Last night, I noticed that the Wii was not connecting to the internet as it should. I checked my computer and sure enough the internet connection was down, though all lights on the cable modem and router looked okay. I gave up on it until this morning, hoping that the issue would resolve itself. Well it didn’t, so I first removed the router from my connection and plugged my PC directly into the cable modem. After refreshing everything, my connection was working again. So I was able to get onto work, but I really needed to get the router back inline so everything else would work.

So after awhile, I plugged the router back in, restored the factory settings, did a hard reset, and still no internet. I was baffled! So I started to think that maybe the router had gone bad. I even went so far as to look for a new one online, which I could pick up during lunch from Best Buy. I then remembered all of the open source firmware available for the router, Linksys WRT54G, and decided to try one of these out. I figured the worst I could do was completely break the router, which was already not working for me. After consulting with my adviser, I opted for DD-WRT and quickly got it installed. Incredibly, it worked right away! All I had to do from there was re-configure all of my port forwards, wireless security, etc. I don’t know why the official firmware wasn’t working for me, but I’m glad this one is, and I’m really liking the advanced functionality.

My travels for the year are finally over and for the third year in a row here is my year in cities:

• Denver, CO *
• Avon, CO
• Steamboat Springs, CO
• Tabernash, CO
• Keystone, CO
• Silverthorne, CO
• Cincinnati, OH *
• Loveland, OH *
• Breckenridge, CO *
• Canon City, CO
• Lee’s Summit, MO *
• Cedar City, UT
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Paris, France **
• Barcelona, Spain
• Cannes, France **
• Monte Carlo, Monaco **
• Nice, France **
• Pisa, Italy **
• Florence, Italy **
• Rome, Italy **
• Naples, Italy **
• Pompeii, Italy **
• Sorrento, Italy **
• Capri, Italy **
• Venice, Italy **
• Split, Croatia **
• Palermo, Italy **
• Minster, OH
• Baltimore, MD

Each city listed indicates at least one night spent there. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. And those cities marked with ** are ones I did not actually stay in but were visited during our honeymoon cruise. We spent a good amount of time in each place and felt that they should be included.

It was definitely a Wii Christmas for us. My brother got us a Wii Fit, which was delivered last week and we’ve already started using. I love all of the balance games, which I really think should help strengthen my ankle even more. Also, shortly before we left Denver for Cincinnati, Kim gave me Rock Band special edition including the game, one guitar, a set of drums, and the vocal mic. We busted that out of the box for a few quick songs before leaving town. Kim’s family also got the same thing, and I definitely played my fair share of the game with our new band, The Three Wisemen. My family also got us some more Wii games, including Rock Band 2 and a Shaun White snowboarding game to play on the Wii Fit board. I haven’t played those yet, but you can be sure it won’t be long before I do.

Sunday we got in our third day of the season, once again at Breckenridge. The conditions were nice, a bit icy in spots, but I’m sure with the dumping that’s been going on yesterday into today that has changed. But we decided on Breckenridge not because of the snowfall, but because of the event taking place that day, the first stop of the Winter Dew Tour, a three stop skiing and snowboarding competition. It was a multi-day event, with Sunday being the last day and host to one of the biggest draws of the competition the finals in both mens and womens superpipe.

Somehow we missed the women, as I thought they didn’t start until 11. But when we arrived shortly after 11, we found out that the mens competition was about to start and that Gretchen Bleiler had already won. You may remember her from the 2006 Olympics, where she took home the silver behind fellow American Hannah Teter, who is also participating in the Winter Dew Tour. Anyway back to what we actually saw, the mens finals, where we got to watch snowboarding champions such as Shaun White and Danny Kass, winners of gold and silver respectively at the same 2006 Olympics. It was a thrill to see these guys pulling off some amazing tricks in the monstrous halfpipe. But this competition was anyone’s game, so it wasn’t too surprising that neither of these guys won, though Shaun White did get second after a great second run. The winner of this event was Danny Davis with a score of 94.75 after a run comprising of a switch backside 720, a backside 900, followed up with back-to-bak 1080s, and finally a frontside 900. Incredible.

Here’s a photo I shot from the bottom of the halfpipe, the only one I got before the camera batteries went dead. If you look on the right side, all the way at the top, you can see a small figure in the middle of a trick.

I’m much later than years prior, but I finally wrapped up this year’s NOW That’s What Ed Calls Music CD. What can I say, it was a busy year! You will definitely notice a wedding theme to this one, which is applicable since there are a number of songs included that we used for wedding DVD’s, etc.

1. Ray LaMontagne – You Are The Best Thing
2. Jason Mraz – I’m Yours
3. Brett Dennen – Make You Crazy
4. O.A.R. – Whatever Happened
5. The Beautiful Girls – I Thought About You
6. Kings Of Leon – Sex On Fire
7. Vampire Weekend – A-Punk
8. Fleet Foxes – Ragged Wood
9. My Morning Jacket – I’m Amazed
10. Will Hoge – Dirty Little War
11. Virginia Coalition – Stars Align
12. Ingrid Michaelson – The Way I Am
13. Mike Doughty – 27 Jennifers
14. Michael Franti & Spearhead – Say Hey (I Love You)
15. Newton Faulkner – Gone In The Morning
16. Eric Hutchinson – Rock & Roll
17. Sara Bareilles – Many The Miles

I won’t be printing of many (if any) copies of the compilation like I have in the past. There simply isn’t enough time, and I think most people want it on their iPods and mp3 players anyway. So the entire thing is obviously available for download from this site and I’ve also added it to sendspace.com (download link toward the bottom of the page), which should be a much faster download. As always I hope you enjoy it and happy holidays.

I should have mentioned that if you do want a hard copy of the CD, the artwork is included in the zip file so you can print it out and make one yourself. :)

There’s a new sub shop in Denver, Lenny’s @ 3299 S Broadway. During my visit last night, I was told that it is a popular chain in the south, but this is their first venture into Colorado and it just opened at the beginning of the week. I ordered a regular size turkey sub, which included a half pound of fresh sliced turkey and my choice of fixings. The large sandwich includes a full pound of meat, so they definitely serve up some large sandwiches.

Overall, I thought the sandwich was decent. Nothing too go crazy over, but not bad at all. It reminded me a lot of Jersey Mike’s or Mr. Goodcents, which I frequented often while living in Kansas City. One thing of note is Lenny’s hot pepper relish, which I thought was great! And another thing worth noting was the incredibly nice and accommodating staff who made sure that I really enjoyed my meal, including a free chocolate chip cookie. I’m told they will be opening four other locations in the area, so I’m sure I’ll be back again.

Something crazy happened to my webserver today and I’m still not sure what it was. All of the categories used for posts suddenly disappeared and then i couldn’t even open the site. I got a database connection error, so mysql might have something to do with it. Perhaps my hard drive is full, I know that both drives in the server are very close to full capacity. But now everything seems to be working again. I’ll check into it tonight when I get home.

The winning streak continues for my hockey team, after we won last night 3-2 beating the fifth place team. We did lose last week, but since I missed that game I am not counting it. Personally I played pretty well and scored one of our three goals. Overall our record is now 3-10 but unfortunately we are still tied for last in the league. We have another game tomorrow night against the same team we beat a couple of weeks ago. When we win this one, we should finally move out of last place!

Kim and I have continued playing racquetball and are really enjoying it. We played Monday after work for almost an hour. Since our games go back and forth a bunch with no points being scored, after the first game we decided to play the others rally scoring like they now do in volleyball. I won the first and only real game, and we fit in three other rally scoring games with Kim winning two of those. We started a fifth game, but were not able to finish before our time was up, but I was winning that last game by a bunch. I think we are playing again tonight.

Less than one month after I started putting some serious effort into the basement, I’d like to provide a quick update and some photos. I removed most of the old framing, except for a section that seems to be solidly anchored, which I’m now considering keeping. I then started leveling the floor and sealing up the foundation walls. If you view each of the photos below, I’ve provided a link to a similar before shot so you can see how I’m progressing. There is still lots to be done, but I’m hoping the sealing will be done by the end of the year, then it’s time to actually start building things.

What a difference a few weeks makes. The first time we headed out snowboarding the amount of terrain open at the resorts was all below 25%. Now they are all operating with at least 50% open, and some of them should be fully open by now. With that said, we headed out on Saturday morning to Breckenridge for our second day of the season. We didn’t have any problems with the drive up, and arrived around 8:30. We quickly grabbed our gear and headed out to meet up with our friends Corinne and Maura.

We started off on Peak 7, and after finding that most of the peak wasn’t open yet, went back over to Peak 8 and got in a bunch of quick runs. After the crowds started building up we went back over to Peak 7 and found that they had opened everything! We found some trails that had barely been touched and others which were being groomed as we went down. It was perfect! We ended our day at the base of Peak 7, where you can now walk to a stop on the BreckConnect gondola back down to the parking lots. I think we were out of there around 12:30, so nearly five hours or snowboarding and we almost got in ten total runs. It was enough to wear me out for the rest of the day.

Peak 7 on Dwellable

Peak 8 on Dwellable