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Guitar & Pen |
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Thoughts on just about everything from rock-n-roll, sports, kids, to geek speak -- by John Bullock About John Subscribe to this blog  |
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February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 September 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 |
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004 |
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Guitar & Pen is finally on Google | |
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I was finally able to google my weblog. I was able to find it by typing in: "guitar & pen" + bullock. Pretty cool! Now everyone in the free world can enjoy my ramblings! | |
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Limbaugh Canyon | |
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On Monday, I played hooky from work and went riding :) Before I went riding, I took Suzanne's car in for an oil change. Her new car, the Acura TL, does not have a set maintenance schedule. The car is smart enough to tell you when it needs to go in. Her oil life was down to about 30% when we took it in. However, after talking with the service manager, I think you need to wait until it tells you what type of service (e.g. A, A1, B, etc.) so you can tell them exactly what you need before you bring it in. Either way, it is very cool! So, back to the important story line here. After tooling around town in my sweeties new car, I traded with her and then headed down south. I decided to go to the Raspberry Chatauqua Mountain Trail that I was going to do early this summer on my trip to Colorado Springs, but due to tire problems had cut it out. This trail, also called Limbaugh Canyon by the locals, actually goes between Monument and Palmer so it isn't as far south as the Springs. It was a beautiful day. Warm but not too hot. I only took only slight detour on the drive down (only due to construction and the driving directions that I had were no longer valid) which is pretty good for me! It was quite an amazing ride. The climbs were long but not overly difficult. The scenery was fantastic! Here is a photo looking south down the front range from an overlook very early on the ride.  Both the views and riding through all the fields of wild flowers kept me rubber necking the whole time. And the singletrack was very sweet. Definitely a trail I would ride again. I did take a couple more unplanned detours on the ride. The first was shortly after the singletrack started. Because of all the wet weather, a lot of the wash outs looked like trails. I took one for a mile or two before I finally realized that I wasn't going the right way. There were a couple of clues. The first was all of the bullet shells (shotgun & 38 mostly), dead soldiers, and all the broken glass. The second was that I was not find the "landmark" I needed to change trails (a bullet riddle no motorcycles sign). However, it worked out really well as I found some amazing rocks that I got some photos of. See if you can spot the phallic rock (I didn't until I was looking at the photos later).  Once I got back on track (wasn't too hard), I cruised for quite a while. I did get this photo shortly before my second riding detour. This photo is looking to the east from the mountain.  Towards the end of the trail you are supposed to go through some gates and fences but the directions I had were either outdated (again!?) or not accurate. So I ended up going a mile or so further north than I needed to but I got to talk to a few of the locals (very friendly!) and see quite a few of the neighborhoods. Talk about huge and beautiful houses. Not to mention it would be sweet to have giant red boulders in your yard (although it would terrify my to think of my son playing on them!!!). Overall, the ride was supposed to be about 9.7 miles but I ended going about 16.5 miles. I found a couple of links that describe the ride or have more and/or better photos of the area if you are interested. |
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004 |
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Speed Bump | |
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Friday, August 20, 2004 |
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DVD Rewinder | |
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Something that all audiophiles, move buffs, and computer geeks need. The DVD Rewinder! | |
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Tuesday, August 17, 2004 |
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nBack | |
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I've made some more changes to the free windows service that does automated file backup. The biggest changes is beging able to specify entire directories to backup (recursively or not) and fixed a few minor bugs. You can download the latest copy using this link. I definately want to hear your feedback and get your bug reports so I can continue to evolve it. | |
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Monday, August 16, 2004 |
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T-ball time | |
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T-ball started two weeks ago. It got off to a bad start with two of the first three practices getting rained out. They did have makeup practices, thankfully, so it wasn't a big deal. Suzanne and I got a couple photos from the first practice and the first game. We had been very concerned about his concentration and having anybody come watch him. For the games they have half of the parents on the field to help out and keep the kids tuned in to the game and at least resemebling that they are paying attention. There is also a picture of his sister who came to cheer him on! This first photo is during practice as Coach Mark is giving instruction.  This photo is his first at-bat. Notice the nice line drive I caught in flight!  Running the bases after his first hit.  His sister the cheerleader.  In the dugout during the first game. 
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Tuesday, August 10, 2004 |
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All you hear about most professional athletes these days is the negative side. Getting in trouble with the law, drug and alchohol problems, bad attitudes, etc. With the recent exception of the NFL Hall of Fame happenings, you are hard pressed to find the good stuff. I've always been a fan of Greg Maddux, despite him playing for Atlanta, and really enjoyed this article about how modest he is even when getting his 300th win which is an amazing accomplisment. | |
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Friday, August 06, 2004 |
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OK honey, pack the bags as I've found the place we are moving to next! | |
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Thursday, August 05, 2004 |
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This is a new blog post done using w.bloggar. Boston sucks! | |
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The Red Sox suck!
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Wednesday, August 04, 2004 |
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With shopping carts like this one, I am going to start asking Suzanne to push me around at the store!
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With a shopping cart like this one I will start asking Suzanne to push me around the store soon!
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Sunday, August 01, 2004 |
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I will try to catch everyone up on the rest of my vacation as it is over and I have to get up and go back to work in the morning. After my epic mud ride Tuesday, I spent Wednesday AM with the kids. We went to breakfast at Gunther Toody's and then went to play at Clement Park. After I dropped them off at school, I got to work cleaning up my bike. Two hours later, it was finally clean. I soaked my biking clothes from Tuesday in OxiClean. It would take a couple of soakings to get most of the grime out of my clothes. Thursday, I finally made it up to Winter Park (Fraser technically). Winter Park calls itself Mountain Bike Capital USA and has over 600 miles of trails. Well, I'm not sure if it is the Mountain Bike capital of the country, but I must say it has a lot to offer and is worth visiting. I picked out the Tipperary Creek Loop for my ride. The version I rode, was just over 20 miles. I had so much fun riding it, when I got back to the car, I called my wife to let her know that I was going to be later than I planned and rode it again! It was incredible riding. Not overly technical, but very fun. The trails were well marked so it made it easy to make sure I was staying on track. I only took 4 pictures and they were all from the same spot. There were a couple of reasons for this. The first was that I was having too much fun to stop. The other is that the views were not all the scenic. However, I am including one of them for your viewing pleasure. All the pictures are from a open area (meadow) towards the start of the Tipperary Creek trail head and this one actually shows some of the singletrack that I rode.  I'm not sure, but I think it was close to this spot that I got into some poison ivy that showed up Saturday AM! After riding over 40 miles on Thursday, I decided to take another day off the bike on Friday. I had to do some errands, including buying new biking shoes as my old ones finally died an honorable death and cleaning up my car (did I mention is was as dirty as me and my bike from Tuesday's trip to Rampart Reservoir?). Saturday, we (the four of us plus another couple and their 5 year old son) went to the Colorado Renaissance Festival in Larkspur, Colorado, just about 40 minutes south of where we live. It was a lot of fun watching the kids and seeing the everything through their eyes. I'm not sure I would have gone or enjoyed it as much as I did without them. Today I got back to domestic life except for a quick escape back to Deer Creek Canyon for a quick ride. There were a couple of nice surprises there for me. The first was a brand new trail. I didn't ride it but look forward to it. Another was some new wooden stairs they are working on installing on a particularly techincal section of the trail. This will be really good for all the hikers (like two five year olds that I know!). It appears to be a busy week ahead. Catching up after vacation is always a task. I also want to try to get another ride in tomorrow after work. Wednesday is my son's first t-ball practice (it was actually last week but got rained out) and Suzanne's birthday. We have t-bal practice again on Friday and a game on Saturday. I can't recall what else but I know that is just the tip of the iceberg. Well, it is about time for bed (or video games) so more later this week about the big news at work! |
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