Learning to Ski

This last weekend, I learned to ski. I went from never skiing before to conquering the mighty bunny hill plus a mild green slop. I even got pretty good at walking around the main building in my ski boats. :) I’m not too sure what the big thrill is yet. I did have a fun time. My g/f, Dave, his Miriam and myself shared a condo that had a floor layout that kinda reminded me of the Winchester Mystery House. Dave hit up is Black Diamond runs. Miriam stuck the green runs. My g/f and myself spent the two days learning the basics of skiing. She’s skied a couple times a long time ago. We still have another day of schoolin on our ski packages, so we will likely be heading back up in March.

Tahoe ski trip

 
January 28-30, 2005 with Alice Leung, Miriam Erlichman and David Erlichman, visiting Northstar at South Lake Tahoe, CA.  This was my first and prolly last time skiing for me.  (Original post/backup link)

U.S. Press is so Politically Comprised

The American Press is so politically comprised that even some small, meaningless stories are politically skewed to put the President in as good of light as possible. At the inauguration, Bush Jr. and his family openly flashed the "Hook 'em horns" gesture several times. Well, that gesture just to happens to be exactly the same as the "Satanic Salute". So, basically, the President of the U.S.A looks like he's saluting the devil.

Simple enough, right? Well, apparently not. The AP put out a story reporting on a supposed Norwegian reaction to the President's gesture. First of all, I did some research and found out that this "Norwegian reaction" is based on an article from a Norwegian tabloid, not a creditable newspaper. Since when is it proper to use a tabloid to gauge an entire country's response?  Suspicious.

So, the AP article says about the "Satanic Salute" interpretation, "That's what it means in the Nordics when you throw up the right hand with the index and pinky fingers raised, a gesture popular among heavy metal groups and their fans in the region." No, that's what it means everywhere in all of modern Western Civilization!

For some reason, the AP felt it is necessary to make the "Satanic Salute" interpretation of Bush's gesture seem like it was unusual and foreign, while trying to make the "Hook 'em horns" interpretation seem normal and common. In fact, the "Hook 'em horns" interpretation is actually the oddball. It's just screwy for the President to be making that gesture at all.

The AP article tries to cover over the fact that the "Satanic Salute" is the most likely interpretation of Bush's gesture, when seen out of context, by coming up with this ridiculous Norwegian angle to the story

If the AP was truly making an unbiased report, they would've simply stated that the gesture was meant to be the “Hook ‘em horns” and not the "Satanic Salute," without all this nonsense about Norway.

Missed Concert and Skiing soon

My g/f and I showed up for my friend Nate’s group 12 Steps To Nothing concert in downtown Campbell last night. Unfortunately, we missed their set. So, we are going to try to catch another show in Feb. We did get to catch the last set with some other another group. I forget their name right now. They had skill and a couple of great songs, but over all they sounded a bit too much like Blink 182. As we all know, Blink 182 sounds a bit too much like Blink 182 to allow room for any imitators. Hehe (ok, if you do know, most of Blink’s songs sound the same.)
My best friend Dave is planning another trip to the mountains for some skiing next weekend. I think my g/f and I will make this next trip. Dave and company had a cabin this last weekend, but with the Chicago play and Nate’s Concert and a few other personal chores and errands, it didn’t work out for us to join them.

Traffic is really starting to pick up hard in Silicon Valley. Is this a sign that thangs are starting to pick up here? That brings mixed feelings. It’s great that the economy is likely to rebound, but it sucks that San Jose still hasn’t figured out that it needs to provide affordable, non-ghetto housing. Letting the housing prices go up like this is just insane. Market forces be damned. This is no way to run a city.
Granted, housing prices did need to come up over the past decade to come in line with higher building costs. Now the housing prices have covered that many times over. There are townhouses now going for 700K. At this rate, they will be a million in a few years. Of course, I could just buy up a bunch older homes in an ok area of town, tear them down and build several million dollar townhomes on their lots for millions of dollars profit. Hmm. Then I keep thinking, what goes up must come down (excluding normal inflation, of course).

I guess I'm not sick...

...but I'm low on energy. I can tell there is an army of virus critters trying to populate in my body, but my body is doing a damn good job at keeping them from gaining ground. However, I do feel less energetic. I'm glad I'm not getting all burdened with symptoms like headaches, running noise and such, but it would be nice to avoid any affects whatsoever.