Squamish

Squamish was great this past (long) weekend. Headed North on Saturday and met up with Vance. We cragged at the Upper Malamute, which has some great moderate crack routes: High Mountain Woody, Paul's Crack. We then tried some slabs higher up. I HATE slabs, but I know they're good for technique. Met up with Ben on Sunday, and we did a few of the classics at the base of the Grand. Monday we attempted (and bailed from) Rock On, and Tuesday was Diedre and bouldering!
Here's a pick of our wonderful campsite out on the Squamish Spit. My new truck is on the right, and the Chief is in the background. (second largest Granite Monolith in North America!)

Darwin Wins Again

Crikey! Crocodile Hunter stabbed in the heart by a stingray.

This Weekend

The weather is looking great up North. I'm going to take the new truck ('06 Toyota Tacoma) up to Squamish for a long weekend of climbing.

The "Tolerant" Left Strikes Again

National Guardsman Brutally Attacked In Pierce County

Show Your Support for Free Trade

Great fashion piece from the Adam Smith Institute! I just ordered mine, and I'm sure I'll be the envy of all of the tragically hip people in my neighborhood in Seattle.

My Favorites

I know that you have all been laying awake at night wondering what blogs / sites I frequent. Here's a list of my current favorites:
SoundPolitics
TechCentralStation
Drudge
RealClearPolitics
American Enterprise Institute
RockClimbing.com

Skunked

Just received word that my parent's Keeshond, Lille, was sprayed by a skunk this morning. Yuk.

Here's an interesting excerpt from Charles Darwin's Voyage of The Beagle:

We saw also a couple of Zorillos, or skunks,--odious animals, which are far from uncommon. In general appearance the Zorillo resembles a polecat, but it is rather larger, and much thicker in proportion. Conscious of its power, it roams by day about the open plain, and fears neither dog nor man. If a dog is urged to the attack, its courage is instantly checked by a few drops of the fetid oil, which brings on violent sickness and running at the nose. Whatever is once polluted by it, is for ever useless. Azara says the smell can be perceived at a league distant; more than once, when entering the harbour of Monte Video, the wind being off shore, we have perceived the odour on board the "Beagle." Certain it is, that every animal most willingly makes room for the Zorillo.

jobster.com

I've been working at a Seattle startup for a couple of months now(Jobster), and have been enjoying working in an agile development environment and learning (new to me) technologies including Ruby, Tomcat, Lucene, and others. My work focuses on our server side job search functionality.

I've been quite impressed with the ease and effeciency of design, development, test, deployment, and support of a java / linux based server application. I must admit that given my previous work experience in a much more low level application implemented in C and C++, I was weary of more abstracted development environments. No longer. I'm sold...

Squampton

It's late summer in Seattle, and that means that it's climbing season up in Squamish, B.C. I'll be there for the long weekend, and will hopefully get on some classic routes, like Exasperator:

The Epoch

This is my first post in the new blog, hopefully with plenty more to come soon.....