Monthly Archives: June 2004

Mt. Shasta

On Father’s Day weekend, I hiked up Mt. Shasta with my friends Rob, Brad, Matt M, and Matt G. Though it was the most strenuous physical activity I’ve done, I had a terrific weekend. I’m happy to say we all summited with no problems (though with a little sunburn here and there), thanks in part to the glorious weather. This allowed us to sleep beneath the stars sans tent Friday night, hike up firm snow Saturday and Sunday mornings, and glissade down softer snow Sunday afternoon. The views were amazing the whole way up.Matt M and Matt G also have photos posted from the trip, which tend to be more complete than mine as they took more photos during the actual hike.I plan to post a more thorough report of the trip soon. I’ll add it to the extended portion of this entry when it’s complete. In the meantime, enjoy the photos.

Kim Eagle

My cousin Kim was married to Joe Eagle in Pottstown, PA on May 22nd in my aunt and uncle’s backyard. The ceremony was in a beautiful wooded area next to a zen garden and coi pond that my aunt built. The weather was terrific, albeit a little warm and humid. Having grown up in Michigan but now living in California, the green that was everywhere was a welcome change of scenery. Though I was only there for approximately 24 hours, I’m glad I got the opportunity to visit with family I hadn’t seen in quite a while. Kaija had just started to walk with some assistance and she was happy to show off her new skills to others. She also enjoyed cooling off with a short dip in the pool at the end of the night.

Spam Me Not

I got hit with a major web log spamming Monday night. Occasionally I’ll get hit with 1-5 spam messages in the comments at a time. Monday night it was almost 140 spam comments. There are a few things that irked me about the situation.1) I received no e-mail messages regarding the comments. I’m assuming that a backdoor has been discovered in Movable Type to allow posting comments without notifying the entry author.2) I’m running MT 2.64. The last free version before 3.0 was 2.661. I didn’t upgrade before 3.0 was released and now it appears that 2.661 is no longer downloadable. I’m assuming that maybe the backdoor was fixed in this later release but I’ll never know.3) I’m not sure if I really want to upgrade to 3.0 yet. It costs money for web logs with more than 3 authors (which would affect the.windeler.net). I’m still exploring other options.4) There’s no easy way to bulk delete comments. I’ve had to throw together a template to manage this (it’s far from ready for prime time, so I won’t release it to the public yet).5) There’s no easy way to bulk close commenting for entries. I think there may be a plug-in for this, but I think it relies on an SQL backend and I’m not using that. Looks like I’ll have to write another template for this.

Walk This Way

For Mother’s Day, Jennifer wanted to take a trip to San Francisco to do some walks from the Stairway Walks and Historic Walks books that her mother left with us. We choose to explore the Pacific Heights neighborhood since we were unfamiliar with the area. As it turns out, there are a lot of old Victorian houses as well as large mansions in this part of town. It seems to attract a bit of wealth due to the terrific views of the Bay.

Yosemite Blues

My friend Rob reserved a camp spot in Yosemite for the end of April months in advance. When the time came to go, only Matt and I were up for the trip. Who can pass up a chance to go rock climbing in one of the best climbing destinations in the world? Unfortunately we didn’t get all that much climbing in. I took a spill on the second route of the day on Saturday… one that left me quite scraped up and bruised. Due to the small toe on my right foot turning purple and sending a sharp pain up my leg with every step, I decided to take it easy in the Valley while Rob and Matt hiked up the Yosemite Falls Trail on Sunday. If you look really closely at the later shots of Yosemite Falls, you can see them at the top. Just kidding.

Stanford Orienteering

Sandy and Leon invited Jennifer, Kaija and I to participate in a Bay Area Orienteering Club competition at Stanford on April 4th. While I didn’t get many photos of the event, I’m happy to say Jennifer and I placed first among the 4 couples that Sandy and Leon had invited, including themselves (we placed 7th out of 35 overall on the Yellow course). It’s rather ironic that Sandy and Leon placed last, too, considering Leon attended Stanford for several years while studying for his PHD. He claims he’s only familiar with the medical campus, but I’m not sure that’s a good enough excuse!

Smiling and Drooling

To appease the growing ranks of friends and family hungry for more photos of Kaija, here’s a collection of miscellaneous shots taken between March and May. Enjoy.In related news, she started crawling about two weeks ago and is already well on her way to walking. Many other mom with whom Jennifer walks with during the week call her the Super Baby, since she’s doing now at 6 months what their babies are doing at 10-11 months.