11/24/11
I typically enjoy heading up the hill on holidays. The crowds are usually away, and folks seem to be in a generally happier mood. This day was no exception, with the added bonus that I got to see my boardmates progress.
For her second day ever, Sierra made great strides. She did her second “learn to turn” lesson, and by accounts of her instructor she’s very close to “getting it” with regards to connecting turns. We have plans to head back up at least one more time before she goes home back east, so hopefully she’ll be able to do her S turns by then. On top of all this, she’s got the energy of a 13 year old girl, so despite the fact she took some pretty hard falls, she’s still really excited to go again.
As for Angy, she started making shorter S-turns on steeper terrain which is fantastic. The mental hurdle to handle the steeper stuff when you’re not feeling confident on your feet is pretty big. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out, or if you’ve been doing it a while, when you go to the next level in whatever progression you’re taking, there’s a lot of mind-work to do. It was awesome to watch her push through it.
As for me, I’ve be working a bit on buttering. It’s a balance shift, and my board really isn’t the type that’s made for it, but it can still be done. I need to work on doing it switch next time, something that hurts my head a little (see above about mind-work). But I’m excited by the prospect as well.

11/20/11
Decent snow, a lot more terrain, and best of all: a newbie. Today we took Angy’s niece up to Brighton for her first Snowboarding EVER. I’m always a little wary of introducing someone new to the sport as unless they’re of a particularly athletic talent the first day snowboarding is going to suck…a lot. Typically there’s lots of falling, a great deal of which is directly upon the tailbone, so by the end of the day it is very sore.
With this in mind, I usually try to get at least a two day commitment out of a new boarder before I’ll agree to take them up. With the commitment made, we dropped Sierra off for her first lesson and we went on our way. Two hours later I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I asked the two requisite questions: “Does you butt hurt?”, “YES!”. “Do you want to go again?”, “YES!”. It’s that second “YES” that’s key…and warms my heart. A Boarder is born.

The warranty on my car that is. It actually happened a few days ago. I watched it as it passed 36k miles. I have considered, on and off, about buying an extended warranty. Most things I’ve read say it’s not really worth it with deductibles and exclusions and all that. My last car had a great extended warranty with it, as it was bought “certified pre-owned” and up to 100k miles.
This car, however, is a Jeep. I have grand plans to modify it which would pretty much nullify any warranty that I can get. As it is, it does have a lifetime power train warranty, so there is that. But I expect some of the modifications I have planned could present a fight with the dealer if things come up. I know there are laws, particularly the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act, that offers some protection but some battles aren’t even worth fighting. It’ll be a call made if/when the time comes.
In the meantime I now have the knowledge that I’m on my own. If nothing else, a warranty gives you peace of mind, something that seems rarer and rarer about much of anything in this day and age.

As I flesh this system out (not to be confused with flush) expect there to be some wierd/different stuff showing up. Initially this will revolve around me sorting out integration options between everyday.com, Facebook and twitter.
Kinda like this post…

A post, not just a tweet, but an actual post. Posted to Facebook no less. Those of you that know me at all know my feelings about Facebook, but the fact of the matter is that I can either be pissed off and try to ignore it, or I can be pissed off and put it to some use. So I’m choosing the latter.
I’ve been wanting to blog again for quite some time, but I was not thrilled with the separation of tools between Facebook, twitter and Livejournal. I had some cross posting working, but it was being cranky at times, speaking in tongues at others so I wanted to revisit my whole strategy.
I’m effectively retiring my Livejournal. Those that I follow have left it long ago so there is very little reason for me to visit anymore, and seemingly even less reason for others to visit. I had started everydave.com as an online home and had been using Livejournal as the store for my entries, merely displaying an integrated view on everydave.com, but I’ve decided to make everydave.com “home base” for such things.
This is where Facebook is put to use. While the current solution isn’t 100% of what I want (possible to comment in both places) at least the publishing will bring folks back here and allow them to comment using the Facebook comment system. This allows me to have spam protection and comment filtering with very little effort on my part. And who knows, maybe bring other people around so they can decide for themselves how far away they want to keep from me.
So there you have it, a place that I can keep my verbose thoughts (twitter will still be used for what I’ve been using it for: small, meaningless crap. While the large meaningless crap that will go here.
So, comment away…or not.