Another nerd weekend.  Come hang out in January at PDXLAN 15.  Seat 16L.  Matt and I will be there.

I always have trouble describing to people what I do for a living.  I usually just say software developer.  If someone wants to know more though, how do you make it an elevator speech?  Does someone know what data warehouse or business intelligence means?  It seems that my niche at the office has become creating tools for this, mostly in Silverlight lately but it’s always evolving.

I like finding examples that people can relate to.

MIT has an interesting example of mining the internet to create a portrait of your identity.  After all the internet is like another vast database.  Unstructured but still. 

Try it out for yourself.

I was reading a funny stackoverflow post on ‘What technologies are you using even though they are embarrassingly out of date’.

There are some funny responses.

One that made me laugh is ‘Give up and use tables.’  For those of us who have fought the good fight to try and use CSS for layout and looked up at the clock hours later without any progress…

I’m finding myself using Silverlight more and more and less HTML and I don’t miss it…

Heidi was visiting her friend Anne in Sisters Oregon this weekend so I tagged along to check out the mountain bike trails.  Sisters is near Bend Oregon which is home to a number of pro mtb and road racers.  There is alot of mtb trails in and around Bend.  I thought I would do as many as I could but in the end I focused on just one.  A fast smooth and swooping trail that starts right out of downtown Sisters and I could ride to the trailhead from out hotel room which made it convenient.

The country on the east side of the Cascade mountain range is high desert.  Elevation on the Garmin said 3500 feet.  The trail was very dusty and sandy the first day I rode it.  I weaves in and out of a sparsely populated forest of small trees, bushes and lava rocks all over the place.

Reminded me abit of the trails in northern Wisconsin actually.  Levis Trow came to mind while I was riding.

Huge rock formations and boulders were all over the place.  I assume these were formed from some kind of lava.

There was over 28 miles of singletrack.  I got kind of lost on the first day but was able to figure out how to get back via the GPS on the Gamin.  The second day I climbed a small bit of that lava rock and here was the view.

Can’t complain about that.  Time to celebrate with a Session from Hood River Oregon.

A late afternoon storm rolled through and I got to see lightening and thunder which I haven’t seen in awhile so I camped out on the deck of the hotel and watched with Heidi.  Although it rains in Portland, it doesn’t get thunderstorms.  A nice rainbow tried to form during a colorful sunset.

Rode the trail once more on Sunday and went home.

Other things to note.  It was hot in August, mid-90’s weather – almost 100.  Bring plenty of water or ride earlier in the day for cooler weather.  I drank 3+ liters in 3 hours of riding the first day.