jfin is here…

Drove east from San Jose on Saturday afternoon, through the cities and the vineyards and fruit orchards .. dry and hot! Dropping down into the majestic green Yosemite valley was just breathtaking. Got there in time to have a late dinner with workmates / partners. Spent the night in Curry Camp .. classy canvas tent city.

Spent Sunday morning riding around down in Yosemite Valley. Swam in the river, and stood at the bottom of El Capitan .. that is one amazing piece of rock. About lunchtime packed up and drove through the National Park, along the Tioga Road (120). Breathtaking scenery, stopped frequently, and eventually made it to Tuolumne Meadows where I set up camp for the night.

Up early on Monday morning, and drove out of the Park over the Tioga Pass. Down down down to Mono Lake (the photo above) and then across to Bodie - an interesting ghost town in western Nevada. Kept going to Carson City, over the 50 to South Lake Tahoe, and then back to the 28 to ride the Tahoe Flume Trail. Great combination of up and downhill riding, with some sweet singletrack perched on the side of the cliff directly above Lake Tahoe. Finished the loop with the downhill ride back to the car with the sunset over the lake. Met some fellow Wellingtonians in the carpark, so had a good yarn to them. Eventually drove back through South Lake Tahoe, up the 89 a little, and found a good (free!) campsite. Found a nice little clearing where I could throw down the bivy bag, and fell asleep under the stars.

Tuesday started nice and early again, straight onto the bike for about 4 hours of Mister Toad’s Wild Ride. Amazing trail with some awesome technical singletrack. Completely shattered by the time I got back up the hill to the car. Drove down into South Lake Tahoe and checked in to Cedar Lodge (decided I deserved a soft bed instead of a bivvy bag). Went over the road to Heavenly office, picked up my season pass, and rode the gondola up to check out the skifield without snow. Nice, but somewhat depressing. :) Back down the hill for dinner and bed.

Spent Wednesday driving back over the 89/88 (past Kirkwood .. much greener than Heavenly, then down down down and more down) to Sacramento, and through to San Jose. A busy few days, just writing it all down makes me tired. :) Again, nice to be home.

It’s definitely a beautiful part of the country. Photos are here.

Just got home from smallgroup. ’twas a good Bible study, looking at the first part of Acts 8. The next few days are a bit crazy, here’s the plan:

Tomorrow - up at 4.15am, flight at 6.30am from SJC to Salt Lake City (in Utah). A client needs some help with some forensics work, so we’ll spend the day on it and then head back to SJC (9.30pm flight).

Saturday - up at the crack of dawn to finish cramming and then drive up to Redwood City by 8am for the start of my CISSP exam. 6 hours of multichoice exam later, finish and drive for 4 hours to get to Yosemite in time for dinner with friends.

I’ve got the next week off, so am planning on checking out Yosemite and then heading north up the Sierra Nevada range towards Tahoe. Need to be back in San Jose by next Thursday. Taking my bike, hiking boots, and will be enjoying as much outdoor open spaces and fresh mountain air as possible.  If all goes according to plan, I’ll have lots of photos to post then. :)

… how sometimes America feels just like the movies that we all watched growing up. Like last Friday evening, when I was walking around downtown Seattle (First Avenue down to Pioneer Square), sipping on a latte from Seattles Best, it definitely felt like a movie. I forget which one, exactly.

But then other times it doesn’t.

I haven’t experienced the same plethora of cheerleaders that were in a good percentage of the movies I remember.

I have yet to experience a “Die Hard” or a “Lethal Weapon” moment.

And today, today didn’t feel like a movie. It was just work. I don’t think I could even draw “Office Space” parallels.

I think I need to go and see Snakes on a Plane. That is probably about as divorced from real life as you can get. That should well and truly convince me that the movies were lying.

Go retro.  Yeah.

At Seattle airport .. again. The last time for a while. Finished up at the client today .. seems to have been a fairly successful audit, they were happy. They’ve already said they want another 6 weeks of my time in November so I’ll be back. Hopefully at about the same time as winter starts cranking, so I can spend my weekends feeding my addiction to the sweet sweet white powder.

Very much liking the idea of sleeping in my own bed.

Airport is busier than normal, but the security lines were fine. Oh yeah, for anybody who spends much time on airplanes - I highly recommend the noise-cancelling headphones that are becoming fashionable. They definitely make flying a little more pleasant.

Made it to a proper church service today, for the first time in a month or so. Went to both morning and evening service of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, so made the most of it. :)

The place has a pretty amazing story … having started as a homegroup of 10 people, they will now (or as of October 1) have three different locations with a total of 7 services each Sunday.

They seem to be striking a good balance as far as theology goes, in my opinion .. definitely not fundamentalist, but very Bible-based, Jesus-focused, and avoiding some of the problems with the whole ‘emergent’ thing. The pastor, Mark Driscoll, seems to have a  lot  to  say  for  himself. Quite interesting reading. I enjoyed his preaching today (part of a series on the spiritual gifts in 1 Corintians 12 - today was faith/healing/miracles/discernment). He’s very direct, somewhat crass, but he held my attention for the just under 1.5 hours which is pretty impressive.

The music was awesome. I love the big-fat-guitars worship style at the moment, and the guys up on the stage looked like a bunch of indie rockers.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how I can make my Christian faith a bigger part of my work and life. And as a result have been reading about the approaches of different churches .. emergent, emerging, evangelist, Reformed, fundamentalist. Interesting to do .. can’t say I’ve reached any conclusions yet, but have decided that I need to take look directly at Jesus, rather than the churches that try to interpret him.

Spend the day doing touristy stuff. Drove in and parked next to the Space Needle, rode the monorail, strolled around downtown.

Went to Pikes Place Market. Watched fishmongers throwing fresh fish around. Ate food from different holes-in-the-wall .. baklava, Chinese pork roll (I forget what it was called), donuts, chocolate. Walked past the original Starbucks, and watched a group of five Negro gospel singers for a while - amazing.

Got bored of the markets and moved on to the second-hand book stores. One owner complimented me on my ‘browsing skills’ after I spent 1.5 hours in his shop and at the end bought only one book (1984 by George Orwell, which I haven’t read yet).

Drove out to Green Lake, and went for a stroll through the park. Then back into town and along the waterfront. Dinner from the supermarket in Bellevue, and back to the hotel.

No photos this time .. camera was flat, and I don’t have my charger up here.  Oh well.

I’m liking Seattle more each time I go through there… not sure what is so likeable .. it’s just got a cool vibe, isn’t tooo big, nice old (by NZ standards) architecture, pedestrian friendly, ’spacious’ feeling, green.

Listening to : The Decemberists - Kingdom of Spain 

.. even if it was going to be inside the States.  Delays and “heightened security” everywhere.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4780815.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4778871.stm

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/15242600.htm

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/10/us.security/index.html

This’ll make flying interesting for a while.  Check out the gun that the dude in the last article is carrying!

“This country is safer than it was prior to 9/11,” Bush said. “We’ve taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously we still aren’t completely safe, because there are people that still plot and people who want to harm us for what we believe in.”

Apparently Bush also thanked Blair and the British for “busting this plot”.  Sure.  And in other news…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4778591.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4777677.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/5257518.stm

Listening to : Jakob - The Diffusion Of Our Inherent Situation

Does anybody else have a problem with the height-adjustment controls that are situated on the underside of many office desks?

Being in a job where I find myself sitting at a range of different desks, I constantly forget. i somewhat frequently end up moving my legs around and banging my knees against these hard (and sometimes sharp) bits of metal.  it’s particularly bad when you slide your wheeled office chair in from a distance and *bang* GAH!

Sometimes I do it so often that I’m surprised I don’t begin to develop scar tissue on tops of my knees, or tear holes in my pants.  Do i just have abnormally high legs, bad coordination, or inability to learn from mistakes - or do other people have this same issue?

Friday. Flying, clear skies. Red desert. Vegas. Slot machines in the airport terminal. Taxis galore. Hotel is a castle. Knights. Expensive. Monorail to the Riviera. Friends. Drink. Relax.

Saturday. Cheap brunch, Circus Circus. Defcon. Insecurity. Black t-shirts and ponytails. Laptops everywhere. Spot the fed. Own the jail. Hack the Blackberry. Five geeks dressed as ninjas walk into a presentation and share their point of view to everyone. Ninjas are way cooler than pirates. Global hacking permit #24089.

Fake skies in a fake France. Dinner in an Asian restaurant under the fake Eiffel Tower (outside the Paris casino) watching the Bellagio water show. Bright lights. Biiig casinos. People everywhere. Vibrant. Advertising everywhere. Lion in glass cage. Short skirts. Buzzing. People everywhere. Sex sells. Alcohol excess. Loud. Depressed people. Shorts and t-shirts. Smiling people. Old people feeding pokies. Smoking everywhere. Cocktail dresses. Parents with kids in tow. Walk back to hotel, past the Statue of Liberty, with eyes wide open. So many contrasts.

Sunday. Different in the daylight. More Defcon. Fuzz the user agent. Proxy the TCP using scapy. Avoid the census. Howto phish. Walking walking walking. Bellhop for bags.

Airport and plane .. Velvet Elvis and Macgyver. Collect Ford Escape. Back in Seattle hotel.

Photos.