dennisjudd.com

I seem to be in a writing slump as of late.
So much is going on at work that I really can’t talk to anyone about. Very few people would find CALEA or dual ACL applications via Radius interesting. And really the number of people I can talk to about I/O memory upgrade requirements on a Juniper 1400 is easily countable on one hand.
Today I learned nothing. Not a darn thing. No life lesson’s, no meaningful epiphanies, no parting of the clouds for the sun to shine through.
i’m playing around with online widgets….

Today for the first time I finally beat the chess game on my cell phone. You wouldn’t believe how hard that damn thing is to play.
- Baby dies in bucket of mother’s own vomit. Sometimes the headlines just write themselves.
- I want everyone who knows me to be aware of this date.
- And finally, what happens to 50lbs of silly putty when dropped off a 7 story building. Not quite what you might expect.

I just got a windows Vista RC 1 dvd in the mail today….guess I know what I’ll be doing later on today/tomorrow.

Well it’s been over a year, but I finally moved the last Redback tonight in San Francisco.
Phew! What a pain in the butt that was.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Sirius Boombox lately, especially with all the work around the house I’ve been doing and I wish I could get that damn song out of my head. Damn british rap and it’s slighty addictive accent.
oh lord, this is funny.
It’s 4:15am…I think I need to go so sleep now. Very tired and obviously not making much sense

Part of a continuing saga…you can find the previous parts here:
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
The next day, while our sore behinds were still recovering from the bicyling adventure we took, we arrived in Skagway. It was a cloudy and over cast day to begin, and we were also the only boat in town at the moment, so the whole place was deserted pretty much at first.
Interesting thing we learned during the course of the day. LIke 60% of the town were seasonal workers from all over, it was like some giant Great America theme part, and when tourist season was over most of the people boarded up everything and left. I can only imagine how creepy that place gets around December.
We had signed up for Rock Climbing and Rappelling in Skagway, so we got off the boat early in the morning and started the long walk down the pier looking for our “guide”. One of the more unusual things about skagway is a lot of boats tag the rock face that’s next to the pier. I mean, there was stuff on there from as far back as when I was in high school.
Anyway we found our “guide” and climbed into the omnipresent ford econo van’s that every town seems to have and drove out to a trail on the side of the road. Then we got out and took this really cool little hike to where the rock wall was. After donning helmets, rock shoes, and a harness that emphasized my bulges we were ready to scale the craggy peaks. Since there were two guides, only two could go at a time. What happens is they tie a rope to your harness and basically keep that line taunt the whole way up, so that way if you fell…well you wouldn’t fall. I’m sure you get the idea, you’ll see the ropes in the pictures. Also, it’s how you get down….basically once you get to the top and touch the chain, you lean back. Yes…lean back and they lower you down. I had a hard time with that part…leaning back from a perfectly solid rock wall isn’t really in my programming.

After everyone gets a turn or two (depending on whether they want it or not) then the group heads up to the top to rappel down the side of the rock wall. This personally scared the crap out of me, but really it was a lot of fun. Jen had already been repelling in the past so she wasn’t really excited about it. But I’m a cheap date
Once done, they gave some people the option to either rappel again or climb more based on what you wanted. Or you could get out of the stupid shoes and harness if you were so inclined. Then it was a quick hike back and a short trip to the boat. On the way Jen got some recommendations from the guides on what to do and where to go during the afternoon. It turned out to be great advice. After we got back to the boat, changed clothes a bit and freshened up a bit we headed back out to the local tourist lodge for a map of the hiking trails around the area.

We decided to go hiking on a trail called Lower Dewey, and boy I have to tell you it was pretty damn cool. Forget paying for expensive things, some of the coolest stuff you can do is free. But don’t let the short lenght fool you, the real bitch here is elevation. You go up like 500 feet and it’s a bear. Now here’s the weirdest thing. So we get to lower dewey lake finally, and where sitting there in the middle of nowhere….total forest…but somehow I’ve got full bars on my cell phone. I literally sat there for 10 minutes talking to my sister in the middle of nowhere. It was a little surreal.
Then we made a big decision…we decided instead of heading back to go around dewey lake. This was both smart and dumb. It was smart because it was cool…but it was dumb because it was hella hard. Once side of dewey lake is nice and large, with paths the size of bike paths that are obviously cared for and maintained. The other side of dewey lake however is not, the path get’s down to about a foot wide at parts (when you can even see it) and it takes you over rocks, boulders, and just some down right crazyness. It was really cool

After that we headed into town, had a few beers and then back to the boat to collapse. It was a lot of fun, totally free, but really kicked my butt. Some better shoes would have really helped.
next time, glacier bay…
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Our honeymoon pictures can be seen here, and a slideshow is available here.

I had really hoped to get to do a 5th post about our honeymoon today, but I just simply ran out of time.
So in lue of that I present these links as a temporary offering:
- A motorcycle rollercoaster. Yeah I didn’t get it until I looked at the pics either, but now that I’ve seen it I think it’s hella cool.
- Did you know that in some suburbs of Chicago, if you live in a townhome or any other multi dwelling unit you aren’t allowed to own a grill? That’s just crazy.
- Finally a wedding ring that reminds you your anniversary is coming up. At least in theory….sounds like a brilliant idea, I was wishing mine had an LED or something in it the other day so I could play green lantern see in dark places.

So I was reading an article on Yahoo News today when an ad on the side caught my eye.
And when I say “caught my eye” what I really mean is annoyed me enough to make me look. Much like a very fat old hairy man in a speedo I was powerless to avert my eye’s. The googles indeed, do nothing.
Here is a screen capture of the specific ad in question:

Now what you can’t see in my capture is that the two sillouette’s are dancing back and forth in the moonlight constantly. Back and forth like the front of K.I.T.T on Knight Rider…..they never stop shaking what their mama’s gave them. Long after you and I pass from this mortal coil, these two will be so excited about their mortgage rates they will be dancing on your grave.
If you don’t believe me, .
Now I have a few problems.
1. The only way to only pay $1,698 per month on a $510,000 loan is to figure it for 50 years…and even then your going to end up paying 3x’s the loan amount in the end
2. What the FUCK do two people dancing in front of the moon have to FUCKING do with a FUCKING mortgage????? What stupid mother fucking asshole signed off on this thinking that “hey, this speaks to our demographic, dancing nocturnal people looking for a mortgage”
I’ve been seeing these for a while, stupid ones like a bear holding a fish, or the one’s where every scale on a snake is a different state for car insurance.
The simple fact that something thinks something like this was good enough to make me interested pisses me off. Not to mention that you have to be a fucking moron if you think your paying two much for your mortage. If anything your not paying enough. Low mortgage monthly payments are just a scam by the banks to keep you paying more on your loan so they can line their pockets with it.

It’s very rare when an artist you loved as a child still makes you laugh…I mean donny osmond? seth green? wtf…that’s just to funny.
15 years later, and I’m still proud that I saw UHF in the theaters back in ’89.

Part of a continuing saga…you can find the previous parts here:
part 1
part 2
part 3
Next stop Juneau, but before that we’ve got a lot of sea to cover. Along the way you might see some things you normally wouldn’t. Like tug boats transporting shipping containers or playful whales.

The next day we arrived in Juneau, and were welcomed with typical Alaskan weather. Pouring rain. We spent most of the morning walking around doing more touristy things and just sort of exploring the town. We had planned to buy tickets for the Mt. Roberts Tram, so we could go up the hill and see the view. But considering the weather we wouldn’t have been able to see anything except cloud up there. So we basically just killed time until the afternoon when we had the Glacier View Bike and brew.
Now keep in mind, this entire time it’s pouring rain. It turns out Juneau’s annual rainfall ranges from 55 inches to over 90 depending on location. So needless to say we were a little curious about whether or not they were going to actually cancel the tour.
Remember that point I made in the beginning? If not let me recap; They don’t get paid if they cancel, so things rarely get cancelled. So yeah, guess what we did. If you guessed went biking in the absolute pouring rain you’d be right. Now they give you rain gear, but really in the end….it’s still pouring rain and your basically perspiring inside a hefty bag so your gonna get drenched nomatter what you do.

Now it wasn’t all bad…honestly I really started having alot of fun once they got us off the roads, and onto the trails. Those where a hell of a lot of fun, there was this part where the trail had been basically washed out by water, and we had to convice this 60 year old guy to not chicken out and cross so we wouldn’t have to turn around. And his wife was giving him shit about how everybody else wanted to go and he was being a wimp. The best part is later on the ride when she casually mentions how he had his hip replaced like just 2 months ago. YIPES!
So we travel 9 miles, and get to a stopping point where we return the bikes. Now the next stop is supposed to be Mendenhall Glacier, but you can’t ride the bike down into that area. So here we are dripping wet, my glasses are fogging up every time I breath, and a little sore from riding for the longest time since I was 15. What do you think is next? It turns out they can’t drive you down there, you have to walk 1/3 of a freakin’ mile to go stare at a chunk of ice…..and when we got there, you couldn’t even see the damn thing.

Yeah, that last part kinda chapped my hide. But at least we were heading to a brewery right? When we got there like 1/2 hour later, the sun started poking out and we headed inside for the free beer mecca we dreamed of. The inside of their tasting room was pretty cool, they had a shelf running around the room up top with all different beer bottles on it arranged by country. It really was cool, but their brewery tour was kinda lame. They don’t actually let you out into it, but rather they have a room with windows that you stand in and they tell you about how beer is made. Which if your like us, you already know….so we left and went back to pound more free beer
Probably one of the best brews (no barley wines alas) was their oatmeal stout, it was very very drinkable. And if it was available locally here we’d buy it in a heart beat. They were very cool there, and it was obvious that a lot of locals like to hang out there for the free beer. Of course we didn’t snap any pictures while we were there, after all we were focused on drinking….but they made it all back in the knick knacks we bought. Plus we bought some beers to bring back to the boat with us.
After that we piled back onto the boat, headed back to the room and changed from our wet soggy clothes into warmer, dryer ones and pretty much just relaxed by walking around and playing the occasional ping pong game. There are few things are fun as drinking beer and trying to play ping pong on the open sea.
Tomorrow Skagway!
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Our honeymoon pictures can be seen here, and a slideshow is available here.