I’ve been flying a lot lately and – yes – it’s still frustrating to have to get undressed to go through security.  I just found a neat online game called Airport Security that let’s me be simulate being a TSA agent.  It’s both amusing and satisfying once you get the hang of it.

Air travel generally sucks these days.  It starts when TSA tells you that you cannot have your toothbrush in the same ziplock bag as your toothpaste (liquids only in the quart bag Mr. Traveler), continues on the filthy plane (thanks for the nice smelling oder killer thing in the bathroom, but did you notice that the sink doesn’t look like it has been washed in a year), and finishes as you sit in the airport during yet another weather or mechanical delay.

Really – I’m just trying to get to Harrisburg (originally from Las Vegas this morning.)  There’s nothing quiet like a four hour weather delay.  Thankfully, I found an amazing spot at O’Hare to hang out at.  The Terminal C Red Carpet Club has a “Quiet Room.”  It’s a huge comfortable room with a cell phone ban.  I’m the only person here – since I have several more hours before my flight, I just counted the seats (about 80 of them) – and I’m the only dude here.  Delightful – better than a library.

When I decided to give away my entry in the North Pole Marathon (now valued at approximately $12,000 inclusive of airfare) I wasn’t sure what to expect.  In 15 days, over 30 serious athletes have entered the competition.  The entry descriptions are really cool – if you want some vicarious running, go take a look at a few of them.  There’s still time to enter – please pass this on to any of your crazy runner friends.  Thanks to my buds at PixieMate for being a sponsor – if you want to join them and get some promotion for your product on the North Pole, drop me an email.

Just joking.  But given that it was 70 degrees in Boston this weekend and it took me two hoursto dig my car out to get into the office today, the thought cross my mind (several times.)  The weather here is completely fubared.

We had a hurricane in our canyon in Eldorado Springs last night.  Seriously.  The winds topped 115 mph at 2am (that would be a category 3 hurricane for those of you following along at home.)  Amy and I were pretty certain that we were going to end up in Kansas last night when we went to bed.  We have a sculpture just outside our bedroom window called “The Vistors” – they are giant rocks on the top of 8 foot plus poles.  I dreamed that one of them was blown through our bedroom window (floor to ceiling) last night.  Thankfully, it was just a dream.

I woke up at 5am to no Internet (thanks Qwest.).  At 7:30am, I got in my car to drive to the office (it’s a 15 minute drive on a bad day.)  The main part of our road was completely windblown – it was mostly gravel – which was weird.  I was pondering where all the snow had blown to as I went down the road and made the sharp left turn that heads down to our main road.  The car abruptly stopped as I high centered myself in a two foot snow drift.  Stuck.  Completely.  Going nowhere.

I got out and marched back to the house.  Fortunately, my neighbors were coming down with snow shovels to dig out the road.  I grabbed my snow showed and the three of us proceeds to spend the next 90 minutes shoveling 4000 cubic feet of snow.  We managed to get my car down (after high centering it one more time.)  I arrived at the office soaking wet (from snow and sweat) around 10am.

At least I got a good workout today.  Packed snow (and you could make a nice igloo out of this stuff) is 481 kg / cubic meter.  According to Google, this is 30.027849 pound / cubic foot.  Given that we shoveled 4000 cubic feet, that would be (according to Microsoft Calculator) 120,111 pounds.  It’s a little hard to believe that I just moved approximatly 40,000+ pounds of snow, but my back is telling me that I did.  For perspective, a box of potatoes is about 50 pounds (if I remember correctly from my job in high school at Potatoes Etc.)  That would be around 800 boxes of potates.  Even if I’m off by a factor of two (ok – some of the showels weren’t completely full of snow bricks), that’s still a lot of potatoes.

It’s 50 degrees and the roads are wet (no snow – lots of snowmelt).  I keep telling my California friends who moved here this summer that “this is atypical.”  Whatever.

Last August, I stumbled into the idea of running the North Pole Marathon.  Early in December, I realized it was a dumb ass idea – at least for me – as I’d never be ready for it given the inconsistent training I did in the fall.  So – I decided not to run it (at least not in 2007.)  As Kenny Rogers once said, sometimes you’ve got to “know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.”  I’m not running this time – I’m going to fold ‘em instead. 

The original idea was that the University of Alaska at Fairbanks was going to sponsor me.  However, they ran into some budget issues and ended up not being able to do this.  In the mean time, I’d fronted the money for the entry (about $10,000.)  So – as karma would have it – I decided that I would sponsor someone to run it in conjunction with YourRunning (one of my investments via The Enthusiast Group.)

So – if you have the desire, courage, or basic insanity to take a shot at running the the North Pole Marathon, go to the YourRunning site and apply to be the guy (or gal) we sponsor.  You’ve got to fill out an application – we are only going to sponsor one person.  YourRunning is tossing in round trip airfare, which increases the approximate value of this sponsorship to $12,000. 

If this is not for you, but you know someone (other than me) that this might be for, please feel free to pass this along.  We’ll definitely be highlighting some of the “more interesting” applicants.

I’m on the IT Transition Team for Colorado’s new governor – Bill Ritter.  One of the primary roles of the transition team is to recommend to Governor-Elect Ritter a pool of candidates for the position of State CIO (Chief Information Officer).  This position is a direct-report to the Governor and will run the Colorado Office of Information Technology.

The current CIO salary is in the $120,000 range, however if a candidate comes from outside the state, the salary will probably be negotiated in consultation with the Governor’s Office.  We are looking for experienced CIO’s that are willing to take a moderate paying CIO-job in exchange for the ability to have real impact on the state of Colorado.

The transition team is seeking resumes by Friday, December 8.  If you know of anyone who would be interested in this position, I would appreciate if you would forward this information to them.  Resumes can be emailed to me – I’ll make sure they get considered.

The snow is finally sticking in Homer – what a beautiful day.  I’m looking at my web cam in Homer, AK from Keystone, CO where it’s also been snowing.

Winter (and ski season) is here.

David Cohen has a nice summary of what happened at BarCamp Boulder up on the ColoradoStartups blog.  I didn’t attend (I needed to sit at home for the day and ponder the universe with Amy while petting my dogs).  There’s a nice BarCamp / Tech MeetUp thing developing in Boulder/Denver – the attendee list is has some really interesting folks on it.

BarCamp Boulder is happening on Friday (7pm – ?) and Saturday (9am – 5pm) with a party afterwards at Me.dium’s offices at 1738 Pearl Street, Boulder, CO.  The attendee list looks great.  If you are in town and like BarCamp events, check it out.