It has been a long time coming, but the wait is quickly coming to an end. On Sunday, I'll be heading over to Columbus early in the morning to catch a flight to Salt Lake City, UT. We'll be spending the week enjoying the slopes and views (and beers) in Park City, just southwest of Salt Lake City. This was the site of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, and features a number of different resorts that feature some of the most highly regarded terrain in the United States. This will be my first trip to the area, and I'm looking forward to seeing just what it has to offer. We'll primarily be at the Park City Mountain resort, but will probably take a day to visit The Canyons as well.

While I'm gone, I plan on posting pictures and updates here as possible, mostly through a service called Twitter. It allows me to quickly post a message about where I'm at, what trail I just survived, or the room number I'm in at the hospital. You can keep track of these updates using the What Am I Doing... widget on the right side of the page. I think I'll be much more inclined to post something quickly than having to draft a formal posting such as this. If I can get the pictures downloaded and processed, I'll post them on my Flickr account.

As for breweries in the area, I was quite surprised to learn that there are three that I'll possibly be able to visit. Two are in Salt Lake City (Red Rock Brewing Company & Squatters Pub Brewery) and one in Park City (Wasatch Brew Pub). Hopefully I'll come home with three new growlers to add to the collection, although exactly how I'll get them back is still up in the air... I might have to make a trip to Kinkos to send them to myself.

Hopefully I'll come home in one piece! =)

From Mac Rumors:

The Financial Times reports that Apple has signed on the 20th Century Fox studio to a new online video-on-demand service "that could change the way people pay for online film content." The new service is set to launch at Macworld Expo, which kicks off on January 15th with Steve Jobs' keynote speech. The service will allow consumers to rent the latest Fox DVD releases by downloading a copy from iTunes for a limited time.

Rumors of Apple adopting a rental-model for movies have been circulating since last year. While no pricing information is provided with today's rumor, the Financial Times claimed in June that Apple was negotiating a rental service for $2.99/film for a 30-day rental. Pricing details, however, may have changed since negotiations first began.

Meanwhile, a digitally protected version of a film is also expected be included with DVD releases, allowing users to copy the movie easily to their iPods and iPhones, without resorting to "ripping" or otherwise converting the DVD to another format. This digital version would employ the same FairPlay copy-protection system used by Apple on their iTunes store purchases, though the details of the restrictions are unknown at this time. This move would help cement Apple's iPod and iPhone as the standard devices for mobile video content.

While there has been a lot of rumors floating around of a possible iTunes-rental service coming soon, this is probably the most concrete information I've seen posted on the Internet to date. I just hope that any update Apple makes to the iTunes Store is reflected in an update to the increasingly-insignificant AppleTV (which I still love by the way).

I've posted two new photo sets on my Flickr account. You can view them by clicking here, or directly using the links below.

Playing With Phoebe - Cheryl and I play around with Phoebe in my parent's back yard while visiting for Christmas.
Mad River Mountain @ Night - Some interesting pictures taken from the parking lot of the resort, as well as a couple different county roads nearby.


These pictures were all recently taken using my new Canon PowerShot SD850IS that I purchased for the upcoming trip to Utah. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the overall picture quality versus my older SD410.

To commemorate the upcoming release of The Simpsons Movie on DVD, those wacky British Fox PR people decided to stage the above event at the Battersea Power Station in London, England. Look familiar? That's right, this is the same location where the album cover for Pink Floyd's 1977 release Animals, except Spider Pig didn't break free and wreck havoc on the skies over the city this time. Here's the official video from the event.

On Friday, Mad River Mountain opened for the 2007-2008 season with a decent covering of snow. While I wasn't able to make it down to Bellefontaine in time to hit the slopes on Friday, my dad and I got up early on Saturday and made our way out to the hill to beat the mid-day crowds. The snow was good and after some quick adjustments to my bindings we made quite a number runs in before it started to get busy. Overall, I was pretty happy with the way my new boots worked out; I think my bindings need adjusted to allow for more lean, but everything should be good to go for Utah.

Speaking of Utah, Park City received approximately 33" in the past 72 hours, allowing the resort to open a significant number of more trails. As of this posting, they have 25 trails open now, and are planning on adding more to the number by the end of the week. I have a feeling that they'll be ready to have the majority of the resort open by the time we arrive on the 30th. We're also planning on stopping by The Canyons and Deer Valley resorts while we're out there.

As you may be aware, this past week I celebrated my 27th birthday, and Cheryl was kind enough to buy tickets to see Monty Pyhton's Spamalot at the Stranahan Theater here in Toledo. After my favorite fish dinner and a pint of Hoegaarden at Claddaugh's Irish Pub, we made our way over to the theater and found our seats (which were just about in the perfect spot center stage). I'd heard really good things about this musical on Broadway, and they did not disappoint as the entire crowd laughed throughout the performance. I enjoyed the show so much I even grossly-overpaid for a small stuffed (but still vicious) rabbit. If you have the opportunity to see this show, by all means make sure that you do.

They started making snow at Mad River Mountain this week, and while the warm temperatures and rain will likely melt some of what they were able to produce, it is supposed to get cold enough again tomorrow to turn the snow machines back on. I am hoping that they are able to open by the 14th; if that happens I'll be on the slopes that Friday breaking in my new boots and making sure everything is ready for Utah. Park City just got a foot or two of snow (and probably more higher up on the mountain), and things are looking good for some great powder out there in January.

Tomorrow, I'm leaving for Royal Oak, Michigan, where I will be attending a Check Point firewall certification class for work. While I'm sure my brain will be hurting by the second or third day, I am excited to visit the downtown area and three breweries (Bastone, Lily's Seafood Grill & Brewery, and The Royal Oak Brewery). I've heard good things about each of these establishments, but haven't been in the area yet to check any of them out. Hopefully I'll have three more growlers to add to the collection by the end of the weekend.