I arrived in Orem last Monday (8/15/2005) evening so we could start training Tuesday morning on the new extensions to our migration system, Ellis. We’ve got some really cool stuff going on there that is going to make migrations scale better and Rob is doing a great filling the hole left when Van left to pursue his legal career. Bill and Mark seemed very excited about the prospect of what can be done with the new Ellis tools as well.
We took half a day off and went mountain biking at “Sundance(Robert Redford’s Ski Resort)”:http://www.sundanceresort.com/bike.htm. What an absolute blast! They only had four bikes when we got there and we had five people that needed to rent them so Rich ended up getting a scooter (looks like a snowboard with two big wheels attached and a handle bar — I guess they are called scoot-boards and the ones Rich had looked something like “this(Mountain Scoot-board)”:http://www.scootboard.net/sportscooter-mountain.jpg.) Anyhow, I felt bad for Rich, so on the second run I said I’d take the scooter so he could have fun on a bike. I was really impressed how much more fun the scooter was. In fact, at the end of the run, Rob, Rich and I all got scooters. Given the terrain and the fact that most of it is downhill, they were just so much more natural for us. Some pictures that Rich took can be seen “here”:http://www.patsoffice.com/wp-gallery2.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=1661.
On the last night I finally got a chance to visit a “dojo(Bobby Lawrence Karate)”:http://www.kwonshukarate.com/ that I’d been trying to get to all week. I met with the master instructor and he was quite gracious. I got to see a little bit of a class and then they were working some jiu jitsu (I don’t remember the style) that were pretty interesting. I got an invitation to come back (and I assume train) next time I’m in town. To close out the evening I finally caught up with my old boss, Jared, for dinner. We closed out the restaurant and talked for another thirty minutes outside. It was really great catching up with him and I’m ecstatic that he’s doing well with life after Verio.
