As Richard pointed out turns are turns, and that’s just what they were on Saturday. This past Saturday was probably one of the earliest times I’ve gotten out skiing since the 1991 Halloween Blizzard. The day after that Blizzard I was up at Wild Mountain enjoying one of the biggest powder days I’ve ever seen in Minnesota to date. Between the man made stuff and the fresh powder I was skiing on over 4 feet of snow that weekend. It was pure bliss.

Anyways this past Saturday marked another year of my 23 years of skiing, yes that’s right I’ve been skiing going on 23 years now. Its hard to believe that since I was the age of 4 I’ve been going year in, year out to Wild Mountain, Trollhaugen, and company for that many years. Granted some years (specially the early years) I maybe got out skiing only a few times a season, but once I got into middle school I was skiing on Average about 50+ days a winter, then in high school I was averaging almost 110+ days of skiing a season, not including my week long trips out west to Colorado during spring break.

Saturday I met up with Richard, Adam, their co-worker Nate and enjoyed a free day of skiing thanks to the demo days going on at Wild. I “pretended” I was with Richard and Dave who work at Continental Ski and Bike in Duluth, MN. So Ski shop reps got to ski for free and got to partake in the ski demo for free. Hell I even got a free dinner thanks to the Elan rep. So even though there were an ass load of people at Wild, I got a free day of skiing, free demo and a free meal to top it off.

The Snow was shitty, the single run that was open, was crowded, and the lift line was long, but I was still enjoying myself. No matter how shitty the conditions are, or how bad of a day I am having, If I am outside, on the snow, either Skiing or Snowmobiling I am happy as a clam, and being out there with friends like Richard and Dave just makes it that much better.

So on top of it being the first turns of the season, I was able to test out quite a few pair of ski’s. Pretty much all the major brands (Elan, Atomic, Rossignol, K2, ect…) had their reps out there pimpin their latest and greatest ski. A few ski’s caught my attention, and intrigued me. Lately I’ve been trying to find a ski that I can use out west but still use here on the off chance we actually get a powder day in the Midwest. Last year in Utah I was riding Dave’s Seth Pistol’s so one of the first ski’s I demo’d was this years Seth’s, which I was a little iffy about because of the mini rocker they put on the tips of the ski now. Granted I still loved the way they ski’d but the mini rocker took away the some of the stiffness in the tip which caused the tips to chatter on the crud on the hill, and that chatter just annoys the hell out of me.

Next ski I really liked were the Elan 888’s. The Trip 8’s were a great ski, nice and wide, good side cut, and solid. I love a solid stiff ski. Which the trip 8’s were. Even though I was on a shorter ski than I wanted to ride, they still were a blast to ski, and I could only imagine how they would be out west it better snow conditions.

The last ski that I liked, the ones that Richard has been telling me to get for a while now, the Rossignol Scratch Brigades. They are a close match to the Seth’s in almost every way, wide, stiff, twin tip, ect…. I rode those for quite a while Saturday, I loved them and hated them at the same time, I loved how light they were, and how stiff they were but they didn’t ski for me light I thought they would, probably the snow conditions, but still I wasn’t too excited to ski them like I was when I first rode the Blizzard X-Cross’s.

So now really it’s a hard choice to figure out what ski I want. For now I’ll wait till later on when it gets closer to the time frame for the out west trip and then I will figure out what I want, till then I’ll keep looking and go from there.

- Josh

I am a regular visitor of www.johndee.com, John has put together probably one of the best resources for Minnesota, Wisconsin, upper Michigan for finding out the latest weather reports, snow falls, weather predictions, ect…

One of my favorite parts about the website though is the Northwoods Camera Network, This is a map of the Midwest with clickable links of webcams, live or still, through out Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the “yooper”.

The webcam network is a great way to easily see whats going on in terms of snow fall, snow fall levels, ect… Every time I visit the site I just itch for it to snow so I can get out the new snowmobile I bought this fall. Ever since I bought the sled I am just itching to go riding. But for now I have to sit and wait for the weather to come.

Till it snows, I guess I’ll just have to settle with heading out to Wild Mountain on Saturday for the Ski Demo they have going on, and ski the “fake stuff”, but either way it’ll be good just to get out and enjoy the snow again.

but till then check out www.JohnDee.com and the webcam network.

- Josh

Sparked from this Article: Missing Remote Article

The article started to make me think, what do I really do with my HTPC? and what are the proportions of those tasks? For me first of for most is PVR/DVR. My HTPC is my primary dvr for my basement home theater setup. Though I do have a comcast HD DVR connected to my setup, I preffer the HTPC running MCE 2005 over the comcast DVR merely because the interface for the comcast box just sucks that bad.

I absolutely hate the comcast interface for their box’s. They are slow, clunky, and oh so not user friendly. Windows MCE interface is refined, and for once is actually a joy to use. It is easy to navigate, easy to set recordings and find recorded shows. All around the MCE interface is years ahead of what comcast does with their box’s. Though rumor has it that cocmast will be implementing the tivo software/interface on to their box’s, we’ll have to wait and see about that.

So #1 is PVR/DVR, yes I’ll agree with that, but one thing they didn’t mention or get into were (#10 does talk about media distribution but doesn’t get into the real advantages of what a media center extender can do) Media Center extenders. The topic of Media Center Extenders is on par with PVRing capabilities, and honestly go hand in hand. As you saw in my previous RANT , I despise paying huge amounts of hardware rental fee’s to Cable/Sat. MSO’s. That is why I love the idea of Media Center Extenders. Being able to have a central repository for recorded TV shows, Movies, Media, Music, Pictures, ect… and being able to share them with Any TV, PC, Laptop through out my home is HUGE!!!!

Sitting down after dinner and catching up on the latest Heroes episode, then starting to watch CSI or Journyman Monday nights, then being able to pause half way through an episode, shut down my equipment in the basement, go up stairs to my bedroom, turn on the tv there and continue were I left off would be the ideal setup. Being able to time shift, as well as place shift my tv shows enables me to not be restricted to sitting down stairs every time I want to watch a tv show I prevously recorded. Granted you need to have a cat5 drop or a 802.11A or N wireless setup to support the higher bandwidth needs for HD video, but in the end it is well worth it.

Later this month Linksys will be releasing their .V2 Media Center Extenders which will fully support Vista MCE. Previously the only MCE Extender that supported vista was the xbox 360. Earlier this month Microsoft released a 6th SKU for the 360, the Xbox 360 Arcade, which also supports the Media Center Extender functionality. So between the Linksys and Dlink Media Center Extenders and the 360 Arcade you basically can extend your PVR viewing to any tv in your home for under $300. Not bad if you ask me, specially the added benefits you get with MCE functions over what you’d see with the comcast DVR.

#2 is DVD Player, for me that is the Second most use feature of MCE in my Home Theater, however I take that one step further. I use a third party plug-in for MCE called My Movies.

With My Movies I am able to catalog ALL of my ripped DVD collection I have backed up on hard drives. I can see visually the entire collection, and on top of that My Movies allows me to load up third party DVD application called TheaterTek. With TheaterTek I take dvd playback further that what MCE can provide. With TheaterTek I can use FFDshow to post process the dvd video to further enhance the upscaling of the DVD, while at the same time getting a really slick, easy to use DVD app.

So far I use my HTPC for my primary DVR, as well as use it as an upscaling DVD juke box. #3 in the list is photo viewer. Though I do use MCE to show off photos of my Daughter when I have friends or family over that haven’t seen my Home Theater setup, I very rarely use that feature, but it is nice to have.

#4 is Media Library, this is another feature I use on a regular basis. I have quite a few tv shows, video podcasts, and other downloaded media content I watch. I love being able to view all of those videos in a nice, clean easy to use interface, and have them all cataloged and stored in a central location. Some of the media comes from Torrents, others Newsgroups, while lastly video podcasts. Since all the video come from different locations, it is definitely nice to store them in a central folder in MCE and know exactly where to go to watch them.

#5 is home automation, #6 is Gaming, #7 is Browse the Web, and #8 is High Def Player.

#5 I don’t do any at this point in time, and If I did I don’t think I’d use MCE to interface to control my home. I’d rather have a stand alone touch screen or tablet PC to do those tasks. #6 is gaming, I do use my HTPC to game, but not as much as I used to. The Missing Remote article shows a mame plugin for MCE, which is an awesome idea, however I just don’t use my setup for MAME games all that much. Maybe for an occasional NES or SNES but not really for MAME games. #7 I just don’t use my HTPC for web viewing other than downloading a driver but not for every day, regular web viewing. #8 even though I did buy the xbox 360 hd dvd addon drive for this intent, in the end I just gave up on it and chose to go with the stand alone HD DVD player.

#9 is place shifting, remote scheduling. With the advent of Webguide being release for free, I’ve taken more and more advantage of the remote scheduling features. Being able to remotely log into your HTPC via a web browser and viewing scheduled recordings and setting new recordings is just huge. Say I hear about a tv show at work and I want to make sure my HTPC records it and I want to schedule a recording before I forget about the name of the show, I can quickly log into my HTPC via my work pc or even better I can log in with my smartphone. Granted the smartphone doesn’t work as well, but in situation where I can’t quickly log into a pc and schedule a show, I can always do it from my phone.

#10 Distributed Video/Audio. Granted I did already talk about the advantages of Media Center Extenders and what they can do for you in a PVR/DVR situation. What I didn’t talk about was the ability to share all of you media files, photos, music, ect… through out your home. I’ve got a pretty extensive music collection, over 120gigs worth of music, being able to share that music, play lists, cover art, ect… through out my home is another huge advantage of media center extenders (aka distributed video/audio). Instead of having a PC at EVERY tv in your home, you can just have a dumbed down xbox 360 or a V2 extender and call it a day.

Lastly is bonus features of a HTPC. Being able to pull up weather reports, Adding plug-ins like My Movies, or other third party utilities like adding Netflix to your MCE interface is just another way of showing you the flexibility of what a HTPC can really do for you. Internet radio, Youtube, Pandora, online video rentals, ect… are all ways of utilizing PC centric content that normally would be used in a desktop environment can now be used and interacted in a home entertainment fashion. Moving away from a keyboard mouse to a remote to me is the holey grail of the HTPC and why I use it almost every day in one way or another.

In the end what you can do with a HTPC is limitless and really just depends on what you want to do with it.

- Josh

Yes thats right I am Famous!

New York Times Article

A while back I was contacted by Peter Wayner of the New York Times. He found me through AVSForum (which I spend way too much time on) and asked if I was interested in doing an interview about my HTPC setup. I figured what the hell and did the interview. He asked me about my setup, how I was using my HTPC and what measures I took to ensure a quiet/tolerable environment with my Home Theater/HTPC setup.

He then said he would contact me if the article was to be published, but I never heard from him and frankly forgot about the whole ordeal. Well being the weirdo I am I did a google search based off of my name and three lines down pops up the NYT’s Article.

Here is also some subsequent articles based of of the NYT’s Article:

Red Orbit

International Herald Tribune

The Globe and Mail

So there you have it, I am famous! ;)

- Josh

Wild Mountain is open!
Trollhaugen is open!

So I was talking to Richard on IRC tonight and he pointed out the fact that Wild Mountain is open. So I went over to Wild Mountain’s site and sure enough they’ve already got one run open. Seeing Wild open this early is just plain awesome. It’s been years since I’ve seen Wild or Trollhaugen open this early. I remember back in High School, when I raced, it would take forever before we were on the hill skiing gates. Those were the days. Makes me want to skip dinner and drive out and go skiing right now!

- Josh