Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Speechless

This is probably the stupidest thing I've seen to date. As in my entire life. “It will do for skiing what ‘Jaws’ did for swimming.” Oh, will it? Or will it be an epic waste of your time, money and soul? How a movie like this even made it to production is beyond me. I'd rather sit in a dark bathroom with only a jar of fingernails to eat than sit through this, probably the worst movie of 2010...

Waxing Poetic

With the end of 2009 coming ever more near I've seen some pretty cool montage videos summing up the main events that occurred during this roller coaster year. You know what though? Montage videos can suck it. Ain't nothin' more back to the basics than sitting down in your favorite chair and kicking back with a good book. On that note, I found this recap of the last decade to be very interesting and a great read. Maybe you will, too.

A decade that left a mark on U.S. History
By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

The decade began with a national sigh of relief — no Y2K terrorist attack or computer meltdown. A traveler named Luis Salcedo, boarding a flight in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2000, summed it up: "Nothing to worry about now."

Not with the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years and a stock market that had just closed at a historic high. Not in the world's only superpower.

But it wasn't going to be that smooth — not America's trip through the next 10 years, nor Salcedo's trip to Washington.

After takeoff, the 727 developed a hydraulic system leak and had to land using a backup system. Emergency vehicles were waiting at Washington Dulles International Airport and followed the plane as it rolled to a stop at the end of a runway. "Last time I'm booking a flight on the first," Salcedo said.

So began a decade when America experienced its worst attack by foreigners and its worst natural disaster; its second-deadliest domestic plane crash, and the most divisive, protracted presidential election since 1876.

DECADE GALLERY: A look back at the last 10 years

There were two wars, both longer than World War II; two stock market crashes; and two recessions, including the worst since the Great Depression.

The first African-American president was inaugurated in a city where, 60 years earlier, Barack Obama's father couldn't have sat at the same lunch counter as a white man.

Americans learned that there was water on the moon and that Tiger Woods wasn't perfect.

Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Skype and Hulu all debuted, as did the iPod, the iPhone and iTunes. Books were joined by e-books. Television broadcasting moved from analog to digital, and TV viewing from cathode ray tubes to flat screens.

In Boston, the Curse of the Bambino that had hung over the Red Sox for the better part of a century was broken.

An interstate highway bridge collapsed, a space shuttle exploded and Michael Jackson died young. Ted Kennedy died knowing that 45 million people in the USA had no health insurance.

The price of oil rocketed from less than $25 to almost $150 a barrel, before dropping to half that.

Deranged gunmen slaughtered the innocent and unsuspecting in places that seemed safe, including a suburban shopping mall, a college campus and an Army post. Scandal erupted almost everywhere, from an Iraqi military prison to Wall Street to K Street.

For the first time, foreign carmakers captured more than half the U.S. market, and two of the Big Three automakers — modestly renamed the Detroit Three — filed for bankruptcy.

Diversions from 21st-century cares were plentiful: American Idol and Lost, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers, Call of Duty and Halo. Mad Men began; Friends ended.

The general lexicon gained words (unfriend, reality TV, hoteling, waterboarding), expressions ("axis of evil," "toxic assets") and slogans ("No credit? No problem!").

What kind of decade was it? How big? How bad? Historians will tell you it's too soon to pass judgment. But what strikes many of them is the sheer pace of change.

Paul Boyer, who recently updated the last chapter of the U.S. history college textbook he co-authors, The Enduring Vision, is amazed, for example, at how quickly America went "from a remarkable moment of unity after 9/11 to the most intense political factionalism."

To appreciate how tumultuous a decade it was, go back to that first day, when Pluto was still a planet and a typical cellphone weighed 7.7 ounces, twice as much as today.

At the start

We know how the decade turned out; this is how it began.

Shortly after midnight CT, Jose Ramierez-Saucedo, a 19-year-old Mexican, wades across the Rio Grande, where he becomes the decade's first illegal immigrant arrested on the Texas border.

About an hour later Marcus Perlas is born in the heart of Silicon Valley. As the first baby of 2000 at Mountain View's El Camino Hospital, he wins 10 shares of Silicon Graphics stock (worth $96.90 at the time) and a single share of Yahoo (worth $432.69). "We're going to keep it in the baby's portfolio," says his mom. "He's a born businessman, I guess."

It's a Saturday. When the sun rises in the east at a bit after 7, Americans still have not agreed on what to call the new decade. The Oughts? The Naughts?

The headline on page one of Denver's Rocky Mountain News proclaims: WORLD FINDS Y2 IS OK AROUND THE PLANET.

It's a time of dial-up computer connections, foldable road maps and 5-pound phone books. When people want to trade a stock or make a reservation, they pick up the phone. They also lick stamps, check answering machines, flip Rolodexes and insert floppy discs.

For most, times are good. According to a USA TODAY-Gallup Poll, 69% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the country. More than three-quarters of those in the work force say it's a good time to look for a job, and only 14% of Americans are extremely or very worried about their economic situation.

The previous week new unemployment claims fell by 9,000 to 274,000. General Motors, the world's largest automaker, is planning to create 1,000 jobs in North Carolina at a new call center for its OnStar in-vehicle information service.

The only potential problem is a diminishing supply of workers: Some jobs are going unfilled for lack of qualified applicants.

The No. 1 TV series is Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The No. 1 millionaire is Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, worth $91 billion.

Enron, the seventh-biggest U.S. corporation with annual revenue of $101 billion, has been named "America's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune magazine four straight years. Its chairman, Kenneth Lay, received compensation in 1999 worth $42.4 million.

Barack Obama, an Illinois state senator from Chicago, has declared his candidacy for the congressional seat held by a fellow Democrat, a four-term-incumbent. Sarah Palin, re-elected with 74% of the vote, begins her second term as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

Vermont legislators face an order issued Dec. 20 by the state Supreme Court: Grant gay and lesbian couples the right to marry or craft an alternative system to provide them with equal rights.

The USS Cole, having won a holiday light decoration award at its Navy base in Norfolk, Va., prepares for maneuvers in the Atlantic.

Almost 2 million people are in prison. None is named Jack Abramoff, Dennis Kozlowski, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernard Ebbers or Bernard Madoff.

Warning signs missed

The SEC has just investigated a complaint that Madoff's investment firm is hiding customers' orders from other traders. Madoff has agreed to take corrective measures.

A project to strengthen New Orleans' hurricane defenses, started after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, is years behind schedule. Projected completion date: 2015. Future FEMA director Michael Brown is working for the International Arabian Horse Association.

Toyota is promoting its high-mileage hybrid, the Prius, on sale in the USA this summer. GM, sensing a lack of demand for such cars, is about to cancel work on the Precept, a prototype model that can get 80 miles a gallon.

It has been 81 years since the Boston Red Sox won the World Series and 80 years since they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The team's last heartbreak came in October, when the Yankees beat them in the American League championship series.

Baseball's biggest hero is Mark McGwire, who in 1998 broke the single-season home run record and who last season hit 65 home runs — followed, as in '98, by Sammy Sosa, who hit 63.

Rachael Ray is working at a gourmet market in Albany, N.Y., where customers' reluctance to cook has given her the idea for a course, book and local TV segment called 30 Minutes Meals.

Miley Cyrus and Nick Jonas are 7 years old.

Osama bin Laden, named to the FBI's Most Wanted List six months ago and under indictment for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, is somewhere in Afghanistan. He recently has given Khalid Sheikh Mohammed approval to proceed with a plot to hijack U.S. airliners and fly them into buildings. A group of the plot's participants has arrived in Afghanistan from Germany, including a man named Mohamed Atta.

A year after U.S. missile strikes on Iraq, Saddam Hussein clings to power; his police state has become more like a prison state. One lockup, Abu Ghraib, has as many as 15,000 inmates.

In Green County, Pa., Chuck Graner is a prison guard at the state prison, where he's been accused of mistreating black and Muslim inmates. In West Virginia, Frankfort High School junior Lynndie England is a new member of the Army Reserve. Both will become U.S. military guards at Abu Ghraib, and for their crimes there wind up behind bars themselves.

About 10 a.m., a man in Muhlenberg Township, Pa., calls 911 to report that he shot his family. Police find the bodies of Henry Peffer, 46, his wife and three children from her previous marriages.

Over the next decade, Peffer's successors in mass murder will explode across the nation, from Fort Hood to an Omaha shopping mall to Virginia Tech.

Nidal Hasan is a student at the U.S. military's medical school in Bethesda, Md.

At 11, Robert Hawkins of Omaha already has suffered through five years of psychological problems, including hospitalization for depression.

Seung Hui Cho, 15, a middle school student in Centreville, Va., has been diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder and depression.

On this placid New Year's Day 2000, so much else is happening beneath the surface.

FBI agent Robert Hanssen has re-established contact with the SVR, one of Russia's successors to the Soviet-era KGB, with the intention of resuming an epic spying career that will end in his arrest the following year.

Bruce Ivins, a scientist at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Maryland, is studying the potential use of anthrax as a biological weapon. It's an expertise he'll allegedly put to deadly use in the fall of 2001. When the FBI finally closes in seven years later, Ivins will kill himself with nothing more exotic than a common pain reliever.

In Minneapolis, it's been 10 years since the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River was rated "structurally deficient" because of corrosion in its bearings.

No one's too worried; tens of thousands of other bridges in the nation have the same federal classification.

Full of promise

For better or worse, the future is ripe as the decade begins.

Craig Newmark, founder of an online network with free classified ads, incorporated last year and plans to expand into nine more U.S. cities this year. He calls his site Craigslist.

Later in the year, Sony will release Play Station II and 'N Sync will release No Strings Attached. The TV series Survivor and Curb Your Enthusiasm will premiere.

AOL, the world's largest online service, will buy Time Warner. Federal agents will take 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez from a relative's home in Miami and hand him over to his father, who will take the boy back to Cuba.

In two weeks, the Dow Jones average will peak at 11,723; after that, the dotcom bubble will burst. But that won't stop the information revolution.

Chad Hurley, who will co-create YouTube, has just graduated from college in Pennsylvania and joined PayPal, where he's been asked to design a logo for the online payment service.

Jack Dorsey, who will create Twitter, has dropped out of New York University and moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where he's about to start a business that will use Internet messages to dispatch taxis, couriers and emergency vehicles.

Mark Zuckerberg, who will create Facebook, is in middle school in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., where he's started to develop computer programs.

For many, the day ends with college football. Led by quarterback Tom Brady, Michigan — making its 33rd consecutive post-season bowl game appearance — stages a come-from-behind, 35-34 overtime victory over Alabama in the Orange Bowl.

Virginia Tech and Florida State, both 11-0, meet Tuesday for the national championship. Tech's freshman quarterback seems to have a bright future. His name is Michael Vick.

Ten years later, we look back at the wild ride and wonder what it meant.

After the historian's disclaimer — "still too early to say" — Michael Stoff of the University of Texas suggests that even the decade's disasters might serve a purpose. The 9/11 attacks and global warming, for example, showed that problems such as terrorism and climate change are too broad to be solved by one nation.

"I'm always struck by how bad things look close-up," he says. "They look different when your nose isn't pressed up against the mirror."

Contributing: Adam Silverman of TheBurlington (Vt.) Free Press; Kathleen Gray of the Detroit Free Press; Associated Press

Monday, December 21, 2009

A friend at work sent this out the other day. I think I'm somewhere still near the beginning...

Thursday, December 17, 2009

GoPro

My roommate and I picked up a GoPro Hero Wide HD camera a couple weeks ago. These things are actually pretty fun to mess around with. Excited to see what other nonsense we can come up with as the season goes on. Here's a quick edit Ty put together from the footage we got last Sunday at Brighton.

Early Season Pow - Brighton, UT 12.2009 from Joe Penacoli on Vimeo.

Monday, December 14, 2009

The Snowbird Syndrome

I feel bad. I have no pics with which to enhance this short post.

So, the 'Snowbird Syndrome,' as recently coined this weekend while skiing at Brighton, is a fear for skiing where, technically, you shouldn't.

In short, at Brighton, as long as there isn't a 'closed' sign posted, you can duck ropes and get to the good stuff. At Snowbird you risk losing your pass for this 'bad behavior.'

This doesn't excuse the fact that you still need to make wise decisions when skiing out of bounds. Have fun.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

A Struggle

Sometimes that's what this blog is. A struggle. Not in the sense that I lose sleep over, but in the sense that I'll ignore it at times, let it go by the wayside and when I do finally catch up with myself I have a hard time committing to making updated posts. Tough, right? Enough introspection.

Life is full of unknowns - I think these two photos I took express this fact in their own ways.

My buddy Josh, a fisheye, his palm and the obvious.


The depth of field on this makes it a little hard to read, but Calvin is spot-on with his philosophy. "Well, each decision we make determines the range of choices we'll face next." Well put, little buddy.