Backbyrner

December 1, 2022

SNOQUALMIE PASS, Wash., December 1, 2022 / PRNEWSWIRE/ – The Summit at Snoqualmie, a Boyne Resorts ski area, announced today that Greg O’Byrne has been named as Digital Marketing Manager.

“Greg is assuredly the ideal candidate to lead the Digital Marketing team for the Summit,” said Guy Lawrence, President of The Summit, “He brings 20 years of experience in the online media world across multiple disciplines…also he rips, which is nice.”

Greg O’Byrne has more than 20 years experience in the online media world having led teams for the ABC TV affiliate in Seattle and been a member of the Amazon Global Communities team.  He’s built Content Management systems and leveraged multiple tools to deliver great content to his customers wherever he’s been.  He skis on Atomic Vantage 97 Ti skis and you can find him ripping Rampart or Dino’s revenge most weekends.

“The entire team up here at the pass is excited for Greg to join the team,” continued Guy, “Are we done?  Its snowing and I want to get some loops in…”

SOURCE – Summit at Snoqualmie

The Pacific Northwest is blessed with a YYUUUUGE! number of ski resorts (small locals to world class).  75 or more of them stretching from North West BC by Nelson down to the corner of Idaho.

PNW Ski Areas: bing collection of PNW ski Areas

I’ve been craving a trip to get out and see a bunch of these areas, big and small and had several I REALLY wanted to get to:  Lookout Pass and Whitefish.  I did a bunch of research to set a fun week long itinerary, a route, what I am calling a “Kerouac”.

We left Seattle on Saturday and drove to Wallace Idaho – easy drive, but we wanted to explore Wallace some (its a fun town).

Sunday began our skiing.

Day 1: Lookout Pass.

Awesome fun day. Skied everywhere and ended up looping Purgatory and Red Dog. Great staff, so friendly. If you've driven by it a hundred times and told yourself "I should ski that someday." Do it.

We left Lookout Pass and headed off to Missoula, where my Aunt lives, the plan was to stay at her place and hit a few areas around Missoula because there are 5 areas within a couple hours or less than Missoula: Snowbowl, Discovery, Lost Trail, Grand Divide, and Blacktail.  After a great dinner of homemade spaghetti and meatballs we were all set for Snowbowl.

Day 2: Snowbowl.

Miserable rain and sleet day. We still had fun and ended up looping Grizzly and the Spartan Headwall all day. They finally opened the top at 12:30, but we were soaked and cold so, we didn't head up ... Gotta come back. Snowbowl has the best schwag, BTW.

- Day 3: Discovery. sssshhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone about Discovery. Great big mountain, skies like a Resort, feels like a local.

- Day 4: Blacktail: Closed due to Rain. gotta come back.

- Day 5: Whitefish. Wet rain and snow and fog. Dismal. Found some runs that were ok down below the fog, off of Swift Creek Express.

- Day 6: Whitefish - Superb and awesome, skied as much of the mountain as possible. Ended up looping the run under Chair 11. Great time. gotta come back.

- Day 7: Hyak. Sunny and fun to get home and ski out the back door.

Where should I go next year? What would be your trip go?

…just sayin’

Out of Date List: http://www.backbyrner.com/blog/post/2018/11/21/Top-13-Free-Windows-Applications

Interesting to see how in the space of three years how much can still change in the mature windows applications ecosystem, but there are several key new programs to call out.

1. Office application: Libre Office. [No change here, still awesome]
   - Works with all Microsoft Office Files (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.)    
   https://www.libreoffice.org/
   
   
2. Browser: Firefox [CHANGE]
   - This is a change.  I had recomended Vivaldi (https://vivaldi.com/) but there were some rendering and weirdness that I encountered using it.  Firefox has gone up in my list now.  Its improved its privacy, security and rendering and speed.  I really like it.
   https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
   
   
3. Music listening application: MediaMonkey [CHANGE]
   I tried everything… EVERYTHING.  And none of the players do everything right.  The closest actually is GROOVE by MS, however it won’t let you export playlists into MPU files which is ridiculous.  Some don’t make playlist editing easy.  Some abstract your library with an intelligent db/ai which usually sucks.  But the closest to getting everything right is MediaMonkey.  Plays everything.
   https://www.mediamonkey.com/
   
   
4. Password Keeper: Keepass [No change here, still awesome]
   - Gives you 100% control of your passwords.  Nothing up on someone else’s cloud.  Although you can set it up to be stored up on the cloud if YOU want, but otherwise its all local and under your control.
   https://keepass.info/
   
   
5. Zip (archive) manager: 7-zip [No change here, still awesome]
   - does everything just the way you want it.
   https://www.7-zip.org/
   
   
6. Image editor: Paint.net  (Paint Dot Net)  Although GIMP is soooo close.
   Paint dot Net is just so easy and quick and gets most things done so well.  But if I am going to be doing something more like a project, I’ll fire up GIMP for that. So a virtual tie, one for quick work and one for project work.
   https://www.getpaint.net/index.html
   https://www.gimp.org/
   
   
7. Video Editor: ShotCut [CHANGE]
   So I was using OpenShot at first, but it started crashing.  I found ShotCut and haven’t looked back.  It does everything you could want in a full featured video editor and is getting better with every release.
   https://www.shotcut.org/
   
   
8. Markdown Rich Text Editor: Typora – [NEW]
   Do you hate editing Markdown, I do, it sucks.  This little app will fix all your problems.  Handles all the MD editing for you in in a perfect WYSIWYG editor.
   https://typora.io/
   
   
9. Audio Track Editor: Audacity
   - This app has been around for a long time and has steadily been improved.
   https://www.audacityteam.org/
   
   
10. Notepad replacement: Notepad++
    https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
    Just about the most useful tool on the list.
    
    
11. Command line (enhancement) tool enhancer ConEmu
    https://conemu.github.io/
    - taking a bit of time to set this up and it is awesome.
    
    
12. Developer environment: Visual Studio Code
    - by Microsoft but free and awesome.
    
    
13. Video transcoder (video file format converter): HandBrake
    https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

Where should we go?

Here is a rundown of where I want to go.

Start: Ireland

• Dublin [2]
• Wooden Bridge (O’Byrne roots) [1]
• Galway (I’ve always wanted to go to Galway [1]

England:

• London [2-3]
• Somewhere to experience Elizabethan culture (Bath??) [1-2]
• https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187065-d4067259-Reviews-Himley_Hall_and_Park-Dudley_West_Midlands_England.html
• Wolverhampton for a soccer game [ visit while others are in Bath]

Germany

• Rottenburg [2]
• Salzburg [2]
• Rhine trip [3]
• Brault roots [2]

Italy

• Venice [2-3]
• Rome[2]

How about that for a trip?

21-23 days on the continent.

Sound good?  Let’s go.

I have been in the software world for a long time and I am constantly (CONSTANTLY) looking for good applications that are free and effective.  Here is my list of the applications I have found over the years that are GREAT at what they do, Free and open source.  Most of these you probably know about, some of them maybe not, but give a try.

1. Office application: Libre Office.
   - Works with all Microsoft Office Files (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.)    
   https://www.libreoffice.org/
   
   
2. Browser: Vivaldi
   - Uses the same rendering engine as Chrome – but without all the creepy google tracking.
   https://vivaldi.com/
   
   
3. Music listening application: VLC
   Plays everything.
   https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
   
   
4. Password Keeper: Keepass
   - Gives you 100% control of your passwords.  Nothing up on someone else’s cloud.  Although you can set it up to be stored up on the cloud if YOU want, but otherwise its all local and under your control.
   https://keepass.info/
   
   
5. Zip (archive) manager: 7-zip
   - does everything just the way you want it.
   https://www.7-zip.org/
   
   
6. Image editor: Paint.net  (Paint Dot Net)
   https://www.getpaint.net/index.html
   
   
7. Video Editor: OpenShot
   https://www.openshot.org/
   
   
8. 3d Editor: Blender  (wish I had time to work in this)
   https://www.blender.org/
   - also video editing
   
   
9. Audio Track Editor: Audacity
   - This app has been around for a long time and has steadily been improved.
   https://www.audacityteam.org/
   
   
10. Notepad replacement: Notepad++
    https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
    Just about the most useful tool on the list.
    
    
11. Command line (enhancement) tool enhancer ConEmu
    https://conemu.github.io/
    - taking a bit of time to set this up and it is awesome.
    
    
12. Developer environment: Visual Studio Code
    - by Microsoft but free and awesome.
    
    
13. Video transcoder (video file format converter): HandBrake
    https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

My Idea.

I'm not gonna tell you what it is, not here on a public blog.  It's an idea that is both simple and huge.  If you are someone with some development talent you could build it out yourself...and that would suck for me.

Back to my idea.

It's brilliant!  Trust me.  But it was just the engineering solution just the "engine" as it were.  I talked with some people about it and they kept looking at me like, "What? Why would I use that."  But the idea kept getting better.  Mrs. Backbyrner had some great ideas (she's a marketing wiz) and then in general the whole Social Networking market went into a spiral of bad press around privacy.  Which just makes my idea all the better.

So with these idea changes My Idea is doubley brilliant!

The lesson learned:
Your idea will undergo lots of changes as you work on it.  Embrace them, use other people's brains, they're smart too.

Welcome back to backbyrner. 

I’m going to start to use this blog to talk about me putting together my startup and things I’ve learned and challenges I’ve faced. 

I’m just a regular guy in the tech world.  I’d call myself a journeyman Program Manager.  Drop me into a technology team with a product to work on and I can run with it.  I can work with most any engineering team, work with almost any product team and deliver the features needed. 

But I have this idea.

MY idea.

I have been able to sell a couple of my technology friends on this idea and they are along for the ride.

It’s been fun already and a lot of new ideas and value have been added to it by a host of people.

My goal is:

Fix Social Networks on the internet and make millions of dollars for me and mine and my friends.

here is where our cowboy triumphs.

https://archive.org/details/georgeblood

We have a whole stack of these records in our garage and I had planned on digitizing them.  But now I don’t need to.

Now how much are they worth on Ebay?