Category: General

1585 Trip Miles

We just got back from a trip upstate to see family and friends. It was over a week, a double trip split between Western NY and the Adirondack mountains. It was a very nice time, relaxing and invigorating.

First stop was to visit my parents. We drove up Friday and spent Saturday relaxing. My brother and his fiancé came over for a barbeque, with their dog Loki. Did a bit of fishing and took the girls on a hike along the creek in the park near their house. Sunday we went up to Canada for a family reunion. Good to see all the cousins and uncles. Martin blogged about it too and put up some pictures here.

My grandmother told I should take a trip to Hungary. This is something I’ve been considering doing in a few years, when the girls are old enough to handle a big international trip. There is an origami conference each year in Budapest, and it might be a cool thing to check it out. I had already talked to my mother about the possibility of coming along, as she is fluent in the language, and she likes the idea. So one step closer to reality and added to the list of destinations. With luck the next few years will be a good for traveling with the family.

On Tuesday we went out with my Mum and Dad to my Dad’s woodlot. It’s a piece of land he has out in the countryside with a meadow and a creek and a forest. He goes deer hunting there in the fall. It’s a beautiful place and it was a perfect sunny day. We had a picnic there with bacon cooked over the fire, then went for a hike in the woods and let the girls splash in the creek and try and catch minnows in cups.

Wednesday we went out to Victor, NY to visit Jeannie’s brother and their family. Carrie was delighted to have Michelle over and they played together. But the big news is they just had a baby! Little Anna, only a few days old, and as tiny and cute as can be. A very peaceful baby.

Then it was on the Saranac Lake, NY, in the very heart of the high peaks country of the Adirondacks. We stayed with our friends Mark and Kelly. It was great to catch up. They had just bought a new house and have been busy fixing it up: drywall, paint, a pretty big amount of work. Alot of it was done but the place was not yet ready to move into.

On Thursday we went for a hike up nearby Mount Baker. It’s about a mile up the hill and then again back down, and the kids complained a bit because whenever we stopped the mosquitoes came at us something fierce. But the view was great and it was worth it for the character-building. Later that day we went to a place called the Wild Center in Tupper Lake, a sort of natural history museum of the region. They had had a big hall of exhibits with native plants and animals including frogs and turtles and salamanders and fish and even an otter. They also had some (taxidermically) stuffed fauna including a loon. I must admit I’ve never seen a live loon, and when I made my origami loon it was based on pictures from Google image search. So I kind of have this thing about loons now, trying to get to know them. The bird was a good deal larger than I expected (almost 2 feet long), and wider. I think I did a pretty good job at capturing its essence.

Went to a great restaurant in Placid called The Caribbean Cowboy that night. They had all kinds of good stuff I had some seared tuna over a bed of jambalaya.

Mark works at the Olympic center in Lake Placid, and Friday we took a tour. There was a triathlon in town that weekend so the roads were all full of cyclists, and the town it itself was pretty packed with people. First we went up the car road to the top of Mt. Whiteface. We had to drive around to the far side of the mountain and put up with the kids clamoring to stop at Santa’s Workshop in North Pole, NY along the way. And when we got to the toll we were told the top of the mountain was shrouded in clouds and visibility was zero. So we turned back. This might be a good time to mention that we used to come up to the Adirondacks alot in the days before we had kids, and in three trips on three different winters I went up with the intention of skiing Whiteface and the mountain was closed because of extreme cold, extreme wind or a combination of the two. So this really came as no surprise.

So we spent the morning at a place called High Falls Gorge on the north fork of the Ausable river. It’s a neat little canyon with some falls and rapids and some nice hiking trails including some bridges and catwalks that let you get in close to the action.

By the time we were done there, the weather was clearing so we thought we’d get up Whiteface while we had our chance. Rather than motor all the way back to the north face, we decided to take the gondola, which was nearby. The ride up was pleasant and soon we arrived at the top of Little Whiteface (elevation 3900 ft), which was just as well, as Big Whiteface (elevation 4700 ft) was still obscured by clouds. After hanging out in Tahoe and the Sierras for a few years these peaks don’t sound that high, but it’s about as tall as it gets on the east coast! The view was great, of the surrounding peaks and lakes and the sky was properly dramatic.

Maybe a bit too dramatic at that. We’d had a good look around and were ready to come down, when all of a sudden up came a fierce wind and pelting rain. A dozen or so people up there all went into the ski patrol cabin to wait it out, as they stopped running the gondola. After a short while the rain stopped, but they were reluctant to start the gondola up again, cuz another storm was on the way. Finally there was a break and they decided to get everyone down at once. The ride up took 18 minutes but the trip down took maybe 5. And not a moment to soon. By the time we got back to our car it was raining again, and minutes later it there was hail and rain so hard I had to pull over.

We went into Placid and got some lunch. By the time we were done the storm had passed so we went to check out the ski jump complex. Boy ever neat. There were guys practicing acrobatic jumps and landing in a pool, which was fun to watch. Then we went to the main tower. It’s amazing how tall that thing is. And it’s built on top of a mountain! You have no idea seeing it on TV; you really have to check it out in person. I don’t think I’d ever have the fortitude to be a ski jumper. In fact when I go to the gate where they start the run I got a but spooked. On the way down –- you have to take a chair lift up the hill to the tower — I noticed it was one of the highest lifts I’d ever been on, and there’s no kind of seatbelt to keep little kids from falling out. But we all landed safe and sound.

The last stop of the day was the ice skating center. They have 2 rinks there, one from the 1932 games and one from 1980. On the older rink was a figure skating show, featuring girls from all over the northeast. A girl who did a Tinkerbell routine won. Michelle, who had taken ice skating lessons last winter, absolutely loved this. She has been thinking of ways to pretend to practice ice skating since we got home, mostly sliding around our wood floors in socks.

There was also a “Virtual Reality Simulation” ride there, which took you down the bobsled run, luge, ski jump and some other events. It was pretty cool except for the heavy, clunky, lo-rez, 15-year-old headmount displays from VPL which didn’t even do any motion tracking. They would have been better off (and I’m saying this now as a former professional VR software and systems developer and designer) with a big screen in the front of the room for everyone to look at. The fans were a nice touch I’ll admit. Also they could’ve used Adirondack chairs. That would’ve been cool.

Saturday was much more mellow. We went swimming in Middle Saranac Lake, at a tranquil little beach accessible only be hiking trail. Twice it started to rain, then rained hard for a minute or two, and then cleared up again. Crazy mountain weather. Later that we took a really nice canoe ride around Lake Flower, and checked out all the cottages. It really reminded me a lot of when we used to go up north in Canada as a kid. Mark’s landlord, also name Mark, was a really nice guy. We struck up a conversation and he offered us the use of his canoe. He also gave us a ride in his powerboat to take the girls for ice cream.

Mark had spent most of the day working on his house and missed all the fun. Saturday was big painting day for him, so I went over there and helped him out for a few hours. He had a They Might Be Giants boxed set on his iPod, which made the whole experience pretty pleasant.

Sunday it was pouring rain from the time we got up. We went to brunch in town, and the place was packed, but the food was good. It was also triathlon day so we decided to take the scenic route home, via Tupper, since the roads would be closed near Placid. Drove a good 100 miles in the rain on the mountain roads. The weather finally cleared as we got on the Northway. Almost as soon as we got past Albany the Thruway slowed to a crawl, so we took an alternate route home.

While we were on the road, my car passed 90,000 miles. Woo-hoo! I put more miles on my car on this trip than I have the whole year before that. While were on the road, I listen to the girls sing songs from Hannah Montana. I now have every song memorized even though I’ve never heard the CD! Also Lizzy and I concluded that an RV that turns into a house boat and then turns into an airplane would be a really cool thing to have. I have it all worked out in my mind. Remind me later and I’ll make some sketches.

Coming soon: Pictures!

Life and Origami

I’ve been really busy the last few weeks. More on that below, but first a few preliminaries.

First, both of the girls had their models accepted in OUSA’s origami for children exhibit! Look for them this June.

Next, it turns out that Nick.com won a Webby. Thanks for all your votes. I have no idea how canihazacheezeburger.com did.

Spring is really, really here.  The weather has been really, really beautiful.  Out in the garden we planted tomatoes a few weeks ago. Critters ate them.

I haven’t had a chance to work on music in a couple of weeks, although I want to get my last song of the current set done soon. Hopefully this weekend I will get back to it. One or two more sessions and I’ll be able to post a rough mix; it’s down to vocals and horns. A couple things came up that delayed the music work.

One is I got some malware on my PC. It looks like it’s under control now, but I’m afraid that next time I reboot it will come back. I had to go out and get anti-malware sofware and all, and it didn’t even fully clean it. I might have to go back and restore my OS from and archive I made last fall. Oh such fun. Glad at least my new computer’s a Mac.

The other is I’ve been really jamming on origami, making a ton of models. I’ve been working the last month or so on an origami commission, and I finished all the models last Friday. It was a cool set of subjects; each on presented different and interesting challenges. I’m please and satisfied that I was able to come up with good designs for all of them pretty much on demand in a short time, and while I was at it, came up with some new ideas I can apply in other models. These were more in the intermediate than complex level, so it was also good to take a step back towards more readily doable subjects. I’m particularly fond of the bear and the moose.

The Bear is in the modern style, which is to say it doesn’t really use a base. With a model like this it’s all about the pose and the posture. I came with the basic form and approach pretty quickly, but it took a couple of days just to work out the ears! And it changed around the design quite a bit.

When I was done I noticed an underlying structural similarity to my Elephant. So I went back to look at my Elephant, and it seemed needlessly complex to me, especially the back legs. I remember a few years ago when I came up with the design really struggling to work it out but never being fully satisfied with the fold sequence. So now I’m redesigning my Elephant. The new version is closer to 30 steps than 50, and the same size paper yields a substantially larger beast. The overall appearance is very similar, and the head is almost exactly the same. Of course one thing leads to another, so now I’m working on the head.

For the moose, I had a bit of an idea about how to approach the antlers. I saved this model for last, cuz it was the hardest and I figured I’d work up to it, but by the time I got there time was running out. So rather then do a free body design I fell back on the tried-and-true bird base. (A modified stretched bird base, actually.) I pretty much nailed the model on the first try with not alot of experimentation and some lucky guesses on the proportions. Using the base turned out the be a good thing because it left me with a thick body with lots of layers; it was strong and the legs could support the weight, and the model doesn’t tend to flop forward despite the big antlers.

I took the day off Thursday and pretty much folded continually from first thing in the morning into the evening and the wee hours of the night, all the final models in one long session. I was amazed at how exhausted I was by the end of the day. It was intensely creative, and my brain felt like it does at the end of a 16 hour marathon of writing code. My hands hurt right at the base of the joint of my thumb too.

Sunday was a folding session at the Museum of Natural History. I took Lizzy and my friend John was in town to teach and hang out. He’s working on a new book that includes a lot of theory, and I looked thru some of the material. Lots of math; very intense stuff. It’s going to be up there with Robert’s ODS. Lizzy learned how to wet-fold. It’s also kind of cool to see how she can function and enjoy herself in an all adults kind of setting. All in all a really good day.

Jeannie stayed home and re-planted the garden, and built a little fence out chickenwire to keep the critters out. Tomatoes again as well as various peppers. So far so good on the critter front.

Hello Spring

Well, spring is here. In fact it’s April already. The nights are still cold but the days are getting mild. It’s been a few weeks since life has returned to normal WTR the work week, but I feel like I’m still catching up. Haven’t even had time to go shopping. Been trying to catch up on some random purchases. Been getting back into biking and rollerblading regularly again. We *did* manage to finish tiling and painting our bathroom (more on that in a previous post). Also last weekend we started getting the yard going for spring. Raked off the leaves and debris, and uncovered the fig tree, and started planning what we want to do this spring.

Been making progress on the new Mac. Every new thing is an adventure. After we discovered that Boot Camp won’t work if there are three partitions on the drive, we basically started over. We got a new external hard drive (which we were planning on anyway for backup) and put a 10.5 partition on it, and then put a 10.4 and a Win XP partition on the main boot drive. I went back and installed proTools on 10.4 and it worked, and so did the drivers for my MIDI interface, and so the whole MIDI rig. So far so good. Last week we installed VMWare, which involved calling up Microsoft to talk numbers with a phone robot. Tons of fun. My friend Blick, who is a Mac ProTools guru, came over to help me out last weekend with my music setup. Still after all that SampleTank still doesn’t appear in the list of plugins. So it looks like I’m gonna buy the new SampleTank upgrade for intel macs and see how that goes. At least I always have the option or running PT under windows now.

Been making progress on a new song. The song is gonna be it’s own post when it’s ready but for now I’ll say it’s a kinda prog-ish r&b number and I’m working out the horn arrangement. I realized as I was tracking it that I don’t really have funk chops on the bass, so I went for something I’ll call the funky rock approach that seems pretty good. Now I’m up to penciling the horn section.

And I did get a bit of a spring break, a few comp days. We took the kids up for a day of hanging out in the Catskills with my brother Martin and his fiancé Kathleen at this quaint Victorian era lodge. Sort of like camping but without sleeping out in the cold. The place had a Teddy Roosevelt kind of vibe; thematically consistent with the Museum of Natural History. It was built kinda like a castle into the side of cliff on a small lake. We went hiking and ice skating and swimming, and had a blast. Pictures to be posted sometime in the indeterminate future. The next day M & K came back to our place, and we hung out and played Wii and Settlers of Catan. Our friends Steve and Alice from Texas (yo!) also popped by for a visit.

I’ve also been making progress on diagramming my origami turtle (hope to be ready in another few days), but overall I feel like I need to devote some time to new origami designs, and haven’t yet had the opportunity. I have a bunch of ideas in my head I need to work out in paper.

Ski

One of the few things I really love about winter is skiing, so I was really happy that we finally had a chance to go this year. Technically, we went skiing way back in December at a local hill near my parent’s house, but that barely counts cuz the main purpose of that trip was to introduce the girls to skiing, and mostly they took a lesson and I took a few slushy runs down a very short slope. I don’t think Jeannie ever even put her skis on. Still, it accomplished it’s primary goal, and Lizzy took to it, and Michelle liked the idea although did not do so well on the rope tow.

Then January and February flew by in a blur as I worked alot weekends and I had an injured foot anyway, so, like, whatever. Finally, with my project gone live and back to a normal schedule I was determined to have a real day skiing before winter’s end. Lizzy was thrilled, but Michelle decided she didn’t want to come, so we spilt the kids up, which turned out to be the perfect move. It’s something we rarely do, but they’re really at different levels, and Michelle had a great time with Nana and Poppy.

Of course the other wild card was the weather. The day before was pouring rain and stormy, to the point where my friend Nick had major flooding issues with his new basement, and my next door neighbor lost a chunk of his garage roof, and we had a rather heavy fallout of tree branches in our yard. But then it turned freezing overnight, so we went to bed hoping for the best. We got up way early, a problem made worse by the fact our government, in keeping with its recent trend of terrible policy making, decreed that this was the night we’d move our clocks ahead instead of a more sensible date in April. So off we went.

It turned out to be great day for skiing. The weather was in the upper 20’s and amazingly they had groomed large amounts of the mountain to decent conditions. The place we picked to go was Catamount, in the Berkshires in Massachusetts , about 100 miles from our house. They’re not a huge mountain, but big enough to be fun. Another nice thing about it is you can park close to the lodge. We started with Lizzy on the bunny hill, and discovered they had a conveyer belt instead of a tow rope. Michelle will be thrilled to hear about this. Lizzy took a lesson, and by the time she was done she’d been up the chair lift and down a real slope. Meanwhile Jeannie and I got in a bunch of good runs. One of the nice thing about Catamount is alot of the trails wind thru the trees, and my last run was very peaceful (and high-speed), as I was the only one on the trail. Perfect moment of ski Zen.

After lunch we spent our time with Lizzy and she was doing great zigzagging down the hill. She really wanted to make it the whole way down with out falling, and was well on her way, but toward the bottom she picked up some speed and the wind came up, and she almost lost her hat, and in saving her hat she lost her balance. I told her if that happened again just let the hat go; I was right behind and would grab it. Shaw’nuff next run the same happened, and she let her hat go, and made it to the bottom, quite triumphantly!

So that was it, now I’m ready for spring. As luck would have it, the weather is getting milder, and our government, going against its recent trend of deplorable policymaking, rolled back the clocks a month earlier than usual, so even though I’m getting up before it’s light out again, today I got to go out for a bike ride after work in the daylight.

South Side of the Sky

Good news: my project for work is going live this week, which means no more working nights and weeks to meet the deadline. I worked basically continually from Thursday morning thru last night. At least it’s a good time of year to be sitting inside in front of the computer. I feel like I’ve made it through the worst of the winter, and the days are getting longer. On the other hand, I’ve been not devoting as much time to music and origami as would have liked this winter, not to mention playing Super Mario Galaxy, and need to make that up. Oh yeah and finishing tiling my 2nd bathroom.

At least I got out on my bike a few times when there was a break in the weather. I find I can tolerate 40 degrees or higher pretty comfortably. And I got my bike fixed up just recently. I originally bought my bike when I moved to California, and Jeannie and I were sharing a car, and my commute was shorter, so I did it on bike. I bought it at Palo Alto Bicycles, which at the time had a little neon sign that said “Google” in the window in the floor above the bike shop, the home of a tiny internet startup. Jeannie and I had a conversation something like this:

I though it was spelled Googol. I wonder what they do.”

“I think they do search or something like that.”

“Sounds interesting, I wonder if I should apply for a job there.”

“Nah, most startups tank. And Alta Vista already owns search.   I’m sure they’ll be gone in a year.   Stick with the job you’re at.”

It was a basic but well made mountain bike (a Trek if you’re curious), that has held up well over the years. No shock on the front, cuz in those days it was a pretty high-end feature. Palo Alto has lots of bike paths and I used to pass over a cute little bridge and by a kind-of farm with donkeys, so it was very pleasant.

So I switched to biking in the evenings after work when it got too dark to skate, and kept it up into November, and here and there in December, January and February. But then I got a flat tire, and not only my tubes but my tires were shot, so into the shop it went. This time it was Pelham Bicycles, with no internet startup on the floor above. They put on new tires, trued the wheels and replaced the brakes and cables. Now it rides as good as new. Of course as soon as I got it back from the shop, I rode it once and it was back to the cold and snow again that very evening. Ah well spring is getting closer. I’m looking forward to taking a few days off to catch up on things, and hopefully getting a day of skiing in before it’s too late, and get a bit of a spring break.

Special Guest Blogger: Lizzy

Today we have a guest contributor to this blog, my daughter Lizzy. She’s been getting into taking pictures and wrote about a few of them. Here you go:

“This is my play-dough heart. On Valentine’s Day Michelle brought pink play-dough from school. I made a heart out of it. Plus we got a lode of candy. Also I saved my brownie.”

“We didn’t have the week off but we had Monday off. But we had a snow day on Friday. On Friday we built a snowman, had a snowball fight and played with our friends on our block. And we also played ice princesses.”

Caribbean Blue

You might think all I’ve been doing this winter is working extra hours and complaining about the cold. But no! Last week Jeannie and I managed to sneak out for a long weekend getaway to Nassau, in the Bahamas. Four days of lying on the sand, sailing sailboats, swimming in the ocean and pools, eating lots of seafood and drinking fruity rum drinks, and checking out aquariums full of sharks and manta rays and exhibits on pirate history. Aye me hearties!

We stayed at a place called Breezes on Cable Beach, which was very nice. The flights were smooth both ways. It was a much needed break, and our return to the winter is mitigated by a warm spell this week.

Here are a handful of pictures. A full gallery will be put up at some point in the future.