My internal clock is definitely not what it used to be. In the past I used to stay up until all hours of the night. I would routinely go to bed between midnight and 1:30AM. Now no matter what I do it seems as though I am falling asleep by 11:00PM but then waking by 4:00AM. I think much of this has to do with my state of mind and depression/anxiety I have experienced over the situation with Shelly. The loss of your fiance to your own stupidity is traumatic beyond bounds. So yet again I am making a very early morning post.
What I was thinking about this morning as I lay here was how much new technology there is everywhere. I comment on this simply because in the last 3 - 4 days my life has been filled with new technology experiences.
The first new technology experience came in the mail over the weekend. I had renewed my "Colorado Pass" ski pass offered by Vail Resorts in mid-November. This was the first time in 2 years that I had purchased a ski pass. Normally when I renewed my pass I simply got an e-mail that said my pass was renewed and unless I had lost the physical pass, just use the old pass. This year however they sent me an entirely new physical pass. The reason for this is due to the fact they have integrated technology directly into the physical pass that is part of their "Epic Mix" package. The "Epic Mix" package is technology that allows Vail to track exactly where I ski. At the end of my ski day I can log onto their website and see a map of where I skied and how much elevation I gained/lost etc. Some may consider this new technology an invasion of privacy but... I think it is really cool.
My second "new technology" experience came when I recorded Zack's choral concert on Wednesday night. The battery in my camcorder was dead and I didn't have time to charge it. So I took my Digital SLR camera and the manual and recorder the concert with that. The interesting aspect of that was that the video portion of my SLR camera is so technologically advanced it records everything in High-Definition which is the reason I could hardly get the video uploaded to the web yesterday.
Because of the difficult of uploading the video to the web, when Zack was at his swim lesson on Thursday I swung by the Best Buy at the Streets of South Glenn and looked at the newest version of Adobe Premiere Elements (a video editing software). I practically fell on the floor as I read the outside of the box and saw all the tools that were now part of this software. A couple of years ago these kinds of tools weren't even available to the movie studios in Hollywood!
Lastly (and thankfully Zack doesn't read the blog) I was out looking for one of his Christmas presents at REI - an outdoor gear store. (Zack is getting a new bike for Christmas!) Of course given my fixation on GPS's I wandered by that section of the store when I was there. Oh my god! They things they are now doing with GPS's and other small electronic gear for the outdoors! I saw the coolest stuff. The thing that impressed me the most was in that same section they had miniature cameras that you can now attach to your helmet, wrist, where every and record everything you do when skiing, biking, kayaking, whatever - all in high definition. These things only weigh a couple of ounces. Incredible!
Given that I am such a technology geek I could help but think of these things as I lay here a wake this morning!
Something else I was thinking about was all the various videos I have uploaded to YouTube since I first signed up for it over 2 years ago. I first signed up to post the memorial montage I did for Patty's memorial service. Since then YouTube has pretty much destroyed that video because I used a copyrighted song in it. But... there are a bunch of other videos that are pretty good that I decided to embed in my post this morning just as a trip down memory lane.
This first video I took in the Grand Canyon when Zack and I were caught in a massive wind storm and almost blown off the side of the canyon.
This second video was immediately before the windstorm video. It shows Zack and my descent into and ascent out of the canyon. You can kind of tell the wind is gathering strength in this video.
These last 2 videos are nature videos that I compiled from various hikes Zack and I did from late 2008 through the summer of 2009. I haven't done one of these in a while - I think I should.
I will admit one of my frustrations with YouTube and all the different Google services these days is that they used to be all separate services so I have different accounts for them. For example my YouTube Account is mtnclimberx13. It is associated with my e-mail account of jkromer@ix.netcom.com but I don't know if I can get rid of the mtnclimberx13 account on YouTube and just use my jkromer@ix.netcom.com account. (Of course that is different because YouTube used to be a separate company back when I signed up for the service. All I can say to that is Argh... With all the new technology why can we have a single sign on for just about everything on the web. There was a story on the news several nights ago that they average person has over 20 different passwords and accounts that they need to remember for the web. How frustrating!)
Anyway - I hope everyone has enjoyed my walk down my video memory lane. If I have some time over the weekend I might create a new nature photo montage and post.
I hope everyone has a great Friday ahead.
Thanks and peace to all! ~J.
FYSRD!
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