The deer ate our trees!

We planted two small Rocky Mountain bristlecone pines on the street side of our home just after we built it in 2014 and over the years they had grown slowly but nicely. 

That particular species of pine tree (Pinus aristata)is long-lived and highly resilient to harsh weather and poor soils. In the family, one species, Pinus longaeva, is among the longest-lived life forms on Earth with some trees more than 4,800 years old, making it the oldest known tree of any species.

We appreciated them a lot in our high-desert environment. This was until yesterday when the deer that have invaded our neighborhood looking for food had both of them for lunch. 

We were angry and disappointed, but could only accept that sad situation. I’ll cut the remnants of both when the snow is gone...

Park City’s mid season report

As we’ve well hit past midpoint in our ski season, let me admit that it’s been a great one so far, skiing-wise. What has made all the positive difference over last year and many of the previous past season was the abundant snow cover since opening day on November 16. 

This said, the generous snow cover didn’t totally hide Vail Resorts (VR) shortcomings (the company owns and operates Park City Mountain) that are not as obvious as they exploded into view last year, but somehow still linger. 

Lots of elements are still spoiling the experience. If we start with parking, the advent of the paid parking at the Park City side of the mountain has been bad for Park City residents, as public transportation has woefully failed to pick up the slack. 

Parking at Canyon Village is okay if skiers come with the most rugged version of the Hummer, otherwise it’s just a matter of time before they’ll destroy their cars in the multitude of potholes that pepper the entire area. 

The disappearance of tissues for skiers in the corrals is badly missed and while it save VR money, it says to its clients “We don’t care about you!” Same things for chairlifts seats that are not broomed on snowy days and get our asses wet for the rest of the day. The heated seats at OBX are a fast vanishing species. 

Why are those not maintained in good order? Wait, this brings me to the lack of maintenance for the many Red Pine gondola cabins and their “Out of service sign”, the sheaves on chairlift that make funny noises and unlike Deer Valley’s denote a serious disregard maintenance. 

Same thing for bush and tree care (lost of fallen trees waiting to impale skiers or widow making trees hanging precariously. Nothing is happening there as it should PRIOR to the season and the chronic traffic jam and long lines at Silverlode. 

Will VR ever consider my proposal of upgrading MotherLode to help that situation? The unhappy stickers keep on multiplying and yet, VR doesn’t seem to care at all. Just money, money and more money.

Can we age and still progress?

Is age-related decline unavoidable, whether it’s physical and intellectual? I don’t think so, because I’m one who believes that there’s no good reason for accepting this and throwing the towel. 

On the contrary, fiercely fighting for maintaining what we still have is critical, and if done well, this will even improve upon a current condition. Of this I’m convinced as I have observed the results in real time.

The only difficulty that we all face is to fold, listen to conventional wisdom, consider any further effort futile and accept the arrival of old age as a fatalistic signal that it’s time to stop, take an extended vacation and a well deserve rest. 

That’s not for me and neither should it be your choice. Life is just like a bicycle. In order to stay on it, you must keep on pedaling!

HP’s Filipino support team

This morning my printer is finally working in unison with my computer thanks to a simple cable that unites the two. Just a simple USB 2.0 cable; what a concept! At least something similar to what I used back in 1983 with my first computer. Yeah, return to basics 40 years later, forgetting about wireless, Ethernet cable and the rest. 

The HP Filipino support team that whispered that solution to me wasn’t really supposed to share it, because without a WiFi connection, HP loses control upon what I do and in particularly ceases to know about my ink consumption, the company’s real gold mine. Now, as a result, they don’t even ship their new printers with a USB cable! 

Finally, after spending these many hours with their support team, I’ve learned a lot about them. HP uses girls mostly, they are obsequiously polite, but don’t show a common and consistent approach in handling customers problems and attempting to solving them.

 Their approach is notoriously piece-meal, for the exact same problem, as each call is treated differently, a bit by improvising. Their skill levels differ immensely between the various persons as well as their ability to speak an understandable English.

Then, as they try to help, they constantly interact with what seems to me supervisors with more knowledge, but since these folks aren’t directly invested into the process, they don’t really care. These IT service individuals are paid less than $300 a month, so HP is giving its customer what they paid for their (cheap) printers in terms of support. 

Had they been a bit better trained, they would have told me not to bother with their notoriously unstable WiFi to connect my printer to a USB cable and saved me one week and more than 24 hours of my precious time, but that’s something that was conveniently omitted from their script...

The recurring tech nightmare

This week hasn’t been good to me as far as home technology was concerned. It began when I had to change my 6 year old printer for a new one and, at about the same time, my internet gateway had to be replaced too. 

What created a huge problem is that I don’t get internet by cable, DSL or satellite, but by what amounts to 5G cell phone technology, and with it come huge compatibility problems with my printer or any printing device. I pretty much followed the HP’s instruction for wirelessly connecting their printer to my network as I had done in the past, enough cables everywhere, right?

Not counting the T-Mobile technicians that dealt with my in internet service that were quite proficient, I ended up on the phone for more with 24 hours with various agents of HP in the Philippines. 

So you can imagine the exchange of balls, or I should say blame, between the 2 companies and my being stuck in between. I think I spend more than 24 hours trying to make that marriage work, but as of now, I still have not succeeded but will still persevere and will let you know if I can make it work!

Another ski resorts rankings

Tripadvisor operates online travel agencies, make comparison between shopping websites and mobile apps with user-generated content. 

Based in Massachusetts, it operates in 40 countries and 20 languages and features around 1 billion reviews and opinions on approximately 8 million establishments. 

Recently it ranked the twenty top places to ski around the world (there are more than 6,000 ski resorts on the planet) and its reviews mixes apples and oranges, like real ski towns like Whistler-Blackcomb and metropolitan area like Sapporo. 

Aside from Whistler being number one not much makes any sense on that hit-parade. What I like is that the places that I’ve called home during my lifetime (Morzine and Park City), made it to that silly list!

Skiing and Super Bowl Sunday

The Super Bowl is a big deal in America and even the most avid skiers pay their respect to that yearly festivity by watching it in a social setting with friends and family at a bar or at home. 

It’s estimated that more than 100 million people (mostly North Americans) will watch the event. 

When we took our morning walk, we noticed less cars parked at weekend the overflow lot located at the Park City High School and when I went skiing, there were definitely less skiers, particularly at Ninety-nine-90, my favorite spot. 

By mid afternoon, skiers were thinning out and when I quit, few were left on the hill. 

I got home and I watch the first 45 minutes of the game that was drowning into commercial and it didn't take me too long before I had enough, and moved on.

As for me I had a great Sunday skiing with blue-bird skies and excellent snow, thank you Super Bowl for the crowd-control!