It took over a year of living her to finally do it, but I did my first mountain hike today. We went to Roosevelt National Forest and hiked the trail (kind of) to Mitchell Lake. It went another 2 miles further west to Blue Lake (which we were told by people who made it up there that it was still completely frozen over) but we didn’t make it that far due to time constraints and exhaustion.

It was a blast. I got a nasty cut on my leg when I fell through the 40-50" of snow still on the mountain right alongside a tree. It got my right shin cut up real good.

Other than that, the trip went off without a hitch and was an absolute blast which led to some pretty http://www.flickr.com/photos/klyrish/sets/72157625864756341/:“awesome photos” and quality time I won’t soon be forgetting. Experiencing this today was amazing and only made me madder at myself for not getting out of the city sooner to do this stuff. Can’t wait for rafting in Buena Vista next week and then climbing my first 14er in 2 weeks!

Let’s cut right to it…moving is one of the biggest pains in the ass any human can endure. And by some stroke of severely unfortunate luck, I’ve been doing it pretty much yearly since 2002 (yay Freshman year of college).

I’m about halfway through the process of moving from my mediocre apartment in Cap Hill to a pretty nice apartment (sans the horrific carpet) in LoDo/Five Points. And the hatred for this song and dance never lessens. It either remains the same or increases. I’d wager “increases” for this one for no other reason than the absolutely asinine parking situation in Cap Hill.

The new place has an underground parking spot, much cheaper rent (splitting it 3 ways) and gives me access to those sweet, sweet Sprint 4G towers. I was lucky if I could get a connection to 4G in Cap Hill. Down here in LoDo, I’ve got FULL BARS. Add in root access, the Wireless Tether .apk and bam…mobile 4G hotspot.

Aside from the parking and lack of 4G, I’m not going to miss the dirt. Yes, “the dirt.”

I will, for the rest of my life, avoid “garden view” apartments and tell everyone I know to do the same. The last year of living in the basement of that building has been pretty terrible. The staggering number of bugs that get in makes me shudder and my skin crawl. Being on the ground level gave them the advantage but the warped wooden-framed screens that were held in place by four clasps—some of which feature half-to-full-inch gaps between the screen and the wall—gave them the in.

On top of the bugs…THE DIRT. My apartment is dusty…who’s isn’t? My apartment is also caked in a not-so-fine layer of dirt because of the gaps with the screens in addition to the fineness of the dirt which allows it to get right in through the screens. It’s disgusting how truly dirty my apartment and most of my stuff is. Can’t wait to clean it this weekend.

Anyway, I’ve learned some very valuable lessons over the last 13 months here in Denver:

1. Make sure your apartment includes a parking spot or allows you to get one at a reasonable price per month
2. Live on a floor that doesn’t allow dirt and bugs to, literally, pour right in
3. Try to get over the “charm” of older buildings and stay in one with modern screens
4. Pretty much don’t stay in garden view apartments

Ugh. I (and my back) cannot wait for this to be done. And this time…I better not be moving for at least 2 years.

Aliens.

That simple (and completely brilliant) title brings back some of the best memories of my childhood. I had almost every single action figure that Kenner put out. Even those reboots of the Gorilla, Panther and others a few years after the first run. They were the exact same as their original counterparts but had different coloring.

Now I proudly display the McFarlane Alien Queen on top of my tall book case and marvel at how amazingly detailed that replica of my favorite movie monster ever is.

I got the Alien Anthology Blu-ray set for Christmas last year and hadn’t take the time to watch anything from it until last night. Aliens has long been my favorite my movie, with the Special Edition only taking it to a new level of awesome. I figured it couldn’t get much better with HD but I was so wrong. The detail was just incredible and, thankfully, the additional resolution didn’t make things look chintzier or lamer…in fact, it made everything look SO much better. Thanks to the beautiful work of Stan Winston, HD has turned Aliens into an even more real experience.

I caught myself quoting along and, in some cases, ahead of the movie. I can’t get enough of it and I believe it will forever be my favorite James Cameron movie and, without a doubt, my personal favorite.

And seeing it again for the first time in a few years has only gotten me MORE excited for Gearbox’s upcoming Aliens: Colonial Marines. A game that has been criminally delayed for 3 years now. But if it means that more attention to detail was given and this game ends up being half as good as the previews make it seem as well as half as good as the movie that inspired it, it will be the greatest Aliens-based game ever made. It’s such a shame that such an amazing franchise has had such a poor showing.

I will forever standby my claim that Aliens is the best in the series. I don’t consider any movie after it to be part of canon and it pisses me off to no end the that brilliant work of Mark Verheiden in the Aliens Vol. 1-3 comics was completely ignored by FOX when they greenlit Alien 3. The story MV came up with was absolutely brilliant and while Vol 3: Earth War was a bit rushed and weak (and featured some atrocious artwork) the overall story was fantastic and where the series should have gone. Hopefully Colonial Marines rights many of those wrongs and, hey, maybe someday it’ll get a franchise reboot (starting with the end of Aliens) like Batman did.

And the fact that has-been Ridley Scott is going back to make two prequels to Alien worries me at the best. I swear to God, if Russel Crowe is in either of those movies…

The Twitter feed on the right side of the screen has been added, thanks to the excellent Tweetable plugin for jQuery. A few other minor changes have been made as well.

Still no luck with the tag cloud though.

But at least this gave me the opportunity to add a sweet picture of the Manhattan Bridge being constructed to the site. Without this update, I might not have had the opportunity to add this.

Here it is…my site completely redone in a new look/feel using the Simpfolio platform I’m building. All the old posts still exist in the other database and I’m working on porting them over but for right now, this is all there is.

It’s still very much a work-in-progress but it’s definitely heading in the right direction. Rails 3 is such an enormous step up over 2.3.x in so many ways. I’m excited to get this site fully up to speed (along with Simpfolio).