JoshK

Sky, did you guys climb to the summit, or just to that blue point? I couldn't quite decipher...

Damn, that is sweet. I'll get to hear about it first hand when I meet Sky in So-CO for some skiing in the San Juans next week. That sound be fun but, damn, shit like this makes me miss the cascades!!!

You will have no problem camping at that col. Like nols said, if not right on the col you'll find something very near by.

Mount Si, but of course... Maybe I'll see him here in CO working on the 14ers???

Staying in Colorado... I ended up bailing on my trip home when I saw the forecasted weather. It's been sunny every day here since. For once I didn't screw myself listening to the weather-guessers.

FWIW, yes, Glacier Peak Meadows is really really beautiful. I have been up there a few times as it is one of my favorite places.

Why are our normal right-wing contributors so absent in this thread? I'd at least like to hear the excuses and explanations, as lame as they may be...

iain, on that note, i would actually argue that this isn't really skiing so much as a guy jumping off a cliff into some snow. You can tell he basically falls into the ground then starts skiing. There is a noticable delay between him hitting and him moving again. He might as well just jump off then put some skis on and ski off. That is just about as much skiing as this is. He mentions that he has never hurt himself skiing. I am gonna say this is a negative for him...he has never learned so it is only a matter of time before he hurts himself really bad (or kills himself) to a constantly built up sense of invincibility.

PP, what in the heck does an article about the IRS' tuition assistance program have to do with "socialized" (as you and your right wing fear-mongers like to call it) medicine?? With your incredibly brilliant rationale we might as well do away with the military. After all, I hear there are some seriously steep administrative costs associated with maintaining an effective fighting force.

Holy shit! How does he not end up with his knees through his chest? That is insane...

Wow, now that is a *classic* looking route...the steep ice runnels, the beautiful clean granite!! Nice job, btw

I see them for $60, which is $20 off, but not super cheap. Did you find some coupon to get it cheaper? thanks, -josh

Hey all. I get back to Seattle later this week and want to spend a few days trekking through the Chelan Mountains, for example Saska, Emerald, Cardinal, etc... Any idea what kind of snowpack I will encounter up there? I am debating the skis or not question. I am assuming at this point trailhead access wont be a problem with this year's snowpack, wouldn't you think? thanks, -josh

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess if drilling holes in a shovel actually maintained its full strength one of the companies would have done it already. I'm think if shit came to shove and you needed to go toe-to-toe with some really icy crap that shovel would bend, but who knows...i sure don't.

When life begins and ends at the missionary position of course they are satisfied. hahahahahahahahahaha

Yeah, they used to pay me moneY That isn't to say I liked working there. I didn't, i hated it, and I am more than happy to find other software to use. I think I was fairly honest, there are things that I think are way better and things that aren't. How the hell do I sound totally in love with all things microsoft? aren't you supposed to be the balanced non-hyperbole guy around here?

That's cause there is no reason to try Opera, TLG. If you hate IE, use Firefox, that is pretty much the story.

What in the heck would you pay money for a web browser for?!!?

Are you single? Probably so, and not by choice.

[quote Not to get into some lameass geek-war but I bet half those "bugs" you attribute to your application are actually Windows making it's presence known. It is totally accurate to say MS products are almost universally sub-standard. Word crawls on a lot of mid-range hardware. It's a word processor. Holes in Explorer routinely allow executable code as if the exploiter is sitting at the keyboard. Versions of MS Office have "called home" with users' personal information. They just don't give a rat's ass about your security, or the performance of their products. They are not trustworthy, and they are stagnant when it comes to innovation. They play a constant game of catch-up. I also don't appreciate seeing the network logs rack up a bunch of entries whenever I fire up MS Word. WTF. I wrote software professional for 7 years, and several years as an amature before that. I stepped thourgh the windows, IE, and pretty much every other component's source code, line by line, debugging, day in and day out for a majority of that time. From that experience I can say (with actual experience, unlike everybody else that complains) that 99% of software bugs, both 3rd party and MS non-OS software is a bug in the software and *not* in Windows itself. It happened that I would discover bugs in Windows and report them but that was a tiny % of the time. Take that for what you want, but I can say that first hand experience shoots that assumption. I am obviously not going to convince a pro-mac, anti-ms person that the software is not sub-standard but I will again say it is not in my experience if actually judged by the same standard. Alex listed some other fine pieces of commercial software that are shit on a stick. There is not another brand of **commercial** software that I have used where I don't experience more bugs, overall, than MS software. This doesn't touch the fact that I am using the MS software way more often as well. For the vast majority of open source software I will admit I don't have enough experience to actually say whether I think it is better or not. As for Macs, I totally won't touch the Mac vs. windows debate. I think macs are great and are also vastly superior to most everything out there. I see that more as a personal preference. I just like to use a windows PC more, and that is about the only reason. As for MS apps "calling home", every single instance I have seen they have asked me if I want to report information and it states if it is anonymous or not. When apps first started talking over the internet a lot with "home base" I admit there were probably abuses, but I think this was pretty widespread, not just MS. With the current focus on privacy there is no way MS is deliberatley doing that kind of stuff. The risk is just too great. About the only software that does it now is spyware, and hopefully that will all be put out of business soon. Matt, I think a word processor is a pretty personal preference. For me, MS word is way better. I have always thought of WordPerfect to be shit on a stick, but I guess that I just happen to like Word more. I think the sales would probably back people's preferences up. You can't blame the early victory of office on a monopoly, cause it caught up and passed all other office apps at lightspeed.

Wait...Whitehorse Mountain by Darrington? What route? The standard "glacier" route from either the trail or snow gulch? If that is what you are doing I dont see why you would need to repell anything, let along with two ropes. When I did it the summit was simple a few feet of steep snow climbing followed by like 2 feet of rock. I can't attest to later in the year but nothing like a rope was nescessary nor have I heard of people using them on Whitehorse. In any event, use your own discrecsion and certainly dont leave safety gear home on my recommendation.

Well put, Will. Unfortunately, Immigration has become (or rather has been for a while) an issue that right has turned into a ideological, rather than a pragmatic debate. With the economic evidence condraticing their arguments they have turned to the "immigrants cause crime, steal your jobs, dont speak English, steal free services" brain wash. Sad. Oh, and for those who are interested, the research shows that, overall, immigrant Americans are found to cause equivilent or lower amounts of crime than native-born Americans. I did a short paper on this and found the numbers pretty interesting.

A "disgrace"?? Haha...ok. Yes, it is a crime against humanity. I love anti-MS rhetoric. Man, if people applied the same standard of what sucks to open source or other companies' software 95% of it would be deemed to be a disgrace...mismatched UIs, various oddities that could confuse your typical user, plenty of things that don't work with windows standards (for those of us that actually like our apps to look and behave the same rather than everything have some different stupid "skin"). I also find most non-MS software to have just as many bugs on average. Some programs more, some less, but certainly not an overall improvement. It is just the simple fact that people will bitch about every little thing an MS product does wrong. But when I think about it how often in my day-to-day work to I hit a bug with Windows or MS Office? I can't say I can even thing of one. I guess being a student I am a "typical computer user" of these applications and they sure work fine for me. As for patches, I would rather take patches which automatically install than be told that recompiling is actually a valid solution to getting updates for my operating system or manually installing patches. The MS windows update system, i am sorry to tell you, is a major bonus for your average computer user. It is the only way people are going to patch their computer software. A typical user is not going to frequently check for patches, figure out what they actually need, determine if the patch is for whatever version they currently have installed and then patch it. I actually like the thing popping up once a week or whatever and telling me to install shit. I click yes, it downloads for five minutes, it does some installation in the background, then I possibly have to reboot, which takes me all of 30 seconds. Big freaking deal. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of applications out there that fit my needs better than the corresponding MS application (take Picasa2 for managing photos, that program rules) and lots of other more specialized pieces of software (there is tons of great stuff out there). In that case, i'll gladly use the non-MS solution, but to just wholesale write it all of as crap is just typical anti-big-guy bashing. Here is some non-MS software that I use and really like for my purposes, if you haven't seen them, they may be worth checking out: 1.) Picasa2. You can download it from google. Very very cool digital imagine library program. This is the first photo library program I actually find I will use. The UI is very slick. 2.) Mozilla Thunderbird. Our school's email is an IMAP server, which outlook (and every other email program) has really lousy support for. Thunderbird is far and away the best email client for IMAP i have found. It works great. 3.) Trillian. I use this instant messaging client cause it combines AIM + MSN and has lots of great features. P.S. I must go out of my way to point out the worst piece of commercial software out there. CRAPPY AOL INSTANT MESSENGER. The AIM client is the worst piece of software I have possibly ever used. It's UI sucks beyond any describably level.

You didn't hear? Baker erupted this morning. I would stay far far away.