A busy day being a Park City host

The day starts with me as the meeter and greeter at the lower ticket window. It can be fun meeting people from all over, but as you can see, getting a good parking spot early in the morning wasn't an issue. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz



Bored, I wander over to the First Time lift, where a lift operator was busy adding finishing touches to her newly crafted American snow flag.



Now I start finding interesting patterns in the snow.



Yep, still bored, but enjoying all the patterns.



Do you like going off jumps in the terrain parks? Take a look at these on King's Crown. Use the five story building for perspective.



The day is shaping up nicely. Sunny, highs in the mid 40's. Excellent spring skiing. Now that I am up on the mountain, I can try a few bump runs.



But spring weather isn't always kind to the snow. Blue Slip Bowl, which gets a lot of direct sun, is becoming Poo Slip Bowl. The kinder alternative is Blue Slop Bowl.



But now the fun begins! It is time for our annual host picture. Almost a miracle, all 15 Wednesday hosts are here, as well as two of our leaders.

You have to know the names of the runs at Park City to fully understand the humor, but we each became one for the picture. Alison dressed as the previously mentioned Blue Slip Bowl. She and Cindy did all the work to pull this together.



Sherry is Sunrise. After all the picture taking, she just skied off in this outfit.



Bill, our boss, is King Con.



Here we have Manette as Hot Spot and JR as Temptation.



And finally, the group picture we were working on. Cindy dressed at Silver Queen. Gabe was Lucky Boy. I am in the back as the Tycoon run, flashing big wads of money.



Seems a lot less like work when you get to have fun doing it.

When the picnic tables come out of hibernation

You can always tell it is spring when the picnic tables awaken from their hibernation and start searching for picnicers. Still a ways to go yet, but a certain sign that winter is losing its grip on Park City.

A Serious Ouch

Chuck Terrien is a friend of mine from Raleigh. We used to work in the same department at IBM, play Ultimate Frisbee together, and live about 10 doors apart. Chuck plays hockey, perhaps just a little too hard. He seems to have done a little damage to his finger.



I accused him of creating this "fix" with a paperclip and a rubber band (McGyver style), but he swears a doctor did it.

Heal fast!

St Patrick's Day on the mountain

This is the normal Wednesday routine for the Park City Mountain hosts. Changing in our ugly little locker room before heading out to start the day.



This Wednesday was St Patrick's Day though, so we started the morning off with a delicious breakfast of green eggs and ham. That seems a bit more like Doctor Suess Day, but it worked just fine.



This is our boss, Bill Benson, styling in some green.



The day was way too toasty warm for March. It hit nearly 60 on the mountain, making it tough to dress for skiing. Since then, it has cooled back down, but my next work day is Sunday and it is supposed to hit the mid-50's again.

I really wish it would wait for another few weeks.

Tech support from where?

I sent a question to a company called 1and1 asking if they offered any discounted pricing for non-profits. Here is the lovely response I got back. I actually xxx'ed out the name in sympathy.

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Dear Steve Joyce, (Customer ID: 8491073)

Thank you for contacting us.

To have this further check, as much as we would like to tackle on this further only our billing department does handle your billing concern and does have records of your payments. For this we would like to suggest to contact our billing department at 0871-641-2121; option 4 or 01753-490-404 and you could also email them at billing@1and1.co.uk. We here at technical support department however would greatly take care and handle of all technical concerns for the shared hosting packages.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

--
Sincerely,
xxxxxx
Technical Support
1&1 Internet Limited

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A March 19th update: 1and1 was nice enough to send me a survey to see if I was happy with my support. I love it when they are interested in seeing just how crappy it is. Of course, companies never seem to do much about it.

Kicking off the golf season

We are now up around 25 years in a row for our annual golf trip to Myrtle Beach. The players have changed some over the years, but the core group remains the same.

This year we had a last minute cancellation by Dave Allred, who has been with us for over 20 years. For some reason, doing his job well seemed to be a priority when unemployment is still at 10%. Mark Pozefsky was kind enough to brave the cold (anything below 80 for Mark) and take Dave's spot.

From left to right: Jim Saunders, Mark Reid, Mark Pozefsky, John Steigerwald, Darrell Baber, Lewis Petree and Jason Shive.



Mark proved to be our best golfer. Darrell beat him the first day, but after that, Mark ruled. However, when handicaps were applied, Jim Saunders kicked everyone's butt in our first round of betting. Notice Mark's nice relaxed form.



Of course, I am still a terrible golfer, but that just doesn't matter. Every time we pick two foursomes and compete for dinner, my group wins. Can't explain it. We have tried picking groups in numerous ways. This year it was those who watched the ACC tournament in a bar versus those who watched from our house. The alcoholics won.

Here we have a picture of Steig finishing his swing. I hope that's a baseball bat in his hand. If so, looks like a great follow through.



Weather had a lot of potential to dampen the trip's enthusiasm. The first day, we got caught in some rain and finished pretty wet. After that, it was kind enough to rain at night and let us have nice, 60 degree weather for the daily golf. Very considerate. Those same storms tracked up the east coast and hammered the Northeast, causing flooding and leaving 500,000 people without power.

I couldn't resist getting this picture. What do you call a clump of turtles? A herd? A gaggle? There must have been something special about sunning in this one spot. I can remember this hole as having a 15 foot birdie putt, then a 4 foot par putt, then an 18 inch boogie putt. I made that one.



It was another nice golf trip. Fun to see friends. Fun to see grass instead of snow. Fun to stop by and see my Uncle Sam, Aunt Martha and cousin Sara. If I could only manage all that without embarrassing myself on the golf course so much.

The International Space Station

This is a pretty cool flash video about the how the space station has been built over the years. It is a lot bigger and more involved than I remember. It's good that they are almost done since the space shuttles are almost at their last flight.

The video

Thanks to my mom for sending me this.

Should have taken a picture

Four guys came to take an icicle off the back of a condo near our house. Four guys for one icicle? Yeah. I put a picture of the icicle here.

Since that picture was taken back in December, it grew to about three feet across at the top and two feet across on the ground. The December version looked like a toothpick in comparison.

I tried to do some math based on a cubic foot of water weighing 62 pounds, and figure the icicle came in at about 6000-7000 pounds. They were able to get it down with sledge hammers, an axe and pulling hard on a rope. Quite the entertainment.

Heading back to Raleigh to play golf with some friends. Hope the forecasted rain finds somewhere else to go.

Another incredibly successful friend

A few months ago, I posted about a friend from high school, Chris Kubasik, who is now running Lockheed Martin. Today I discovered that another high school friend, John Hesterman, was recently promoted to Major General in the US Air Force.



John went from Brigadier General to Major General in less than three years. In high school, John was always a huge success. An athlete. A scholar. Friend of everyone.

It is wonderful to see someone so nice, talented and hard working go on to be such an incredible success.

A big day of skiing

Just as the slopes were starting to look thin again, we got a surprise 17" dump of snow. They were calling for 8-14" , and we normally end up at the low end.

Here are a few shots of Julie, enjoying the powder. Wish we could ski in conditions like this more often.