Ben and Joe Afterfrom Big Sky 2009

It was a great trip. Fantastic weather, really good snow, no injuries, and my favorite part about Big Sky: no lift lines. The interns, as Ryan dubbed them, did really well. As predicted, I certainly had my work cut out for me just trying to keep up.

We got a lot of fun pictures too. Mine are here; Ryan’s are here. My favorite has to be this shot by Ryan. On the afternoon of the last day, we split up for a while. The boys headed to the terrain park while Ryan and I rode a couple blues we hadn’t seen yet. Our timing was perfect, because our next lift ride took us right over the park while Ben was making his run. He hit the C-box perfectly, and we were able to snap off some aerial photos. This all happened without any coordination.

I already can’t wait to go back, and the interns will be more than welcome when they’re ready for their true apprenticeship.

Ben and Joe Beforefrom Winter 2003

I’ve always loved this picture, taken of my brothers Ben and Joe before their first snowboarding lesson. The total lack of enthusiasm on Joe’s face kills me. In 2003, I had the pleasure of teaching them how to ride. It was a struggle at first, but by the end of the day, they were both riding, turning, and stopping on their own, carving up the blues at Afton Alps. They’ve both become good riders, and I’m proud to have been a part of that.

Six years later, I feel very lucky to be able to bring them along to Big Sky this weekend. It’ll be their first exposure to real mountain snowboarding. I’m sure this time it’ll be me who struggles to keep up, and I’m hoping they’ll teach me a trick or two. My FS 270 needs work. This time, I’m assured that they’re very excited, and I hope to post a successful “After” picture soon.

I’m generally no fan of Apple. Their marketing is so frequently filled with lies. The Mac v. PC ads are impossibly smarmy. And the Apple Stores: the retail employees are either so uninformed or so blinded by corporate idolatry it makes me ill. (Don’t get me started on the so-called “genius” bar.)

Mac OS has its moments, but for every cool feature (Exposé, Spaces), there is as much awfulness (menu bar, Finder, window management, keyboard shortcuts). If you really think it’s any better than Vista, it’s probably time to put the Kool-Aid down. And the dev environment, Xcode? What a usability nightmare.

But I’ve certainly been a fan of their hardware ever since my 3rd-gen iPod. Their computers, phones, and media players are certainly the best looking around, and they always seem very solid. With that in mind, curious about iPhone development, and needing a laptop for grad school, I made the plunge and bought my first Mac – a refurbished MacBook Pro (MBP). This was in September.

Three weeks later, conveniently past the return period, Apple announced a new line of MBPs that were much cooler than mine. On top of that, mine started making a really high-pitched noise at medium brightness in Vista. Two separate repairs by the “geniuses” did nothing to fix the problem, and the laptop was beginning to show signs of having been taken apart and reassembled by non-experts.

Here I was seemingly stuck with an “obsolete” machine that made my ears ring and didn’t nearly shine like it had only six weeks ago.

So I was elated yesterday when I called Apple to pursue a third repair or possible exchange. After only a few minutes on the phone with customer service and a few more minutes on hold, they gave me an exception to the return policy – I’ll be getting a full refund for the “old” one. I was really impressed by this; kudos to Apple on a great “make good.” My new MBP is already on the way.

Happy second anniversary to my sweet Sugarpop! It keeps getting better.

I had PRK surgery done two years ago, and my vision has been fantastic. I’ve generally been pretty comfortable, but every once in a while I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and my eyelids will be stuck to my eyes. Opening them quickly before I realize this is then very painful.

It happened again early Sunday morning and my right eye still stings today. I saw Dr. Croissant (his real name), and he explained that it’s not uncommon and nothing to worry about. I have a “recurrent abrasion.” My eyes are dry, and small areas of my cornea are not totally healed since the PRK procedure; this is normal. The dryness makes my lids stick to those healing parts of the cornea and then pull them off. I’ll be using a salve at night for a while to keep the eyes lubricated until they full heal.

Before I begin, let me clarify that I really enjoy Vista and Windows Media Center (WMC). Don’t let my recent purchases fool you, I haven’t become a Mac, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to. WMC combined with an Xbox 360 or other Media Center Extender (MCE) provides an awesome television viewing experience, especially in HD. With the issues ironed out, it’s been working fantastically for a couple of months now.

However, my experience with it hasn’t been without its problems. The problems themselves wouldn’t have been so bad if they had been well documented online, but they weren’t. This post exists so that hopefully someone else with the same problems can save themselves some of the swearing I’ve been reduced to.

My Setup

• Windows Vista Ultimate
• ASUS P5K Motherboard
• Core 2 Quad – 2.4 Ghz
• 4GB RAM (I only realize 3.25 under 32-bit Vista)
• Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm, 1TB Hard Drive
• SiliconDust’s awesome HDHomeRun network TV tuner

Problem 1: Total Computer Freeze

I had used WMC on my old PC (and extended via the 360) without issue, so when I build the new box, I was pretty excited about seeing it all in HD. You can imagine my disappointment when I fired up the MCE on the 360 to try it out, seeing the great picture only to get an error message telling that WMC couldn’t connect. When I went to the PC to investigate, it was totally locked up. Not like a program had crashed… not like a blue screen… not rebooted… just totally frozen. Nothing to do but turn it off and back on.

This seemed to happen every time I used the extender. Sometimes it would happen immediately after the MCE started, usually it would happen 30 seconds or so in to watching something (live or recorded). Occasionally it would happen after 30 minutes or more of fine performance – this was the most frustrating, as it would seem that some tweaking I had tried had fixed the problem.

Solution: It turns out that this freezing has something to do with the onboard network card of my P5K motherboard, either the hardware itself or the drivers. Strangely, simply adding another network card did not fix the problem. I had to to remove the drivers completely and disable the card in the BIOS settings. After doing that and installing a new network card, this problem has gone away.

Problem 2: “application has launched UI unexpectedly”

I felt great when the total lockup was solved, but that didn’t last long. Soon enough I began to get the “application has launched UI unexpectedly” error from the 360 when trying to launch the MCE. I would reboot, and occasionally that would fix the problem. I also followed the steps in this Microsoft knowledge base article; that seemed to fix the problem too, until a week later when it happened again. Reapplied the steps, problem solved… until a week later when I was trying to demo my sweet setup to a friend… boom. This time reapplying the steps several times did nothing, and I was ready to beat my head against the wall when I saw the annoying “low battery warning” from my mouse driver pop up.

Solution: Duh – that was the unexpected UI! I checked the Startup folder for all users and sure enough, the mouse driver shortcut was there. When someone starts a MCE session, it runs as a separate user on the computer, logged on in the background. So that user was effectively getting the low battery warning with no way to handle them. I moved all the shortcuts from the “all users” startup folder and put them in my own startup folder, and I haven’t seen this happen since.

I hope this helps someone. If so, let me know!

You have to love the Daily Show. Thanks to Kari for sending me this.

(Warning: links from this post might be gross, just remember that they’re all just cake.)

Thank you so much to Patrick for telling me about Cake Wrecks. My day is made. Nowhere else could I learn about both a delivery cake and a foot fungus cake along with priceless examples of stupidity.

I love Google Maps. Creating a map of hotels and bed & breakfasts we’re considering for our upcoming San Francisco trip was incredibly easy and fun, and now it’s super useful.

Lyric & Maebyfrom Grilling with Lyric

This sporadic blogger feels the need to post something, despite any specific news. So summer’s been going well. Our patio and grill have seen a lot of use with some thanks to Christin & Lyric and the Kesslers. Maeby’s been keeping us active, and both the dog and I are a few pounds lighter for it. I’ve been having a lot of fun with my new toy, my reading list, new things to study, and some old-school gaming.

My camera has been getting a lot of work as well, but a lot of that still sits on my computer awaiting “post-processing,” otherwise known as deleting, deleting, deleting, cropping, sharpening, and “I’m Feeling Lucky.” So when I finally get through that, there will be photos to enjoy of our continuing summer adventures, including grilling with the Bears, Minnesota wine country, and fun times at Lake Kjostad.

We also recently decided to take a long weekend in San Francisco. Amy’s wanted to go back there as long as I’ve known her, and I’m excited to see it for the first time. If anyone has any travel tips for us, let me know.