entertaining as she screwed around with everyone in the play and made faces. The girl playing the lead queen was beautiful and elegant. The girl playing Peaseblossom I believe was outstanding. Her arms seemed to be lighter than air. I know, I sound super cheesy, but if you were there and paying attention, you would whole-heartedly agree. The two guys playing Demetrius and Lysander played their parts just fine, but the guy playing Oberon needed to get punched in the ear. Man, that guy was not into it at all... and he was with the beautiful leading lady. It was obvious he forgot what he was doing up there, he stood on his heals and just kind of walked around on stage and to top it off, he hardly actually gazed at his queen. He might glance at her, but while he was supposed to be dancing with her, he was just spacing off in the distance. Irritating.

All in all, great fun and a great way to spend the evening. The dancing was good, the costumes amazing and just cool and out of the ordinary.

Not so hot

2008-05-14T23:53:00.003-06:00

Last Friday, I had a frustrating dining experience at a little local Mongolian BBQ place called HuHot. The food was good like it always is, it was just the service. Let me explain.

There is a waitress at HuHot that my office, myself included, happen to prefer. She's fun, cute, attentive and just an all around great waitress. There is another waitress that is just plain miserable. We asked for the cute waitress, but she only had a 2 seater available, so we were handed over to the waitress of death.

We get close to our seats and we really don't need to sit down because we all know that we're getting the buffet. She says something along the lines that if we don't sit down, we're not getting anything to drink. I'm thinking that if she doesn't change her attitude, she's not getting a tip. Now anyone who knows me, knows that I love the banter and joking around, but rude is not cool. I think that she is going for the diner waitress aspect and she thinks that she's funny, but um, wow, she's not. Mix in incompetence and you've got her.

Anyway, we sit down like good little boys and give her our drink orders, then march up and get our food. About 10 minutes later, I sit down and see two of the five drinks that we order. There are two iced teas, one of which is mine, and no straws. She's probably swamped and is working on the rest of the drinks right? Nope. She's jawing with another table. While she spends the next five minutes chatting with that other table, everyone gets back to the table to no drinks except for myself and the other iced tea drinker. I catch the eye of the waitress that I really wanted in the first place and she comes on over and slips me a straw. She almost takes our drink order again when the wicked witch of the west comes on over and finally works on getting the rest of the drinks. As she is dropping off the drinks, she puts down the straws on the other end of the table and makes some "funny" comment about those who aren't tough enough need to use straws. Now I'm not aware of her being particularly bent out of shape about me and I got no impression it was directed towards me, but it was a goofy comment. Was it bad enough in and of itself? Nope, but put all this together with everything and I'm getting all kinds of irritated.

Fast forward to round two at the buffet and we are halfway through those plates and she starts bringing our checks. I'm thinking, "Can you wait until I'm at least close to finishing my lunch?" as I get the whole, "Here's your hat, what's your hurry" treatment. So I pull out my credit card and put it in the little folder as does everyone else. She comes over and is finally being attentive and picks up our payment folders. Couple minutes later, she is back and hands out our folders from the far end of the table (both ends were very accessible). I need a pen to sign my credit card statement. I didn't ask yet, but one came flying down the table as she tossed it at me. One of my coworkers commented that we needed another mint as my other coworkers was destroyed when he got it (see photo). Instead of walking over and handing it to him or put it on the table, she chucks it at him... classy. Feels like those restaurants where their whole deal is being rude.

She takes off and we sign our stuff, then I go back to finishing eating. While I'm still eating, she comes on by and picks up our checks. I'm not sure when she started waiting tables, but you let the table leave, then you pick up the checks, that's the drill. I mean we weren't in there all that long and I just felt like I was being crammed out the door (and no, there were plenty of tables, so it's not like we needed to make room for other guests).

Wow, this blog sounds whiny, but it's a bit difficult to capture this waitress in a blog. All I'm saying is that I'll ask for the waitress that I want. If she's not available, I'm going to specifically ask not to have this waitress which is something that I've never done. Ever.

Leftovers

2008-05-11T21:57:00.003-06:00

After last weekend's trip, I still have some residue. "Residue?" you may ask? Yup, residue. You see, we all pile in tons of gear into the vehicles, change cars part way through and such. Pictured is what is still in my car... all of which isn't mine. This happens with parties, Bible studies and just general get-togethers at my house also. I think that I still have someone's plate and hoodie at my house. Weird.

Anyway, I still don't have my ski poles....

I need closure

2008-05-07T22:31:00.003-06:00

Have you ever been in a phone conversation that you're just done with for whatever reason, but you don't say, "Well I'd better go" because you don't want to offend or be the one to break off the conversation? So what do you say? You say something along the lines of, "Well I'd better let you go" like you're doing them a favor. Oh gee, thanks for "letting me go"! I was just starting to tell you my really interesting story, but since you know that I've obviously got something else going on that I wasn't aware of until now. I really appreciate the courtesy of you letting me go instead of me having to say, "Well I'd better go". Next time just give me the, "I do need to get back to work" or "You're boring me to death" or "My real life is awaiting my return". Something like that.

This is in the same genre when you are ending a relationship and you say, "It's not you, it's me". If it really was you, then they would be ending it. It's your decision, so don't pawn it off on the other person. Likewise, if they had to go, they'd say something. So don't prance around the issue. Own it!

Anyway, I know you have more important stuff to do, so I'd better let you go....

All things to all people

2008-05-06T23:23:00.004-06:00

Where have all the good car designs gone? Whatever happen to the really sweet car-trucks? Don't know what I'm talking about? How about the El Camino or the Subaru Brat! Now those are vehicles. Take the sweet interior of a two seater so you don't have room for four people and put a bed on it that can only haul a twin mattress... outside. Of course this Subaru I spotted the other day got around the two people limit by installing two seats in the bed of the car, complete with handles.

Ridiculous. And don't give me all this hooha because you are all sentimental when you drove an El Camino as a teenager in high school with your bell bottoms, or the Brat with your acid washed jeans or how fast an El Camino SS is, because you can make an SS without a bed such as in a Camaro. I know that the Subaru tried to bring back the Brat in the form of the Baja and Chevrolet is allegedly bringing back the El Camino (seriously, what's up with these south of the border flavored names), but notice that the Baja is not a current model. Sweet Santa Maria people!

I got dibs in the back!

Montana rig

2008-05-06T00:42:00.002-06:00

I'm not going to say that this is unique to Montana, but I will say that it's pretty typical Montana... or at least stereotypical Montanan. I followed this truck to work this morning and cracked up. This old guy driving has probably owned this truck for almost as long as I've been alive and I'm guessing it's his baby. I often think about the things I do that take up a lot of my time and wonder if people feel the same way about me as I do this guy. Take, for example, the Waylon mural in the window of his topper. Now I couldn't imagine at all purchasing something like that. Not only did he purchase it, he took the time to make it a part of his truck. Amazing

What I'm hoping that you'll notice is this guy has a rebel heart. He just shows it in the subtle ways. Notice the little naughty girl chrome decals on the mudflaps next to the running stallions and of course if you don't know who Waylon is, I know you aren't a redneck. I bet you'd find a couple of eight tracks of Willie Nelson lying around his pad without looking too hard as well. And what Montana rig (that's what you call just about any truck in Montana as in, "Can I borrow your rig this weekend to move my couch?") isn't complete without a little redneck bling in the form of reflectors. The couple on the back were just a foreshadow to the sides and front. For the love of trucks, that's funny.

Back to school...

2008-05-04T23:36:00.003-06:00

Apparently I need to head on back to "Sunscreen Application 101" in school. If you look at my picture of my nuked mug, you can see a pretty sweet pattern on the right side of my neck. I did put sunscreen on before we went skiing yesterday, however I lacked the skill of "even distribution". This wouldn't be a problem on most sunny days, but when you spend about 5 to 6 hours on snow during a sunny day, you are getting twice baked and the neck and underside of the nose get it (yes, burnt there too).

Anyway, now I'm dating a little lass called Aloe Vera and I'm going to try and peel as little as possible. The bad news is that I'm burnt. The good news is that the sun is out to do it. School's out for summer. ;-)

(notice my sweet raccoon eyes. after spending yesterday with poorly applied sunscreen, I did the next logical thing and didn't refresh, so I just got burnt worse... ridiculous)

Phenomenal day

2008-05-03T23:22:00.005-06:00

Finally made it out to the east side of the mountains to the bison ranch. On the way there, we stopped and went for a ski climb up to the top of Elk Mountain. I shot some video and hope to get it edited and posted in a few days. So good to hang out with friends and get a bunch of physical activity on a perfect, spring, bluebird day. I haven't skied for about two or three months and so it's nice to see that I can still do it. Some good spring snow and boy is there a ton still in the mountains. If you don't mind hiking, there will be skiing for the next couple months.

For those of you not aware of AT skiing (Alpine Touring... also known as randonee), we put these things called skins, as they used to be actual seal skins, on the bottom of our skis, unlock the heel from our skis and hike up. You get up to the top, take of the skins and lock the heels and ski down traditional nordic style. You earn your turns for sure.

At the end of the evening, we ate at our favorite East Glacier restaurant called Serranos which is amazing food. If you come over, plan on waiting in line, but having a great dinner. We then headed to the ranch, played some games and I'm getting ready to wind down and get some sleep for some more skiing tomorrow.

Better with friends

2008-05-01T23:08:00.003-06:00

I don't watch a lot of TV. I personally feel that there is so much more living that is available outside of "the tube" and find that I get frustrated if I just plop down in front of it and watch it to burn time. I think it's important to be purposeful about things in life and I have to be that way about watching TV or I'll sit down, watch a few hours and be upset because of how much time has been wasted on watching garbage.

My purposeful watching (not counting football season) is pretty much when The Office and LOST are on. This happens to be on Thursday nights and I have a bunch of friends that love those as well. So people come over around 8 pm, we chat and wait until there is a buffer so we can fast forward through commercials and we watch The Office. After that I make some popcorn and we watch LOST in all of its glory and try and figure out what just happened, what we learned and the myriad new questions that are there.

All in all, so good.

Can you smell that?

2008-05-01T22:58:00.003-06:00

Opportunity is that neat little window where time and chance collide and you can either take it or not. Tonight, I had some time between work and my Thursday night TV viewing, the weather was beautiful and my lawn was long. So I took it. I pulled out the weed eater from a winter of non-use, took care of the edge of my lawn, then pulled out the lawn mower, gassed it up and was barely able to mulch it... okay, so I should have bagged, but I'm kinda lazy and hate bagging.

My friends pulled up for the new weekly ritual of watching new episodes of The Office and LOST (the only shows that I regularly watch) and we just stayed outside for a bit, enjoying the evening, the smell of freshly shorn lawns, the unassuming growls of distant lawnmowers, the sunset, the straight lawnmower lines in the grass (okay, I enjoyed that)... then we moved downstairs.

So the first clipping of my lawn is done. I think I'm ready for the almost two times a week that my underground sprinkler lawn needs... sheesh!

Oh, it's that crazy

2008-04-29T06:35:00.005-06:00

On my way home last night, I called Josh. We were going to have our first college/career age Bible study at my house and I started doing some math and told him that I thought we might have around 50 people. My house isn't big enough for that, and I suggested that we try to get some chairs and maybe have it outside, besides, it was gorgeous out.

Long story short is that we did have about 50 people and it was great to just meet new people. We had some worship (shown in the picture which I used the automatic stitching of three pictures so a couple of people are kinda doubled up in the middle), Josh brought a message and then we hung out. It's that "hung out" part that got a little crazy though.

I've played this little game called spoons in the past. The basic premise is that you put a quantity of spoons in the middle of a circle that is exactly one less than the number of people playing. Everyone gets four cards from a deck and one person draws from the deck and either keeps the card and passes one from his hand, or just passes the card along with a goal of four of a kind. Once four of a kind is reached by anyone, they reach out and grab a spoon and everyone follows leaving one person without a spoon. Whoever is left without a spoon is out and you keep going until a winner is found.

That's what we played... but with a twist. We put the spoons at the other end of my yard and set up randomly placed chairs throughout as an obstacle course. Elisha was the big winner at the end. It was crazy and the most fun I've had in spoons ever... no joke. We had a video camera and I threw together a quick video of it featured below.

To pee or not to pee...

2008-04-28T10:52:00.003-06:00

One of the HR gals came to my office as I was getting settled in this morning with a urgent request to come see her. I sauntered down to her office and she started handing me paperwork to fill out for my random drug test. I'm not worried about testing positive at all. What I am (was) worried about, was actually getting the sample.

As if a mostly empty bladder isn't challenging enough, stage fright sets in when the nurse parks herself outside the door. After standing there for about a minute, we decided that I needed to hydrate and come back later. Of course, I couldn't leave her side, so Nurse Bernie and I just chilled for an hour while waiting for nature to take its course. I downed a bunch of water and chatted with other coworkers who were recounting their stories of waiting for up to two hours... ugh.

Anyway, an hour later, I was good to go and headed back to work. What a relief!!