Category Archives: Mark’s Stuff

While travelling to and from Thailand, you find yourself trapped in a metal tube a few thousand feet above the ground with not a lot to do. I had a book to read, but United Airlines did show some decent movies in the good ‘ol economy cabin. I’m not a movie critic, so I’ll just give a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Thumbs up. Fun movie. The added content over and above the original 6 page childrens book was done very well. Liked it. Thumbs Up.

Up In the Air
Good movie. Watching a movie about a person (Clooney) who flys all the time while flying may have enhanced the experience. Thumbs Up.

Whip It
This movie was just plain fun. Watch it. Ellen Paige is great. Double thumbs up.

Blind Side
Another great movie. I think it won awards. It’s worth it. Sandra Bullock does fantastic in her role which is NOT a romantic comedy. Fantastic. Double Thumbs Up.

Love Happens
Lame. Wish I spent the time reading my book. Thumbs Down.

Invention of Lying
Ricky Gervaise is just plain fun. He was a bit better in “Ghost Town”, but this was still fun. Thumbs Up.

Last summer, Mark was talked into trying out CrossFit classes by his boss, and he rapidly fell in love with it. What’s CrossFit, you ask? Well, it’s a daily workout, focusing on whole-body and functional movements, that tests your mental and physical limits. In other words, he goes to the gym every day at lunch and works so hard he wants to die or throw up or both.

I have gotten trained on CrossFit, and attended several classes so far. The first one was so hard that I started hemorrhaging blood and ended up at the hospital! Since then, I’ve built a ton of strength, and I’ve started to, occasionally, beat Mark at body-weight only exercises.

It’s been a great ride for us so far, and we’ve seen incredible gains in our fitness and strength. One of the best things about CrossFit is the ability to compare gains and accomplishments through careful logging. So, based on this idea, and inspiration from No X in Espresso, we’ve started our own on-line CrossFit Workout Blog.

If you don’t do CrossFit, this blog is unlikely to be very interesting. But, if you do and you’re interested in the struggles and triumphs of other CrossFit-ers, check it out: ColoCalders CrossFit Blog.

My feelings on Taxes… (click on image)

My only regret is that the clip does not have “Quick! Get the hobbling post!”

So, I finished. Hooray. Sunday is completely gone. I deserve fruit pie. Liv, put on your walking collar, we are gonna hoof it over to the supermarket and get Daddy some sweet treats.

A few hours of tinkering last night and the website is in pretty good shape! I discovered that the new wordpress theme I love so much has heavy, heavy use of stylesheets. I know these are useful things, and good for abstracting your code, but I think this is just over the top:

Nobody should have to enclose their photo gallery code in five different “div” levels, and behind one dummy “div.” Yep, that list containing only a space is entirely necessary to make everything work. Lovely.

I still have some work to do, like adding in a link to the map on posts with geotags, and putting the “nights outside” graphs back in. But all in all, it took a lot less time to make it work than I thought it would, and I like it. And it’s fun to redecorate every now and then!

Also, Mark wanted me to post the story of his encounter with the Mangoes and the Monkey Peeler. (Imagine the sound of guitar floating out of the website and Bob Dylan singing “Mangoes and the Monkey Peeler were hard up for cash. They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash…”)

On our hike out from North Table Mountain last weekend, the two guys walking infront of me were discussing the most wonderful sounding foods they were preparing for their superbowl parties. One guy was exceptionally creative and mentioned his world-famous mango chutney. Yuuuum. So, Mark and I bought some mangoes, a pinapple, some peppers and set about making a chutney. While peeling the mangoes with his new, awesome, monkey peeler (a Christmas present from my very cool brothers), the mango got away from Mark and he took the top off of his finger nail.

I finished up the chutney, which turned out great, and we served it in big piles over spicy grilled fish. Mark has kept his finger carefully wrapped and covered in anti-biotic cream, complaining about how this terrible injury is going to ruin our early climbing season.

I guess I’ll go to Florida and get myself some sun
There ain’t no more opportunity here, everything’s been done
Sometime I think of Mangoes, sometimes the fruit dealer
Sometime I don’t think about nothing but the Monkey Peeler

So, my wife is away for 2-ish weeks and I get a full run of the house with a sidenote that it needs to look respectable when she arrives next Saturday.
What does a married guy do when left to his own means for more than two weeks

Eat Food…

Watch an extra dog for a few days (Izzy got to go to work with Liv)

More Holiday Gifts… some wicked strong coffee…

Break the PS3 Rock Band Guitar because I rock THAT much.

My whammy bar went limp :(

Tiny springs make Mark ANGRY!

Endeavor to fix it.

I chose a random retired (though functional) household electronic which has moving parts in the theory that it could have a similar tiny little spring. I was right on my first guess. Sorry CD/Clock/Radio alarm, you served us well but Rock and Roll needs your parts.

The Patient.	The Victim… um… donor
Broken and Donor springs	FIXED!

On Saturday, Katy and I went up into Rocky Mountain National Park and did some snowshoeing up to Loch Vale. It was … delightful. I hiked the whole thing in two layers of t-shirt, while carrying many pounds of arctic-worthy gear in my pack (that I used a little at the Loch)

On Sunday the air temps plummeted and inhaling (air) deeply made me cough.

This morning, Mon, my morning dog walk was at -15 degrees F. Thanks Canada for the gift of showing me how much of a wuss I am. Even my dog can’t seem to do more than short walks without picking up her feet and looking at me with a very accusing look as if I forced her to walk. She has never found a set of dog booties that she couldn’t kick off in under 5 minutes. There is exciting news on that front, a coworker has a “bootie retrieval system” composed of an X of elastic cord which is tied to each booty and the X lays (stretches) across the dog’s back. Liv took it for a test drive and it worked. You can expect some hilarious video once I get a similar system rigged.

We don’t post political stuff here, and I’m going to do my best to keep it that way. Please follow the links to let your congressional representative know how you feel about their recent vote on the financial bailout package. In Stephen Colbert’s words, the brink of financial meltdown is getting “brinkier”.

Visit this page at Colorado.gov to contact your rep (or see a map of the districts and find how who represents you).

I heard on the radio that some reps are getting 100 to 1 feedback against the plan and as of Fri-Sat, the Zogby polling numbers show 46% to 46% at the National level. Those numbers don’t jive.

So, on release day (two weeks ago?) I bought the PC game Spore. For those not following PC games, this is a game where you start out as a single-celled organism and evolve your creature until it grows legs, forms a tribe, builds cities and then ventures out into the galaxy. It also has an internet community component where you can encounter other players’ creations while you play the game. But don’t start imagining yourself as the ultimate core wars player whose organism will crush other players worldwide. What you do see other creatures/buildings/vehicles as a flavor element which you then crush/befriend on their way to galactic dominance.

It received so much hype that I had to try it and find out for myself. Does it stand up to all the hype? No, of course not. Is it fun… yes. I’m a huge fan of all the Civilization style games and galactic exploration/conquest so this is right up my ally. I think this review is fair where they describe it as the ultimate casual game.