Snowboard ish.

(portions of this post are copied from emails, if you were the recipient of one of those emails, I hope it doesn't bore you.)

Wednesday I went skiing with my sister and some of her friends. It was a bit nervous working to actually getting to go skiing. First I think everyone was late. Next my sister got a flat in the parking lot of a grocery store, then as we were leaving, we drove across an overpass and we could see the interstate was backed up for a couple miles. Wisely, we chose to drive through town a bit to the next freeway on ramp and had no problems from there. The weather wasn't exactly looking good though. It had been really warm the day before and we were expecting the snow to be really icy as it had thawed and refrozen. So, on the way up to the mountain we actually broke through and got above the clouds and fog, so it was actually sunny on the mountain, and the snow was pretty soft. It was almost like spring skiing. The day went pretty well, and overall was very good. everyone was pretty good skiers so we went on a lot of technical stuff and trees, so it was a bit more work for me on a board, but still good. We ended the day with a hike up to a peak without a chairlift up it and had a nice ride down some fairly untracked snow. It was nice.

On the drive back it was VERY foggy and we pretty much had to drive by the paint on the road. It wasn't to bad, but there were a few spots that the fog was so thick I don't even think we had 10 ft of visibility. My sister and I got to talking, during the drive, about a ski trip she is doing in March that is back country. It turns out one of the group has dropped out, so there is a spot for me!!! I'm stoked, but It's troublsome cause its a backcountry experience which is really rare and a great opportunity, but in this case it's a tellemarking trip. Me being a boarder just means I need to firgure out a way I can telli through the backcountry and then board down this gorgeous untouched snow. There are options to just telli and haul my board, but then I'd constanly have a huge mast on my back; I could snow-shoe(I'm leaning toward this) but I'm concerned about how well I could keep up with the group which will be on telli; there are split snowboards that split to skis for telli then you have to put it back together for boarding, but then again I'm worried about the time it takes to put together and take it apart, also this is an expensive option, but maybe I could rent; finally is a collapsable ski but that is super rare, expensive, but then agian is possibly rentable, but first looks are bleak. Hopefully I can work something out on this, soon.

As you may or may not be aware I've been picking up a lot of nice newish snowboard crap off ebay. So first thing I ordered was new (DUB)boots . I got them, they are super nice, but don't fit my old bindings (I wanted new ones anyway, right!?!?). Then I started looking on the eBay for bindings and came across some ridiculously cheap, but very nice (SP)bindings. I won them and then I started to get nervous about the boot to binding fit aspect. The new boots I had gotten are quite a bit different from my older boots, much more bulky mostly; so I was thinking "crap if these boots don't fit the new bindings, I got a super deal on something I'm not going to be able to use." So the box arrived today and I anxiously unwrapped the bindings and although a little tight the new boots fit! That was a relief. Then, as I investigated the little puppies I noticed, pretty obvious actually, how much more advanced they are than my old bindings. I'm thoroughly impressed with the amount of different adjustments I'm able to make on the new bindings, especially when compared with the limited amount of adjustments that the old bindings accommodated. This is really great since I've been playing with my stance a bit, tweaking it to get a good control and well balanced trick stance. Hopefully I can get something dialed in nicely. Especially since I've basically never adjusted the bindings on my board since day one.

My digital strife...ahem, I mean life

It's been a goal of mine for the past year or so to integrate as much of my lifestyle/possessions into digital format and storage. A person needs to understand that I am a bit of a collector, I come by it honestly, and so I've got a few rather large collections. But really what I want to do is get as much of my stuff, that can be digitized(which I think is most), into a digital format and stored in a portable device(read: computer). My collections include my music(probably the largest collection), my photos(probably the most important/tedious to me), and then a variety of art and paperwork that I value or just don't want to keep the paper floating about.

I've been pretty diligent about keeping up with the whole paper thing, I mean, that is kind of a no-brainer; just saving everything I type(those that are important to me) and things like school papers(now old), and things like receipts and statements. Most of the Statement stuff is easy as I don't think there is a company now which doesn't offer the option to do everything online, which necessitates digital information rather than paper. The receipts have been a bit of a pain tho, it's amazing how much paper people use, and there is no standardization in the world of receipts. It's been super helpful to have all the receipts digital in one place, bookkeeping has benefited.

I've really hit a milestone with the music portion of this whole project; I recently got every last one of my CD's into iTunes at 320kbps, 48Hz. All nicely organized, with covers(whether automatic or made) with as much meta information as possible. This has necessitated the purchase of a 300GB hard-drive, dedicated to music. Thankfully that isn't full, but then again, that isn't all my music. I've got a few tapes that I do want ripped, and a few I've already done, so that is a bit of a time consuming process, and of course my huge record collection is a bear in itself. I've hoped to cut that portion down now that I can accurately cross reference my collection with my iTunes so that should prevent me from having go through the process of getting each record on iTunes. Still, that is going to be a long project, which I work on off and on. Thank you to all the record labels that have gone to iTunes or one of the other digital download sites; Red Light, Moving Shadow, Renegade Hardware, Cause 4 Concern, A Touch Of Class, Breastfed, etc etc.

Now I'm moving onto the photo portion of the project, which I've offered to incorporate with some of my families photos in exchange for some of the hardware. My father has offered to finance a nice flatbed scanner to do the project with, and I'm searching for a Minolta Dimage Scan II Elite 5400 film scanner so I can scan directly from the tons of negative I have. This I know is going to take a lot of time, but I really feel it's important to me to do all this so I don't have so many things, that are difficult to move, to move. Anyhow, the tedium continues, now how can I make it fun, as if.