Category Archives: Ranting and Reflections

The past several nights have been pretty foggy in Seattle, at least around the top of Queen Anne and in the “higher” neighborhoods like Wallingford and Phinney Ridge. Its been sort of neat – the air has a vibrant chill and the light does really cool things. Wormwood (our cat with the recent surgery –Continue reading “Foggy nights and cat care”

For the record, giving a cat oral antibiotics that’s just had mouth surgery is a pain in the butt. And it smells bad when it’s spewed back on you.

With the pics from Crater Lake up there now, I’m reminded of something that I felt I needed to share for my own future embarrasment and reference. When the snow you are standing is holding you, that doesn’t mean that it’s only a few inches deep, or that you don’t need snowshoes. The snow, inContinue reading “Snow”

PB110032.JPG Originally uploaded by Joseph Heck. That blue… that amazing blue… More pics to be found at my Crater Lake photo set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joseph_heck/sets/1370688/

Karen and I just got back from a three-day weekend in southern Oregon, the highlight of which has to be proclaimed as seeing Crater Lake. Oh my lord, what a spectacular place that is. It was snowed in at the rim, so we got only a limited view, but it was truly incredible. We droveContinue reading “Crater Lake”

We have an XCoders meeting tomorrow, where we’re “dragging” Brent into the local spotlight again after his (relatively) recent transition back to a full time developer with the dudes from Newsgator. That ought to make for a good evening of chatting! I’ve started playing again with a tablet PC – this time a Thinkpad X41,Continue reading “All sorts of bits”

Sitting on the doorstep when I made it home tonight was A Feast for Crows – a book I’ve been waiting for and not very patiently. I’ve had it on order for months through Amazon, so when the package arrived I was very confused as to what had come from Amazon. But its here now!Continue reading “A Feast for Crows”

Presentations and the Zen Aesthetic is a great writeup about how presentations can be made to the essence of simplicity. I personally think it applies directly to a lot of other things, most recently including software design. I’m sure some of my coworkers are sick of hearing me burst out “if you’re not using it,Continue reading “Presentations and the Zen Aesthetic”

Wow, so a whole bunch of people have dug around and written about Mind Camp. Scoble, while taking the a pot-shot at Google, has some links if you’re interested. If you want pics – check out Flikr with the tag mindcamp10. I think Ted’s writeup is the most complete, and captures the event pretty well.Continue reading “Mind Camp – a few days later”

Mindcamp is over, and it was really good. Very worthwhile, although I’m a bit tired after the whole thing. So what do you do? Well, you follow it up with taking in Jarhead with a friend for a sunday afternoon matinee. Wow – that’s a damn good movie. It hits close to home for me,Continue reading “Jarhead”