Snowing again...

Snowing again, last night we received about four inches of snow. Here are a couple of photos I took this morning.

Jury Duty Canceled, Back in Gunny, and Aikido classes

Yesterday I went in at noon to the Montrose Justice Center and found out that my grand jury duty had been canceled due to bad weather in Telluride and surrounding areas. I drove back to Gunnison and spent the day doing some chores around the cabin along with a quick trip to City Market. I purchased a young turkey that was on sale, so this weekend I'll have turkey to last for a while.

I went over to the Escalante Fitness Center here on campus and I talked to Nikole about teaching an Aikido class. Right now I'll be teaching Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights at 7:30. From going to no Aikido to three nights a week will be a big change in my activity level. I won't be getting paid but I will be getting a free Fitness Center membership for teaching. I plan on posting my lesson plans after each class for my own benefit and reference. I need to order a new gi. Good Stuff.

In Montrose, jury duty is here...

I am in Montrose this morning, I drove down from Gunnison yesterday to do some clothes shopping and on a whim, I went to the Fox Theater in Downtown Montrose and contributed my my dollars to Stallone's Rambo. Here is a photo of the outside of the theater. The outside is a flashback to the 1950's, but inside it looked like any other chain theater, nothing retro about the place including the stupid advertisements before the movie on a small screen (looking from the outside you don't expect much. Rambo was better than I thought, much blood and gore, along with a satisfying and simple bad-guy(s)-die plot. Stallone's is beat-up with his body reflecting his chemical and physical commitment to looking like he stepped out of a glossy body-builder magazine from the glory years of 1980s Rambo. Going to Rambo was a step-back to when Stallone was the biggest, badass in my youth although I never saw a Rambo movie until after I went to college. I check-in for jury duty at 12:15, so I still have a couple of hours left before I need to be there. I plan on getting gas and maybe picking up a pair of new Birkenstocks (my old pair are good for inside duty but the soles are almost gone and the cork is damaged)

I hope to get home tonight and that my little Montrose adventure will be over soon.

I just took an online quiz from Beliefnet (http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html)

Here are my results (not too surprising):

1.	Secular Humanism (100%)
2.	Unitarian Universalism (97%)
3.	Nontheist (90%)
4.	Liberal Quakers (81%)
5.	Neo-Pagan (78%)
6.	Theravada Buddhism (75%)
7.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (72%)
8.	New Age (66%)
9.	Reform Judaism (59%)
10.	Taoism (57%)
11.	Mahayana Buddhism (49%)
12.	Scientology (49%)
13.	Orthodox Quaker (45%)
14.	New Thought (45%)
15.	Sikhism (41%)
16.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (40%)
17.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (36%)
18.	Jainism (35%)
19.	Seventh Day Adventist (33%)
20.	Bahá'í Faith (30%)
21.	Orthodox Judaism (30%)
22.	Islam (27%)
23.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (26%)
24.	Hinduism (26%)
25.	Eastern Orthodox (17%)
26.	Roman Catholic (17%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness (13%)

I am a Liberal Quaker, although I lean much more towards the Secular Humanist positions and attitudes. Also ironic is that I was brought up a Jehovah's Witness and that selection is last for me.

Best photos from yesterday.

The Gunnison river is still flowing even with -10 degree weather. Notice the steam coming off the water.








I found this collection of snow-burdened cottonwood trees on CR-10 as the sun was slowly dropping in the sky.

Animals of Gunnison County

Here is a photo of a cow from CR-10, about three miles Northwest from Gunnison. I took these photos later in the day so the temperature was definitely below zero, I couldn't stay very long but I was able to get this photo
Just a mutt wandering around near the Palisades in Gunnison.

When I continued on CR-10 back towards Gunnison, I came upon these two deer eating near a row of balled hay from the side of the road. At first I took some photos too far way, I then slowly drove up and took this photo through my SUV's window.


Here is much better view of the row of hay, when I looked harder, there was actual a herd of deer feeding on this row with one three-point buck along with the does.

View of Current Living Conditions

So here is my rental cabin yesterday, it was a beautiful day but I doubt if the temperature got above 15 degrees. Notice the large snow piles to either side of the cabin, a result of the snow plows clearing the streets the past couple of weeks. My Rodeo (pictured here on the right) was blocked in a couple of times.

Monday Quarterbacking or quick overview of my weekend

As last Wednesday was my birthday, I decided to purchase a digital camera at Radio Shack on Sunday and start taking some photos. I'm excited by some of these photos which I'll post today.

This weekend I finished reading Charles Stross's Halting State. I enjoyed this novel although at the end of the novel, it went the typical trans-national security/geek route that many cyper-punk novels go. I did enjoy Stross's second person narrative where the three main characters alternated in the second person perspective.

I also watched a number of films on Friday and Saturday. Friday I watched the "Simpsons Movie" and "Bourne Ultimatum". Saturday I watched the "Kingdom", "3:10 to Yuma", and "Shoot' Em Up". Of the five films, "3:10 to Yuma" was the best followed by "Bourne Ultimatum". I felt the "Kingdom" was relevant in that it presented a different perspective to modern Saudi Arabia but I felt the characters were shallow (watching Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner try to act provided made me laugh) and the plot was predictable. The biggest disappoint was the "Simpsons Movie", I was bored and didn't laugh that much. "Shoot 'Em Up" had Clive Owens and Paul Giamatti and was stupid as well but at least it did have a couple of good action scenes.

Cold but no jury duty today...

I am at work after having called Montrose last night to find out if I had jury duty today. I don't, its been postponed due to the weather. Speaking of the weather, this morning I had to dig out my Rodeo with a broom (I don't have a snow shovel, I think Gunnison had a run) . Over the past couple of days, we have received at least two feet of snow.

I didn't do anything special for New Years. I had to work last Monday and Wednesday and it was too cold to walk anywhere ( I know I am being a wimp, I need to reduce my anti-social tendencies). This past weekend, instead of renting a movie or read my novel, I spent most of the two days migrating my Quaker Catalog to a TurboGears application. When I am finished I'll write more about it, basically I am importing all of the topic map XML files to a relational database model currently constructed in sqlite with the web application layer using TurboGears instead of the Apache framework I initially used for the first version of the Quaker catalog. It felt good to actually do some extra-work programming. I still own the domain name to inhinc.net, my old defunct consulting company. I am slowly resurrecting the domain to showcase my hacked development efforts and ideas. On Sunday, I spent some time playing around with Python 3-D physics simulation framework, Visual. I began some rough ideas about a 3-D interface to the Quaker Catalog using Visual and likely the Stackless framework to create an agent-based system. Fun stuff and a lot of work to do in the future.