Ski Roadtrip: Day 3, Sun Peaks

From Whistler, I made it to Cache Creek after a long 4.5 hours of dark, sometimes foggy, narrow, country roads. IMG_3015Canadians who know, call it “Trash Creek”—it is where Vancouver sends its trash—seeing how small it was, the next morning, I was surprised it warranted a nickname at all). I would have stopped earlier if there had been a motel sooner. That put me within a couple hours to Sun Peaks.

So day 3 starts with a drive to Kamloops. Kamloops is a city. It has an airport. And it has a CostCo, which, of course, had the cheapest gas in the area.

Roadtrip tech tip: I use Gas Buddy to find the cheapest gas prices nearby, an app which is available for Android and iOS (and probably other platforms). Fortunately, it works in Canada too. If you don’t have a smart-phone, you can go to GasBuddy.com.

And Kamloops is only an hour from Sun Peaks. I stopped at a Tim Horton’s to make arrangements for a place to stay. Then I was on my way to Sun Peaks, an hour’s drive from Kamloops.IMG_7156

Roadtrip tech tip: I never take as much time to plan my trips as I ought to. Fortunately, Orbitz (or Expedia, Travelocity) exist. Since I often don’t know where I’ll be next, or when, I’ll often book a reservation sometimes just minutes before my stop via Orbitz. It lists options and is often cheaper than booking directly. The reservation goes through to the hotel/motel system immediately. If that doesn’t work, there’s always Google.

I only need a relatively comfortable place to sleep (relative to my car, that is), so the cheaper the better. I couldn’t find anything under $100. I had to dig deeper and go for the $130 entry. I only mention this because I was shocked to find it to be the fanciest ski accommodations I’ve stayed at. IMG_3021Ski in/out, ski valet, free wifi, pool, sauna, jacuzzi and fitness. The Sun Peaks Grand.

They took my skis to valet and I took my stuff upstairs. I quickly dressed, got a $44 late-afternoon ticket (less the Canadian discount), picked up my skis from valet and headed out for a few runs in the days’ last hour and a half, trying to hit as many lifts as I could. I ventured into a hazard marked narrow black-diamond run which would have been pretty good with coverage; as it was, I had to navigate around rocks and logs as my still-new boots began to hurt my feet (ugh… I hate new boots).

A "sweet onion soup" preceded my rib-eye dinner
A “sweet onion soup” preceded my rib-eye dinner.

Apres ski involved a walk around the small village—sort of a micro version of Whistler’s village, maybe about the size of Squaw’s, but prettier.  I decided on a the Steakhouse because it had a rib-eye on the menu. I first had used the hot tub and a quick sauna to dry off before dinner.

I got a lot done that day.

Roadtrip: Skiing 2015 the prep

Over the past three years, I have spent a 4 or 5 weeks in Truckee (Lake Tahoe), armed with a season pass to Squaw Valley. Last season one of my ski buddies, my dad’s cousin Brian, seemed a bit surprised that I haven’t explored more ski resorts. My contract ended early this season, so that opened up time to expand my ski horizons: a roadtrip through Canada ski resorts became  my for this season, before ending up in Tahoe.

After consultation with many of my ski aficionados I’ve come up with the following ski playlist:

  • Vancouver (visit Nann’s) 2 hrs to
  • Whistler, Jan 20, 5 hrs to
  • Sun Peaks, Jan 21–23, 4 hrs to
  • Revelstoke, Jan 24–26, 2.5 hrs to
  • Kicking Horse, Jan 27, 2 hrs to
  • Lake Louise, Banff, Jan 28,  45 min to…
  • Sunshine Village, Banff, Jan 29,  2.5 hrs to…
  • Panorama, Jan 30, 31,  2.5 hrs to…
  • Drive  to Fernie and Seahawks-Superbowl day
  • Fernie, Feb 2, 2 hrs to…

  • Whitefish, Feb 3, 4
  • drive day, Feb 5, 6.5 hrs to
  • Big Sky, MT, Feb 6–8?, 2.5 hrs to
  • Yellowstone (tour, no skiing) Feb ?, 5.5 hrs to
  • Grand Targhee?
  • Jackson Hole
  • Powder Mountain?
  • Truckee/Lake Tahoe, Feb 15
  • Seattle, end of Feb/beg of March


I tried to keep driving stints between resorts to less than three hours. If distances seemed too far, I tried to find a resort to break up the drive. Mapping out the initial route allowed me to make sure that the trip would be achievable fun and not a tiring chore. And that I could leave a couple of weeks to ski in Tahoe before the third week* of February… assuming the snow is any good.

I didn’t know what the snow conditions will be like I didn’t know how long I would be at each resort; planning would have to be somewhat ad hoc, adjusting as I go. Despite the long time, I found that there time to squeeze all this in would be pretty tight.

Travel Tech Tip: In the US, if you have an unlocked GSM cell phone (I.e., not a Sprint or Verizon phone), T-Mobile offers no contract subscriptions. For an extra $10, you can get free calling within many foreign countries and unlimited slow speed Internet data. This is a great deal. You can make necessary reservations and use navigation and other smart phone apps. If you don’t need the services once you return home, you can simply deactivate your T-Mobile account.

*

End of Feb/beginning of March is out… I have a job that will take me traveling and I have to start that job before the last week of February.

Real Programmers Don’t Eat Quiche

Thinking more about programmers’ lack of understanding about how computers work and their inability to program in C, that I alluded to previously, makes me say to myself “Real Programmers Use C” or “Real Programmers Don’t Use Interpreted Languages”.

I hear of no calls for C, while there are lots of call for the inefficient, interpreted languages—PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, and Python—which drive most of the “web”. These languages insulate programmers from having to know too much about how computer hardware works. Because of this, programmers never develop the innate sensitivity to computer performance. This results in our needing increasingly powerful computers to do, essentially, the same amount of work (the amount of useful work done is not proportional to increasing computing hardware performance).

Real Programmers Don’t Eat Quiche

Way back before the web was programmable, like it is today, there were a list of “facts” defining real programmers:


Variations of this list were passed around via company mail (snail mail, mail-kart, and pre-“email”). Posters of this list hung on the office walls of developers who considered themselves “real programmers.”

This, of course, was triggered by the 1982 book, “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche.” An essay appeared in Datamation magazine, “Real Programmers Don’t Use Pascal,” extrapolating on the geek version of this list (it isn’t clear whether the lists spawned the essay or vice versa).

Movie Review: Need for Speed Movie

Need for speed movie posterSometimes movies are exactly what you’d expect of them; when it’s a bad movie, that can actually be okay, so long as it has some redeeming features. If you were teenage male car-nut, the Need for Speed movie (leveraging the popularity and theme of the namesake video game by EA), then you would appreciate seeing rarefied super-cars on the big-screen. If you wanted something more than an action-packed, car-crash filled, movie with a typical American anti-hero hero story; then you should spend two hours of your time doing or watching something else. gaminator hack download

Aaron Paul walked in front of the NfS cameras the day after wrapping shooting of the Breaking Bad TV series that made him famous. Though he trades his hoodie of the TV show for a leather jacket, not much was asked of the actor for the new character—hopefully we will see if he has a broader range of acting skills in future roles. The brooding anti-hero character has proven popular since James Dean‘s character in Rebel Without a Cause and is used to cliché-effect in NfS; well-done in a predictable fashion.

Since the cars were as much a star of the movie as the actors—bigger, actually—it is worth noting that this is a car-porn movie. legjobb fogadóiroda They picked some of the most notable, to car-enthusiasts, examples of super-cars to represent. And, by “represent,” I mean faked… these cars were no more real than porn stars in the other movie genre. gaminator kockás gép But they were well done, being one of the few unique aspects of the movie. online sportfogadás adózás online nyerőgépes játékok ingyen However, they all get smashed up, which doesn’t show much respect for the reason which they’d chosen them in the first place—I guess that is typical of porn-stars. tipmix sportfogadás

Nothing about the story is based in any kind of reality. The actions of the characters barely makes any sense. tippmix élő fogadás hivatalos fogadóiroda But if you can fill in the story gaps with cliché assumptions and appreciate seeing super-car porn at speed, then your two hours won’t be completely wasted. tippmix.hu sportfogadás

Offered: C Programmer for Hire

C Programmer for Hire There are some projects that are best done in C. Do you have a project requirement best served by C but cannot find anyone who can write bug-free C code? A majority of programmers have difficulty manipulating data at the bits and bytes level and have little sensitivity for the performance impact of their code. Reduce risk and unpredictability in C code-quality. Hire me! @wrlee.

It’s been a while since I have seen a call for C programmers. I’ve been interviewing a lot of web programmers lately. Few of them can program in C. One word of interview-advice… if you don’t have a reasonable ability to program in C, do not offer to solve programming problems in C; there are simple mistakes that tip me to the fact that you have never written a working C program—and reveal that you do not really understand how a computer works. Use pseudo-code and focus on the problem at hand and you’ll be further ahead.

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