Rockin’
by kgroke on Feb.14, 2010, under Family
Natalyn and I went to the rock climbing gym for our date last night. This was her third time there, and she finally made it to the top, and not only once, she made it up three times!
I also was finally able to make it all the way up the “hard” wall without falling. So a first for both of us.
Thanks for the fun date, Natalyn.
Map of All VA Hospitals in the US
by kgroke on Feb.09, 2010, under Computer Stuff, Family
My inlaws are moving and need to be near a Veterans’ Hospital. I tried to find which ones were nearby but couldn’t find an easy list. I ended up writing a script that took all of the addresses from the VA website and mapped them online at batchgeocode.com
Click on the image to browse the map yourself. The Blue pins are clinics and the Red pins are (usually) larger hospitals.
Blog Hacked (and fixed)
by kgroke on Feb.09, 2010, under Computer Stuff
I just discovered that my blog was hacked. It kept redirecting users to Chinese websites. If you were sent there I apologize. I was freaked for a few minutes, but it was a pretty easy fix, I just had to update my theme.
I hate hackers.
My First Lead Climb
by kgroke on Jan.08, 2010, under About Me, Interesting
My friends Telly and Heidi did a lot of climbing before they had kids, and now that I have gear and am excited to go, I’ve pushed, prodded, and begged them to take me climbing and show me the ropes, literally. Today was our second climb at the Chuckwalla trailhead, and they taught me how to lead climb.
In the past, I’ve top roped, which is climbing with a rope that runs through an anchor on the top of the climb. Lead climbing is where you attach to anchors in the rock as you ascend. If you fall while top roping you don’t really fall at all, the rope stretches a little to absorb the impact, and that’s all you move. When you lead climb you fall twice the distance of your last anchor, so if I last attached to an anchor 10 feet below me, I’ll fall 20 feet, plus whatever stretch the rope needs to compensate for the shock. The advantage of lead climbing is you don’t need an alternate route to get to the anchor on top, you just climb up to it instead of climbing around the cliff looking for a hiking route to the top.
I did it and was able to set the rope so everyone else could climb, I didn’t even fall, though I was pretty close to it at one point. I’m slowly building up my endurance, and get a little better each time. Thanks, Telly and Heidi!
Stumping with Gil Almquist
by kgroke on Jan.02, 2010, under About Me, Interesting
stump (st
mp)
- n. The part of a tree trunk left protruding from the ground after the tree has fallen or has been felled.
- v.To traverse (a district or region) making political speeches.
I went stumping with our City Councilman, Gil Almquist today. Now I’ve never been much for politicians, but I got a knock on our door today from Mr Almquist, and he was very convincing:
Hi, I’m Gil Almquist, and I noticed you’ve been working on those two stumps out front, and I have my backhoe, want some help pulling them out?
He proceeded to spend the next hour helping me, a complete stranger, pull two tree stumps out of my yard with his tractor. Then he even disposed of them. He didn’t mention the city council or government at all, I brought that up, he was just being a good neighbor (see Mark 12:31)
Why can’t our other elected officials be more like that?
(Yeah, I used the <marquee> tag on a webpage, I haven’t done that in years)
Nephews, eat your hearts out
by kgroke on Dec.16, 2009, under Family, Interesting, Video
My nephews totally love all things Star Wars. Well their girl cousins put them to shame yesterday.
I messed up Kathryn’s video, but I’ll post some pictures soon.
African Christmas
by kgroke on Dec.05, 2009, under Family
Montessori Dayspring of St George puts on a Christmas play each year to help children in Africa. My oldest two were in it, and they both did a great jorb. Here are some clips from it.
Piece of Cake (Brownie)
by kgroke on Oct.29, 2009, under About Me, Family, Interesting
The girls’ school had a cake auction last night as a fund raiser. Here’s our entry.
I made most of it, and Meg did the hard part, piping the frosting onto the tombstones. It sold for $65, which I thought was pretty good, but even better a friend from work bought it, so I got to help eat it today too!
Meg also made a batch of scary looking cupcakes that fetched a pretty penny!
Spiderman
by kgroke on Oct.09, 2009, under About Me
Seven or eight times over the last few weeks I’ve gone to a nearby park with some friends from work during lunch break. The park has two large climbing boulders, like this one:
Each boulder has four sides, with one easy face so kids can climb. As you can tell from the picture, the other walls are actually inverted. The first time we went I looked at the inverted walls and though, “What a joke, I can’t climb these, nobody can climb these.” I tried anyways, I was right I couldn’t climb any of them, at least nobody else could either 
| We didn’t quit though, back in the office we did pull-ups and griping exercises, trying to strengthen our climbing muscles, and we kept going back, several times a week. Eventually we all started to notice an improvement.
Our goal was to be able to climb up all eight sides in one climbing session, at the beginning that seemed an impossibility, but two days ago Pete did it! He’s nearly a foot taller than the rest of us, so we joked that it was his height that gave him an advantage, but in reality he’s been hitting the pull-up bar more than the rest of us and has bulked up. I didn’t feel too bad though, I did six of the eight sides the same day, a far cry from only being able to do the two easy sides. |
 |
Finally, one hour ago, I was able to climb all 8 sides consecutively! Even better, when I finished, I climbed one of the hard sides again, just because I could.
SUCCESS!!!
We’ve already been certified to belay at the local climbing wall, so our next goal is to climb all 16 corners, and then we’ll start some top-rope climbing at some of the local rock formations.
