klenke

My Lord! Babnik has already got ~300 posts in 9 days. That's over 30 a day. Man, is this guy going for the forced cool or what? And I'm thinking I haven't seen one meaningful post from him yet. Hell, there must be a puddle of saliva below his computer.

You're one to talk!!!! Latona Tavern ring any bells? Let's see if I remember that incident clearly: It was you, me, and AlpineK straggling. Everyone else had left. I went up to the counter to pay my share, but the bartender said the bill had already been paid up (without my knowledge). I therefore didn't have to pay. Or, more to the point, why pay twice for the same beer? And as I recall for myself, I made sure I made up for it by buying at least one pitcher at the next PC I attended. Or something like that...

I tried twice to get up Malachite in 1994 (once by Purvis Lake approach and once by north approach). My next attempt will be via the SE approach (the start from Foss River trailhead). Which way did you do the climb, Tony? General consensus is that the SE corkscrew approach and climb is easiest. All routes involve some level of brush. I may go up Malachite later this month. Got to knock that sucka off once a fer all.

I saw Equilibrium on DVD a few weeks ago. I would rate it 2 out of 4 stars. Some of the ideas were interesting, but the action scenes were too corny for me, and they were most definitely a 'going-too-far' rip-off of The Matrix. The story and suspense was lost (or negated, if you will) by some seriously goofy fight scenes. The puppy sub-plot was touching, though. All in all, the movie was worth seeing but not personally up there in the superior annals of "thinking man's" Sci-Fi. Not like the original Solaris was for me, for example.

I think you missed the point, Greg-ine. The point was not lost on Trask at least. Hmm, I've bought Trask a beer at PC? Well, maybe Trask = Dave Schuldt.

My post statement "obnoxious?" Oh, give me a break. If that statement would be obnoxious to you then I imagine you don't have many friends, Iain. It's called a lighthearted jab, something not to be taken seriously. Ah, wait, I see you changed the word to "lame." Okay, that's acceptable. But "pretty" lame? Aiblins.

I can sew up a third class talus slope like no other. I can redpoint a 3.13 talus fan in boots. What can you do, Scot'turdyx?

My recollection is that the third pitch was not that bad. Compared to the awkward second (chimney) pitch, the third pitch is more relaxing...or at least it was for me. As for Dryad not being prepared, she at least had Brian there to reel her in if she fell.

My Lord! We better rename that the Sew Up Route. Nonetheless, that's a good start. The finger traverse pitch is a good one for a first lead: easily protected, not extremely steep, good features, but not totally a bore even for a beginner.

touche.

Nicole, My advice is to come to one or more of the weekly Pub Club (PC) events that take place on Tuesday nights. The location changes but it generally takes place within the Seattle city limits (8 out of 10 times). A thread announcing the coming Tuesday's PC event gets posted the day before wherein people can discuss and wrangle over the location, etc. Generally, the people who attend PCs are respectable. I will send you a PM to list those regulars who I consider respectable. Of those I do not consider respectable, I will not divulge my personal opinions. That's not the point here. However, I will note that Trask NEVER goes to Pub Clubs. It is an ongoing joke that he poses like he does but he doesn't. At Pub Club you will be able to meet different types of climbers (alpine, sport, skiers, etc.). Most of the people who attend PC events are men (which is reflective of their statistical majority in the sport), but there are a few women who regularly show up too. You can then get your questions answered in face-to-face conversation, not like on this bulletin board where the expectorators expect no less. Despite the naysayers and some otherwise scandalous events that have occurred, PC events are "generally" decent affairs. We , we , we , we , we , we some more, we some more, we find out with each other, and, in the end, we that didn't show up. As the night rolls on, people come and go. Usually, we goodbye...unless it's Dave Schuldt skipping out on the bill again. ~~~~Paul

Explain this pulley contraption a little more. Do you attach yourself to it or just packs to keep them from getting wet? How bad is the crossing without the pulley? If it's just a case of having added security to cross a menacing river, what is the pulley for exactly? I'm just curious as to the process by which this pulley is used.

The plume and self-produced towering cumulus above this fire was quite impressive from Cutthroat Peak on Saturday. From our vantage, it was billowing up almost directly behind Tower Mountain, making that mountain appear as if it were on fire. What was that movie? The Towering Inferno. "The Tower's on fire! The Tower's on fire!" As the day progressed, the billowing smoke intensified greatly. I'll see if I can post a photo tomorrow. The atmosphere around Rainy Pass was a miasma of smoke as we descended from Cutthroat. It looked like a pea-soup fog bank. As we descended to below about 6,200 ft, we found ourselves in a slight respiratory distress. Good thing we weren't climbing up at this time, as the heavy breathing would have surely given me a headache.

Andrews Creek in the Pasayten is closed, as are a couple of others in the vicinity of the Farewell Creek fire north of Winthrop. FR-1590 (South Fork Cascade River Road) that provides access to Formidable and environs is closed due to a fire up there by Johannesburg.

Nice. Would look interesting on a topo map. People would come from Africa to see it.

Don't you mean this theme: Parker Park Perkin's Perch Spelunker's Spire Pilling's Pile and... Beckey's Rib ?

A new top Fuck Head has emerged: Whoever it is threatening Timm@y X 500 Billcoe X 2 (for using his real name) lummox X 2 Dreg_W Necrophiliac Tomcat Klenke wirlwind catshiteat Fence_Shitter michael_latent mattp Sphinxter erikkk RuM(p RaNgE)r Fairweather

This is the Fuck Head List, not the Dumb Shit List, dumbass.

The $25k question has been answered: The North Summit of Greenwood is higher (by about 10 ft). It is quite obvious to the discerning eye and a water bottle test (actually a more accurate water cup test in my case) proved this out. The South Summit, the one with the 1937 register, is the one everyone goes to (including all those cheater Top100 peakbaggers), but it is not the highest point on Greenwood Mountain. Stefan and I did not go over to the N. Summit (a miscommunication on our parts), but the good news is that I located a class 2/3 easy way over to it. If you downclimb the South Ridge from the South Summit about 200 yards you can get onto the upper part of the eastern cirque glacier, cross it due north, and then scramble to the N. Summit. Non-technical all the way.

Driving up to Chiwawa River area yesterday, noticed (by way of smell and sight) a thick pall of forest fire smoke on the Stevens Pass Highway from about Index on. We saw a fire plume start up in the vicinity of Dome Peak while we were up on Dumbell. The fire was directly in front of Dome from our vantage, so was probably somewhere near the head of Sulphur Creek. I remarked at the time how I wouldn't want to be climbing Sinister Peak right then, as the plume billowed directly into that peak.

I am also a USAA member. Of course, you gotta be someone special to qualify for membership, but that's beside the point that they're a great insurance company. Re: wallets. I don't even take my full wallet with me when I leave my house for the mountains anymore. Instead, I take my ID, my debit card (sometimes also my CC), and some cash, along with a piece of paper with phone numbers, etc. on it, in a small ziplock bag. This bag I put in my pack as it is small and streamlined. When the bag gets too old to be of use (ripped), I simply replace it with another. Over years of climbing, I have discovered that there is just no reason for me to take 95% of the crap with me that's in my wallet. So I leave all that crap at home and only take with me that which I'll probably need (as listed above). I even find myself not taking my full wallet with me in the city when I'm doing things where I know I won't need any of that crap. You can evaluate your own wallet needs, but I'm willing to bet you take along way more wallet items than you ever need.

Suppose you have a humanoid robot. It has many joints, and it has motors on each of the joints. The robot has sensors to detect all sorts of things. How do you make the robot walk? You have to figure out how to control each motor for each joint, based on the current joint positions and all the sensory input that you have. Model reduction focuses on simplifying the state information so that the inputs get mapped as best as possible to the outputs (controls to observations). Control reduction focuses on simplifying the control parameters (knobs/dials for the motors) so that control problems (which tend to be nonlinear and nasty) can be solved in a lower-dimensional (easier) space. Ideally a reduced controller should retain as much flexibility from the full controller and behave robustly. The tricky part about control reduction is that the reduced controllers have to operate on a reduced model. One option is to do model reduction and then design a controller on the simplified model. The problem with this method is that the approximation happens at the beginning, and errors tend to compound. Ideally one would want to simultaneously simplify the model and the controller at the same time (i.e. with a closed loop between model and controller). There are esoteric mathematical methods to do this for linear systems, but extending to nonlinear systems and performing robustly is still largely open. The other way to simplify control is to make control not necessary, that is, make the system inherently robust. A simple example would be a slinky. It tends to walk down stairs no matter what width/height the stairs are. More complicated examples have been studied in biomechanical literature. We've explored both directions, and we've tried working with toy problems (multi-link pendulums) and with real problems (humans walking). No killer results yet. So, you're one of the assholes who's responsible for the future destruction of humanity, as illustrated in those Terminator Movies. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.... ...oh wait, they were only movies. Phew! Klenke is again.

No you didn't Gary. I'm bored. So, elaborate on this sentence: "My current project is aimed at the mostly unsolved problem of controller reduction." What is controller reduction? And why is it mostly unsolved?

A good friend of mine who was in the PhD program in the Mechanical Engineering Department at UW was always complaining to me about how her advisor (who, by my own experiences, is/was a complete prick) would keep heaping on her his own little projects thereby not allowing her to get on with her own. I guess this is standard operating procedure for profs: to dump the lame work they don't want to do or can't do themselves on their minions. Sorry to hear about your problem(s). Literally I am sorry, having considered at length going back to school to pursue my own PhD (just not in Computer Science).