Archive for category Not doing things the easy way
How to kill a fat kid’s dream….
Posted by Tom in Blood is Thicker then water cooling, Not doing things the easy way on August 1, 2010
So most of you my dear readers know my brother in one form or another, so use your context of my brother to fill in the gaps of what follows…. Or you can take it as it is and just run with it. Run all the way to the hills with it.
My brother used to come down on a regular basis once upon a time, but due to changes in his personal life and scheduling conflicts he hasn’t been able to come down in almost a year. Sometime last month he signs up for a conference in Phoenix so he can have an excuse to come down and try and hang out with his brother… at least that is what he told me. At the very least he saved his work a few dollars by crashing at “Chateu de me” instead of a staying smart at a Holiday in Express.
So I roll in from work at my usual time and there is my brother watching TV on my couch… strange how he always has a key to my house, but yet “the key to his house can’t be copied and he has only one” very very very strange. So we chat for a bit and I ask “what do you want for dinner?” because as you all know I keep exactly enough food for one person for about 2.5 days in my house. After the usual hemming and hawing he doesn’t really have a answer.
At one point he was wanting to do the “Man VS Food” challenge at Chompies in Tempe, but he backed out of that because “he wanted to make sure he like the sliders first”…. Ok kind of weak, but I will give him the pass our family is known for having notoriously sensitive stomachs. So I suggest the “Tilted Kilt” the following conversation ensues…
LilBrother (LB); What’s “Tilted Kilt”
Me; Bar food but more of a Irish flavor, even though Kilts are Scottish.
LB; Uh ok, I guess.
Later on in the truck as we are pulling into the Tilted Kilt on Baseline and Gilbert in Mesa….
LB; So really all this way for something we could have gotten around the corner from your house?
Me; Food yes, but the service is really good here.
And as we walk up to the door and I open I all I hear from my brother is…
LB; whoa (just loud enough that I could hear it)
So yeah, he enjoyed the “Tilted Kilt” after we finish he says “I saw this place called ‘Aunt Lena’s’ by Chandler Mall we should go there…. OK the boy doesn’t get out of the sticks much I will indulge him…
Turns out that using his smart phone to look up directions is not something that ever occurred to him… I finally have to pull over to look up the place… and it’s nowhere near Chandler Mall it’s over on Arizona and Ocitllo… The following conversation ensues…
Me; how did figure this place was near the Chandler Mall?
LB; I saw it on “Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives” and I when I saw the background shots it looked like the strip malls around the Chandler Mall.
I guess nobody told him that all the strip malls in that part of town look the same. So we trek out there… and sure enough there are two identical strip malls across the street from one another the only difference is one has a Lowe’s and one has a Home Depot. So we drive through both, I do the Google maps thing, and we can’t find this place. Finally little brother calls the place listed on Google maps page… and the number is disconnected….
LB; Man way to kill a fat kids dream there
So we begin the trek home… somewhere along the way we get detoured to a cold stone and a movie about a guy who kills people with carrots… The movie was almost as good as the Kilt…
As a interesting side note on why you should research before going anywhere, after I put in a cursory Google search I found this article and it’s #1 on the Google results!
http://thedish.freedomblogging.com/2009/01/05/restaurant-closings-aunt-lenas-lucs-carrabbas/2660/
I think someone missed the boat just a touch.
10,000 ft and surprisngly I feel pretty good…
Posted by Tom in Not doing things the easy way on June 27, 2010
The day after the event.
So I’ve probally mentioned a hike in August to go up Longs Peak in Colorado w/ a few friends… well on the way to that final hike Curtis and I did what could best be described as a “midterm” hike to gauge our progress.
The results are encouraging.
From a gear perspective; I picked up new shoes, a larger day pack with true hip support, and large hydration system. The shoes I’ve been using for a couple of weeks now on hikes around Phoenix and they have done well. The back and hydration system were taken out for the first time this week. Overall I’m pleased with how the pack worked I was a little surprised when I pulled out the hydration pack and it was dry all that was left was the water in the tube. So 100oz in the high country of Arizona on 11 miles of trail is probably juuuussstttt enough. Provided you don’t hit it hard and early and tap out on the way up. Longs will probably require a couple of nalgene type water bottles to supplement the hydration pack.
From a food perspective; we ate mainly trail mix fruit and jerky on the way up along with water. I had a couple of energy packs. For a buck a pop they actually work surprisingly well, I will definitely be bringing a few extra with me on the longs hike. As for lunch at the top Curtis and I both had sandwiches from Safeway… I’m thinking some a bit more substantial may be in order.
From a physical perspective; the time in the gym paid off in large dividends. Unfortunately there is no way to train for altitude at 1,500 ft above sea level. I started to having issues around 10,000 ft on the climb up, going 40 or 50 feet stop for a couple seconds catch my breath go another 50 or so feet which is pretty much what I expected. Curtis started having issues around 9,000ft when we started gaining a fair bit of elevation. 9,000 ft and flat he had no problem with.
Overall I’m pretty pleased with the results. Longs Peak is still going to be 14,000 ft of damned interesting though.
In the end…
Posted by Tom in Not doing things the easy way on June 14, 2010
At the end of the day I have a choice… I can wallow in my own self pity or I can do something fucking about it.
I choose to do something fucking about it.
But first… I need another beer.
Keep until the end…
Posted by Tom in Appley, beer flavored, It's hell to be me...., musings of a back porch, Not doing things the easy way, Observations that no one else cares about on May 10, 2010
Long time readers of the blog… and I think there is a grand total of 4 of you now. Probably remember the last round of upgrade fever that hit the batcave which resulted in a TiVo, a MacBook Pro, and a sooner then I would have liked upgrade to my current desktop rig. That last bout of upgrade fever was 2007. Honestly it was pretty much kicked off by coming into a couple of bucks because of a house I sold. I think I may have gotten into beer brewing at about that time too, and I have yet to hear anybody complain about that (when enjoyed in moderation).
So flash forward to 2010 it’s 3 years since the last major bout of upgrade fever… and honestly I don’t think it’s returned. Do I look at the new Core i5 MacBook Pro’s and go “damn that is one sexy machine”? Oh hell yes I do. Am I going to stick with Mac as my laptop platform of choice…. at this time I’m going to say that the answer is yes. I don’t feel this over riding urge to go and purchase a new laptop simply because it’s new. Other then a different body style and upgraded guts what does this new mac do that my existing mac doesn’t do?
In a word not a damn thing. Actually I’m starting to think that I may pull windows off my mac with the exception of a vmware environment. Why install windows on a mac? well in a word “games” and I have to think about the last time I played a game on my mac (spring of 2009) after that I’ve booted into windows just to update it and the AV software, I’m normally back to the mac os within a hour or so. At this juncture it seems kind of dumb to keep a windows partition on my mac. Vmware has matured as a product that it’s pretty usable for those one off devices that won’t work with mac (which in my world are far and few between).
What I find interesting is what I choose to do on my mac vs my pc….
Photos… mac
Videos… editing the one time… mac… watching pc
surfing… pc unless I actually unpug the mac and take it to another room… and honestly I would just assume leave the technology in the office when I get home / get done working.
games… pc
blogging… what ever is most convenient… which again depends on what I’m doing quick dumps seem to go better on the pc… longer sessions (pretty much anything with the category of “musing of a back porch”) tends to be written on the mac. Not that the mac is any better it’s just more portable which lets me get creative in other spots.
When I think about how I use mobile technology I know that a iPad while cool would probably not be used as anything more then a media tablet and digital photo frame. And if I had pictures that I wanted to show off in HD on a 10 inch screen I would so buy one. But I don’t and I tend to be more old school in my technology usage (I still prefer a command line for Christ sake) and combination of mac-book air with a mac mini seems like it would do well for me. At the very least the mac-book air wouldn’t burn my legs like my mac book pro.
Why a Mini and a Air? The Air would be for the day to day stuff, surfing and writing… The mini would be for more cpu intensive apps (vmware, iphoto editing, something with more then a 12 inch screen) of course the cost of those two items is just about to the point of a mac book pro and why buy two when you can have one at the same price.
The part in all of this that drives me up the wall the most? Other then a slightly undersized hard drive (which is fixed very easily by a afternoon and $75) I have zero problems with my mac and it does everything I need/want it to do! I don’t know if I’ve finally hit the point of not needing the latest and greatest or if maybe just maybe I have found technology that can fulfill my needs for a extended period of time.
God it’s hell to have my problems. 
I listen for the whisper of sweet insanity…
Posted by Tom in friends, Not doing things the easy way on April 25, 2010
The definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. While I would like to present evidence to the contrary, my own personal experiments have proven that if you do something consistently and change nothing you will get the same result each and every time. I killed alot of beer to bring that thought to the forefront of your semi-weekly blog reading. I hope you appreciate the sacrifice that my liver and I have done for you.
Speaking of insanity… so there is trip being planned to go climb a mountain… I’m still trying to figure out how I got talked into this one, but I’m pretty sure my easy going nature coupled with the news that I did not get a elk tag this year pushed me over the edge. It’s a small mountain only 14,000ft… so the air is a touch thinner up there then it is at 1,200ft down here in Phoenix. The bright side is the mountain will be climbed in August which means I have 4 solid months to prepare. So lets talk about prepare for a moment, almost all of my gear is designed for day work, which works out well since this will be a day hike. And when I say day work I mean walk the 1.5 miles from the truck to the blind/water/whatever and wait for the Elk. If we do walk it’s normally less then 3 miles, cross country with no climbing involved (other then the occasional barb wire fence).
So this peak while being 14,000ft high also has a bit of a scramble and it’s 8 miles one way. I’m going to need some new shoes, and get those puppies broken in. A new day pack that actually has some sort of support in it would be good too (since it can be re-purposed to other functions i.e. hunting).
Gear in the bag is a whole different ball of wax… that I’m going to have work on with a dry run or two here in AZ.
As for speed, I only have one speed and it’s the speed I’m currently going and as long as the direction is forward we are all in good shape.
I can already feel alot of moaning and groaning coming on about this trip, which means I’m beyond excited I can’t wait!
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