Zac and Jen: This side of eternity

Drawer pulls

2011-06-04T08:38:00.008-06:00

The drawer pulls we had built for us don't have an edge to hide any mistakes made when routing the holes they are placed in. It was very important to me that no mistakes be made since I was not going to build a whole new drawer. I also thought attempting to patch any mistake would not be acceptable. A custom form or a template was necessary to meet my goals.

My good friend Chris, who is an excellent craftsmen and has been taking classes at Red Rocks for many years, suggested I use a method he'd learned while in class. He said the method was used when a joint was required to fit exactly with another non-standard joint. The method involves Bondo and Petroleum Jelly.

To create the form/template, coat the object with Petroleum Jelly, mix the Bondo, place it around the object, and let it dry. The Petroleum Jelly prevents the Bondo from bonding with the object. It worked quite well for this project. Here's a picture of the template created by the hardened Bondo.

Removing the drawer pull from the hardened Bondo was quite easy. I drilled a hole in the back of the plywood and pushed the drawer pull out from behind. I didn't have to worry about damaging the drawer pull since it is made out of some hard metal.

Using a 1/2" bearing flush router bit, I created the custom templates I would use when routing the cabinet drawers.

Here's a picture of the front of a template with a drawer pull inside.

Here's a picture of the back a drawer pull inside the plywood template. Quite a nice fit!

After removing the hardened Bondo from the plywood with a hammer and sandpaper, I then routed the drawer faces using the three templates. It is difficult to make that first cut into something you've worked so long and hard on!

Here's an up close picture of the finished product. I'm really pleased how it turned out.

All three drawer pulls installed with drawers in the cabinet.

The next task for this project is the drawer front for the bottom drawer. My friend Chris will be helping me. I'll start this after main doors are installed. Thankfully that isn't my job.

Castlewood Canyon

2011-03-27T10:22:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, some highschool buddies and I went hiking at Castlewood Canyon in Franktown CO. It's a hidden gem out in the plans southeast of CastleRock CO.

View Larger Map

We had to cross the stream a few times.

Here we are at the end of the trail.

TV is installed

2011-03-18T18:43:00.000-06:00

The TV is installed in what may be its final resting spot. There is only about 1/2" clearance all the way around it.

More progress on the cabinet

2011-03-09T21:25:00.002-07:00

Today I installed the last glass shelf and moved all our electronic components into the media cabinet. It is really starting to come together.

Joe M. should be coming out sometime to install the doors for the media cabinet. After that is done, then I can start on the front for the bottom drawer.

The drawer pulls still have to be installed too.

Hardware for the tall drawers

2011-03-07T20:24:00.004-07:00

The media cabinet I've been working on has three tall drawers. There is about a 1/4" gap between them, not enough for little or big fingers to be able to open them easily.

We decided on using a recessed drawer pull, but we couldn't find one we both liked, so we went custom. One of the guys at the 23rd ave Sculpture Studio, John "Wild" Mann, created some drawer pulls for us based off of sketch I made.

Glass Shelving

2011-03-06T19:39:00.001-07:00

I installed the 3/8" thick glass shelving in the media cabinet today. I have one more to do, but I need to have the shelf trimmed so it will fit nicely.

Entertainment Cabinet Continued

2011-03-04T20:10:00.007-07:00

Over the past year, with my Dad's help, I've been building an entertainment cabinet. We purchased plywood from Austin Hardwoods in April 2011 and started construction. We made great progress over a week or so getting the general structure cut and built. Over the last 10 months I've been putting together the tall drawers, ironing on the edging to hide the plywood ends, and putting the finishing clear coat on everything. Just recently I've started installation.

Here are some pictures.

Empty Space

Bottom Drawer Only

Main Structure with a Tall Drawer

Bottom Drawer with Support

Top Shelf

Top Shelf with Fan and I.R. Repeater

Glass Shelving Support

VCR on a Glass Shelf

Glass Shelf with hole for cabling

Bottom of top shelf with holes for cabling

Wall Mount for TV

Generating Java code from a WSDL

2010-01-12T12:35:00.007-07:00

Another java/web services post for yah. I recently had to generate some java code from a wsdl file to be able to access a webservice.

I used the axis2-wsdl2code-maven-plugin to accomplish this. Here's the pom file I created.



  4.0.0
  jalki-wsdl2java
  jalki-wsdl2java
  1.0-SNAPSHOT
  jalki-wsdl2java

  
      
          http://HOST:PORTS/CONTEXT/WEB_SERVICE_NAME?wsdl
      
  

  
      
          org.apache.axis2
          axis2
          1.4
      
      
          org.apache.ws.commons.axiom
          axiom-impl
          1.2.8
      
      
          wsdl4j
          wsdl4j
          1.6.2
      
  
  
      
          
              org.apache.axis2
              axis2-wsdl2code-maven-plugin
              1.4
              
                  
                      
                          wsdl2code
                      
                      
                          blah.blah.ws.client
                          ${WSDL_FILE_LOCATION}

With a simple invocation of "mvn clean install" this great plugin generates the client Java classes needed to interact with the web service.

Cap'n?

2009-05-27T21:47:00.000-06:00

This is my Captain Crunch costume I made for the coed-kickball team I am a part of. The league hosts a couple theme nights, this time it was "product mascots."

Product Recall

2009-04-29T06:55:00.001-06:00

I'd hate to be the one who first reported this issue...

Under Armour Recalls Athletic Cups Due To Injury Hazard

from US Consumer Product Safety Commission - Recent recalls and product safety news

The cups can break if hit, posing a risk of serious injury hazard to athletes.

The Shack

2008-09-10T09:43:00.003-06:00

I just finished reading this book and I highly recommend it.

theshackbook.com/

Can you spot the bee?

2008-07-17T22:20:00.001-06:00

Since we moved into our home I've planted a garden every year. I love growing sunflowers because they are very hardy and don't take a lot of work. Here's a photo of one of my first of the year. This is a red variety. Can you spot the bee?

Sun and Fun

2008-04-26T11:33:00.003-06:00

in Hawaii...

Jeremy, Stephanie, Mom, Dad, Jennie and I spent some time together in Hawaii on the island of Kaua'i.

We surfed, snorkeled, rode bikes, went fishing, and enjoyed time together.

Bustin' down the lane

2008-04-09T09:49:00.003-06:00

Jennie and I went bowling with her sisters Courtenay and Hannah recently.

We bowled three games together. I beat my previous high score of 215.

Bear Creek Lake Park

2008-02-23T21:38:00.003-07:00

Today we took our first trip to Bear Creek Lake Park with our friend Bonnie.

View Map

Our first HD video posting

2008-02-14T08:28:00.002-07:00

I finally was able to get some trial software to work so that I was able to transcode the m2ts (AVCHD) files created by our camcorder into an mpeg format. I used the trial version of Main Concept's AVCHD codec (H.264. They seem to be in the business of selling licenses to other companies so hopefully we'll see more support soon in other software. I then used the TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress software to deinterlace and transcode into mpeg-2.

Anyhow here's the video.

Horses in the corral from zac on Vimeo.

An amazing video

2008-02-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

I'm still struggling to find a solution for editing the video files created by our new camcorder. There isn't a lot of support for editing the AVCHD format natively and the software that does support it often costs more than the camera.

I recently ran across an hd video someone had taken while paragliding. It is quite an exprience to watch it.

reNormalization from Marcin Kostur on Vimeo.

Another Home Video

2008-01-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

Just playing around with the camera. This is a view of our corral to the west of the house.

GiSTEQ GPS Datalogger

2008-01-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

For my birthday, Jennie gave me a GPS unit that came with software to set latitude and longitude values on pictures. It is able to do this fairly accurately if your camera's clock is synchronized with that of the GPS unit. Here's a great review of it: http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/gisteq-phototrackr-r1032.php

View Larger Map

Video from a Canon HG10

2008-01-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

Here's the first video Jennie recorded with her new toy.

The camera records to a 40GB HDD using the nascent AVCHD format. There doesn't seem to be a bunch of support for editing or transcoding from this format.

With some help from http://chomer.com/how%2Dto/ I was able to figure out how to use the bundled software to transcode the .M2TS file produced by the camera into an AVI or a Quicktime file.

Executive Summary: Import your video file into a project in Ulead's DVD MovieFactory, then right-click the movie and select Export Video -> Customize. You can then choose a different file type such as .avi or .mov.

The video you see here is very dark and doesn't represent how the camera performs. I'm not quite sure why it turned out this way.

Maven, rmic-maven-plugin and the Ant task

2008-01-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

This is a Java tech post, not the type I usually include here, but I spent a lot of time searching for the solution and I wanted to share my findings.

I'm migrating a project at work from Ant to Maven and needed to RMI Compile (rmic) some classes.

There appear to be a couple options: Using a Maven Plugin, rmic-maven-plugin, http://mojo.codehaus.org/rmic-maven-plugin or using the rmic Ant task. The plugin is not very well documented and is still in an Alpha-SNAPSHOT version. The Ant task works great.

I found some direction on using the task from Maven from here: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MANTRUN-23

If you don't setup the dependencies for the maven-antrun-plugin, you'll end up with this error:
"Cannot use SUN rmic, as it is not available. A common solution is to
set the environment variable JAVA_HOME or CLASSPATH."

Below is a snippet from my pom.xml file.


<project>
.
.
.
 <build>
     <plugins>
         <plugin>
             <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
             <dependencies>
               <!-- runtime dependency for the antrun plugin.
                  It brings tools.jar into the plugins execution
                  space so the 'rmic' compiler can be called from
                  Ant's <rmic/> task.
               -->
               <dependency>
                 <groupId>sun</groupId>
                 <artifactId>tools</artifactId>
                 <version>1.0</version>
                 <scope>system</scope>
                 <systemPath>
                     ${java.home}/../lib/tools.jar
                 </systemPath>
               </dependency>
             </dependencies>
             <executions>
                 <execution>
                     <id>rmic</id>
                     <phase>compile</phase>
                     <configuration>
                         <tasks>
                             <rmic verify="true" debug="on"
                                   classpathref="maven.compile.classpath"
                                   base="${project.build.directory}/classes"
                                   includes="**/Remote*Impl.class"/>
                         </tasks>
                     </configuration>
                     <goals>
                         <goal>run</goal>
                     </goals>
                 </execution>
             </executions>
         </plugin>
     </plugins>
 </build>
</project>

Hey...

2007-09-03T07:05:00.000-06:00

Our hay broker passed away a while back so we've been trying our different sources. This time we had to pick up the load ourselves instead of having it delivered. It was a whole day operation for us, we started around 8:30 AM driving to where the hay was and finished at 4:40 PM after having unloaded and cleaned up.

This was our first time driving a trailer this size and loading this much hay. The hay broker, Jim of Mariah Farms is a personable and helpful person.

We're not sure yet if we will be doing this again, but it was an adventure in horses that I wanted to share.

Go Karting

2007-06-30T19:56:00.000-06:00

I took last Thursday off from work to spend time with my brother in law, Joe, and his nephew, Zach. We ended up going to Action Karting at Bandimere Speedway. This was my second time racing go karts at this track, so I think I should have been able to beat Joe, but I didn't. His best time was 56 seconds and mine was 59.

No kidding

2007-06-16T18:01:00.000-06:00

You may have noticed the goat on blog. Well, his name is Buddy and he has been with us since the summer of 2000. He was a gift from the owner of a ranch that Jennie worked at during her last year of college in Fort Collins.

Buddy has developed a bump on the left side of his jawbone. It kind of looks like he has a wad of tobacco in his cheek. Unfortunately, the Vet has diagnosed it as a cancer. In addition to the bump, there has been a lot of foamy spittle on his mouth and by him early in the morning. I'm assuming this is from him chewing his cud all night and the bump.

So... we've been left in a quandary of sorts. A biopsy would cost a whole lot.

Any how, he continues to be a good goat, eating some of the weeds we put in front of him.

Well... done?

2007-06-16T17:52:00.000-06:00

Actually the well isn't done just yet. I started working on repairing the cement roof of the enclosed space that contains our well (pump, bladder and pipe). The cement roof had almost completely chipped off the top layer.

I spent most of today and part of yesterday evening doing the demolition by hand. I didn't want to risk the pump or bladder being damaged by an errant jackhammer or stray skid steer.

I was expecting to find some re-bar in the cement, to my surprise there was a heavy duty wire mesh embedded instead.

I had planned on Jeremy helping me mix and pour the concrete this afternoon. Unfortunately I wasn't ready yet, I think it turned out to be a good thing though since we had clouds roll in.

Carmina Burana

2007-06-09T10:23:00.000-06:00

Last night Jennie and I attended an open air concert at the Arvada Center. The Arvada Center Chorale performed Carmina Burana. You've heard the first movement, O Fortune, before in a movie or TV ad.

Listen here This rendition is from the Northeastern University Choral Society.

I think we might be going to the June 30th Johnny Cash tribute by Rusty Evans and the Ring of Fire.

Grandma Heismann's Slideshow

2007-05-18T15:35:00.000-06:00

Another Mexico Trip slideshow

2007-05-18T13:39:00.000-06:00

Mexico Trip: Interactive Pile of Pictures

2007-05-05T22:14:00.000-06:00

At the Marina / Heading out

2007-04-29T20:22:00.000-06:00

Putting the boat in the water

2007-04-29T20:19:00.000-06:00

Working on the boat

2007-04-15T22:05:00.000-06:00

Dad has done quite a few projects in the short amount of time we've been here. Changing the diesel engine's oil, altering the stove so that it runs off of propane instead of compressed natural gas, and installing a new hatch are a few of the major items.

Dad and I started installing a new solar powered exhaust fan in the Head (boat term for the water closet, which is a british term for the toilet). We were unable to finish due to the lack of silicone gell (we'll pick some up tomorrow). Here we are trying to understand the directions.

Here I am in the Head, the hole we drilled is between my fingers.

We also spent time working on the deck resealing the some plates that are a part of where the halyards are attached to some metal that is attached to a bulkhead. (I think)

Tomorrow the boat goes in the water! More pictures to come.

Love you all.

Zac

p.s.

Here's a video of me (looking dorky in my golfing/boating hat) that mom took.

Marina Seca

2007-04-15T21:36:00.000-06:00

Hola, como estas? Estamos muy bien!

We made it down to Mexico safe and sound on Friday afternoon. The scheduled move of the boat from storage to the work yard was successful.

This is a picture of Marina Seca and all the boats on dry dock/storage. The mountains behind the boats are to the north and the Sea of Cortez is to the east. You can only see a little bit of the water from where we are. In the mornings right now there is a nice breeze that come from the west that blows out towards the water. It has been in the 80s and low 90s here and it is pretty dry.

Picture of Mom and Dad in the living area of the boat that is below deck. I'm in the area where you sit when sailing.

Dad named his boat Obo, it has a punctiation mark I don't know how to make on one of the o's. The word is swedish for boat. We have to climb up the ladder to get in right now.

This picture is taken from the foredeck looking towards the stern. We've done some little projects and maintenance so far. You can see the new hatch Dad installed in the foreground of the picture below.

Here is a video I made of looking at the boat:

Good Morning... Tuscon!!!

2007-04-13T07:26:00.000-06:00

We woke up to some moisture on the ground today and this view from our balcony.

Heading down to Mexico

2007-04-12T19:43:00.000-06:00

I'm driving down to Mexico with Mom and Dad to spend time working on the Islander 32 and to do some sailing.

It's 80 degrees in Tuscon AZ, we escaped CO just in time to avoid a forecasted Spring snowstorm. It has been a leisurely drive in Dad's somewhat cramped Toyota Tacoma. The wind has been with us the whole way.

Tomorrow we will be heading South through Nogales onto San Carlos in the state of Sonora, Mexico.

Here's a picture of Dad and I at a rest area in New Mexico taken today.

My first JavaOne

2007-04-03T12:27:00.000-06:00

I'm very fortunate to work in a profession where continuing education is paid for by the company., this includes certifications and conferences.

This year I'm going to my very first JavaOne. I'm going to the one in San Fran. It is one of the largest Java conferences and is put on by Sun Microsystems, the originator of the language.

Shameless promotion of another Website

2007-04-01T14:57:00.000-06:00

Go visit this site: http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/03/10120/

Shameless, I tell ya!

Alllll Aboard!

2007-02-06T23:52:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, Jeremy and I took the Ski Train from Denver up to Winter Park Resort. This has been an annual benefit my work has provided since I started. Thanks Abacus!

It was sunny at times and very windy, but not too cold. We enjoyed some powder in the trees on Mary Jane.

Let it snow!

2006-12-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

The heavens opened and dumped pretty white flakes on the front range this past week. Golden, where we live, received just under 3 feet of snow. The snow from this year's blizzard wasn't as moisture packed as the last one we had in 2003.

The melting has just begun -it will be a while before our yard looses its snow-sea.

Here are some pictures:

Snow

2006-10-26T18:34:00.000-06:00

We received at least 5 inches last night. Wet snow. See what happens when you have wet snow and elms that haven't lost many leaves yet.

Before:

After:

Jennie and I spent part of Saturday doing cleanup duty.

Robocode: Round 2

2006-10-24T22:54:00.000-06:00

I never mentioned how I did on Round 1. I didn't do as badly as I thought I might, I believe bugs in my code was my downfall. I made it into the quarter finals.

Round 2 of our competition at work didn't have as much participation. There were only 5 'bots submitted this time. This go 'round, I dominated. I maintained my way-point movement system and focused on my radar control. I improved my aiming by adding a rudimentary linear predictive targeting system.

The RoboLeague platform was used to run a bunch of one on one battles for the participating robots. This method takes a lot less time than doing it by hand and having the computer render the bots movements on the screen. Once you've set up the league participants you push a button and then wait for the computer to run through its calculations and spit out the results.

For my troubles I was awarded a half pound of the most expensive coffee from Starbucks.

I've also posted my bot at an online robot repository: http://robocoderepository.com/
. There is an online Roborumble competition that I've entered. You can see my ranking details here and the general rankings here. I made it up to spot 407 with the 0.0.1 version of my bot. I just uploaded version 0.0.2, it will be a while before it gets anywhere.

The Roborumble works in the following manner: People run an application on their machines that downloads robots from the robot repository and pits them against one another then it uploads the results which are used to create the ranking details.

I think we'll be having another competition in the first quarter of next year. I'm hoping to defend my title. We'll see.

Junk in the Trunk?

2006-10-13T23:07:00.000-06:00

I don't think so, these are our precious puppy dogs, Cody and Roco.

Down on the Ranch

2006-10-13T21:45:00.000-06:00

Our roommate, Mendy, lived and worked at a horse farm before coming to live with us. Here are some photos of the '06 crops. Cute, aren't they? The farm is in the vicinity of Colorado Springs.

Enhanced Image Viewing

2006-10-06T23:37:00.000-06:00

I don't know if anyone has noticed how I updated my blog so I'm going to spell it out. I spent a little time a couple weeks ago enhancing the way images are displayed in my blogger layout tempate. Try clicking on one of the images. You'll see that the page no longer navigates away from the blog to the image. Instead a HTML <div> object is made visible and brought to the front of the viewing area and the larger image is loaded and displayed. This concept is referred to by some as a "lightbox."

Once the lightbox has been displayed, you can navigate between all the pictures on the site by clicking on the right or left side of the picture to move forward or backward respectively. You can close the lightbox either by clicking the close label at the bottom border or by scrolling down the page and clicking somewhere else.

I didn't do all the programming for the lightbox I just wired it up. There is a lot of javascript code that was written by others being used. The main lightbox library came from: http://www.huddletogether.com. Blogger doesn't allow you to upload scripts that they will host so I had to post them on my own site. It is common curtousy to not link images and scripts from others sites.

The little work I did do was to write some code to iterate over all the pictures and attach the lightbox functionality to them. If I didn't do this, then I'd have to add a special attribute by hand to all the images as I upload them. By doing it dynamically when the page is loaded I don't have to remember to do it when putting together a post. I'm also grabbing the blog-entry title and placing it on the lightbox to give the picture a description.

Here's an example of what it looks like:

Going to the Chapel

2006-09-27T15:11:00.000-06:00

Our good friend, Lyanne, got married this past weekend. Her Dad is a farmer, this explains their unique mode of transportation from the church, where the ceremony was held, to the reception site.

Congratulations!

Packing it in Redux

2006-09-20T10:00:00.000-06:00

Jennie and I took her sister and her husband, Courtenay and Joe, on a packing trip to White Ranch this past weekend. This was our second attempt, thus we are now experts that have it all figured out. Hah! Not really.

Initial packing. We did a much better job packing this time. We needed only one additional packing bag even though there were two more people. Our pack saddle outfit came with three bags.

It was very windy and cold during the afternoon and evening.

Jennie led the way with the horses while the three of us hiked in. Notice the canvas bag on top of Anne, we didn't use it on our first trip.

Pit stop. Cody carried the horse food while Anne carried almost everything else.

This time we chose campsite #4 because it is very close in proximity to the provided corrals.

For dinner we planned on having Lucky Bean soup and hamburgers. The buns got left behind, so we ended up having flat, round, patties of ground beef instead.

Heading Back

I rode Cody and led Anne most of the way home this time.

Courtenay gave it a try too. Great job!

Robocode

2006-09-11T12:57:00.000-06:00

One of my colleagues at work is facilitating a Robocode competition. Robocode is a Java-based framework for developing virtual robots. Once developed, these robots are placed in a “battleground” where they attempt to defeat each other. Please see http://robocode.sourceforge.net/. We are going to have a bracketed competition of 1v1 this coming Friday and then a meelee competition where everyone is put on the board.

I've spent close to 25 hours so far learning how it works and developing my robot. The hardest part so far has been the geometry that is required to direct the robot, interact with the surroundings, run the radar, and aim its gun.

Have you looked at a Unit Circle lately? Do you remember the Law of Sines/Cosines (SSS, SAS), the Pythagorean Theorem? I sure haven't. My math knowledge after many years of non-use has declined to a horrid state. The programming I do at work doesn't involve any geometry so this exercise has been enjoyable. Jennie even sat down and helped me with one problem that still vexes me.

I've decided on a way-point sytem for the bot to used during its navigation. Basically I picked a bunch of spots on the battlefield, put them in an ordered collection, then when the bot starts up it merrily goes on its way from point to point. Nothing fancy, but it will appear at first to be random and I doubt anyone here has put in the time to do pattern matching yet. I still need to add code to retreat in the opposite direction if the realizes it is going to get too close to the other bot.

In addition to the gun, the bot has a radar providing it with information about opponents when the radar pings them. This also must be controlled by code I've written.

My bot's name is 'UnderDog' I don't feel it will do very well as there are some very smart people in my office. We'll see though. I did 'pimp' my bot by adding some short audio clips that will be played at the appropriate times. One of my favorites is: here

Here's a quick video of another persons bot.

It Finally Happened

2006-08-31T22:55:00.000-06:00

Well it finally happened. I had avoided it up until this point. Have you figured it out yet? Probably not. Well, this evening, after a great session of wake boarding with my friend Justin and his dad at Sloan's Lake, we stopped at Starbucks and I had my very first coffee concoction. I believe it was a venti Espresso thing with caramel and milk. It was pretty good, but I should have gotten the decaf.

Packing it in

2006-08-29T20:24:00.000-06:00

You'll never guess what we did this past Sunday.

Jennie and I went on our first camping trip with our horses: Cody and Little Anne. We spent one night at the Equestrian campground at White Ranch Park in Jefferson County.

After owning a packing saddle for 4 years we finally used it!

We took a packing and outfitting course at CSU before we purchased the saddle. We learned about tying knots and hitches (which are ways of securing the load to the horse), preparing a horse for a trip and his care during it, how to plan a packing trip, and setting up camp. Our instructor, Chuck Peterson, was a character and good teacher.

We left our home on Sunday with the panniers, the bags on the horse I'm standing next to, all packed. One of the keys to a successful trip is to have them weighted the same. This keeps the horse balanced and helps prevent sores from developing on its back. I used our foot scale to weigh the panniers, they each weighed close to 42 pounds.

When we started out Jennie ended up leading Little Anne because we all weren't accustomed to our tasks yet. Our rig spent the night in the parking lot that is just over the hill in the background.

The hike in from the parking lot was around 1.6 miles. Not too far, but Little Anne asked for some breaks on the way. By the time we got there our nerves were rattled a bit, but we made it in one piece.

After unloading the horses we setup camp.

The campground was free to use, but we had to make a reservation with the county. This was the Sourdough Springs Equestrian Camp. You can see the hitching posts in the above picture and the corral below. In addition to these facilities there is a toilet, firewood, and a pump.

Our site was surrounded by woods like these. It was very peaceful.

For dinner we cooked our hamburgers on the grill. Before going to bed we put our food up to keep it away from the bears and them from us.

Sleep didn't come easily at first because our horses were bored for lack of something to do. We were greeted by this site in the morning.

Breakfast was also done on the grill since Zac didn't check the fuel level in the stove we brought. It was a 2 hour, 3 course meal!

After breakfast we did a little hiking and then we packed up and headed back home. This time Little Anne was more cooperative so we were able to lead her while on Cody's back.

The trip was a blast, but it had its frustrating moments. We agreed though we'd be doing it again and hopefully sooner than later.

Thanks for coming along.

The Hay Days of Summer

2006-08-26T07:45:00.000-06:00

Hay ya'll!

We recently got another load (~5 tons) of hay for our horses. My cousin Chris and his family helped us along with our roommate Mendy. Five tons may sound like a lot, but it is quite easy with five people helping. It took around 1.5 hours to move it all.

Hair Do

2006-08-15T13:00:00.000-06:00

Got my hair bleached/dyed in a salon for the first time. My sister-in-law, Hannah, did it a couple weeks ago. Here are some pictures.

Under the dryer

Shark Attack!

2006-07-21T17:22:00.000-06:00

There is a pond outside of our office building which I can see from my cube. One of my co-workers thought it would be fun to have a remote controlled vehicle to play with here.

The shark wiggles its back fin for propulsion and used a fan in its head to enable it to dive. The fish would swim with it and touch it from time to time.

Here's a link to it: http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/search.do?productCode=RCSHAR#top, be sure to watch the movie.

Small Adventure in the Mountains

2006-07-18T06:20:00.000-06:00

Last night Hannah, Josh, Jennie and I went for a trail ride (& picnic dinner) at Meyer Ranch, which is located about 15 minutes west on Highway 285 from C-470.

There was a forecast of a 20%-30% chance of rain & thunderstorms for the area, but we decided to risk it anyway. It thundered and stormed on us! Thankfully there was a covered picnic table that we had just reached when the storming began. We ended up sharing the space with about 10 mountain bikers and the two horses for a good 30 minutes.

The Rig

Josh

Jennie

Hannah

You can't see me because I'm on the other side of the camera.

Hannah is Home

2006-06-19T08:28:00.000-06:00

Jennie's Westernaire team, the Lancers, participated in the White Division Summer Show this weekend. Hannah got home from India Saturday night.

Here's some pictures:

Patio Table is Finished

2006-04-06T18:21:00.000-06:00

I finally finished taking out the stump and setting up the Patio Table Sunday afternoon. I still need to seal the table top and seats to preserve it. I also need to do some work on the umbrella that came with it.

Here's a couple shots.

The Game Room is No More

2006-04-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

My employer, Abacus, has had a game room in our office since we were purchased by DoubleClick in the fall of 2000. It was a wonderful perk, there was foosball, ping pong, pool, and some arcade games.

I've received a lot of teasing from certain family members about how rough it is to go to work and have to play ping pong/ foosball. Well that can stop now. Our company is moving to a new location and the president has decided the games will not be coming. These items were put up for auction this past week.

I purchased two items, bet you can't guess what they are. One is a concrete patio table and the other is a broken arcade game.

Today Roco and I are going to remove a stump and setup the patio table.

[edit 3:00 pm MST]

Worked on this for most of the morning and afternoon so far. I've make a good bit of progress considering the tools I've been using: Dad's electric chain saw, axe and sledgehammer/axe. I've also been using a steel pole that I usually use only for breaking up concrete holding fence posts in the ground.

The Arcade Game, called Virtual On, is a two seater where two players can battle it out with MechWarrior type robots. Quite fun. I used the horse trailer to transport it from the office to our home.

My cousin Chris has experience repairing these and will be helping me restore and sell it (for a profit we hope).

Get Well Soon

2006-02-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

Our precious puppy dog, Roco, got an injury yesterday. She's a purebred Border Collie and loves to herd our horses. Apparently she was nipping at their legs as she tends to do if they are standing near the corral fence and one of them stepped on her left front paw.

A visit to the vet today resulted in an X-Ray showing no broken bones(the picture was computerized!), a dab of DMSO, some pills, and a $100.00 bill.

Get well soon Roco, we love you.

Oh my, those are big!

2006-01-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

These are a pair of really large Wranglers. One is a barrelman style and the other a bull fighter style. Believe it or not those are the actual style names on the labels.

They were given to Tony by Wrangler for the PRCA bull fighting and cowboy protection events that he works in.

Tony competed in the 2006 National Western Stockshow's Freestyle Bullfighting event. He qualified because of a good showing at an event on New Years Eve in Greeley. Tony ended up winning the competition at the Stockshow. Go Tony!

Tony and I are side by side.

Tony was injured in his last performance of the competition. The bull's horn smacked him on the hand. I think his middle finger was broken.

The insurance carried by the rodeo producer covered the attention he received from a doctor.

I fit in one of the legs!

thirty.

2006-01-17T22:13:00.000-07:00

Zac turned thirty this January.

He got this card from a good friend and his wife.

No Bull

2005-10-11T05:36:00.000-06:00

We're home now, but I can't sleep anymore.

Part of Saturday in Madrid was spent at the bull fighting stadium, Plaza de Toros. Performing in the Madrid arena, for the Matadores, is the grandest stage that can be achieved in Europe we were told by an afficienado (fan) we met on the plane home. Most of the information about ceremony and why things happened are based off of the conversation Jennie and I had with the man on the plane. He was a native English speaker, so if anything is incorrect here it is because we didn't understand his context (or he is wrong). If you are interested, Ernest Hemmingway, wrote a guide book to this event titled: Death in the Afternoon.

A Matadore retains a whole team that helps him in the arena in different ways. This is in addition to his manager, publicist, etc. Based upon his most recent performances the Matadore is given contracts for shows in various places.

The Matadores invited to Madrid are apparently making some good bank. The local afficienados that attend performances here are very discerning and tough on the bulls and the performers when it comes to giving them praise.

Before the beggining of the performances the crowd was instructed to rise and observe a few moments of silence in honor of the bulls who were about to die.

As you can see from the pictures, we sat in the non-shaded section of the arena. Not that it mattered because it was overcast in the evening during the performance. The arena probably holds 17,000-18,000. (The one in Mexico city is supposed to be much larger holding around 50,000!) We did have assigned seats, but they weren’t seats as you would expect in a sporting arena. Apparently most arenas used for bull fighting are built in this style. Very close, concrete seating (tall people have to spread their legs while sitting down to allow the person in front of them to sit without your knees in their back) allows you to get to know your neighbor. Getting into your seat in a moderately filled section is a close encounter with a bunch of strangers. The close seating didn't appear to be an issue though, probably due to the gentle or laid back nature of the Spanish people as a whole. Experiencing the bull fight with the locals was a priviledge we hadn't had before.

Apparently we were treated to a special show for a number of reasons. Two of the three Matadores who performed are up and coming stars. One of those was given an ear of the bull. This is a special honor that is granted upon a Matadore, I believe, by the request of the crowd and a couple of the people in charge of ceremonial duties. The crowd showed their extreme pleasure for the performance of both the Matadore and the bull by waving white hankerchiefs indicating they wanted him to be given an ear. While the ear is actually cut off and presented it is only a symbolic guesture as the ear is not actually kept. It is rare for Matadores to be given an ear, the man we spoke with is a seasoned veteran and he only knows about one Matadore being given two ears in a season (not sure how long or how many performances that usually entails though).

Because the point of the bull fight is not to see a slaughter, if a bull is shown to be weak in any way physically it is not killed in the arena (nor afterward I believe). We were able to see one such instance, to retrieve the bull a herd is introduced into the arena and once they realize the door they entered the arena is open again they all exit. (Not sure why they didn't just open the door for the single bull. I guess this way may speed up the process.)

I also found out if it is deemed that a bull is such a great physical specimen and has show great courage (not sure of how this is defined) that sometimes it is not killed. The bulls that appear in the arena are not domesticated and live out on the open range on someones property. They are tested from time to time in order to gauge their courage and physical aptitude for the arena.

During the course of the fight the Matadore's Picadore, the guy on the horse, would challenge the bull. He would try to use the 'spear' to keep the bull away from himself and his horse. The spear is only placed into the fleshy part of his back where the feathered looking flags are. Not sure what this is about, my guess is to tire the. All the times we saw this happen the bull was able to get to the horse and ram him with his horns (it is more of a duck and lift action than a straight on ramming motion). Many times the bull would lift the front legs of the horse off the ground. The horse would maintain its balance and push back against the bull. The padding appeared to protect the horse. One time though the bull was able to knock the horse and rider to the ground. No serious injuries were sustained to either the rider or the horse.

After a sword had been thrust through the bulls back into his heart (this should assure a quick death) and the bull died. A team of mules was led out to remove the body of the bull from the arena. Traditionaly the meat was given to the poor, not sure if this is still the case.

I can't say I was sicked or repulsed by anything that I saw. It definitely was violent and I don't take pleasure in seeing an animal killed. The animals were respected by the crowd and performers and it seems the meat is not wasted. I'm glad we went, but I don't think we'll be attending another one.

¡Hasta Luego Madrid!

2005-10-10T02:04:00.000-06:00

Well, were finally in the airport terminal (Barajas), we made it through customs and are now waiting for our boarding time. Our plane leaves España at 11:25 local time. We should be home around 10:00 PM MST.

I´m entering this post from a phone/internet kiosk, so no chance for pictures.

It has been a great trip, we´ve enjoyed seeing the sites and spending time together. Thanks for going along with us.

See you state-side.

Zac and Jen

A Shout Out To The Newly Weds

2005-10-08T13:09:00.000-06:00

This goes out to my good friend Brian Bollig and his bride Sarah.

Congratulations you two!

Looking forward to seeing the pictures, sorry we missed it and hope it wasn´t too cold.

¡Estamos en Madrid!

2005-10-08T12:56:00.000-06:00

¡Hola from Madrid!

We arrived late on Thursday evening from a short time in Barcelona (We went to a little resort town on the Mediterranean coast outside of the city named Sitges [I think]). We traveled first class from Barcelona, in España we must make seat reservations for every intercity train we travel on. It was fantastic, better than travelling on an airplane. We had a three course meal, real silverware, multiple drinks, and wait til you see the salt and pepper shakers.

We´ve filled our time here rowing a boat in Buen Retiro park, watching an opera on a huge LCD screen outside of the opera house, taking in a bull fight, doing some shopping and relaxing. Its been great, we have yet to go to a museum. Manana for sure though.

Our first room was in a hostel just outside El Plaza Mayor (big famous square in the center of the city) great location, the room and service were poor though so we found a new room at Hotel Paris which is outside of Plaza del Sol.

Can´t post any pictures now because the Internet Cafe we are in lacks accessible USB ports. Sorry.

We´re enjoying the last leg of our trip and look forward to going home and see all of you.

Oh yeah!

2005-10-04T08:53:00.000-06:00

Just saw the Broncos record. Go Broncos! Read about last weeks game. Sounds like they are doing okay.

Schweiz

2005-10-04T08:00:00.000-06:00

$$$ Hallo from Interlaken, Switzerland $$$

We arrived Sunday morning after a night train from Florence, Italy. The Hotel we're staying in is Hotel Eiger. It is a small locally owned hotel that we found on the hotel information board conveniently located just outside the West Bahnhof (train station) in Interlaken. They provide free internet access (thus the reason for all the updates lately) and free ice. I highly recommend it to you all.

Here are some flowers nearby the hotel.

Yesterday we bought train tickets (had to because they are not covered by our Eurail Pass) up to the Schilthorn. Here's a live webcam if you want a first hand look. The Schilthorn is a building that has been placed way up in the mountains nearby Interlaken it is reachable by Gondolas. The views appear to be stunning when there are no clouds, we decided to go even though there was a cloud cover down here. A live feed from the Schilthorn is broadcast here in Interlaken, it allowed us to see what the views were like before going up. Our destination put us above the clouds for some spectacular views. To give you an idea of the altitude change we experienced Interlaken is around 500 (~1500 feet) meters above sea level and the Schilthorn is around 3000 (~10,000 feet) meters above sea level.

Here are some more pictures.

View on our way up to Schilthorn from the trolley car.

Here's a couple more pictures from the trolley car on our way up to Murren.

View from Murren a stop on our way up. Basically this was ski lodging town.

We ate lunch in the restaurant at the Schilthorn. It has a rotating eating area that lets you see all 360 degrees of the view every 50 minutes.

More pictures:

The Schilthorn was in the James Bond movie released in 1968.

Romà

2005-10-04T06:43:00.000-06:00

Rome is a beautiful, old, dirty city with ruins everwhere in the city center. The subways are always very busy as they only have two lines running. Avoiding rush hour is a good idea.

We arrived in Rome around 9am after a night train from Munich. Gone are the convenient English speaking tourist information booths we'd become acustomed to in Germany and Austria. This makes for a frustrating time as we try to figure out where and how to get on the subway and local train to get to the Bed and Breakfast we were staying at.

Abacus (name of my current employer by the way) Rome BnB was our final destination. Its a long story, but let me just leave it at we were thankful to find this place. Here's a photo of the outside of the estate.

This BnB looked fantastic from their website. We were not dissappointed when we arrived, except maybe that the live in maid's english was very, very limited. We were taken out back and given refreshments before being shown down to our room. The house is absolutely huge, it has three stories and a small elevator. It is cylindrical in shape with a very nice plant and rock garden on the main floor that can be seen from the 1st floor (in the US we call it the 2nd floor). The BnB rooms are in the basement and have their own entrance.

So we got changed and dropped off our stuff before heading back into Rome for some proper site seeing. The Colosseum and The Forum were top on our list and that's where we started. We ended up taking a tour from a local company that had rep's gathering people outside the building for a tour. We both enjoyed the tour, it gave us some historical information about the Colosseum from a charismatic and fun speaker. The tour consisted of two parts the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

More pictures for you:

Here's another picture of us around the Roman Forum.

One thing we learned from the guide (A Brit getting his PHD in roman history, he was very passionate and it was humorous to hear him refer to some of the past Roman emporers as 'brilliant') was that during they heyday of the Roman Empire that vehicles carrying goods were not allowed on the streets in the city during the day. Thus they had to move things at night quitely. Apparently the wagon wheels were covered with animal hide to dull the noise of their metal rims coming in contact with the stone roads. He also stated that light was provided at night by reflecting firelight off of walls that were coated with olive oil. Here's a picture of a ruin that has a hole in the wall where a fire was supposedly lit for this purpose.

Burg Eltz

2005-10-03T09:01:00.000-06:00

On our way down to Vienna we stopped for a night in Koblenz, Germany so we could journey to the nearby town of Moselkern. Burg (castle) Eltz can be reached by a moderate 45 minute hike from the train station up a valley. Zac visited this last time he was in Europe and thought it was so special he wanted Jennie to experience it too.

Burg Eltz boasts some of the most well preserved, authentic artifacts and furnishings to be found in a castle. Most of the castle is open to tourists willing to pay a modest fee for a tour. There were only 5 of us in our group so we were blessed with a guide willing to explain and answer questions in English. Normally all tours are only in English unless a large group is present. So, in addition to the English pamphlet explaining the rooms we toured the guide interacted with us.

The family Eltz has owned this estate for 33 generations. They still inhabit the castle for part of the year. The wife of Mr. Eltz has a hobby of creating arrangements of flowers for each room on the tour. This is a nice touch.

The reason the castle is intact and contains many old furnishings is not due to its remote location from the Mosel river. Instead the family used its excellent political connections to insure against attacks. The castle was put under siege once until the Eltz family sued for peace.

Is that Smart?

2005-10-02T08:39:00.000-06:00

Not sure how many of you have seen the Smart car. They are tiny beyond belief, to see them next to a bus on the road is humorous. Definitely a commuter vehicle. This picture was taken near our Bed and Breakfast in Rome.

Oktoberfest Picture

2005-10-02T08:35:00.000-06:00

Here we are at the fest sitting outside one of the beer tents.

Night Trains

2005-10-02T08:23:00.000-06:00

Last time I was here we did not make reservations to sleep on a train when travelling between cities at night. We ended up sleeping in couchettes. These are 5' x 7' compartments have a door for privacy (no curtains though) and two three seat couches facing one another whose seats will fold out and make a kind of bed. Not too comfortable, but a great way to go on the cheap.

This time I made reservations on four night trains. Two of the three we've been on so far have been first class (at least I think they have, Jen disagrees about the first one). Things are cosy, no tight is probably a better word for us tall people. We had a private room, a door we could lock, two bunks, and a wash stand (not drinkable water, but a sealed cup of water was provided for brushing teeth). The conductor would come by to get our reservations and tickets very shortly after the train left the station. We've had to surrender our passports, Eurrail pass, and our reservation ticket to the conductor for the duration of the trip. It was hard to let those valuable and important documents go the first time, but we haven't had an issue getting all of them back yet.

Here are some pictures of two of our 'rooms' we've had so far.

These two are of our train from Frankfurt to Vienna.

This one is of our train from Munich to Rome.

Being 'Over ђЭ®Є'

2005-10-02T07:40:00.000-06:00

Travelling

Since the last time I was here there have been a few minor changes affecting what it is like to travel.

The one change that is most notable is easy to guess. It's related to most of the countries 'on the continent' (as some of the brits say) using the same currency, the Euro. Moving between countries no longer means having to figure out the approximate exchange rate. Also, worrying about having a bunch of one currency that isn't valid in the next country is a thing of the past. When speaking about the currency we've found that euro = dollar and that cents is used in the same way we do in the states. The restaurant below our apartment in Wien (Vienna, Austria) had a neat poster that explained that each country has minted its own version of the coin money. This is a similar concept to the special quarters that have been minted recently in the states. The coin money comes in 1,2,5,10,20,50 cent pieces. There are also 1 and 2 euro coins.

The other change that has affected us as travellers is the absence of border guards on the trains when we cross country borders.

Language

Starting out in England definitely minimized the culture shock. Since we've moved over to the continent we've found that most people working in the tourist industry speak some English. Because of this it has not been too trying to find where we are going or get a question answered. We did purchase an english-german phrase book, this helped us in a few instances. I was able to tell a teller at a bank in Wien that I wanted to convert my English pound notes into euros. Most of the time we used 'Sprechen zee English' and 'Ich sprecha kien deustche' or 'Do you speak English' and 'I don't speak german'.

Weather

For the most part, the weather has been very nice. Warm, sunny days and no moisture have been a blessing. Coming from Colorado we are very sensitive to places with more humidity. In Italy I always seemed to be sweating, even if it wasn't that hot. The leaves have just started to turn colors and fall off the trees. The country side in Austria, Germany, and Italy that we've seen from the trains have still been very green and lush. Doesn't appear that the summer here was too harsh.

The past few days have been cooler in Italy and today in Switzerland.

Misc

I really enjoy experiencing and seeing the little differences between the states and each country we visit. Here's a couple of things I think are interesting:

* The keyboard I'm typing on is not from the US locale, this means there are different characters and letters are mixed up (for instance there is no dollar sign and the z and y keys are swapped) All the internet cafe's have either a program installed or a feature enabled in M.S. Windows that allows them to simulate a keyboard from any number of locals.
* Traffic signals are different. In Italy, on the stop lights, the green light starts blinking before it turns to yellow.
* Chain restaurants are a rarity. Besides McDonald's and B.K. we haven't seen many local varities. Instead there are cafe's everywhere.

Mµnchen

2005-09-28T11:12:00.000-06:00

We're sitting in an internet cafe right now. It is across from the Geldermat (think German ATM) that the Europe '96 crew used quite often. We just spent a wonderful few hours walking around Oktoberfest. We met a delightful local family while sitting outside the Paulaner Beer tent. They shared their meal with us and helped us order ours.

This morning, after arriving from our day in Salzburg, we parked our big backpacks in a locker and headed out to visit the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. It was a sobering experience (again for Zac). We toured the site with Audio Guides. The clerk dispensing them spoke 6 languages including a little Hebrew! The exhibits have been updated since the last time I was there. For example, the entrance is now where the prisoners entered instead of nearby the parking lot. The museum's displays have been updated and increased. We didn't stop and read everything in the museum because the audio guides were informative enough.

This evening we are off to Rome on a night train. Can't post any pictures at this cafe because the 'towers' are not accessible as they are in cabinets.

Laundry Day

2005-09-27T11:34:00.000-06:00

We left Vienna this morning on a train to Salzburg, Austria. The tourist booth hooked us up with a room. After dropping off our stuff we headed out on a hiking trek around the fort and city and before dinner. We then went and visited the fort. Compared to the last time I was there the fort's exhibits have been greatly improved. Laundry is being done across the way from the train station, we were in dire need of clean clothes. Its been very warm in the cities we've visited. Today we had rain for the first time since we've been here. We were thankful for the cool weather though.

Sorry to cut this short, but Jen is expecting me back and the laundromat 5 minutes ago.

Tomorrow we are off to visit the concentration camp near Munich, Germany.

Here are some pictures:

Updates below

2005-09-23T02:16:00.000-06:00

I've added some pictures to previous posts below.

Haarlem (Nederlands)

2005-09-23T02:06:00.000-06:00

Good morning to you all!

We arrived in the Nederlands yesterday around noon on an EasyJet. We spent the night in Haarlem which is west of Amsterdam. It is a very nice place, not too big and not too touristy. We went to the Corrie ten Boom museum and saw 'The Hiding Place' and had a personal tour. After a lunch/dinner at a local restaurant on top of a department store overlooking the entire city we crashed at our hotel near the city square.

Here's some pictures:

London Calling...

2005-09-21T13:21:00.000-06:00

Hey ya'll.

Jen and I had a full day in London today. We spent the morning at Westminster Abbey on a guided tour learning about its 900 year history. There are some very famous authors and poets burried there. Chaucer, Dickens, Sir Isaac Newton, to name a few. We also saw London Bridge. Pictures to come later, I'm on an old 350 MGZ computer and don't see a USB port to use.

Write to you soon.

Z&J

Updated 9/23/2005

Here are a couple pictures of us seeing the sites in London. I'm in front of the london tower bridge, Jen is playing 'Vana'in front of Big Ben and the London Eye.

Oxford

2005-09-20T06:05:00.000-06:00

Hey y'all! Jennie and I are in Oxford visiting family right now. We had a great trip on the plane. It is a beautiful sunny day and we are about to go eat lunch. More to come later.

Mom, Lesley says you guys need to come out here soon.

Updated! 9/23/2005.

We spent some time after lunch in a 'çommons area' going for a stroll! Beautiful country and a pleasant time with family. Here is Jennie and one of the many animals we found just roaming around this open space.

Packing it in

2005-09-18T17:21:00.000-06:00

Well, we're almost finished packing now. Zac has butterflies in his stomach, just like his last trip to Europe but not as bad. We'll be getting on the SkyRide tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM, yawn! The SkyRide, for those who don't know, is a service offered by our mass transit system in Denver that will take us from a Park and Ride to Denver International Airport.

Here is a picture of our backpacks. Mine is the black and purple one that I used on my last trip. Jennie is borrowing a friend's (thanks Hoehle) pack, it is the green one.

Our Mode of Transportation

2005-09-17T14:08:00.000-06:00

You may be wondering how we are going to be travelling around Europe. We will be arriving at the Gatwick airport in London, UK on Tuesday September 20th. Once we get to mainland Europe, we'll be travelling by rail and other forms of mass transit. On Zac's first trip to Europe, this is how he travelled around the continent. I purchased our Eurail Passes directly from the http://www.eurail.com website. After we had decided upon our itinerary I made our night train reservations with http://www.railpass.com . I had a wonderful experience with them, check them out. I found out that if we ordered our passes and made reservations with them they offer discounts. Oh well.

Geography

2005-09-15T22:35:00.000-06:00

Here is a German map of western Europe. Thought it might give you a better idea of the geography of the countries we'll be visiting.

The eurail.com site a PDF file which is a map that shows the major train routes between cities that you may enjoy browsing. You can find it here: Europa.pdf. (1.3MB)

Getting Ready

2005-09-12T21:41:00.000-06:00

Last minute reservations and plans are being made.