Binarynomad

So the Bladium is a unique gym that opened up in Alameda around 2000. Unique in the fact that it has 2 full sized hocky rinks, a soccer field, a basket ball court, weight room, and a few other gym things, all INSIDE 1 building. The Bladium is located on the old Naval base at Alameda Point, inside one of the humongous hangers there.

Well, ever since I had heard about it, I had also heard that they were going to have a climbing wall. I love climbing, and I’ve been to both Mission Cliffs in San Francisco and the Berkeley Ironworks. Both sites are professional climbing gyms with hundreds of routes and full membership options. The only problem for me was that they were not easliy accessable. So having the Bladium, right here on the island, was perfect. Unfortunately, the wall was never created, it was always in limbo due to one thing or another (city permits, contractor costs, etc).

Finally, this last December (2004) they finished it 🙂

So Kristen, Alicia and I all headed over to try it out, and we had a blast. The costs are about $15 for the full day for non members, but that comes with all gear and any training needed. I surprised myself, I thought I wouldn’t be able to any of the 5.8 trails the first day I was back after 2-5 years, but I pulled them off. At the end of the day my fingers had no grip and my forearms were killing me, but surprisingly the rest of my body was fine. My legs weren’t sore at all.

Below you will find a few pictures shot from two of our climbs, I had forgotten to grab the camera for the majority of the day. I wanted to grab a shot from the top one of the trails, but the harness was too tight and I could not get the camera out of my pocket.

http://www.touchstoneclimbing.com/mc_tour.html

http://www.touchstoneclimbing.com/bi_tour.html

http://www.bladium.com/PublicFacilityAreas.asp?FacilityID=5&CompanyID=1&FacilityAreaID=37

Well, it’s official. I’m onto the next part of my certification with Berkeley. I just recieved my next three class confirmations for the spring semester. I’m considering signing up for a fourth online class to see how much cram in. Since it is a “take 6 months to finish course” I think I’ll wait until I find out what my current load feels like.

I’ve never been one of those to set new years resolutions but here are some of the things I’m keeping an eye on:

Build on my Art & Photography skills. Travel both local and abroad (Burning Man, Defcon, Cebit in Germany, something in Asia) Work on my shyness and get back into dating. Finish my UNIX certification with UC Berkeley Extension. Start my own Business (consulting software/hardware, and support)

Wish me luck… 🙂

Wow, 2004 is already over. It’s wierd, but it feels like a hazy day-dream at this point. Now that might have something to do with the fact that I just spent the last 2 days in bed/couch recovering from a heavy head cold, but you never know.

The year started off with me ending a 2.5 year relationship. That was painful. It was something that forced me to look inside and start sorting out personal and preconcieved beliefs on love & relationships. Thankfully we are still great friends.

I joined a local wireless network group called “Alameda Wireless” that hopes to start building a community wireless network on the island. Problem is that we are a bit hampered by the terrain (mostly flat) and number of members in the group.

It’s strange, I didn’t feel like I learned to many new things, but as I went through my planner I was surprised at what I found.

I took a “Japanese I” class at UC Berkeley, but unfortunately, I had to drop out 1/2 way through the course. It was hard to learn a new language without constant use, and my night schedule was erratic because of work and so I had no one to practice with after classes. Right now, I’m still deciding if I want to revisit it again this year.

I got my work to send me to “Shoreline Training” in Mountain View. Shoreline, now ShoreTel, is the VOIP system we use in the office. Although the irony is that my work now wants to remove the Shoreline System completly and install a Cisco system. (Maybe I can get them to send me to training for that too 🙂 )

For my own development I took a “Fundamentals of Cisco Router Configuration” in SF. It was pretty interesting and it helped me realize I didn’t want to dive into a heavy networking career path. I still want to include it, but not as a CCNA or such.

I had a great time when I headed over to Las Vegas for “Defcon 12”, I’m considering doing it again this year, maybe even working it. I only got away from the convention for a few hours one night to visit the main strip, and came away with the feeling that it would be a fun weekend in itself. Next time, I think going with a friend would be a lot more fun.

I’ve had an off and on interest in Tantra over the past few years and I took a “Tantric Workshop” here in Oakland, but it was a bit too new age for my tastes. I think that was more due to the teacher than the subject. This hasn’t discouraged me at all, and I’m still keeping an eye out.

A friend gave her s.o. a birthday present of “Hang Gliding Lessons” and I was one of the ones invited to join up for the experience. It was a blast. We actually didn’t get to fly much due to weather and a parasailing class, but we all had a great time. It got me thinking about going for a hang gliding license. I’ve flown airplanes and skydived, but I think this would give a much greater sense of freedom and control.

I’ve always had this nagging feeling that I want to start my own business but never to settle on what. Well in 2004 I think I found what I want head toward. I’d like to start a consulting business that helps small/medium businesses run using Open Source Software. This would let me do all the things I love: 1) travel, 2) build and design systems, and 3) let me play with the latest tech 🙂 . The only thing missing is photography, but I might be able to work that in somehow. I’ve been playing with Open Source and Linux for while now but with no formal training. So to that end I signed up for a UC Berkeley Certification Program “Unix System Administration” and took two of the first courses “UNIX Tcp/Ip Architechure”, “UNIX System Administration I”. The first which I Aced and the second which I believe I Aced. I still have about 6 more classes to take, but I’ve already signed up for the next three.

As a bonus, my work sent be to Red Hat training in December and I got my “Red Hat Certified Technician” (RHCT) certification, which paves the way for RHCE.

So it looks like most of the year was growing my techinical/business side. I think Im going to keep going that direction for the new year too. I do hope to incorporate more creative aspects though.

Oh, one other thing happened this year. I got to experience working for one of the worst/incompetent managers I have ever had in my entire working career. It gave me a much better perspective on “how bad it could be”. Luckly though, I was given an early Christmas present when I was asked to completely shutdown any access he had to the company the same hour his plane was landing in SFO as he was returning from our European offices. It seem his escapades had caught up with him. 🙂

Overall, it was a growing year, but then again, I hope they all are.

Happy New Year everyone.

Sweet! It seems regular sex does keep the doctor away. Yeah I know the link is old, I accidently came across it when I was using google as a spell checker.

http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/08/cz_af_1008health.html

Hey, don’t forget, you are now entitled to 1 free credit report from each of the three major credit agencies every year. Most people are planning to stagger them over the course of the year to see how their credit is doing, I’ll start that next year. For now, I’m getting all three at the same time to make sure they all have the same/correct info.

A friend of mine gave me a great hint: Don’t use the online form to request your reports, they ask a ton of necessary questions. If you use the phone request, the process is much faster.

Number to call: 877-322-8228

Sorry I havn’t posted for a bit, I’m still trying figure out how I want to use this blog. I’ve worked out some categories to help populate content:

ART: A place where I hope to be posting my doodles, drawings, and such. I also want to start integrating more pictures, like a photoblog.

DREAMS: As in ‘during sleep’. Not goals and such 🙂

FOOD: If you at all know me, you will find out I love food. I regularly eat out (much to my wallet’s dismay) and I hope to start posting reviews of my new finds and old favorites. I also will be including my own kitchen finds and such.

GENERAL: This is the catchall for anything I feel like, interesting or otherwise.

TECH: I’m a geek at heart and I’ll be using this to highlite the toys, gadgets, software, systems, and the like that catch my eye. I also hope to start working on some projects of my own here.

WORK: This is an area to keep track of stuff going on at my current employment.

Wish me luck, and thanks for visiting.

Ok, I realize how non-eventful this is, and you can save yourself a few moments of boredom by skipping, but I’m happy, so I’m posting it anyway. 🙂

Woot! Talk about adding up. I have a big gulp plastic cup that I’ve been throwing my spare change into for a number of months now. Well, today I finally hit the rim of said cup and decided to take it into one of those change2cash machines in Albertsons. After all was said and done, I ended up with $97.17. OK, it actually was $105.56, but they grab .089% for sorting your coins. I don’t mind the a $9 shakedown to cut out about 2 mindless hours of playing with a ton of coins. I’d invest that much time in coins only if I had access to Scrooge McDuck’s vault. 😀