Wow, I've been everywhere on the mountain today. Well, not every single run, you understand.... but I've taken to that Burton Custom X, really I have! A great board, and now with bindings I can finally ride it... and I got out to Pas de la Casa! The snow out there is great, the pistes were still really fresh just after lunch, even the steep ones. Some great wide open pistes too with lots of room, so even though there were plenty of people on there today no mishaps due to packed pistes.
It's funny to be on the other side of trying out the board now, this morning as I walked up with the dusty (I kid you not!) board with shiny new bindings on I thought "what if it's so different I can't ride it???". My worries were dispelled after about 10 minutes as I headed down towards my first lift.
A big shout to Tom Watt - also a custom X rider - I can see why you love that board mate, it's fast, responsive and when the middle cuts into the piste on a turn it really responds.
In fact, I had so much fun I managed to put a deep gouge into the board which is getting p-texed to fix it in time for tomorrow morning. I will take Nic's skis down to get them serviced then...
I've been thinking more about what sort of job to go for when I get back to the UK - I suspect it will be in mobile comms, but I really don't know wether to try handsets again or not... I've beaten enough doubts about the economic pressures handset makers are under into my head to think that none of the handset manufacturers are even remotely interested in Quality. Can this be true? Logic says they can't just churn out awful handsets forever, nobody would buy them in the end. But my observant half notices that modern nokias and motorolas are basically plastic cack with software so awful that people actually hate their phones (the classic line is "I bought it because of the adverts but I really hate it").
And this came home yesterday when I spoke to a guy who owns a P990i - a phone I am intersted in getting to replace my (perfectly working!) P910i. He said it's cack - unreliable, prone to crashes, he's on his 3rd operating system upgrade...
Is nothing safe? Even symbian seems to be creaking at the seams (wether series 60 "how many keypresses to send an SMS?????" or UIQ with the apprently unreliable P990i)... no hope for those of us who want to keep one phone for 2 years or more?
We get the handsets we deserve. While the UK average consumer clamours for another version of the razr with some half-arsed metallic reflective finish, we will get handsets with crappy user interfaces and a software shelf life of 8 months.
So there!
Then again, I do know how handsets work and you can only change the system from the inside... d'oh I'm arguing with myself again.
Decisions decisions.
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