Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

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  • San Francisco Trip, Day 1

    Herewith the beginning of several entries detailing our anniversary trip to San Francisco last weekend (the 11th through the 13th).

    It was a good trip! We had to get up too early, though: five in the morning on Friday, so we could be at the airport by 6 or so (our flight was 7:15). I always dread traveling when I have to get up early, but this time it wasn’t too bad.

    It was a good flight though, quick and without incident. We had everything we needed in carry-ons, so we didn’t have to worry about checking luggage. So we were able to go straight from the airport to our hotel, the Tuscan Inn, even though it was too early to check in. We left our bags with the hotel and wandered around the Fisherman’s Wharf area of San Francisco.

    It was cold, too; we had just come from 90+ degree weather in Bend, to 70-ish degree wind and fog. Fortunately, it cleared up later in the day and warmed up.

    Non-sequitous side note: the biggest and most interesting culture shock moment for me was seeing billboards advertising programming languages and platforms, like J2EE, Enterprise JavaBeans, stuff like that; I’m used to the “mainstream” billboards we have around here (you know, real estate, cars, etc.) and forgot that we were visiting one of the most wired cities in the world. What can I say? I’m still a country boy when you get down to it.

    A good part of the afternoon was shopping at Pier 39, which, as I sit here thinking about it, isn’t really all that exciting. So I’ll skip ahead to dinner.

    Friday night we did the Hornblower dinner cruise. It was very, very nice (very similar to the Portland dinner cruise we did last year). It was a three hour cruise of the Bay: you swing by Alcatraz, around Angel Island, skirt Sausalito, pass under the Golden Gate Bridge, cruise back down past the Bay Bridge and finally back to dock. Excellent food, wine, service; an all-around good choice. We had a great time.

    Funny story, too: at the table next to us, a young couple were having dinner and bickering a lot. The girl seemed older than the boy (it was his 25th birthday, as it turned out), and she was pretty, but I can’t guess what their deal was. I said “funny,” it’s getting there. One of the things they were arguing about was the boy quitting smoking—I think. He was “only” smoking a cigarette a day, but he was passionately trying to make the claim that “all” writers smoked, drank, did drugs, etc., were basically messed up in the head.

    All writers? I resisted the temptation to step in and correct him. It was starting to seem obvious by this time the guy was making a play with his girlfriend/spouse/significant other to get permission to party more. Because, of course, he wants to be a writer, and all writers smoke a lot, drink like fish, etc. etc.

    Yeah, I know. But it gets better.

    A little later, we start getting to the root of the problem. This is a direct quote, believe it or not, and I’m emphasizing just as he did: “I’m 25 years old and I write children’s books. Children’s books! Do you have any idea how unsexy that is?”

    Swear to god. He actually used the word “unsexy” like that. I had to fight back laughter; I couldn’t hide my smile, so I had turned away. I think one of the first thoughts that went through my head was something along the lines of, At least he’s not equating “children” with “sexy.”

    Pathetic. So he wants to be a writer, a “serious” writer, one wracked with angst and depression that only nicotine and the bottle can dull long enough to produce brilliant literary prose. You know, like every “serious” writer. But he writes children’s books, which is about as far away from the stereotype he’s so desperately seeking that it’s driving him crazy.

    I hope he’s reading this, because: Get the hell over yourself. Writers don’t sit around whining about how unfair it is that they can’t write what they want, or that their lifestyle doesn’t measure up to their skewed vision of what they should be: they write. And if you really do write children’s books for a living, then you’ve already got a huge step up: you’re a published, professional writer. That’s huge in the publishing world. You’ve got instant cred, instant advantage over every other up-and-comer. So shut the hell up and write, and I don’t want to hear whiny, self-piteous shit about how unfair you think life is being because you won’t take the time to actually write what you want to write.

    One more thing. Don’t knock children’s books. They’re hard to write. I should know. I have children.

    Okay, my rant is over. I feel better.

    So, to recap: Friday in San Francisco was good, cold in the morning, nice later, did shopping, and a dinner cruise. All went well. My next entry should deal with the rest of our trip, so stay tuned.

  • Genius

    According to this article on CNN.com, geniuses and criminals do their best work in their 30s. This is great news for me—since I just turned 30 seven months ago!

    Of course, I guess that begs the question: Genius or criminal?

  • San Francisco

    This weekend my wife and I are going to San Francisco for our (5th) anniversary trip. Leaving early early early Friday morning, coming back Sunday. It should be a fun trip.

    Friday night we’re doing a dinner cruise of the Bay, and all day Saturday we’re taking a train tour through wine country. Ah, le vin.

    Of course, I’d love to be able to stop in at Anchor Brewing, but we don’t have the time. Bummer!

  • Independence Weekend

    So what does July 4th even mean to people any more? A day off from work? Shelling out the bucks to buy enough fireworks to blow up your house? I have to admit, I’ve caught myself thinking along those lines and forgetting why we have the day off and what the fireworks represent. But the way the world is screwed up these days, who knows?

    Anyway. Busy weekend. We took the kids to the Pet Parade, and the festival in the park, and my parents came over for steaks, cake, and fireworks. Beautiful weather, all weekend. The rest of the weekend was spent on yardwork; trees got pruned, some edging got done, bark dust laid down, garden got weeded. The lawn hasn’t recovered much from the dethatching, but no matter.

    Oh, and I finished up Ender’s Shadow and plowed through Shadow of the Hegemon this weekend, too. It’s been awhile since I’ve gone through 2 books in a single week. Dunno if I’ll keep up with it.

  • Killer App

    The next killer app?

    Not weblogs.

    Not grid computing.

    Not wikis.

    Not even Google.

    It’s a non-volatile, random access, analog memory storage device that’s cheap, durable, mass-produced and ubiquitous.

  • Ender’s Shadow

    I began reading Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card this past weekend, and, predictably, I can’t put it down. Brilliantly written, ties in beautifully to the Enderverse yet remains completely fresh.

    Particularly well written, and heartbreaking, is the depiction of Bean’s childhood on the streets of Rotterdam. Brutal, harsh, and utterly believable even though my mind wants to reject this point of view from its cozy, sheltered outlook on the world.

    Go read it.

  • Wildfire

    This weekend saw the outbreak of the Davis Fire, located about 12 miles southwest of LaPine. Not close enough to us to pose any threat, but today the winds shifted (a “wind inversion” over Bend, the news reported) and smoke from the fire blanketed the area, making everything hazy. So much so, in fact, that the light was tinted red-orange, and the sun was so obscured as to appear as a red disk. Eerie.

    And around noon, we noticed that ash was falling, like light snow.

    And the fire season opens with a bang.

  • Lawn Triage

    I’ve decided one of the big drawbacks to owning your own home is the lawn. The problem is, it’s such a nice benefit, too.

    Our lawn is in a sickly state. Part of the problem is that we live in Central Oregon, which is in large part the High Desert— during the summer there are extremes of temperatures where the mercury can soar into the 90s during the day and drop to freezing at night, during the winter it’s uniformly cold, and year-round it’s fairly dry. So right there, this area is extra hard on lawns. If you can get them started in the sandy, sometimes-alkali soil, they require a lot of water and care.

    Despite all this, there are many, many nice lawns here. Hell, we even have a huge number of golf courses in the area, so I know lawns can be done. So what’s the deal with my lawn?

    It’s irregularly shaped, with lots of curves. This makes mowing it a pain. It’s got several small pine trees, a couple of fir trees, a small birch and of course, juniper trees growing in it, and they suck up a lot of the water. We have a crappy irrigation system, which seems to selectively miss parts of the lawn. And finally, we don’t really know what we’re doing with it. I had to buy Lawn Care for Dummies to buy a clue.

    So today, I dethatched the lawn. “Thatch” is a layer of organic matter that forms between the grass blades and the soil line. (Lawn Care for Dummies, page 198.) When the thatch buildup gets too thick, it hinders healthy lawn growth. So you apparently need to dethatch your lawn every year or two (I’m not really clear on how often), but we hadn’t done this in the 5 years since we’ve moved in. Last year we had the lawn aerated, and that helped a little. So this time, we dethatched.

    We rented a dethatcher, which is kind of a like a big lawn mower, heavier and more awkward. Let me tell you, it’s pretty slick. It went over the grass like a mower, and the whirling steel blades inside shredded the thatch like nobody’s business; just pushing the thing around, you wouldn’t know you were doing anything except for all the dead organic matter being left behind. It actually went pretty quickly, about 45 minutes— the same amount of time, typically, it takes me to mow.

    However, the cleanup of all the thatch took me the next 4 hours. ‘Nuff said.

    Hopefully, this will do something for the lawn. Tomorrow we’re doing more, including spreading seed on the bare parts and fertilizing. And then watering the shit out of it.

    Lawns. Who needs ’em?

  • Blog Updates

    So, in a continuing effort to make this site more like other blogs on the web (say, like Movable Type), with all their admittedly neat ideas, I’ve added a calendar (just off on the top right, there) for the current month which shows what days there have been blog entries. Days that are linked will show the entries from those days.

    Yeah, I keep seeing this on other blog sites and I finally liked it enough to steal it.

    The sad part is, it shows how pitifully few entries I’ve been making lately. I guess that’s why it makes such a nice visual layout— to kick me into gear.

  • GeoURL

    I just found a neat site: GeoURL ICBM Address Server. You register the latitude and longitude of your web site (or your location if the web server housing your site is elsewhere, as in my case) with GeoURL, and they will then show you all the other websites they have registered in proximity to you. Neat!

    Right off the bat I see that within 4 miles of me is UtterlyBoring.com, a blog site run by another local computer geek.

    Damn, this is what the internet is all about.