Matt and Ashley Faus

Thanks the crazy holiday travels and our willingness to take a 12 hour delay, AirTran gave Ashley and I each two free round-trip tickets to wherever they fly, which includes Jamaica! Not sure when, but sometime in 2010.

We had an overnight layover in Milwaukee on our way home, so we took advantage of the local art museum.

We had an awesome Christmas break over the past two weeks.  There are plenty of stories, but it’s really late and I just spent a good deal of time getting all the pictures up.  I’ll link in the videos here, and hope Ashley adds some prose to describe our vacation!

I’ve been incredibly busy writing code over the past two months in order to hit our big Code Complete deadline last week.  Now that we’ve hit it, I’ve got a more reasonable schedule, so I figured I should post up a quick update.

I’m loving my bicycle.  I have gotten in the habit of riding to/from work several days (if not all days) a week.  The weather is getting cooler, but most days are >55, so it makes a brisk ride strenous enough to keep me warm.  I don’t know that I’ve seen a huge health benefit yet, but I’ve only been diligent about riding it the past week or so.  I really need to keep it up to keep in shape for our big Half Dome hike next summer.

One reason I have been biking more is that I started taking a class at Stanford, through their Center for Professional Development.  I have embarked on a “graduate certificate” program that will grant me a certificate in databases after taking 4 classes.  One way to describe this certificate is like “1/5 of a Master’s”.  The four classes count towards a Master’s degree, so after I complete them this time next year, I can re-evaluate going down that path depending on everything else going on in my life.  I really enjoy doing academia and industry computer science simultaneously - it’s a nice balance of “pure science” in academia, and “engineering” in industry.  Anyway, the bike is helpful around campus because Stanford is so huge, it would take forever to walk around.  I am mainly taking the class online, but I go to campus to study and work on programming projects due to the increased intra-network connectivity.  It’s challenging, but I am really enjoying it.

Oh yeah, I was Travis Bickle from The Taxi Driver (with Rober Deniro) for Halloween, so my hair is currently cut into a mohawk.

As you might have read a while ago, I thought I was going to train for a marathon. That went pretty well, until I started getting horrible shin splints. I read a lot of advice about getting new shoes, but this is not the first time I have suffered shin splints, so I kind of gave up trying to cure them. 

Instead, I decided to embark on a no-impact sport, cycling! I found a nice used Giant OCR3 road bike on Craigslist and am excited to get into the sport. I’ve only had it for a few days and I’ve already ridden several times. I really enjoy it, and it is much less painful than running! I am trying to work up to commuting to and from my office a few days a week… about 11 miles each way. If I can do that, I’m sure I’ll see great results both on my body and on my wallet from the gas savings.

The main thing Ashley and I are trying to get ready for now is doing the Half Dome hike in Yosemite next summer.  This hike is known as the most strenous charted day-hike in the nation!  It is about 8 miles of trail that climbs almost 5000 feet in elevation… one way!

One of my college friends decided to take a little summer vacation and visit us in California! He and his girlfriend arrived on Thursday evening and left Monday evening, for a long weekend. We took it pretty easy Thursday night, with a nice dinner (thanks Ashley!) and just chatted for a while. I took off on Friday, and we embarked on a leisurely 4 hour drive to a campsite at Yosemite Lakes, which is a private campground about 5 miles west of the Highway 120 entrance to Yosemite National Park. The campgrounds were pretty crowded, but luckily ReserveAmerica had a deal where we could stay in the “members only” spots. I can’t imagine the other spots, they must have been tiny!

We were able to setup camp rather quickly, and then walked down to swim and lounge around in the stream at the campgrounds. We cooked up some filet mignon and ribeyes with loaded baked potatoes for dinner and had a great time hanging out by the campfire. We were lucky to have a campfire at all, it took us quite some time (and money) to find someone who would sell us firewood!

The next morning, I used my fancy 3-burner camp stove to cook up some bacon and scrambled eggs to fuel our big day. Driving through Yosemite was incredible! The scenery there is unlike any I have ever seen, and the park is so big - there is so much to do! There are 5-6 campgrounds within the park and even a 4-star hotel. It’s really commercialized, but it does not detract from the beauty of the surroundings. We also found out that the weekend we were there was free entry to the park! It was a nice surprise when we got there, but it also meant that it was incredibly crowded. It took us nearly 15 minutes to find a parking spot so that we could get out and begin our hike. We set out on the John Muir Trail, which happens to extend for over 212 miles! We only made it about 2 miles up the mountain, and it was one of the most strenous hikes we have ever been on! It was pretty much 2 miles of huge stairs up a steep cliffside. We grew very tired and had to take several breaks, but the views were well worth it.

When we got up to the top of the falls, my friend and I decided to go for a swim in Emerald Pool. The snowmelt was pretty cold, but it was a hot enough day that it felt great! Yosemite valley was carved by glacier movement, so I have swam around in a glacial pool at the top of a waterfall! Refreshed by the cool waters, we started our trek down the mountain. It was MUCH easier going downhill, and we were able to get down in about 45 minutes. We walked around a little more in the park, and then started the 4 hour drive home (it took 45 minutes just to get out of the park and on the road)!

On Sunday, my friends borrowed our car to do the Alcatraz tour, and then Ashley and I took CalTrain to meet up with them later that afternoon.  We had lunch on Pier 39, walked around there, to Ghiradelli Square, and Lombard Street.  Then, we got back in the car to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and take some pics from the other side.  We also explored a little around a beach near the bridge and found a great place for a picnic next time we visit!

All in all, it was an outstanding weekend and it was really cool to catch up with old friends around the city!

A group from church planned a trip to Sequia National Park, and I was lucky enough to be able to come along! It was about a 5 hour drive from Santa Clara, but once we got there, it was very much worth the wait! The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and the scenery even more outstanding! We set up camp and began the incredible experience of living amongst one of the greatest parks in the nation. There were several deer spottings within our camp, and the adventures we had outside of our camp were out of this world. The views and weather were truly an experience to be reckoned with. I have posted several pictures of the event, and below are some videos I took.

For the summer, Ashley and I have decided to train for one of the San Francisco marathons.  Our sites are set on San Francisco Marathon at the end of July, but there is also one at the end of October, called the Silicon Valley Marathon.  The one in July is coming up pretty fast, so we’re going to have to train pretty hardcore if we want to make it through.  We are planning to parallelize the race such that we both run half of the marathon simultaneously, and then add the two lengths together for a full marathon distance at the end.

It wil be tough, but I think we can do it and it will be a really cool accomplishment to have together!  Well, I’m off to run my 4 miles for today!

Well, I know I am pretty late in this, but better late than never, eh?  I’m going to try to be more diligent in my blogging…

I just wanted to say “Thank You!” to everyone who sent me cards and Facebook messages for my birthday!  It truly made my day to see that so many people remembered me on my birthday!

To celebrate, Ashley and I went on an adventurous drive through the mountains to the East, and discovered a very cool little park a mere 20 minutes from where we live.  We intend to spend plenty of time there this summer, and in fact, we headed there for Memorial Day.  When we got home, we went to the store to pick up some filet mignon, salmon, and some cheese and bread.  We also thawed a section of pork loin we had.  I fired up our charcoal grill and got to cooking a feast!  We ate the filet mignon bloody rare with baked potatoes and creamed corn, with a sampling of the salmon and pork.  The rest we saved to eat through the week!  It was a great birthday and an incredible dinner!