Desultory Thoughts

I took the day off the other day to attend a sales event that NCSI (a vendor that sells network apps and utilities) hosted for a bunch of their customers.  It took place at the Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, so I didn’t have to drive very far.  Some of the customers came all the way from Wyoming to attend!  They were showing off some stuff from LeftHand Networks (iSCSI SANs).  Pretty cool stuff, but it pales in comparison to the pre-event!

First we were able to get out in a Mustang on closed course track with cones.  We took three rounds through the course to get a feel for it, but their advise to us was to drive the car like we stole it.  I’ve never in my life driven something with that much power!  It was pretty dang sweet!  After we warmed up we took three laps around as they timed us.  I wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t the worst either.  And I never hit any cones, so that was good.

After driving the Mustangs you wouldn’t think that it could get much cooler, but it actually did.  The coolest part of the experience is when we rode shotgun with professional drivers around the actual race track!  Their were three cars out there jockeying for position on the track, just like they would in a real race.  The only thing they held back on was actual tapping.  That’s what they do in a real race that so often ends with a car off the track, so I’m glad they held back a little.  I had my little camera so i pulled it out and flipped it into video mode and took some low-quality video of the experience.  This video doesn’t do it justice, but you’ll still get the idea.  It was a lot of fun!

My wife and I enjoy watching “So You Think You Can Dance” and were excited to see that they were coming to Salt Lake City to search for talent this year.  The Salt Lake City episode aired tonight and it wasn’t long before I saw a familiar sight.  Anyone involved in the Special Olympics Utah program would recognize it in a heartbeat, it was none other then Brett Banford rippin’ it up out in the snow on the street in his ski jacket as he often does.  In fact, if you ever decide to volunteer for a Special Olympics event be sure to stick around for the dance that takes place after the first day of events.  You’ll have so much fun!

Brett is a very outspoken and charismatic athlete and he loves everyone he meets.  He told Kat he loved her on the show, but he told me that before, too.  He represented Special Olympics and people with disabilities so well tonight; we can all be proud.  I’ll upload his highlights and post it soon so you can all enjoy his performance and words of inspiration if you missed tonight’s episode.  His personality is addictive!

Way to go, Brett!

UPDATE: You can also see him in an interview on Fox 13 News.

As promised, here is some old video of another trip we took to Gooseberry Mesa, this time mostly shot and edited by me. It was really hard not to edit further as I was prepping it for upload to YouTube, since after so long I started to be overly critical of my work. And, since YouTube only allows submissions of 10 minutes or less, I had to break this into four parts. Don’t feel obligated to watch it all; the good stuff is in parts three and four. The first two videos will be good if you are curious about what we do when we’re not biking on our mountain bike trips.

The Gooseberry Mesa Adventure – Part I

The Gooseberry Mesa Adventure – Part II

The Gooseberry Mesa Adventure – Part III

The Gooseberry Mesa Adventure – Part IV

Another wonderful spring day makes me want it to be spring for real, all the more! Good news is that Matt called me today and told me we’re going biking this Saturday. Bad news is, the weather forecast for this weekend is predicting rain! Dang it! At least it’s not snow.

A few years ago my friends (John, Matt and Chan) went biking at Gooseberry Mesa in Southern Utah. John and I filmed the whole thing and John made this video that makes me wish it were spring already! I love this video! I’ll upload another Gooseberry trip video that I edited and share it, too.

If you’re familiar with Google Maps then most likely you know about the awesome “street view” view. It was originally available in San Francisco and New York but since then Google has been busy driving the streets of many metropolitan cities and taking pictures with their fancy truck.

I’ve ascertained that they were here on September 11, 2007. If you were in downtown Salt Lake City on that day (or within a day or two of 9/11 because who knows how long it might take to drive up and down every street in Salt Lake) then check out the maps and see if you can find yourself!

I looked at the places I work first to see if I could find myself walking to lunch and that’s where I found my clue as to when the google truck was in town. I work at the Energy Solutions Arena and the marque says “September” and the flags are at half-staff. That narrows it down to 9/11 and a quick google search confirmed that the Governor had ordered that all flags be at half-staff on 9/11/2007.

People have noted all sorts of interesting pictures that were captured in other cities when people in public places didn’t possibly realize that they were in fact in a public place. I wonder what we’ll find happening in Salt Lake City. If you find something interesting, please be sure to let us know! Here is a YouTube video that shows just how detailed these street views can get.

UPDATE:

In my excitement to post this story I just assumed it was downtown metropolitan Salt Lake City. BOY was I wrong. Tooele even made the cut!! They drove by our house and I didn’t even know it. And my kids weren’t out playing that day, darn it.

Besides Tooele they pretty much got everything as far south as Santaquin, as far north as North Ogden and from the Dugway exit on I-80 all the way Kamas in the east.

 UPDATE: As I’m looking around I thought it would be cool to link to some of the things I’m finding:

• The house I grew up in
• The house Heather grew up in
  
• My High School (that place is OLD)