12/24/11
But you wouldn’t know it. Very clear, very sunny, and quite warm. All are good things…however, we need snow. The resort is doing a decent job with the snowmaking as coverage is pretty good so long as you stay on the runs, but that’s about it. The snow itself is pretty hard thought, good for carving, but not so good for falling, it all hurts. The crowds are down though, and at the end of the day, we got to board so life doesn’t suck!

12/10/11
A very quick trip up the mountain this morning. It’s not snowed a whole lot so the trails were pretty hard pack and we both were feeling a little sketch with it it all, but the weather was nice and our primary goal was achieved:
The view this morning:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7004/6492633911_6f5ae5e639_z.jpg
And this was the view less than 30 hours previous:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7164/6492633455_7467e56b9b_z.jpg
Thanks to the miracle of modern travel, we were able to go for a swim in the Gulf Coast of Florida one morning, and be thousands of miles away, and thousands of feet up in the mountains the next. That’s pretty damn cool…

So after playing with it for a number of weeks, the Facebook comments integration just isn’t working out as well as I’d like. So, for now, I’ve gone back to the standard WordPress comments, but with reCAPTCHA enabled to hopefully help with the spam.
Also, I’ve not posted nearly as much as I had planned on, but with all this in place, I’ve got at least one less excuse from doing so. Though that just means one more excuse I’ve got to think of…

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.

11/19/11
I decided to take a quick morning trip up the Canyon as Angy had to work this morning and the snow had come. 11″ of it as a matter of fact! Brighton looks totally different than how it did a week and a half ago, what a difference a few more inches can make (zing!).
The snow was soft and plentiful, and while not terribly deep I did get my pow float on somewhat. I was only up there for a few hours, and I did spend a goodly amount of time tweaking my bindings a boots. I decided to try loosening things up a bit as I’ve historically ridden very, very tightly but I’ve come to the conclusion that this might be holding me back. I imagine this experiment will take a few days to sort itself out.
The other reason for the short day is that I’ll be going again tomorrow, this time with Angy and her niece, who will be going for her first time. That should be a lot of fun…I hope she loves it as much as we have.

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.

I decided to do a quick post each day I hit the slopes. As this decision has come retroactively, we’ll see how past posting goes.
11/10/11 – Opening Day
First day Brighton is open for the season and it was surprising good…and crowded. I was fortunate enough to be there for opening day last year and it wasn’t nearly as crowded. It might had something to do with the fact that there was limited terrain so that there more more folks in a smaller space, but despite that it was a good time.
The snow was quite good, so long as we stayed on the trails and the temperature warmed up nicely. The best part about the day though was seeing how much Angy had progressed since last season. It’s kind of amazing how the human body/mind works, but the break has done her good. She’s riding with more confidence and control than even at the last day of last season, it was exciting to watch. It’ll be fun to watch her progress through the season.
As for myself, I was a little worried that my switch riding would suffer a bit, but my fears were unfounded and switch seems to come more naturally every time I ride…