UPDATE: I’ve finished re-writing the database connection scheme, so I’m hoping that fixes things. If you run into the database connection error again, keep refreshing your page it may go through… then let me know.

Some of you have noticed some issues with the site over the past few weeks. You may have seen an error message when trying to access this blog, or a weird database error when trying to use Wishlist.

Well after numerous discussions with my hosting company (the people I pay to house kateandjoel.com) I finally figured out the issue. Turns out there were a few pages that didn’t close the database connection, so a limit was met.

So let this be a lesson to you kids, close all those pesky database connections!

Oh, if you run across any weird errors again… let me know. Happy Wishlisting!

Abby, Megan and their friend Cassidy came to visit us for the weekend. Still lacking snow to hit the slopes we went for a hike (the trail was ironicly covered in snow and ice). Saturday we went to see “Playground”, the new Warren Miller film at a bar and grill in downtown Breck… nothing better to get you excited for the coming season.

On a side note… please bear with us and the pixilated pictures. I built myself a new computer last week and I’m on Vista now which changes things. I was never thrilled with the Gallery software that I’m using now for hosting photos (there’s no easy way to actually upload photos), so I’m giving Flickr a try again. It’s super easy to upload photos, but the problem is that I don’t have much control over the image sizes… so for now I have to scale them down a bit which is why they look horrible. I’m thinking I may need to just adjust the site layout to accommodate the 500px images. Not ideal, but can’t think of a better solution at the moment.

We’ve been out biking almost every weekend (mainly because we’re fighting the cabin fever we have during the week), and we’re amazed at all the trails that are around. Last week we did the Breck to Frisco trail, and this weekend we went from Dillon towards Keystone. I’m trying to convince Kate that before we leave, we need to do the trail to Vail that follows I-70. (it looks tough)

We tried to pose in front of Dillon lake but the sun wasn’t helping.

Here you can get a feel for the bark beetle infestation that’s taken over the forests around here. There are large sections around the area that they’re clear cutting, I imagine to get rid of the dead trees.

We went skiing at A-basin last weekend (sharing one single run with hundreds of drunk teenagers isn’t a ton of fun), and planned on experiencing Keystone this weekend, but as you can see, it’s been a weak opening-day. There were plenty of people skiing, but they obviously couldn’t ski down to the bottom of the mountian, so they had to “download” by riding the gondola back down to the bottom from mid-mountain. I’m biding my time and waiting for the snow to come and the rest of the mountain to open up.