Just the other day, I witnessed the first incident of gas rage. I pulled up to the pump, cringed at the $3.70 or so per gallon I’d have to fork over and then heard somoene screaming in a rage. A gas rager! Boy was this guy pissed. Fuck the US government was the only thing I could make out but there were explitives directed at the politicians, the oil companies, the middle east and whoever else he could think of to lash out at. He’ll probably still vote for McCain.

Funny thing is that is was just spontaneous and there didn’t seem to be anyone he was venting at, just the gas pump. Of course he was driving a pickup truck so the thing probably cost a hundred bucks to fill up. We all knew the free ride wouldn’t last forever but most people didn’t bother to think ahead or prepare for the day when gas prices shot up. At least now there will be incntive for people to think about conserving things instead of continuing the gluttonous ways of the past.

It got lots of great comments, was made very well and took a lot of abuse. After about 4 years of extensive use and sweat bands, it started to show a little more wear than was desirable and I started looking for a new one. The folks in Argentina at the factory didn’t seem to be interested in shipping to the US since they never answered numerous emails. I searched and searched and searched and finally came across Bencraft hats at www.bencraft.com. It said it was made in Argentina and looked like the leather hat I purchased in Argentina. I inquired if they had it in leather. They said yes. I talked to three diffeent people there and told them all I was looking for the brown leather hat from Lagomarsino. It took well over a week to ship from NY to Philadelphia and to get the suede hats shown on the Bencraft hats website. All this and they ship the wrong hats.

As soon as I got back from the PSIA National Academy, I emailed the guy who responded to the initial email inquiring about the leather version of the hat, oh yes, I think we have that one. I asked for a return shipping label and never heard from the guy again. Bencraft has nice hats and they were the real deal from Argentina but the service form that place sucks. Guess I’ll just give them away as presents or maybe wear one once in a while.

Fortunately, a couple weeks later the exact Lagomarsino leather hat I was looking for turned up on Ebay from N-FASHION-STYLES. While it hasn’t come yet, let’s hope they come through on the auction.

While they can be a real pain to track down, Lagomarsino Hats from Argentina makes extremely high quality hats, that look great and are very durable. They can add a unique stylish touch to any outfit and one of the various styles they offer is sure to go with most any outfit. Bencraft hats in New York is one of the few places I’ve found that carries Lagomarsino hats and while they do have good quality hats, I woudn’t buy anything from them without going up there to pick it up in person to make sure you are getting what they tell you you are getting.

Get a great hat - buy a Lagomarsino hat from Argentina!

I had the opportunity to stay at the Cliff lodge at Snowbird ski resort for the PSIA National Academy. I’ve skied all over the west coast and usually stayed in condos with a bunch of people packed in them. We often stay off the mountain and drive to a bunch of different resorts so this was a nice opportunity to stay on mountain, experience what was essentially ski in - ski out convenience and have a blast for a whole week at Snowbird!

Check in at the Cliff lodge was a breeze. They had my reservation, I picked up a couple keys and went up to a nice clean room. They don’t permit skis up in the room so I just left those at the bellstand and went to the room with all my other gear and feel asleep.

The bed was one of the most comfortable of any hotel bed I’ve ever experienced. It wasn’t quite like home with a pillow top mattress with a fether bed on top, 1200tc sheets and a body pillow but it was very nice!

As I guess is standard now, there was a nice flat screen TV in the room with cable. As with most TVs they make them kinda broken. You can’t often pug in a DVD player or video game console so that maybe you’ll get the pay per view or play per view in the case of games that the cable system offers. I think that is bullshit but it is a small gripe and not unusual. On the other handthey did offer FREE wireless Internet access that was really easy to get configured and working. Lots of places have it but many times it is a pain to get it to work and once you finally do get it to work they stick you for $10 - $15 a day. At the Cliff Lodge it was free and it worked!

In the room there were two beds, 2 desks, a couch, a mini fridge, a coffee maker, an iron and ironing board and the usual assortment of soap and shampoo. It would have been nice to have a microwave but that would have been an extra.

The bathroom was clean and had plenty of room. There was a big window into the shower from the sleeping area which seems more like something for a honeymoon sweet but I guess if you want to be able to watch your partner or roomate shower you have the option without having to get all steamed up (or if you do get steamed up it won’t be from the hot water in the shower).

The location of the Cliff lodge is excellent! When you check in you have a locker downstairs for your ski stuff. You keep your skis down there, set the combo to your locker and then pick up and leave your skis in the locker nd the begining and end of each day. It’s handy, it’s convenient and included with your room rate!

There are a number of restaurants in the Cliff. The Aerie at Snowbird is probably the best and most well known. They’ve got breakfast, lunch and dinner. The breakfat buffet is awesome and the sushi is some of the best I’ve ever had. There is a Mexican restaurant, El Chanate Cantina with happy hour taco specials and a nice selction of tequila for those who might want to forget a bad skiing day. There is also the Steak Pit down in the Tram building which is not that good and overpriced. The Wildflower in the Iron Blosam lodge which has great happy hours wing sometimes, a nice selction of drinks and some pool tables and live music. There are numerous other food and beverage establishments scattered around the various lodges to choose from as well.

After a long day on the slopes, a massage can be a great thing. If that sounds good, then head up the the Cliff Spa at Snowbird for a variety of spa and massage services. You can also get a spa membership for a day or longer. The multi-day passes are a pretty good deal. If you don’t opt for the spa, you can still enjoy outdoor hot tubs and a heated pool.

There are shops in the Cliff lodge and the Tram building. You’ll find a pharmacy, a grocery store, some souvenier shops, ski shops and a demo shop. Lift tickets can be purchased down by the locker room in the Cliff lodge or at the Tram building. Prices aren’t cheap but they are reasonable for a resort like Snowbird.

If you’re anticipating a long stay or are looking to kep the weight down for the airlines so you don’t get killed on bag/weight charges there are laundry facilities in the Cliff. There is a free washer and dryer on each floor; you just have to spend a buck or two on the detergent. If you go during peak season or the lodge is full, one washer/dryer would never be enough to have any hope of actually getting to use one so you could do some laundry in the sink in your room or pay the outrageous fees to have someone at Snowbird do some laundry for you.

The housekeeping service was friendly, efficient and didn’t come pounding on the door in the wee hours of the morning. They provided great service and never disturbed us during ther entire stay.

Overall if you are looking for a great place to stay at Snowbird, definitely check out the Cliff lodge. 4 out of 5 stars.

Who out there besides Microsoft ever though this acquisition made any sense? From the get-go Yahoo! didn’t seem interested in being swallowed or dismantled by Microsoft. The whole thing seemed rediculous and it seems that Microsoft’s desparation to do something, anything to catch up to Google online is starting to show. I’d sum it up like this:

This is like a high school cross-country race. Google wins at each meet, Yahoo! comes in second and once in a while MSFT has someone that manages to finish the race while wearing downhill ski boots.

Google goes on to win every race as usual, the Google ski team also wins since Microsoft and Yahoo! have sustained injuries that put them out for the ski season.

What Microsoft needs is a fresh perspective. They have brilliant people there. They have the best service of any search advertising provider in the industry. They just don’t have what people want - consumers or advertisers. They can’t buy what they need, they need to develop it, hire some smart Internet people (not software people).

From a consumer (or search results and search advertising) perspective, all I can say is thank-god the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal is going nowhere (at least for now). We’ll still have more than 2 search advertising options, we’ll still have more than 2 unique companies that serve up search results and that is a good thing.

Last year the conference had a special deal on rooms at the Las Vegas Wynn for under $200/night which is a killer deal for that property. However after going into the Okada Japanese restaurant at the Las Vegas Wynn and getting served what tasted like dirty laundry water and being offered $8 bottled water as an alternative, I won’t be returning to the Wynn again.

If you are going to the Vegas PubCon, there are lots of great hotels and restaurants there. The Las Legas Hilton is ok, and the Las Vegas Renaissance is outstanding for those who like to come back to come peace and quiet in Vegas at the end of a long day (or an all-nighter).

The Las Vegas Planet Hollywood is a nice new place that used to be the Alladin and sometimes you can get it for around $100/night on Priceline and other hotel aggregator websites. It’s a bit far from the convention center but in a great overall location for the Las Vegas strip.

While in Las Vegas there are some great shows to go to. You can save some $$$ on the top shows at Ticket2Night.com including KA, Zumanity, BlueMan Group, Crasy Horse Paris and others.

If you’ve got some great info to share with the Internet marketing industry, be sure to use the PubCon speaker proposal form pretty soon to have a chance at getting selected to present there.

CJU is one of the best events in the online industry for the content, the people there (they know their shit - how to sell stuff online, not just how to throw out buzzwords), the food, the location and the atmosphere.

The cost of registration keeps going up every year and is now up to $995.00 which is getting pretty steep, particularly in a year when the economy is on the downturn. I think it was only $595 of $695 a couple years ago the first time I was interested in going.

If you are looking for a GREAT affiliate marketing conference to go to or just an excuse to take a business trip to Santa Barbara, then go signup for CJU today!

Turns out is was a GREAT call to stay out in Snowbird! During the whole PSIA Academy it snowed about 2 inches. Last night is snowed all night and then it snowed all day. Everyone from the PSIA Academy was driving back down the mountain in a snow storm. How depressing huh?

Since I didn’t have the comped breakfast available at the Aerie at the Cliff and had no moring clinic to go to I took the liberty of sleeping in a little bit. Snow, snow and more snow! Fresh Utah powder! The best snow in the world, tons of it.

Unfortunately along with the snow came no visibility for most of the day and it was a little chilly as it tend to be when it snows. Snowbird has some steep stuff, cliffs and other trecherous terrain so I had to be kinda careful with so much snow and so little visibility.

I headed over to Mineral Basin and tried to find my way down. It was really slow going and I was never really sure what was ahead of me and could hardly see 10 feet in front of my most of the time. What’s a solo guy to do in ski conditions like that in an mostly unfamiliar ski mountain? Follow the bodies, preferably 2 bodies at a time. Figure one person might be lost like me but if there are two together then they probably know where they are going.

It was a blizzard and near whiteout conditions virtually all day but the snow was excellent.

It seemd like Snowbird was the only resort still open out there and even Snowbird was only partialy open. Lots of the lifts were closed and the lodges were pretty empty. I was able to get a PSIA discount on the lift ticket for the day - Thanks Sowbird & PSIA!

There was a taco happy hour special at the El Chanate Cantina Bar in the Cliff lodge so I went there and got 10 tacos. They were small but good and there were a few other PSIA Academy stragglers there as well. Combined with a Poylgamy Porter it was a great way to finish up the day. It was a mellow night after that, grabbed some Ramen noodles at the shop in the Cliff along with a six pack of Polygamy Porter and watched the tube and went to sleep.

We started of with a few group pictures, something there wasn’t much of during the trip - photos, either posed or action shots. After that it was back to the slopes, Mineral Basin as well as the front side of the mountain. We picked up a little snow to take the edge off the hard pack icy conditions that developed as the temperatures fluctuated above and below the freezing point.

The afternoon clinc was skiing with some international pros and included ________ from the British ski instructor association as well as ____________ from Australia. This clinic provided an opportunity to learn about teaching and sking methods from around the world which was a nice compliment to the presentations from the international ski pros offered at 5:00 pm each day afer the skiing was done.

The last couple runs were on some new terrain that was a bit off-piste and took some catwalks to get to on the front of the mountain. By late afternoon, the snow had softened up and we hit some soft and steep bump runs on the font side of the mountain.

After the sking was done, _____________ gave a presentation on the Argentinian ski professional philosophy, training and certification process and requirements. The presentation covered the technical aspects of ski teaching methods in Argentina. Like the US, in Argentina they have several different levels of certification for ski instructors. Unlike PSIA, the ski teachers in Argentina have to retake entire exams every few years in order to maintain certification.

Following the presentaion on the ski teching industry in Argentina was the final wrap up dinner. This was anohter great event! Tequila shots mysteriously appered at the table and there was a big toast to Steve Smart and to a great week overall. The ski group for the week all sat together at one table. Unlike previous dinners, this was not a buggest and was served by the waitstaff at the Cliff lodge by the banquet staff. Like everything else at the Cliff it was first class all the way.

There were some speaches at the dinner and then a video/slide show from the previous week. Mike Rogan took quite a barrage of humorour jabs with everyone on video saying something to the effect of “Hi I’m Mike Rogan”. This was simple a take-off on his introductions for The Matrix videos available as a subsription from PSIA to help illustrate various teaching concepts.

Everyone in attendance received a certificate for attending. At our table, everyone from the clinic session signed everyones certificate. In addition to the certificate, everyone got a PSIA National Academy pin which was the size of the PSIA level 3 certification pin. Now I can show off how importnt I am to ski instructors everywhere.

After the dinner was over, most people went up to the Aeries bar for some more drinks and socializing. Since it had been a rather long week, I didn’t stay up there for to long. The local Polygamy Porter (Take some home to the wives!) takes a toll after a while. It is a great local Salt Lake City brew.

My roomate, Doug had to take off for Arizona the next day so he retired fairly early as well. The whole week and event passed with mostly Sproing skiing conditions, lots of hard pack that softened up in the afternoon. If at all possible, I’ll be back for the PSIA National Academy next year. It’s one of the best events I’ve ever been to professional or for skiing.

I’ve got 4 more days to ski now that the event is over. Let’s pray for some snow over the next few days!

As usual, I went back to the hotel room at the Cliff lodge, had a bananna, watched the tube a little bit, took off the painful boots and got a chance to rest a little bit. The afternoon session was an intro to back country and avalanche preparation. I wasn’t sure what to expect and had had some basic avalanche training on a previos ski trip to Las Lenas Argentina with Gavin from SnowPerformance.com in 2004, I think it was.

The trip to Las Lenas required an avalanche tranceiver so I had an Ortovox M2 that I brought to Snowbird for this particular afternoon clinic. Prior to the lunch break, it really started to warm up and I ditched the long underwear at lunch so as not to melt.

We met back down at the Snowbird Tram area for the afternoon clinics and ________ and ________ were the clinic leaders for the back country and avalanche clinic. In just a few hours with 2 clinicians and about 20 people, there isn’t time to cover much more than the basics but it was a good refresher. We headed over to Mineral Basin (essentially the back side of Snowbird), traversed around to the right along the catwalk with a few of what may have been the ski patrol ski backpacks.

When going back country, especially anywhere with any real danger of avalanche, it is important to remain spaced out. If an avalanche starts flowing, the group will be a lot better off if only one person gets caught in it than a whole group. That was pointer number one and something easily forgotten that could make the difference between life and death. Simply being aware of the surroundings - what’s above you, what’s below, where you can ski out an avalanche if necessary is also extremely important.

Once we got to a nice out of the way area, we split up into 2 groups. I started in the group practicing the withe avalanche tranceivers. Didn’t actually get a chance to test my skills but have played with them before so it was good other people got a chance to learn how to use them. While avalanche tranceivers definitely work, it one person doesn’t switch their from transmit to reveive during t search, it can throw the whole things off. If you go wiht a group it is extremely important to designate one person to coordinate the search to make sure the tranceivers all have the right settings and to maximize the area that can be covered in the minimum amount of time.

When you get within a meter or less (maybe a little bit more if the person is buried deep) its time to break out the probe to see if you can find the person or an air pocket where they seem to be. Once you identify the spot, you should try to dig at an angle to the person and not straight down on them. Try not to crush any air pockets that may be around the person and get to them as quickly as possible. Buried in an avalanche a person could be dead in under 15 minutes so it is really important to move quickly!

The second part of the clinic was evaluating snow conditions. When trekking back country or skiing out of bounds, the makeup of the snowpack is critical to be aware of. What layers are you trekking across, are they stable, will they slide, will they shear off? You’ll never know for sure but with a snow card and a shovel you can examine the layers by cutting away some snow - go down a few feet - and then using a credit card to identify the consistency of the diferent layers in the snowpack. If you are serious about back country, then you’ll want to get a Digital Professional Snow Kit from Life-Link or some other manufacturer. This will give you the tools you need to evaluate the snowpack and the crystals when you dig a pit to see how safe the snowpack is around you.

Digging a pit and examining the snowpck was new to me so that was pretty interesting. I can’t remember the lst time we had an avalanche in Pennsylvania but next time we get conditions that might create a danger, I’ll be more prepared. PSIA really ought to sell the gear to do this stuff at the National Academy. When you signup you should have the option to order gear for the clinics you signup for. PSIA could make some cash and the manufacturers could get their gear in the hands of industry pros.

There was almost no skiing in the afternoon but I was still sweating like a pig out in the sun. After dinner and the presentation from the International ski pro, it was off to bed reltively early. The combination of lot of skiing, sunburn and the altitude had me pretty wiped out by the end fo the day again. Hard to belive we’re at the end of day 4 and only one more day to go!

Just like Saturday and Sunday, Monday (today) started out eary with the wakeup call at around 6:30am. The wakeup calls here are kinda cool becuse if you don’t pick it up it stops for 5 minutes or so and then starts ringing again. By around 7:15 I rolled out of bed, hopped in the shower and then headed up to the Aerie restaurant up on the 10th floor of the Snowbird Cliff lodge.

The PSIA National Academy registration included 5 breakfasts at the Aerie. Breakfast at the Aeria was a buffet with eggs, oatmeal, bacon, sausage, potatoes, cheese blintzes, cold cereal, omlettes made to order, pancakes and french toast, fresh fruit, yogurt and other breakfast foods.

Following breakfast, it is off to rush around to get the ski gear on, get down to the Cliff lodge lockers to pick up the skis and then out to the plaza down by the Snowbird Tram where the moring sessions kick off.

Today was a video session tht started at 8:45am. It was a group of about 10 people lead by ______________________. During video sessions there isn’t to much skiing cause the person taking the video can only film one person at a time and only film about 1/5 of the entire run at one time. Desipte the lack of skiing during a video session, it is absolutely worth it to realy see how you ski and what other people are talking about when they give you feedback on how you can improve your skiing.

If I can, I’ll post some fotage from the video session. Aside from my crash, there wasn’t that much to look at on there aside from picking apart the finer points ringtones for alltel cell phone | ringtones converter | send free ringtones to your phone | 50 cent ringtones | free music real ringtones sprint | free pcs ringtones sprint | free cellular phone ringtones | cell phone ringtones wallpaper | cingular cell phone ringtones | download mosquito ringtones | free get ringtones | send ringtones to your phone | free ringtones 3gforfree | free ringtones for alltel cell phone | free mp3 nokia ringtones | free real ringtones verizon | free mobile ringtones | cingular free ringtones | 24 ctu free ringtones | free phone ringtones | of my technique.

After about 3 hours on the slopes filming, we headed into the Alpine room in the Tram building and watched the footage. The leader of the clinic _________________ provided lots of good feedback on general issues common across the group as well as some specific feedback.

Following the video review session, I had a Bratwurst with kraut (bargain at $8.75) at a little snack place in the plaza down by the tram. Normally when the snow is soft, the sun is bright, I’ve got a lift ticket and am on a mountain like Snowbird, I’d be out there skiing in a second. Combine altitude of ~10,000 feet, getting up at 6-7am, skiing really hard, a bit of a pulled hamstring from Day 1, a major crash today and it was time to take the afternoon off. There are up to 6 more days of skiing ahead here so a little break felt like the right thing to do. My body is sore all over.

There is a dinner buffet on the house at 6:30 tonight and just realized that the presentation from the New Zealand ski pros at 5:00 which I’m going to miss cause it is already 5:15 now. Tonight should be a relatively mellow one. Dinner may be followed by some time in the hot tubs or a drink or two at the Aerie Lounge and Sushi Bar which we have yet to visit.