Into the Woods

Tomorrow morning I will begin a short, timely, and long overdue period of my life.   I am setting out in my Subaru from Ithaca, NY to Park City, UT where a condo I have rented for the winter awaits, along with 5 of the worlds best ski resorts, and hopefully a winter full of large storms.

Am I going to be a ski bum using my hard earned education and job experience to load people on to chair lifts?  Not exactly.  While our new company, Cambridge Semantics, is in a heads-down development phase, I will be hitting the slopes during snow storms, and working on my laptop for the lion’s share of the remainder.
The length of my endless winter will be determined by snow conditions, the state of Cambridge Semantics, and the availability of my condo, presently only leased through January.   However long my adventure, I hope to improve several aspect of my skiing and fitness, including big mountain and back country, as well as dive into the lifestyle and culture of the mountains; an environment I have only witnessed, rather than experienced through my trips out West and weekends at Killington.

Though I’m driving the 2000+ miles across I-80 alone, I will not be alone in Park City.  Joe Betz, a longtime friend, adventure sports teammate and colleague at Cambridge Semantics will be there as well.  In addition, I hope to have lots of friends visit, and of course Lauren will be there as much as her Latin teaching career allows.

Look for pictures and accounts of our winter in Utah on Chronicles of Gnarnia.

I don’t know know where to begin so I just will. What the hell was ARod thinking? I defended him against Red Sox Nation for FOUR YEARS living two blocks from Fenway Park. I consistently proclaimed him as the best player in baseball, and the Yankee’s MVP throughout his post season slumps. I reveled in every HR, and clutch hit; every spectacular barehanded grab and fire to first, every time he proved the critics wrong; I had maintained his greatness, and thought, this year, taking us to the post season he has made himself a Yankee forever. Well the joke is on me and every other Yankee fan who played the role of Arod-apologist. It ends here.
As I sit in my Boston condo, 500 yards from Fenway’s homeplate, minutes after the last incredible baseball team rolled over for the Red Sox, just to piss me off, I’m thinking this has been the worst October. Torre is out, the future of several free agent Yankees on the line, ARod and Snot BorAss pick tonight of all nights to announce his abandonment of the Yankees. Thanks, pick your idiom ‘insult to injury’, ’salt in my wounds’, ‘kick in the nuts’, whatever…Arod delivered in the clutch, once more this season, and he wasn’t even playing. Was he jealous that the limelight was on the Rockies and Red Sox that he had to steal 20 minutes of Sports Center? Peter Gammons said it best, “[Arod] has never played in a World Series, and perhaps there is a reason why.” He just flushed whatever was left of his baseball karma down the drain.

I also thought Scott Boras was supposed to be a businessman. How short sighted can he be if he thinks the Cubs or Angels will pay more than the Yankees, given that the Yankees still have the Texas subsidy? Did he forget that next season will be the Yankees final year in Yankee stadium, and that Arod would likely start as 3rd basemen in the last All-Star game in The House that Ruth Built? Or that he could possibly lead the Yankees to a World Series in that stadium in its final days? Or that he could hit the last HR ever at the old Yankee Stadium, and probably the first HR in new Yankee stadium? I’m not a baseball agent, but c’mon.
Finally, Arod could have taken the instability of the Yankees, as an opportunity to become a leader of the team, something the Yankees will need many of in the absence of Joe Torre. What incredible effrontery Arod showed referring to Rivera, Posada, and Pettite as “His closer”, “His catcher”, and “his pitcher”, when he does’nt even have the balls to commit to “His” team in a time of mild uncertainty. Arod had a chance to stand up and say “I believe in the Yankees and my teammates”, but he tossed that aside. Part of me hopes Cashman recants and agrees to negotiate with Arod in the free agent frenzy because he really is a great player, but part of me hopes Arod can’t even command the salary guaranteed by the contract he tossed aside, and after the stunt he pulled tonight, it may turn out that way.

I’m not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last baseball fan to blast “The Hawk”, an exceedingly obnoxious announcer for the Chicago White Sox local TV broadcast. His most notable crime against humanity is his exclamation “He-gone” whenever an opposing batter strikes out. It doesn’t sound so bad until you have watch a few games with him at the mic. You can read all about his atrocities at Heave the Hawk.

This fellow is only one of many local TV announcers who do little more with their important charge than cheer on the home team. The Seattle announcers are pretty horrible as well. Why do I bring this up now? I have been enjoying watching the Yankee games for several summers in Boston on MLB.tv, the subscription service for watching games over the internet. Generally speaking, the Yankee home games are shown with the Yankee announcers on the YES network, and for the away games I’m at the mercy of whichever network is covering the game. The MLB games have been available on satellite, digital cable, and Internet for several years now, and announcers have to realize that even though they are broadcasting to primarily a local market, they are also broadcasting the game to viewers around the country, many of whom are not rooting for the same time as they are. The Seattle announcers, in particular, provide very little interesting analysis of the game or of the season for either team. It’s just about what hit or strikeout the Mariners need at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not hoping for the normal one inch from retarded announcers you get on the National broadcasts on ESPN and Fox. However, a little bit of unbiased commentary would be appreciated. Some of the bigger market announcers, like the Red Sox announcers on NESN and the Yankees announcers on YES seem to understand this a bit better. I don’t find myself wanting to strangle the Red Sox announcers when the Yankees are losing to the Red Sox. They call the game as it is, and seem to get excited when both teams do things well. Michael Kay of the YES network, says his infamous “track–wall–See-Ya” whenever anybody hits a home run, not just the Yankees. Both NESN and YES announcers analyze both teams in depth and talk about very interesting aspects of the game that even serious baseball fans might not pick up on. Lee might consider this a weak treatment of the subject, but that is all I have.

No I haven’t quit skiing, no I didn’t seriously injure myself this season (though I had several close calls), and yes I think skiing is still amongst the most blogogenic topics.   So what exactly am I going on about here?  On the Mineral Basin chair at Snowbird, Utah, Jenny and I came up with the idea of a community blog for skiers to post all their stories and pictures together.  The site is meant to support a network of skiers who have skied together or know one another, not an anonymous online skiing community of which there are many.  As such, it may not grow very big, but should be fun for those involved.  I’ll post alert-entries here whenever I or maybe somebody else has posted something interesting on Chronicles of Gnarnia.

When three of your four infielders make errors in a single game, one can hardly be impressed with opening day. However, a healthy and productive Yankee lineup, combined with a shaky outing from Scott Kazmir, complimented by a weak Tampa Bay bullpen, the Yankees had little trouble overcoming the D-rays at Yankee Stadium. Almost every Yankee did something well offensively. Most notably Alex Rodriguez had a significant two-run home run that put the game out of reach for Tampa, with Mariano Rivera loosening up menacingly in the bullpen, poised to fan the side in the ninth. It’s of course too early to tell, but I’m happy that no Yankee hitters appear to be starting the season in a slump. And, we should also not take it for granted that Carl Pavano didn’t get hit by a come backer.

Considering the disaster of a ski season we are suffering on the East coast, to complain about the lack of snow in Tahoe would be to complain that the Capital Grille had run out of fillet mignon during a city-wide famine.  However, when you go to the Capital Grille you expect the best, and when you go to Lake Tahoe after January 1 you expect full snow coverage on all trails.  This year, much of the Western mountains received well below average snowfall in November and December, and Tahoe was no exception.  (Whistler has received 29 feet so far, grr..) Two weeks before our trip in mid December, I began to get nervous as Tahoe had not received any significant storms.  Heavenly received 3 storms of about 12 inches each between then and when we arrived on January 2, though with warm weather in between, the mountain was mostly all exposed rock, leaving Heavenly’s heavenly treelines completely unskiable.  Groomed runs would not be enough to keep us happy for 10 days.

Luckily, a major winter storm was arriving the first day of skiing.  As a result, mountain top winds were howling, closing down many lifts and confining the residual holiday crowd to precious few lifts, causing lift lines up the wazoo.  As a bit of background, one or two lifts connect the California side of Heavenly with the Nevada side.  When these lifts close, the mountain bifurcates, with the California side being the most crowded.  Stuck on California, I skied only a few runs with my Cornell Lambda Chi brothers Yale and Lurch before deciding we had 9 more great days coming after the storm, and that it wasn’t worth fighting 40 minute lift lines.  So, we bailed for the day around noon.  However, Jason (another brother) arrived around lunch and was eager to ski. So I offered to take a trip up to the remote Nevada base area and try our luck there.  Because of the lift closings, the Nevada side was deserted, and very skiable compared to packed icy trails at Killington.  I ended the day with suprisingly high spirits.

The next day, the storm came.  There were 4-6 inches of fresh already on the ground when we got on the mountain at 9am, the snow fell quite hard throughout the day.  The trees were still officially closed, but we skied them anyway, enjoying some knee deep powder all day.  It was the kind of day you come to Tahoe for.  I used an older pair of skis, so that the vicious rocks hiding beneath the seductive snow would not damage a brand new pair of Volkl Karmas.

The next day the sun came out, but the temperature remained cold, leaving the a dry, bluebird powder day.  Though I did bring out a newer pair of skis, and put a few nice gauges in the bases.  My boys at Aspen East ski shop in Killington will regret they sold me a season tune package when I get back next weekend.

The storm total of 14-16 inches allowed us to ski lots of terrain for the rest of the trip, and a smaller storm toward the end added some more fresh turns.  I also enjoyed a few sunny terrain park sessions.  After a few crashes and bruises, including a curious doughnut shaped contusion around a cut on my inner thigh, I redialed my 360’s, 180’s and grabs, and I’m ready to progress more this season.  The very last morning of skiing was cut short due to an absolute temperature of -10 degrees Farenheit with an unthinkable wind chill, the kind of air that causes you to passout when you breath it heavily.

The lack of snow this year was mostly made up for by the number of friends in Tahoe at once.  At one point, we had five Lambda Chi brothers all hanging out together in Tahoe.  We enjoyed the nightlife just as much as the skiing.  We survived on a gourmet diet of Subway and Baja Fresh, and hydrated ourselves with free Vodka Redbull at the video poker bars.

A trip to Tahoe wouldn’t be complete without some sort of debacle on the journey home.  After checking in my bags, I was killing some time in a Reno casino with Yale before my flight when I received an automated call from United Airlines telling me that the flight from Reno to LAX was canceled.  However, they informed me that it had been *successfully* rebooked for 6:00am the next day.  The very same thing hapenened the year before.  However, the previous rebooking was for later in the day so last year I was able to go back into Tahoe and make a night of it.  Furthermore, this year, I had developed a raging cold and was exhausted.  I didn’t want to look at another drink or spend another moment in a smoky casino nightclub.  Ready to go in and lightup the united ticket agent who had already checked my bags a couple hours earlier with no mention of a cancelation, I stormed back into the terminal, only to find that the flight had been “reinstated”.  Basically some other more important route had needed a new plane due to mechanical issues so they decided to steal the plane from the Reno route.  Even though they gave it back in the end, the hicup resulted in an hour delay, virtually eliminating all chance of making my connection from LAX to Boston.  Luckily I had a friend in LA who was nice enough to offer me a couch if need be.  But I was tired and sick and didn’t really want to impose on anyone.  Fortunately, United booked me on another red-eye to Boston through Chicago.  I used a healthy dose of Tylenol P.M. to get me through the remaining flights and layovers.  I was so out of it, it’s a marvel I remembered to bring my pants home, let alone the rest of my carry-on luggage: ski boots, ipod, Nintendo DS, etc… The upshot was that I arrived 5 hours later in Boston (11 am), without my checked luggage.  The luggage part was actually good because I didn’t have to carry my 50lb double ski bag and duffle home with me on the Subway. It would be delivered for free the next day.

I have couple more ski trips out West this year, to Vail and Snowbird.  Hopefully we get better snow, and that my travels come off without a hitch.

Many of you know that I spent the last four weeks of my life exploring a new opportunity with a startup company. My role was going to be lead developer of one of three small startups within the Top Ten Media Corp. I would be building a system whereby bloggers and other internet users could offer their writings, photographs, songs and videos for commercial licensing. The idea struck me as huge the first I heard of it. It could easily become viral, and take on a huge amount of popularity. The guys at Top Ten were really cool and made me very excited about the job, and laid out a reasonable, but not an overwhelmingly large offer. The decision was quite consuming, and it made it difficult to enjoy my ski weekend. In fact, I had decided at one point to take the offer, figuring out exactly how I was going to break the news to IBM, and plan the transition, only to wake up the next morning with a clear understanding that it was the wrong move. Many factors that I won’t get into here pushed me to that conclusion, and in the end I decided to stay at my current position as a senior software engineer at IBM’s Cambridge Advanced Internet Technology Lab. We have many cool projects going on, mainly the new release of our Semantic Web application middleware stack. We have many cool apps, demos and prototypes coming down the road, and I’ll be excited to blog about them as I am able. I’ve done a lot of interviewing and job searching over the past year; some more successful than others. I’ve realized that I have it very good here at IBM, and that a truly interesting,fullfilling and secure job is hard to find. I’ve also learned that interviewing and looking for the next step destroys focus and hampers productivity, and I’m excited to settle down and realize our Semantic Web vision with my buddies Lee, Wing, Matt, Sean, Rouben and the rest.
This past weekend was my first full weekend at Killington. The new ski house is very cool. It’s larger than my previous Killington houses, though it is a bit further away: an 8 minute drive to the mountain instead of 5. Anyway, the winter has not been entirely cooperative so far, and even though Killington’s snowmaking efforts have been heroic and they received a foot of new snow over the past week, they still have precious little terrain open, relative to the number of people eager to jumpstart their ski seasons. So, the trails were very crowded. Luckily, I was able to motivate very early on Saturday morning, and get to the lifts by 8:00am. I had some fantastic runs before the crowds came out. The snow was soft, and in some places untracked. I stayed out until 3:30 because I was really enjoying myself and I was skiing with a friend who had purchased a day pass for an ungodly sum, and I wanted him to get his money’s worth. This year at the house, most of the members are my good friends, as was my design. So every waking hour is spent joking, skiing, drinking, eating, hot tubbing, and just shooting the sh*t with your best buddies. One of the highlights of the weekend was everybody vegging out to five episodes of Entourage Season 2 after a hard day on the slopes.
Because of the crowds, I was involved in four different collisions. The first was with Aiden, who was perhaps a bit out of control, and clipped the back of my skis as I was carving across the trail. He got the worst of it, and clicked out of one ski and took a tumble. I was unscathed. The second, some snowboarder couldn’t stop and bounced off of me. The third, some kid was skiing toward me on a flat section where trails merge. I went to the right as you are supposed to, but he went to his left, and we collided. He went down hard, losing most of his stuff. I, for some reason, was left standing, feeling bad, but not overly appologetic. The forth was the worst. I was stopped in the middle of a wide beginner trail, that was steep enough that you could still get some speed if you wanted to. Some racer-type kid lost his edge, and plowed into me from the side at mach 10. I had my pole in the ground so it took most of the blow and bent in a huge arc. If that hadn’t happened he might have done something similar to my ACL. Anyway, I went down a little. If I’d stood him up, I probably would have really injured one or both of us. Still..he lost his gear, and looked rather foolish..so..all in all, I claim to be 4-0 on the weekend…

One of the main reasons I enjoy ski films is the variety and quality of music chosen for their soundtracks. The music is great for skiing itself, but also provides a means to discover new bands that ClearChannel hopes you don’t know about. I usually find ways to get the soundtrack from the DVD onto my ipod and cell phone using various technical methods. However, many people don’t want the whole soundtrack or don’t own the DVD. skimoviemusic.com provides a careful listing of the songs found in ski movies complete with iTunes links. Previously, people had to search forums for only somewhat complete lists or struggle with the DVD fast forward and rewind functions to get the music info from the credits. Now there is one place to go. So far it only has data from the previous two seasons of films. Hopefully they will backdate. Perhaps they would benefit from a Wiki-style interface, and freeze it once the soundtrack is complete and verified. That way, they don’t have to do all the work themselves

Minor Surgery

Last Tuesday, I had a minor surger on my back. About 1 and a half years ago, I had a mole removed off my back. They did a sample scrape off with a scalple and biopsied it. They said it was of no real risk, but that it had some atypical features and when I shared the pathology recently with a dermatoligist in Boston, she wanted to remove it. I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal, but they had me on the operating room table for 30 minutes and cut a 6cm incission in the middle of my back, and sowed it up with 3 layers of stiches. Fortunately, they biopsied the re-excised area and found only scar tissue. So thankfully, all those days of kiteboarding and wakeboarding this summer did not result in cancer. However, I can’t exercise for 2 weeks of which about 8 days are left.

New England is on the verge of a championship

A professional New England sports team is playing for the championship after making a very impressive playoff run the past two weekends. The New England Revolution (Major League Soccer) defeated D.C. United today at RFK stadium in Washington to take them to the MLS Cup championship next weekend. The level of play has been getting much better in the MLS. Especially after the MLS allstars beat Chelsea (the English Premiere League’s equivalent of the Yankees with 200+ million dollar payrol) in a hard-fought exhibition. So next Sunday when you are already sitting on the couch with beer, pizza and whatever else to watch the Patriots, Broncos, Cowboys or whowever, stick around and watch the Revs play for the championship on November 12th at 3:30pm on ABC.

Gigtimes.com: A new online community for local musicians

A took part in a pub crawl this past Saturday to benefit some sort of charity a few of my ski house friends are involved in.  My friend Laura’s roommate Brooke was on the pub crawl, and for one reason or another we started talking about the online community she has been working on over the past couple years.  Her website called “gigtimes.com” is an online community for local bands to meet with venue owners and of course to involve the fans as much as possible along the way.  The website has a solid foundation and seems to provide a home on the web for a passionate group of people.  However, Web 2.0 geeks like Lee, Elias, Wing and my other IBM buddies will notice that the site lacks many of the technologies of the Machine Readable Web we have come to expect in up-and-coming online communities.  I’m not saying I’m going to subject this poor unsuspecting entrepreneur to the horrors of RDFa, Microformats, Microtemplates, eRDF, and you probably won’t be writing a SPARQL query to findout when the next Indy-emo-punk-progressive-accoustic-electro-funk band is playing at the Middle East in Central Square,  but hopefully I can give Brooke a few hints on how to modernize her web site.

For some people summer ends after Labor Day.  Others go by the autumnal equinox on September 21st.  For those who wakeboard on Webster Lake (well, Lake Chagogmanchagogchubungagoggamog to be precise), it’s the last day of wakeboarding when we take Sean’s boat out of the water.  Today, October 22 was that day.

The air was about 55 and the water not much warmer.  After wrestling with the boatlift and dock sections for over an hour, Sean, Rouben and I finally had all the various parts safely out of the way of the winter ice pack.  We then set out for one more more trip around the lake.  I was freezing before I even started to wakeboard.  Before getting in the water, I filled my wetsuit top and board shorts with warm water from Seans onboard shower to ease my passing into the fridged lake. It didn’t help much.  After 3 seconds, the cold water seeped into my skin.  Fortunately Sean pulled me out 15 seconds later and I was treated to some glassy water with no other boat wakes to muck things up.  After about 10 minutes of riding, I felt my feet getting numb so I dropped the rope.  I scrambled into the boat as fast as I could and let more hot water from the hose run through my wetsuit. It probably saved my life.

After loading the boat onto the trailer, we headed back to Sean’s cottage for beers, steaks on the grill and baked potatos. A trurly perfect end to the season…