After what eveyone thought was their final performance August 14th and 15th 2004 (they essentially announced it was their final tour) Phish has now decided to get back together for at least 3 days in March ‘09 at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia. I’m definately going to try to go.
For anyone else who cares: Check it out here .
My sweet little sister Denise has left on a two year religious mission to Australia. And although I don’t subscribe to her religion, I support whatever it is that she thinks she should be doing with her life. I couldn’t make it to her “farewell” — so she made me a 5-10 min DVD with a bunch of goofy little clips related to old nostalgic memories. What sweet sister. : ‘ )
Write me! (And I’ll return the favor).
- Rockstar
This was the second half of my European trip in Spetember. Following the work week in Berlin we decided to take a trip down through Switzerland to the border of Italy. As I mentioned in my previous post, I lost my camera on a Train in Switzerland. So my photographic documentation of this trip is somewhat limited. Fortunately Aubry took some pics, so I have a few.
On Thursday, Sept 16th we took a flight from Berlin to Zurich. Zurich is a beautiful place, and clearly very much a big, international city. Zurich is located next to Lake Zurich, and is located at the point at which the Limmat River drains from the lake. Zurich is frequently listed as one of the top five cities in the world in terms of quality of life, and it’s easy to understand why.
We stayed downtown, at a hotel called The Senator. It was raining, but we decided to walk (1.5 miles) in the rain to the Swiss National Museum. It was rather wet, but we had fun. This is a view of us approaching the Swiss National Museum, which was at one time an old castle. It was totally awesome. The Museam is laid out in such a way that it takes you through the history of Switzerland from prehistoric times to the modern era. This is a pic of me standing under an ancient Celtic wooden statue of an old Celtic god. Apparently there had been a celtic settlement near Zurich in ancient times. Here is a pic of the museum, taken from one of the spires inside the building.
As I mentioned in my pervious post, I took a business trip to Europe in the last half of September (Germany, Switzerland / Northern Italy) … I took lots of killer pictures, but unfortunately left my camera on a train in Switzerland on the way to the airport at the end of my trip. It sucks so very, very much. I filed a report with Swiss Rail authorities and, here is the verbatim reply I received:
“Until today, the SBB Lost Property Service could not find your lost article. We shall inform you no sooner we have found it.” – looks like it’s lost in the sands of time. : ‘ (
Fortunately my girl Aubry also took some pictures, so I have some pics of the trip, although the selection is fairly limited. It’s a good thing I have Aubry. Since this trip was rather large, I’ll split this up into two posts: the Berlin trip (business trip) and the Switzerland trip (purely for fun).
Me and Aubry went to Berlin for work, and also took a small tour through switzerland. 9/11-9/22. Unfortunately I left my camera on the rail car on the way back to the airport in Zurich (doh!). I have an inquiry open with them to retrieve it .. but am expecting it to be lost forever. :’ (
I’ll wait until I hear back from them before writing a better blog post about the trip.
Me and Aubry drove up to Steamboat Springs on 9/4 and stayed for a couple nights. Steamboat is about 3 hours away from Parker, due Northwest. It’s another sort of mountain-ski-resort town. Steamboat Springs is a lot bigger then Telluride, and in my opinion, it’s also probably a bit less intrinsically scenic.
Day 1:
We got into town late on Thursday and had pizza at a place called “The Slopeside Grill” — it was medicore. We then went back to the condo and watched the enchanting Howls Moving Castle, which Aubry had never seen (I saw it in theatres when it came out years ago). You have to love Miyazaki films : ‘ ).
Day 2:
We woke up late and ate at a place called the Tugboat Grill. (What’s up with the “boat” theme in this town?).
We then went hiking on “Fish Creek Trail.” First, we rocked a small 1/2 mile hike by a river up to a fairly cool waterfall. Then we took a ~3 mile hike along a rather scenic trail up to a second, larger waterfall.
On 8/26 me and my friend Jake drove through colorado to Telluride, a ski resort town in the mountains of south-western Colorado.
I had been to places like Vail and Park City (UT), and imagined this would be similar. This choice was partially brought on by the fact that the company me and Jake work for, eBay Inc, has a corporate retreat in Telluride that the executives use, which sorta made me curious.
Telluride is a beatiful place, it’s a tiny, scenic, and charming little village in a deep canyon, with heavily forested mountains on either side. It clearly caters to affluent travelers from all over the world who want a nice little vacation away from everything .. there are an abundance of 4 and 5 star resteraunts, film festivals, and nice hotels .. all of which struck me as a bit strange considering how secluded it is. We stayed at the ‘Hotel Telluride’ for two nights, which is right in the middle of the village.
We did some hiking on Bear Creek Trail, a 2-3 hour hike up to a waterfall. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and reminded my of the many nights I camped in the Uinta Mountains in Utah as a kid. Me + mountains = happy.
Aubry moved in with me a couple days ago. Boxes and random clutter rule the house for the moment.
Some interesting facts about this scenario:
1) Moving sucks, any way you shake it. Thanks to Jake for lending a hand.
2) We now own two of several things that are not neccisarrily better in numbers: things like toasters, Monthy Python and the Holy Grail dvds, Playstation 3s, etc. Oh well, better too many then too few. : ‘ )
3) Three cats is too many cats. (Aubry’s two plus my cat Lily).
4) Aubry is great. : ‘ )
It was a good time. I had been to Manhatten before, but Aubry hadn’t. I figured it would be cool for her to see.
Flight: We flew on American Airlines, and on both the flight out there and the flight back we went through the Dallas/Ft Worth airport, and both times our flight was delayed by like 3 or 4 hours. Hanging out in airports is sub-optimal. We used points we had racked up flying to Shanghai in December, that was nice. : ‘ )
Hotel: We stayed at a bit of a peculiar hotel called the The Dream which I thought looked cool (a motif of dark rooms with a strange blue glow, strange art, etc) and had a great location, which was on Broadway, in between Times Square and Central Park.
When we arrived we were greeted with seeing a Giant Menancing Rat facing the entrance of the hotel. According to the protesters, the owner of the hotel has been involved in some shady and unscrupulous behaviors, and this is how they protest, NY style.
The day after we arrived we went a live taping of The Daily Show. This is me entering the studio. Above the entrance, a sign reads “Abandon News, All Ye Who Enter Here.” The Guest was Brian Williams from NBC Nightly News. Brian talked about a recent trip he took to Tehran to see the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was fairly interesting. Apart form having to stand in line for 2 or 3 hours on arather hot and humid July New York afternoon (ugh), it was pretty cool. Too bad we couldn’t see Colbert.
The next day we walked north a couple blocks on Boardway to get to the southwest corner of Central park. We walked though central park to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Central park is cool … although it’s kinda crowded, it is nice to see such a peaceful and green place in the midst of skyscapers and busy streets. While walking though central park I walked past a statue in tribue of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” — one of my favorite books when I was younger. This is me standing amdist the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Alice.
The Met was very cool. It’s HUGE, and filled with art from some of mankind’s greatest masters. Check out me standing next to a self portrait of Rembrandt. We spent multiple hours looking at everything form ancient Egypian and Asian art, to Eurpoean Renaissance era paintings and sculpturs, to modern art.
The next day we took it easy, slept in late, ate some killer food at the resteraunt attached to the hotel, and then proceeded to galavant around Times Square.
It was an entertaining little jaunt. : ‘ )
– Rock *
My old friend, Brian Tanner, has set the world record for fastest time ever completing Super Mario Bros 2 for the NES:
This is verifiable on the Twin Galaxies website (click me).
He got the idea after seeing the very awesome ‘King of Kong’ — a documentary about the world record holder(s) for Donkey Kong.
Brian is so hardcore. : ‘ )
- Rock*
On the way to work today I picked up the newly released Final Fantasy IV remake for gameboy DS. It’s a game that was originally released for the Super Nintendo back in 1991. I owned it when I was in elementary school (I was 10 years old when it was released), and I played it to death in fifth and sixth grade. Aubry also played the game as a kid and loved it.
My and Aubry are flyng to NY at the end of the month, and we both have a DS, so I picked up a copy for each of us, thinking it would be a good passtime for the plane ride.
Once I get a chance to play it, I’ll post a review.
I recently swtiched this blog over from Godaddy hosting, which sucked, to a virtual dedicated hosting provider. It’s Red Hat Linux running on a Xen virtual server. Having SSH access and being root makes me happy.
I’ve been thinking about blogging for a long time, and finally decided to make it happen.
A few updates on myself:
- I’m still working for eBay as a ‘Technical Duty Officer,’ which is sort of a systems administrator and crisis manager.
- Living in Parker, CO in a house with my cat, Lily
- My big thing lately is traveling .. especially to foreign and exotic places. This was Hawaii at night, last fall. : ‘ ) I plan to post pictures of recent excursions.
Who is this Rockstar you speak of?
- The universe, and its endless ambiguity, makes me unsettled
- I am an atheist
- Rain is comforting, it’s raining at the moment
- I work at night, and am fairly nocturnal
First, let me state that I’m not a big superhero or comic book guy, although I am capable of enjoying either if they are done well. Read the rest of this entry »
