Merry eff'n Christmas

Okay, not christmas, the christians just ripped off another perfectly good pagan holiday! but, I digress.

It is December 21st, and I am sitting on the couch in DC drinking coffee, and writing. It may seem somewhat normal, but it’s not. I’m supposed to be at the airport waiting to get on a flight to Colorado; for the holidays and some skiing. Oh yeah, 33 inches of fresh, and I’m kicking back in DC with the damn cat that thinks he is a dog. The little eff’r barked this morning… I SWEAR!

So, now I really don’t know what to do. I’m not going to work, as it is our release night, which typically means working from 9:00 AM until midnight of later. Sometimes much later!

Last night I was on hold for 2.5 hours with united airlines until I finally got one of their service reps on the line. At which point, they explained that they could not get me to Colorado until late on Christmas day. I went out to my car this morning, and the battery is dead!

I have had some issues lately, no doubt, not a great month. First some mother eff’r stole some of my kayaking gear off of the back porch. Probably a total of $700 max replacement cost. I found most of the stuff on sale, so I’ll be out approx $350. Then some dumb ass tried to beat me up on my way to block buster last Friday night. He didn’t accomplish his task, but he made my night. I was sick at the time with a really bad cold, and still took him. I don’t even know why! I was just walking up the road to return videos… perhaps he wanted one?

The evening before, my clutch went out at about 1:30 in the morning, on my way home from work. I spent almost the entire day on Saturday getting car parts and working on the car. I’m looking at a seriously shitty end to 2006! I hope that this is not a precursor to 2007… hopefully I’m getting rid of the bad juju in 06 so I can have a good 07? Okay, enough of my depressing shit. Just to sum it up, people who steal shit from me suck, people who try to beat me up for no reason at all suck, dead batteries suck, Denver airport under 2+ feet of snow sucks! But the eff’n dog (cat) barked this morning… crazy shit!

Eff’n MACs

Now the GF and I get along pretty well, but there are a few things that seem to be a continuing source of [friction, agrivation, discontent, annoyance…]. Well before I jump right in, I’ll give a little background. My GF, as with a lot of women, seem to think that it is there significant others job (by default) to take care of certain things… the car for instance. Anything that happens to GF’s car is now my problem. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand this. If I can not find something in the house, it is now GF’s problem (only because she moved it some place).

In addition to the car, there is the COMPUTER. GF had 2 computers, a windows OS laptop, and a mac desktop. Anytime something happened to the laptop, it was my job to fix it. First there was a ongoing disk problem. I bought GF an external hard drive, cleaned up the bad disk as best I could, and had GF back up all her files. I “suggested” that she back up her files everyday, in case the disk decided to have any further issues.

About one month later the disk goes again, and she can no longer boot the machine. GF is very upset! She needs to get the files off the machine ASAP, and it will not start up. “Baby, use my computer, and uses the files from the external hard drive” I say. Now you may think that I just solved her problem, but if you did, you would be wrong. GF has not used the EHD to back up anything since the first issue, so now she has about 1 month of work potentially lost. I ask her why she has not been backing up the files (ok, I should have know better)…. “I can’t back up my files every day!” says GF. “Okay, how about once a week?”. Well this just escalates, and it is not getting us anywhere.

Not to cut this short, but it is not really what I wanted to write about. After a new hard drive and a lot of work to salvage all of GF’s files, her laptop crapped out a couple of months later. This event coincided with her mac crapping out. So GF now has 2 machines, and neither of which is working. I try, but can not fix the laptop, and she has a friend working on the MAC w/o success (b/c I don’t know shit about macs). So after a very emotional week or so, GF decides to buy a new machine… a mac laptop.

GF is thrilled w/the new mac. She walks around the house with it, like it is a new born. She asks me if I like her new mac umpteen times a day. She tells me how fast it is, and smiles as she cradles it in her arms. This is all good! GF has a mac and I don’t work on macs. I’m finally off the hook!!! NO MORE COMPUTER MAINTENANCE!

My state-full bliss has not lasted long (insert sad face here). It turns out, that if GF turns her computer on and gets a wireless connection before I do, I’m blocked out! Yeah, the eff’n mac is keeping me off the wireless router! So, every day, I have to ask GF to disconnect from wireless, and then power cycle the cable and wireless routers. This really is enough of a pain, but to add insult to injury, GF is now excited that her mac is smarter then my pc. She GLOWS with pride every time I have to ask her to disconnect. In over 2 & ½ years, I have never been able to make her as happy as her new baby mac has! Which is absurd! I cost less, can work on a car, (okay, I’m having problems think of other attributes I have the her mac does not). Anyway macs suck, even if they do have a built in camera and microphone so you can skype with your friens.

Howard Doyle Dies

I met Howie pretty late in his climbing career. He was probably 50 when we met, and was still cranking off Seneca 5.11s. We climbed together at Seneca, Gunks, Nelson, the New, and some other smaller crags. Howard always astonished me with his ability to climb hard scary gear routes. Howard’s list of first assents at Seneca Rocks, WV is both long and prestigious! Some are still considered test pieces to this day, and many are timeless classics.

The trips I did with Howard, Jay Zim, and Adam Erlich will remain some of my fondest memories. The yearly ski trip to Utah where Howard would take us down through the trees at Snow Bird, Solitude and Powder Mountain were always an adventure and a pleasure.

I have a picture in my head… it is early morning at Seneca, and Howard had brewed up his coffee on the back of his truck, and was sitting there in the cold morning air, legs crossed, drinking his coffee, looking up at Seneca.

I will miss you Howard!