I received an email stating that Yahoo! will be shutting down GeoCities on October 26, 2009. That will be one sad day. I used GeoCities for years, starting sometime in high school, to host all sorts of various websites. So I need to start downloading all of my old websites from their servers so they aren’t lost forever.

First was my personal page, geocities.com/edpaff_jr. I’m pretty sure what is currently there was the very first layout of this page. Archive.org also has another version of the site from 2002, but I’m afraid that design may already be lost forever.

Then there was geocities.com/ed_paff, which I setup as I graduated high school. I set it up to try to keep our friends in touch as we all headed off to different colleges and jobs. This site hasn’t been updated since July 12, 2000, making it fairly short lived.

The Pig-Fest website was also hosted on GeoCities at one time, but the files must have already been deleted awhile back. Some various designs from the past can be seen via archive.org, so I guess it’s not permanently gone. This is how the website looked originally. Notice the constant use of frames early on in my design.

There was also a website that my brother and I made back in high school for the Moeller ice hockey team. I don’t recall the actual URL though, and I’m having a hard time finding any traces of the site. I really wish I could find that one.

We had another exciting hockey game last night in my adult league. Unlike last week, we did not need a shootout to claim yet another victory. The game went back and forth throughout, but we eventually pulled ahead 7-5 late in the third period and put one more in the empty net to seal the deal at 8-5. I didn’t add any goals to my stats, but did have another assist. I am now tied for third in the league for most assists. Our team record is 7-2, which puts us solidly in first place. The second place team is now three points behind us with three games left to play. I’m smelling a trophy in our future, or more likely a championship t-shirt.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot, or at least much more than I ever did before. So far I’ve read the first two books in James Patterson’s Alex Cross series, Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls, and I am waiting for the third book to be ready for me to pickup from the library. I really enjoy the thrilling detective stories in these books, and with fourteen books total, I’m sure to be enjoying them for months to come. Who would have thought that I would ever enjoy reading this much, but it really helps pass the time on my lightrail rides to/from the office.

Before leaving rainy South Dakota many of the group who visited Rushmore the day before headed off to Custer State Park. Originally we had planned to hike to the top of Harney Peak, the highest point in South Dakota, but later opted for a shorter hike in hopes of getting back to Denver at a reasonable hour. The hike we did was a strenuous mile and a half up to the top of Little Devil’s Tower. From the top we had amazing views of the Cathedral Spires, Harney Peak and entire southern hills.

After the hike, we drove the Needles Highway through the park and spotted many deer, a few elk, and some amazing rock formations. We didn’t have time to drive the wildlife loop, though if you do you’ll find 1500 free roaming bison. After leaving the park, we stopped in the town of Custer for a quick lunch, and then drove by the Crazy Horse Memorial. This rock sculpture is a work in progress and when completed, it will be 641 feet wide and 563 feet high. We decided not to pay the price of admission to get a closer view and snapped a couple of pictures from the highway.

Black Hills and Badlands on Dwellable

Over the holiday weekend I added another state to my list of states visited, South Dakota, which takes the count to 40. We left after work on Thursday and drove up toward the southwestern part of the state driving through some pretty good storms along the way. We arrived at the Crooked Creek Campground around 11pm and set up our tents in the drizzling rain. We went to bed that night hoping for some sun the following day.

Unfortunately, when we awoke on Friday morning it was still raining. But the worst part was that it never really stopped. We ate a quick breakfast at the campground, packed our cars full of the necessary supplies for a long day and drove off toward Mount Rushmore. We arrived before 10am and found that thousands of people were already there and there was a huge line to get into the parking lots. One of our cars decided to skip the line and found a spot along the road toward the park, where the other two cars later joined.

After standing around in the rain for a couple of hours, the rain picked up and forced all of us inside of the cars to wait it out. Once it finally settled a little, a few of us headed down the road to buy a couple of tarps so that we could attempt to stay dry outside. We put the tarps up between a couple of cars and a couple of trees and waited. Waited for what? The fireworks over the heads of Mount Rushmore, supposedly one of the best fireworks displays around.

At one point the rain died down enough for a few of us to take a hike up the road 1.3 miles to the entrance of Mount Rushmore. We walked up to the main gates, snapped a few pictures, and eventually wound our way back down to the cars. In hindsight I’m glad I decided to take this walk, as some of the members in our group never saw the faces. Later in the evening when it was nearing the time for the fireworks display, we all headed back up toward the entrance area, just in time to watch a thick fog roll into the area.

We waited with our fingers crossed that something would happen, but the fog just got worse and worse. The fireworks were supposed to start at 9:20pm. At that time they lit off a test firework, which provided a bang and a flash of light in the dense fog. We were all thinking that the display was either going to be delayed or canceled completely. Within fifteen minutes an announcement was made that the display was going to start soon. It was great to hear those words, but we all knew that it was going to be very disappointing with the fog so thick that the faces of Mount Rushmore could not even be seen.

And that’s exactly what happened. The fireworks were shot off, but all that happened was that the fog became lit up in various colors. At one point the fog cleared just enough so we could actually see parts of a few fireworks explosions, but still no faces ever became visible. The crowd was very disappointed, but there was little that could have been done. I read that if they would have waited until 10:20 that they would have been canceled completely due to high winds. And there was no option of postponing until the next day, so that did what had to be done. At least we were able to gather with friends and celebrate.

South Dakota on Dwellable

After a week of being tied for first place in an adult hockey league, my team is now solely sitting back atop the leader board. Actually we were technically in second place as another team had scored more goals than us, but that didn’t matter when we beat that same team last night. It was probably the hardest our team has skated this season.

For myself the game started off great. I was playing defense yet again, but that didn’t stop me from breaking the puck up the ice a few times. The first time I rushed up I actually scored a goal, my second of the season. I had a sweet give-and-go with another player on our team. From there my team put it another goal toward the end of the first period. The second period was our opponents’ period, as they evened the score at two.

In the third period they were quick to score another goal and take the lead. However my team fought hard and finally tied the game at three, where it stood until the end of regulation. From there we moved on to an overtime shootout. I was asked to take one of our three shots, but declined after taking a hard shot to the shin with just seconds left in the game. The puck hit me just above my bad ankle, and I wasn’t certain of my status. Fortunately our team is awesome in shootouts, with both of our first two players making their shots and our goalie making equally great saves on the other team’s first two. We didn’t even need our third shooter to claim the victory. And I’m happy to say that the shot I took had no effect on my ankle!

Saturday night I headed to the Impulse Theater with my wife and a couple of friends. Our friend Amy was in town visiting and chose this activity for us since she can’t see improvised comedy anywhere in Cincinnati. I had often seen the theater entrance, as it’s in the basement of the Wynkoop Brewery, but had never been inside. My knowledge of improv extended only as far as what I’d seen on the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway. Fortunately, many of the acts at the Impulse were very similar to the games on the TV show, only they don’t keep score and there is no winner.

Actually there is a winner, everyone in the audience! The comedic wit and quick thinking of the four actors we saw was amazing. We were treated to seats in the very front row, but I think everyone in the room had a great view. The hour and a half long show was the perfect amount of time, and it went by so quickly while I was cracking up in my chair. I would highly recommend this show to anyone, well anyone over twenty-one since that is the age requirement. Even then the show is not really crude, which was hard to pull of with a group of women celebrating a bachelorette party in the crowd. I thoroughly enjoyed the Impulse and hope to be back soon.

After a few days of iPhone use, I can honestly say that I am even happier with it than I could have imagined. The first thing I had to do was figure out how to get all of my contacts off of my old phone and onto the iPhone. Previously I had service with Verizon and took advantage of their Backup Assistant to store all of my numbers for me. I did a quick google search and couldn’t find a good solution for performing the transfer from the Backup Assistant to my iPhone contact list. I was able to login to the Backup Assistant website but unfortunately I could not export the data. However, I was able to print the data, though that really wouldn’t help. So I came up with the following method to manually copy all of the data and get it in to the iPhone.

1. Select Print Address Book from Backup Assistant website (popup window).
2. Copy all rows.
3. Open Excel and paste.
4. Format in Excel:
   1. Copy and paste the data into another sheet, this should remove the pesky check marks in each row.
   2. Move phone numbers around into separate columns specified by type.
   3. Use find and replace to replace all instances of “Mobile”, “Work”, “Home”, etc. with blank text, leaving only numbers in each cell.
5. Save the worksheet as a csv file.
6. Open outlook and create a new sub directory under Contacts.
7. Under File menu select Import and Export…
8. Import from another program of file.
9. Comma Separated Values (Windows).
10. Browse to the file saved earlier.
11. Select the sub directory created earlier.
12. Click Map Custom Fields…
13. Map Name to Name, Mobile to Mobile Phone, Home to Home Phone, etc.
14. You can use the Next > button to see how your data will map.
15. Click Finish.

From there you should be able to use the Outlook Contact syncing in iTunes to send your phone numbers to your iPhone. I think that was all of the steps. I didn’t think to write it all down until after I had successfully performed the sync. But then I realized that my work might actually help someone out. Leave any questions or comments below.

Our good friend Amy was in town this past weekend. On Saturday we took her and our friend Ken up to Rocky Mountain National Park for a hike. Amy had requested a hike to waterfalls, and I found a nice three mile route that would take us along the St. Vrain Creek and past three different sets of falls. This hike started at the Wild Basin Trailhead in the southeast corner of the park. After .3 miles we were treated to our first set of falls, Copeland Falls. Though not very impressive in size, the speed at which the water was flowing made for a thrilling view.

We continued down the trail and eventually reached the Calypso Cascades. I really enjoyed this set of falls and found them fairly easy to photograph. We stayed here for at least ten minutes admiring the strength of the water. From there we completed the final stretch of our hike up to Ouzel Falls. Though these falls have a larger drop than the others we had seen, it was hard to view that as it’s fairly hidden by trees. Perhaps an off trail hike is needed to really appreciate these falls. Overall I found the Calypso Cascades to be much more inspiring and powerful.

The hike was a huge success and I think everyone really enjoyed it. I know that I was happy just to be out hiking again. Hopefully I’ll get out again soon. Here are some pictures I shot along the way.

The day has arrived! My iPhone was dropped onto my porch this morning and I’ve been keeping busy with it thus far. I ordered it last Thursday and it was delivered just over a week later, so not too bad. I finally got it activated, though I haven’t made or received any calls yet so I’m not sure if it’s really fully activated or not. So far I’ve been working to setup gmail on it, along with downloading a couple of apps (facebook and pandora so far). I haven’t bought a case or screen protection yet, but that should come sometime this weekend. Alright enough with the blogging, back to the iPhone addiction. Send any suggestions my way.