Made it to the 70s earlier this year

Well, this year the temperature here in NLV made it into the 70s a couple of weeks earlier then last year.

73 degrees in January.  Sweet.

Packers vs. Seahawks

Tomorrow is the Packers vs. Seahawks game.  We’re going to head down to Big Dog’s Brew House to watch the game.  Big Dog’s is a Wisconsin themed bar just a few miles from our place that does their own microbrews.

If the Packers are winning at half-time there will be harassment of folks in Seattle.

We won! Insert manaical laughter here.

Mount Charleston

Yesterday I got it into my head to take the dogs up into the mountains so they could spend a decent amount of time time outside.  One of the advantages of working for yourself is you can decide when you take your days off, so we could just pick up and go.  On the other hand if your schedule is irregular you can go too long without having taken a day off and suddenly find yourself worked out for a few days.

Unfortunately I forgot to bring the camera after making sure it was charged, so no pictures from this trip.  Mount Charleston is NW of Vegas and from our place it its pretty easy to get to.  Just head west and hop on the highway that heads NW out of town then get off a little way out of town and follow the road up the mountain.  As we went up in elevation the temp dropped from 102 to 80.  More surprisingly vegetation got bigger and greener as we went up.  At 6000 or 7000 feet there was actually a forest of trees hitting upwards of 60 feet.  I had no idea there was anything like that in the area.  By the small town at the top there’s a picnic and camping area in the forest that costs $7 for the day to get into but has individual spots to park at with a picnic tables and grills.  On the way back down the temperature went from 72 to 90 (the sun was behind the mountain by the time we left).

I think we’ll have to trek into the mountain again next week to give the dogs a break from the heat again.

Tula of the Mountain.

A nerd-boy americanus outside his natural habitat.

See, Leah does outdoorsy crap too.

King County trip

We’ll I got back from my 10 night trip to King County last Monday. I spent the first leg of the trip with our friends Pete and Candice and the second with our friends Brian and Erin. Both couples arranged a BBQ the Saturday I was at their place, so I got to catch up with a number of our other friends in the area as well. It was great seeing everyone and I hope I can make the trip up again next summer.

It was overcast most of the days, but there were several days that were quite nice. The last Sunday I was there the weather was perfect in the afternoon and Brian, Erin, and I went on a 2.5 hour hike in a state park near Duvall. We went on a shorter hike up Tolt Hill the day before as well.

Pete introduced me to the web based strategy game Travian and I got hooked the first Saturday I was there. Good thing I brought a laptop. Someone ganked my troops after I fell a sleep early on Monday night when I got back here, so I spent Tuesday building up my forces again and ganking the guy back (repeatedly) thus delaying this posting until Today.

Leah’s off to King County

Just dropped Leah off at the airport. She’s heading back to King County, WA to visit with friends. Perhaps she’ll put up a blog post while she’s there.

110 degrees

Been watching for 110 for a while now and just saw 110.1 degrees. Various weather sites have shown our zip code to have been over 110 a number of times already, but it doesn’t count until I see the reading from my always shaded sensor that isn’t over blacktop or near an A/C exhaust vent.

Roku

Well, we’ve had our Roku for a few weeks now and its excellent being able to instantly get movies and TV series from Netflix.  Picture quality is similar to cable TV.  The compression artifacts are quite noticeable on black scenes, but I don’t notice them otherwise.  Netflix also seems to be pretty rapidly expanding their instant view offerings although there are few weird things like a few episodes missing from a season of a TV show.  Currently media available on instant view is almost all older stuff, although the first season of new Doctor Who series is available, so we were able to catch up on that.  Heroes is also on there although I don’t know how many seasons.

100 degrees

Just noticed the outside temperature was 102.3 degrees. I haven’t seen a triple digit temperature since a decade ago when we were still living in Wisconsin.

Terminator vs Robocop

This should amuse you if you are a fan of sci-fi:

90 degrees

On the way to the gym I happened to notice the temperature had hit 90 degrees for the first time this year (that I noticed anyway).