benlog

I got a new phone and now I’m trying to write on it.

In 16 to 18 hours from now I’ll be on my way driving from Ypsilanti to near Pittsburgh for my second trip to the Pittsburgh Curling Club’s Tropicurl bonspiel. This is a huge and awesomely fun curling event that, with the Rocky Top spiel at the beginning of June, is one of the highlights of the summer curling circuit. There’s one other Detroit Curling Club team going, although they lost a player at the last minute and may be asking some of our team to sub in when possible.

New team this year, but here are the smiling faces of our team - the F event runner-ups - from last year.

* “Get Your Glide On” is copyright © 2008 JCL, used without permission.

Sometimes I amuse myself a little too much. Now I have to figure out how to actual build or program the game of Toe Curling.

It’s been a bit more than a year since I last posted to my nlog, and even longer since I wrote about curling…

Since that time I’ve had many wonderful curling adventures including, but not limited to:

• first experiences at a different curling club and eating pig tails
• haggis
• meeting some great new friends with similar curling goals to my own
• attending a curling fantasy camp (2006)
• joining more league nights
• realizing significant growth in understanding of the sport
• a runner-up team for the GLCA Men’s Club Nationals Playdowns (2007)
• summer spieling fun with friends in Knoxville and Pittsburgh (2007)
• qualifying for a provincial level tournament in Ontario (Best Western Challenge, Zone 16, 2008)
• winning a cow milking contest at a curling event in Guelph (2008)

The most recent excitement is from two summer bonspiels that just happened. Read the rest of this entry »

Bah, another benlog waiting for posts. Neighbors, I just can’t think of anything to say.

I’m writing this up in the hopes that it will someday help someone avoid going through what I have for the last several days. I will attempt to describe how to use Visual Studio 2005 to create a Windows Installer msi file that will install asp.net files, create a virtual directory in IIS, make sure that ASP.NET is installed and enabled for IIS, and also make sure that the script mappings for ASP.NET are installed. I’m using C# for coding where needed.

Just to cut to the chase, the real challenge is figuring out and correcting the state of ASP.NET and IIS. Depending on the order of installing IIS and .NET, and probably with some other unknown factors thrown in, IIS may be all set up with ASP.NET and ready to go or it may not have anything from ASP.NET installed at all. ASP.NET may be installed but the script mappings might not be in place, or maybe the script mappings are there. IIS 6.0 adds a twist in that you can have everything installed but the ASP.NET extensions might not be enabled - because, you know, usually when you install something you don’t want to actually be able to use it. Read the rest of this entry »

Storm Edge

Originally uploaded by benjaminlevy.

A week ago I left work for home at the end of a storm, and on my way I saw the most complete rainbow I had ever seen. A full 180 degrees of shiny rainbowy color filled the sky ahead. Today, a huge storm was following me home and everything was reversed. As the storm caught up to and overtook me, I decided there was something just as beautiful here today.

Shortly after this picture was taken the temperature dropped about 15 degrees, the wind picked up about 20 or 30 miles per hour, and the rain came down as thick as fat free yogurt.

Slammer - Grand Slam of Curling Mascot

Originally uploaded by Jasen Robillard.

Here’s a quick flickr find. This is Slammer the curling mascot. I thought it was important to share this.

By the way, in case you weren’t keeping track, the US team finished fourth in the Men’s World Curling Championship that finished up a little over a week ago. Norway was third, then Canada, and then Scotland on top.

Like in the 2005 Men’s Worlds, the US team started out very strong but then either the other teams caught up to them or they kind of backed off. From what I was reading and watching (check out CurlTV) it sounded like they were more relaxed for the first several games.

wet out

Originally uploaded by benjaminlevy.

Curling season is over. I’ve been working on some good things to write about that experience.

Today was a dreary sort of day, although this picture I took at work has a certain color quality to it that adds some cheer. In fact, by the end of the day I was feeling a bit cheerful for no particular reason.

Cheers.

IMG_0792,
originally uploaded by benjaminlevy.

Today is the last day of regularly scheduled curling. Later I will write more about that. This here, though is a picture I took while in Yellowstone over new years. I was on a nature tour with my family. Mostly, I’m just testing out what it’s like to use this feature of flickr where you can post directly to your benlog.