This was a good week for us at work. We’ve built a prototype which is going to get showed off at the IHE Workshop in Chicago. I guess that means we’re officially a big deal. Our mentor is really excited with the work we’ve done. I think we’ve taken something that could have been good, and set it up to be great. That’s really an exciting feeling. Up next is documentation and architecture. A lot of that is done, but I think it’s going to take us cleaning everything out and starting over to show step-by-step how to setup the various environments. Getting Tomcat, OSGi, Axis, working and talking isn’t exactly easy. Up next is entering the open-source community in such a way that they’re excited about what we’re getting started for them.

Monday night, I had my first soccer game. I’m on a team called RSI Random at the Off the Wall Soccer Center in Santa Clara. It’s 3 light rail and 6 CalTrain stops away from me. Then, it’s a 2.5 mile walk from there. It’s quite a trek, but could you imagine a summer without soccer? It’s just not an option. I have 2 teammates who live near me, and hopefully, I’ll be able to bum rides off of them in exchange for some gas money. It was quite the experience. I’ve never thought of the Soccer Dome in Raleigh to be cutting edge or brand new, but it definitely feels that way compared to this place. The one cool thing was the surface. They’re using the carpet filled with carbon approach that creates a very realistic surface without the knee pains associated with concrete, or the rug burns associated with carpeting. Quite cool, but I might need to find a pair of cleats. On to the game results. We tied 8-8 and I had one goal. I was able to play through the first half, but I died about 5 minutes into the second half, and played goalie the remainder of the time. It was killer. I let in 4 goals, but it could have been a lot worse. I’m a little lucky. That was a good time.

Next came the trip to Yosemite National Park. It was absolutely amazing.

I have plenty of pictures up on my online gallery of images. Here’s the story on Saturday. We arrive in Yosemite Valley at 10am. This happens to be relatively late as far as arrival time goes apparently. We start climbing, and it’s up. With very little relief, we start our journey. The view, amazing. Imagining how crazy it must have been to build the steps that we were climbing, amazing. Looking down the cliff, not amazing. I was very scared. We get to the 4 mile point, and stop to have lunch. About this time it’s 12ish, maybe 1ish. I didn’t have much water, but I didn’t think I needed much. I did have a lot of camera gear. Which happened to be a mistake. I kept going after lunch until the 2 mile marker. I was 2 miles away from Half Dome. I just couldn’t make it. I just wasn’t good enough. Well, more accurately, my legs weren’t enough, my water wasn’t enough, and my load was too much. So I snapped a shot at that point, and turned around.

I thought my adventure was done. I was wrong. We started back to Glacier Point which is where our new car was to be found. It was a 5 mile hike straight up. The elevation at the top was near 7000 feet. I couldn’t breathe. It was the longest day of my life. The memories were great. But 18 miles of walking is killer. Especially when it’s switchback after switchback, rock after boulder, and only hill ahead. Fortunately, I survived, and saw Half Dome in the evening sun. That was a beautiful image. I was too tired to take the shot. It was great.