The Opposite of Brrrr...

As a testament to the up and down weather of Denver, while spending last weekend worrying about power outages coupled with below 0 temperatures; this weekend Sarah and I played our first game of volleyball outside in near 70 degree weather. Yes that's a jump of over 70 degrees in eight days. Pretty crazy huh...

The mountains were still relatively cool (mid 30's) as we embarked on our usual weekend ski trip. Only in Denver can you ski and play in a park in shorts during the same weekend.

We had two-for-one lift tix to Copper Mountain, so we figured we'd give it a try while we're out here. It was a really nice resort, the only problem was that it was obvious we're in peak season for skiing. Lift lines were long (+20 minutes) which meant that although we probably skied about the same number of runs as usual we were on the slopes all day. We had a great time, but the extra standing in the sun provided us with pink faces and sore calf muscles.

It was such a clear day that our pictures came out great:

Brrrr...

So last Friday afternoon, after a long week at work, I stepped outside my office and was smacked in the face with a 2 degree temperature and a 10 mph wind. You know its cold when it feels like your sinuses are freezing within a few minutes of being outside. There were record cold temps this weekend in Denver, somewhat strange given the fact that 60 degree weather was not unusual in January and early February. It dropped to about -12 Friday night, and we were greeted with a power outage Saturday morning. Apparently demand was so high that the local energy company had to perform rolling 30 minute blackouts across the entire Denver metro area.

Editor's Note: Recently I posted a comment to Rob's blog on the fact that Colorado winter like DC's isn't very consistent. Subsequent to this post, DC winter attacked Rob with 8+ plus inches of snow...and now Colorado winter takes a shot at me. I guess I'm flattered that the forces of nature take an interest in this and Rob's blog.

It's amazing how quickly my usual penchant for going out and doing stuff disappeared when it's that cold. Also due to the fact that Sarah and I were both getting over some minor illnesses, it was a relatively quiet weekend. Luckily, extended Olympic coverage provided Sarah and I with some of the magic of Curling. It was interesting for a while, just trying to figure out what's going on. Eventually, as you might guess, it gets a tad bit boring when they get to round 8 of 10. I figure if this whole engineering rotation program doesn't work out, I can always learn to sweep ice in front of large stone...

Ski Rage...

Although slightly less well-known than Road Rage, I recently read about one instance and witnessed another just this past weekend. In the first incident a little girl gets hit by snowboarder, the enraged father starts attacking the snowboarder, who although wearing a helmet turns out to be a 16 year old girl. It was the classic hit and then get pummeled by an angry 52 year old. I guess I just don't understand people who explode like that. Yes I can see getting angry -- but hitting a teenage girl?? Who does that?? You're skiing, you're supposed to be having fun, and accidents do happen. I know a little girl made an unexpected turn in front of me a few weeks ago, and I almost hit her -- was I close to getting into fisticuffs??

The second incident was more disturbing, although only because I was an eye witness who may have even contributed to the problem. To set the stage, this past Sunday morning I was at Breckenridge (surprise, surprise). Sarah was still getting over a cold (she's finally on the mend today), so I ended up going by myself. After a great morning of skiing, I was in the parking lot getting ready to head home. It was about lunch time, so my plan was to go ahead and eat in the car before hitting the road. A Dodge Stratus saw myself and another skier across from me getting our gear off, and appeared to be waiting to take one of our spaces. I was thinking don't wait on me, because I still have a lunch to eat, but my powers of ESP failed. After about a good 5-10 minutes, I noticed another car behind me also waiting. As you can imagine the fireworks were about to start. The second car pulled into the vacated space across from me, and the Dodge starting laying on his horn. The guy jumped out of the Dodge, started yelling at the other guy, and they both were in each other's faces. The Dodge guy pushed the other guy over his car, but no one took a swing. Eventually, I guess the second car guy relented and moved his car for Dodge Stratus guy.

Two observations on this: 1) This guy was basically the same as the Will Farrell SNL skit yelling "You do not talk to me like that!! I work too hard to deal with this stuff!! I work too hard!! I'm a Division Manager in charge of 49 people!! I drive a Dodge Stratus!!" Apparently he and his Dodge Stratus were way too important to lose a parking space. 2) He had a car full of passengers (presumably his wife and kids). How could his wife not be embarrassed and the kids not be completely screwed up. It amazes me that a complete asshole can have a family...

Take my stories as a warning, Ski Rage could break-out at a ski slope near you...

Cool idea, but...

First and foremost, I've been getting a little lengthy in my posts. I think I'd rather not make you read a book each time I post, so I'm trying to implement a new strategy. Keep 'em short, but keep 'em coming more frequently.

Now, to make a quick transition to my point, I thought I'd share a cool idea I discovered: The Internet Archive. Its pretty straight forward - one problem with searching the web right now is that you only search through the latest version of the page that the search engine cached during its crawl, and of course you can only navigate to the current version. In most cases this works out fine, but wouldn't it be cool to have a time dimension to web searching as well. I think its a pretty good idea, BUT its still a few years before it becomes useful. I was trying to find out when Darrell Hammond from SNL came to UVA to figure out if Sarah came with me to see him or not (I could see if it occurred during our "break" period...just kidding Sarah). I thought it would be really cool if I could win this argument (Sarah claims she didn't think he was funny, I'm not so sure she was even with me) using the Internet, and I came upon the Internet Archive. It seemed like the perfect way to answer my question: this is information that wouldn't be on the web now but would be before the actual event happened. The problem is you can't just add a date range in addition to the key words of the search, you have to know the URL you're looking for and that proved cumbersome. In the end, I didn't necessarily win the argument, although I bought tix to see him when he comes through Denver anyway. My advice is check out the Internet Archive, remember it, and come back in 3 years when its combined with Google -- it will be awesome.