For New Years I went out with Aimee, Kim and Matt to the first annual Portland Madness Scavenger Hunt. We were team We Like Big Jugs (A technical climbing term). Our mascott was named Hotness. You'll see her in each picture. We had to take pictures with Hotness at various place around town, only taking public transportation. Each team had a theme and we were climbers, thus our name.

We didn't quite come in first place but we had a kickass time, I even got my name and hand into the paintings at the end of the night. They showed everyones pictures from the night, which was pretty damn cool. Here are ours:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

I've had the keg from my halloween party hanging out in the backyard, waiting for some attention. On Saturday Ron came over to eat pizza and look at my broken window. Instead of working on the window we broke out the 16lbs sledgehammer and went to town on the keg. This is a different version of beer ball, which we did with the 2 half-racks of skunked beer. With the beer cans you can toss them like a baseball and hit them with your broken shovel. With keg ball you just beat the keg. And there was ice from the backyard and pumpkins from halloween. After we got tired of breaking open the keg, we put the ice and pumpkins on the keg and went after them.

I've wanted to get crampon type deals for my shoes in case it gets icy - like last night. I was going to get Yak Tracks but they looked hokey. I read that you can put sheet metal screws into your shoes and still go running on ice and snow. That seemed like an easy solution so I put in twenty screws in each shoe. I tried them out last night and they were fine on the ice, I didn't slip once. This morning I was going to run to work but after getting up to Division I realized it was just wet out, not icy, I went back home and drove in.
Shoes
Snowy

One of my projects from work has been moved into the real world and is ready for use. I work at a climate center that has climate data for the Western US. The most popular data is precipitation and snow water equivalent (how much water is in the snow).
My program is replacing a static report that shows the precipitation and snow water equivalent for certain areas in the country. One of the problems was the data could change and the static reports would then become out of date. The new program gets the most current data instead. There are six different reports now, instead of the original one. You can compare the current snow levels to the average, the peak average or to another year. I think it's pretty nifty, especially if you're into winter sports and want to know the current snow levels. There is a special report you can run that is tailored to skiing - "Ski West Report" (it will take around 10 seconds).
Here is the entry page to the reporting program.

Whenever I call customer service I hate having to deal with "press 8 to...." or whatever. I'd rather just talk to a person. Here is a cheat sheet that you can use to get to a human on the phone quickly.

May got me a copy of pictures from her camera from halloween. Here is the cool chick in her Batman inspired outfit.

I've been thinking that it'd be cool to have a thing to map my runs and maybe keep a log of them. So I ran across mapmyrun.com from lifehacker. It's really cool, you use googlemaps to plot you runs and it tells you your distance and calories (with your height/weight info.)
My runs are here

I was waiting for a compile to finish (like my excuse?) and came across this article/blog entry about geek tv. It's about online distribution and consumption of TV content. Very interesting stuff.

Fittingly as yesterday was halloween, on my run with May I got bit by a vampire dog. (It looks much cooler in person.)
After wiping the foam from my mouth I went out with May and Aimee to the Clinton Street Pub where they were having a corn dog eating contest. May thought she'd take me down, but we both lost to some dude at the end of the bar. I was in second, but it's not horseshoes.
I'll have better pictures up when May throws a few my way, until then here is The Great Pumpkin and Daisy Duke in the dark.

I had a Halloween Costume Party at my house on Friday. I was Paul Bunyan and was pretty psyched about walking around with an axe all night. But after my tally got past 5 on the beer cup, I left the axe alone.

We had such guests as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Jesus and his old man God. Also had another Paul Bunyan (we had an axe fight after I chopped down an Ent.) Daisy Duke and May West were there. Along with a Salmon, a Ninja, some Pirates, Romans, Middle Age Zorro, Tooth Fairy and others. It got hazy pretty early.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster and God had a duel. I think it's obvious who won. The loser had to eat Kitty Litter Cake.

I was told I had the Tooth Fairy, May West and the Mermaid taking special pictures in my bedroom. I wasn't around for that but I'm supposed to be getting them for Christmas. Maybe sooner?

I even had the Viking drive over my beautiful potato and onion garden. Apparently when Paul Buynan threw potatos at the Mermaid it was time to show what's what. My neighbors must love me with trucks driving on my yard, axe fights and a Religous War happening inside.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•