Time for some more updates... Aside from these items, I've been going to the gym 2 or 3 times a week.

• March 21 - Scramble: Grotto Mountain. Ricardo led an ACC trip to Grotto. There wasn't much snow left, and I thought spring was quickly approaching... oh how I was wrong!
• March 22? 28? 29? - Snowboarding: Sunshine w/ Tyler. I don't remember the date, but there was some snowboarding in here somewhere. Pretty decent snow, actually!
• April 5 - Snowboarding: Sunshine w/ Shanna. A Fun day :-)
• April 9 - ACC event: The Unplanned Bivy: Mountaineers Art of Suffering. Three ACC members talked about (unexpected) bivouacs they've done, how they dealt with it, and what they would have done differently.
• April 10-12 - Watrous Trip. The farm auction was this weekend. It was very busy. We left on Friday, but I forgot something in Calgary, so we had to go back, and it ended up being a ~13 hour trip instead of ~7.5 or so. My parents gave me their 2006 Vibe, and I forgot the papers on the table in the apartment, d'oh! The trip back went smoothly though, phew.
• April 17-18 - COSSFest 2009. I spoke on the Saturday, which I mentioned in a previous post. My topic was "Getting things done on the command line." Turnout was pretty low for the whole event, but it was a very good time overall.
• April 19 - Snowboarding: Sunshine w/ Shanna. Another fun day :-) A little icy though.
• April 21 - ACC Meeting: Early New Routes and First Ascents - Glen Boles. It was an excellent presentation full of awesome photos and amazing history about climbing in the Rockies in the 50s-80s.
• April 25 - Beth Rodden was at the Crux from 1-4PM for a meet&greet. I showed up when the place opened at 12 to get some climbing in. It turned out that practically nobody else showed up until 2, and most people didn't show up until 3! It ended up being me and two young girls (13/7?) talking to Beth for an hour. Boy did we run out of things to talk about fast!
• April 25 - Calgary Outdoor Festival - Mountain Film Festival. Beth did a slide show, and there were some films, pretty good overall.
• April 26 - Bouldering at Yamnuska w/ Shanna. We spent an hour trying to find the boulders at Yam. There was fresh snow on the ground (and occasionally still falling,) and freshly cut down trees covering the path that leads to the boulders... d'oh! I did climb one problem, but it was a pain having to switch shoes at the top just to come down. The weather kept changing every few minutes, so we left. I'm glad we finally found them, though!
• May 3 - My first lead climb on rock! Shanna and I went climbing with a few people from ACC at Wasootch. There was still snow on the ground, but not near the cliffs. The weather cooperated for the most part, and we got a few climbs in.
• May 6 - CLUG Meeting - I presented my "Getting things done on the command line" talk to the Calgary Linux Users Group. It was well received, and many people downloaded/viewed the slides afterward (presumably they couldn't make the meeting.)
• May 10 - Rock rescue course w/ Sean Isaac. The ACC training and leadership committee organizes courses to try to get more trip leaders for the club. I see myself leading trips of some sort in the near future, so I took this course (and another one coming up in June.) The course covered things such as how to tie off your belay device, transfer it to an anchor, lowering from the anchor, pulley systems, and tandem rappelling.
• May 15 - The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra performed Video Games Live 2.0. There was really too much going on to cover it all here: Guitar Hero contest where the winner played on stage with the orchestra, costume contest, video game demos, tons of music with video displays, live skype video feed with the creator of the first video game (the feed kinda worked,) the blindfolded pianist played the SMB theme blindfolded, and so much more!
• May 16 - Climbing w/ Shanna at Wasootch again. I led my first slab climb (a 5.7, but it felt waaay harder because I'm not used to slab,) what an experience! Shanna led her first climb as well. It was the same one as I led the last time we were there :-)
• May 17 - Climbing w/ Tyler at Yamnuska. Tyler led Unnamed 5.7 600' 6 pitches (AKA the Pumpkin Route). It was a very fun climb. We managed to get on first by about 10 minutes, but there was still rockfall on us from the wind coming from the north! We were sheltered and in the sun all day, but at the top it felt like 100km/h winds gusts!
• May 19 - ACC Meeting - There were two parts, first there was a "Spring kickoff party for trip coordinators." I attended that, and found out I need to do a first-aid course to lead trips. Makes sense... I probably should have renewed my first aid a long time ago. The second part was about wild edibles and medicinals. I can't say that interests me much, but I did learn that it's the blue Juniper berries you want to eat... not the green ones like I had tried previously (yuck!!!)

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1. Clouds at the rock rescue course.
2. Some tandem rappelling with menacing clouds in the distance.
3. Shanna's first lead at A Slab at Wasootch!
4. Tyler at a belay station on Unnamed.
5. Me at the same station.
6. I didn't end up getting a good angle for this panorama, but it almost turned out. The view from the top of the climb.
7. I took several panoramic photos at the farm auction (for practice,) and I think this one turned out the best.

I gave my COSSFest 2009 presentation on "Getting things done on the command line" to the Calgary Linux Users Group today. The slides are pretty much the same as the COSSFest ones, but here they are anyway

COSSFest 2009 Presentation. Before I forget, here are the slides for the talk I gave at COSSFest 2009.

Since joining Facebook last year, I really haven't been keeping this up to date. That sucks, because I like being able to look back and see what I was doing on specific dates. Well, here's another update...

• December 28?-January 2? - Condo in Canmore: Mom and Dad rented a penthouse suite at Solara in Canmore for the week. It was an awesome trip! I got sick as soon as I arrived, but was better two days later. We went to Sunshine Village for a few days. The temps were cold, but the snow was OK. It was nice spending time with everyone. The condo had an excellent view of the fireworks on New Year's Eve. The condo itself was amazing, I don't think I have any pictures that do it justice.
• January 7 - CLUG Meeting: Topic was Network Security. I also learned that I will never buy a macbook unless I figure out how to middle-click with it...
• January 15 - First meeting of Calgary Hackerspace (Now called Protospace) Lots of people showed up at the Oolong teahouse in Kensington... more than there were seats for everyone! I haven't gone to any subsequent meetings, however, since it looks like they are on-track, and I'm not terribly interested in the idea.
• January 16-18 - Snowboarding trip in Fernie: Chris Bray rented a condo in Fernie for the weekend. We rode down in Ryan K's truck. The snow was old, and there was avalanche debris all over the place, but I was able to find some fresh snow in the usual places! Woohoo!
• January 20 - ACC meeting: Dr. Bill Hanlon gave a presentation about his foundation (Basic Health International Foundation) and the work he has done in other countries. It really makes me appreciate our health care system!
• January 23-24 - Best of the Banff Mountain Film Festival: Shanna and I went to the best of the BMFF at the Rozsa Centre at the UofC again this year. We had already seen a few of the films elsewhere, but it was a really fun time, regardless.
• February 1 - Marilyn: Forever Blonde! at the Glenbow Museum. It's a one-woman show comprised primarily (entirely?) of quotes by Marilyn Monroe. Funny, sad, and entertaining all at once.
• February 1 - 2008 World's Best Commercials. We've seen this a few years in a row now. It's neat seeing commercials from different countries for products we normally see as North American (but are really European. e.g. Nestle.) If there's one thing I've learned from these, it's that we don't have enough nudity in our commericals.
• February 4 - CLUG Meeting - Network Auditing. I really didn't pay that much attention though...
• February - Then, I got kinda lazy. Well, maybe not lazy, but I sure didn't get out snowboardnig as much this season as I wanted to (back in October...) The snowpack was pretty poor in the Canadian Rockies, and the temperature were pretty cold on some key weekends where I was available to go Snowboarding... After getting an 8-month pass to the Crux, I am still going hard at it, 2-4 times a week. I'm still going through my periodized training schedule, and having a great time!
• February 17 - ACC Meeting: "Gothics: 2008 Calgary Section Camp, Bill Corbett" I really need to take some mountaineering courses (or at least one!) so I can enjoy some of the amazing alpine rock around here!
• February 20? - The Dentist. After a few years absence, I put myself in the dentist's chair again. Only a few unexpected cavities, which I had filled on the 27th.
• February 27 - CPO - The Planets. Shanna and I celebrated 6 years together by going to the Calgary Philharmonic Ochestra's presentation of Holst's The Planets. There was an excellent visual component as well (photos / 3d renderings on a large screen.) It was Sol Gabetta's (Argentina) first performance in Canada, and she did an amazing cello solo.
• February 28 - Pizza at David Muncaster's new apartment downtown. It was a nice place. We watched the new (4th) Futurama movie (hilarious, by the way!)
• March 1 - We took a lead climbing course! at the Crux. Shanna did really well, so it looks like it's going to be an awesome summer of climbing for me!
• March 5 - Bought our first climbing rope! and took our lead belay test at the Crux. Shanna took a big whipper and fell about 20 feet on about 32 feet of rope! (not including the stretch) Her feet ended up being at about my head level (which was an extra 6 feet off the ground by the time I stopped going up!) She's still a little sore from that (2 weeks later!)
• March 13 - Snowboarding with Chris at Sunshine. I took the day off to go snowboarding because my weekend looked like it wasn't going to fit into only two days. The weather was good. Not much fresh snow, but at least many of the rocks were covered up, and there wasn't toooo much ice. We found a gnarly cliff drop, and both of us nailed it! It wasn't that difficult, but it looked scary from the top: 30 degree entrance, and you have to ride this fin that's the size of one snowboard, then ride it off to the side so you don't land in the wrong place. It was only about 6 feet once you actually drop off of it, but making a wrong move would have really sucked (for the snowboards, at least!)
• March 14 - Tour De Bloc (a Canadian bouldering [climbing] competition) was at the Crux. Shanna and I showed up to watch at 2:30ish. There were 35 problems, and you had as much time as you wanted (well, several hours) to complete any number of them. At the end, points were tallied based on how many tries it took to do each one, and finalists were chosen. We left at around 4PM to go to the Outdoor Centre at the UofC so I could pick up some equipment for the next day. We came back at 6PM for the finals. There were 8 problems for the finals (4 each for the Mens and Womens finals.) Each competitor had 5 minutes for each problem, and they didn't get to see the problem before-hand. For the men's final, it came down to how many attempts each made, since they were tied for points!
• March 15 - My first time ice climbing! I could go on and on about how awesome it was, but I won't. I went out with a bunch of people I met climbing with ACC last year at Rock Rage on Wednesday nights. We climbed "Wet Dream" in the Icefields. To get there from the road, we had to hike 45 minutes through knee to waist deep snow. There wasn't much of a trail to follow, and I led the way for the first 10 minutes. We ended up right at the ice, the storm blew away, and we had blue skies and above freezing temperatures the rest of the day! I didn't get back into cell phone range until 7:45, and my gear had to be back by 8PM, but they let me extend that to 9AM the next morning, thankfully!
• March 19 - Networking event (S.I. Systems) at the brickyard. I'm not much for this sort of thing, but Carl won a gift basket.

It's been way too long since my last update. I'll have to do things in stages. Here's December at a glance:

• December 3 - CLUG Meeting: subject was "Linux Gadgets"
• December 5&6 - Snowboard trip to Revelstoke! Chris and I left early Saturday morning and headed to Revvy. The weeks weather was not looking promising, no snow at all. Then there was a 15cm dump on Friday night! Woohoo! The roads were a little sketchy, and we followed an invisible semi for quite a while through Rogers Pass, but we made it to town in good time. Unfortunately, the road up to the hill was not freshly sanded, and by the time we got there, it had been thoroughly polished. We had to park before getting to the top, as did quite a few other people, but we caught a ride up right away with a guy who worked there. The lift lines were light, which was nice, and the snow was awesome! We had to walk back to the car afterwards, so by the time we got back to the Same Sun, we just got some supper and slept like logs. The next day was just as awesome, at least another 10cm, and not much for crowds. The drive back was OK, no car problems this time, thank goodness!
• December 16 - ACC Meeting (Potluck): The food was really good, and Rob Owens gave an excelent slide show.
• December 20 - Heading to Shanna's farm for Christmas. We stopped off in Blackie for supper/visiting with her Dad's side of the family.
• December 20-27 - Most of the Christmas week we were at the Farm and boy, was it cold! For the first few days, I'm not sure it got warmer than -20C! The Grahams just got two new border collies, and they needed to be walked every two hours, so that took up quite a bit of time. We did manage to get into some trouble on Christmas, however. After opening presents, we took Phillip's 3/4 ton van turned truck out in the lentil field and let 'er rip. Unfortunately Phillip had the good truck out there as well, and as we all know, young people + cameras = trouble brewing. Well, here's the result: (listen for the "oh no!" at the end... that's when the crash happened!
  
• December 27? - We headed home, and got ready for the trip to Canmore! More on that to come!

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1. Phillip's crazy-awesome truck
2. The inside of the truck. Note the awesome door handle!
3. The crowd at Canmore for New Years

Phew, more busyness.

• 3 times a week or so - Indoor climbing at the Crux
• November (whole month) - Nethack Tournament I won some trophies (see below)
• November 18 - Alpine Club meeting, the topic was Winter Lovers Anonymous, with a slide show by Sean Isaac. Very good :-)
• November 22 - Snowboarding at Sunshine for the first day of the season! Good snow for this time of the year, too bad it hasn't snowed since!
• November 22/23 - Fekete Christmas party (Shanna's work) at the Chateau Lake Louise! Awesome food, great accommodations, snowshoeing in the dark, and great weather.
• November 24 - Climbing at the Crux with Julian. Normally I just boulder and do some "Aerobic Restoration and Capillarity training," but today I had a climbing partner (Shanna's right shoulder is still not 100% after straining it climbing on my Birthday.)
• November 26 - Out There family/friends night. A while ago, I noticed a pricing error ($400 jacket marked as $200) at Out There, so one of the managers took me out for Coffee on the 26th (after both of us forgot about it on separate occasions.) Turns out the 26th was friends and family night, and he invited me to go. Shanna and I got some great deals on Christmas presents for each other!
• November 27 - CUUG lunch meeting. I managed to remember to go this month.
• November 27 - CLUG PROGSIG meeting. For possibly the second time ever, the entire meeting was on topic! Two in a row!
• November 28 - Watched Religulous at the Uptown. It turned out to be a very scary movie... in the sense that it makes you scared for the future of the human race.

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The three trophies I won in the tournament. I did much better this year than last year! I even managed to get my highest score ever!

                       ----------
                      /          \
                     /    REST    \
                    /      IN      \
                   /     PEACE      \
                  /                  \
                  |      hype0       |
                  |     4445 Au      |
                  |   killed by a    |
                  |  yellow dragon,  |
                  |  while helpless  |
                  |                  |
                  |       2008       |
                 *|     *  *  *      | *
        _________)/\\_//(\/(/\)/\//\/|_)_______


Farvel hype0 the Valkyrie...

You died in Gehennom on dungeon level 36 with 926449 points,
and 4445 pieces of gold, after 49232 moves.
You were level 19 with a maximum of 154 hit points when you died.

It's been way too long since my last update. I've been up to lots since then... here's the short form.

• October 8 - Alpine Club - Picking Your Mountain Objective at CAOC. 2nd half was about winter scrambling
• October 10-12 - Thanksgiving in Rosetown
• October 19 - Senecal visited on his way back home to Edmonton
• October 21 - Alpine Club meeting, the topic was avalanche safety
• October 26 - Reel Rock Tour at the Plaza Theatre. Watched a bunch of short films, and The Sharp End.
• October 28 - Wine and Cheese Night at Out There, put on by the Icebreaker sales rep.
• October 30 - CLUG PROGSIG meeting. For the first time ever, the entire meeting was on topic!
• October 31 - Saw a mouse in the house on Halloween Night... spent the rest of the weekend cleaning up after it.
• November 3 - Bought an 8 month pass for the Crux indoor climbing gym.
• November ?- Realized I missed the start of the annual Nethack Tournament. I made it further this year than I did last year, hurray!
• November 6 - Alpine Club Knot Review course at CAOC

It looks like Sunshine is open tomorrow... Looks like I'll be busy again for a while!

Mark's big climbing adventure. I climbed my first multi-pitch and first trad route this Saturday. The route was Grillmair Chimneys which was the first technical rock climb established on Yamnuska, one of the more famous mountains around Calgary. It was a 5.6, 8 pitches, and 295m. It started raining part way up, but it didn't affect the climb, thankfully. I enjoyed every part of the day :-)

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1. Yamnuska in the sunrise.
2. Looking down from about a third of the way up.
3. The route description and topo
4. This is the hole you come out of when you finish the route :-)
5. Tyler and I at the top!
6. The clouds were coming vertically up the mountain.
7. A 2x2 stitched photo of the cliff face. The orange dots represent the route, to the best of my recollection... which isn't that great...

Birthday update. I've been busy lately climbing indoors at the Crux and CCC with Shanna. There are only a few weekends left to get out to the mountains before the weather turns rotten (before the excellent winter weather, of course!) so I should really stop wasting them! Maybe we'll head out and do some bouldering on real boulders for once...

I reached the summit of Mt. Temple via the South-West ridge (moderate scrambling) this past weekend. Mt. Temple was the first 11,000 ft. peak in the Canadian Rockies to be climbed, and is the highest you can climb in the Canadian rockies that doesn't require technical climbing. It was a long day (9 and a half hours from parking lot to parking log,) with some varied weather (overcast, sunny, snowy, snow with lightning, snow with sun,) and a great hour and twenty minute stop on the summit. The whole climb was quite enjoyable, and the terrain changed quickly, so it didn't get even a bit boring.

A short timeline (to the best of my recollection):

• 9:45 AM - Leave parking lot
• 1:45 PM - Summit
• 2:45 PM - Everyone's made it to the summit now
• 3:10 PM - Leaving the summit
• 6:30 PM - Back at the parking lot

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Click here for the extra large version

1. Me on the summit!
2. The whole group.
3. Big snowflakes on the way down. I saw Martin on the last bit of the way up to the summit, then he hiked the way out with us (4 person group minimum [bears].)
4. Summit 360. I had to adjust some the colour of the photos because the snow in the foreground really threw things off.