Cantaloupe...

Cucumis melo reticulatus -- the domestic US muskmelon commonly referred to as "Cantaloupe". People who have known me since I was little are well aware the lure this fleshy fruit has on me. Put simply: I LOVE CANTALOUPE .

Another cute shot from the trip to Crissy!

This was 2 of the puppies we spent the morning with on our "off-leash walk" to Crissy Field.

Ain't that cute!

Trip to Crissy Field...

We took the doggies for an outing to the "off-leash" area at Crissy Field in the Presidio this morning.

They had a BLAST. Playing in the sand, meeting the other dogs, etc.

I took about 125 pics, so I'll be posting a couple more in the next few days, but I really liked the imagery of this particular one.

QA Bizz part 2 -- the winning flag...

So at the Bizz yesterday, each team was given the a piece of simple cloth with which to make a team flag (which is then judged for points towards the team title).

This was our team's flag.

As you can tell, we have some VERY creative and talented folks working with us.

Weird stuff happens on Fridays...

Today was our QA department's annual "Bizz". A "Bizz" is a weekly Friday afternoon get-together at work. Several of these bizzes are sponsored by individual departments, who go ALL OUT for them. Once a year, our quality (QA) department throws a massive bizz, and this year, the theme was "Indiana Jones".

The QA group is a pretty fun bunch, and they have games like "suck jello through a straw", "pin a whip on a picture of one the managers in the department", and this one -- wrapping a mummy with toilet paper. The rules: 3 members of each "team" congregate at the front. 2 of them are blindfolded, and they attempt to wrap the third, head to toe, in toilet paper, "mummy-style".

This is the team that one...

Masts, masts, and more masts...

A bunch of sail boats in the harbor at Oyster Point marina.

I like the detail of all those masts against the blue sky...

New sign on Great Highway

Driving down Great Highway, I noticed a new set of signs posted since the last time I was there (about 2 weeks ago).

Great Highway, for those unfamiliar with SF, a road that runs along Ocean Beach.

Red windsock on a blue sky...

Stark color difference.

Taken at the Half Moon Bay Airport.

Check out those eyes ... and the fur too ...

Got down on the floor to take some same-level shops of the kitty, and was treated by this shot. Those are some really cool eyes. They look like little Australian opals.

















But look a the enlargment -- her fur has all these flecks of blue that that you can only see very close up.

Me as a Simpsons character

Well, maybe not a picture per se, but...

The website for the Simpsons Movie (http://www.simpsonsmovie.com) has a feature that lets you create a Simpsons' style character (or "avatar"). You start with a body type, add eyes, eyebrows, eyes, nose, hair, mouth and clothes.

This is my version of me as a Simpson.

Rosemary is coming back!

I'm happy to report that the Rosemary (from the July 9th post) is coming back following the repotting. As you can see, the yellow is receeding to the ends of the needles, the needles themselves are plumping up and becoming softer, and the whole thing just looks MUCH healthier!

A Weird thing I came across today...

Take a close look at the first picture. About 2 feet above the 2nd pane of window from the left corner of the building, you'll see a little dot.





















Let's zoom in on that dot.






Yes, it's a snail. That snail has climbed nearly 15 feet up on the side of a stucco textured building. This begs a number of questions, not the least of which are:

1) how the hell does a snail climb 15 feet up a building like that?

2) where does he think he's going, and what does he think he'll find when he gets there

It's the little, bizzare eccentricities of life that I love to catch on "film".

Another view of Sutro ...

The same tower as yesterday, seen from Mt. Davidson. Maybe I'll do a whole week of these. I doubt it though.

Sutro from a distance

Remember back on February 21st when I explained about Sutro Tower -- how you can see it from just about anywhere in the bay area?

Well here it is (poking up from the marine layer) from Oyster Point Marina in South San Francisco (just down from where I work). This is about 15 miles from the tower itself.

Dirty window -- black cat...

Ok, this is just between you and me. Nobody listening or looking over your shoulder, right?

Here it is... our lease does not include the cat. We have a pet clause that includes the doggies, but not la gata.

Apparently, no one ever told Sophie, because she insists on laying in the front window, inside the blinds.

So there it is -- a black cat through a dirty window (preferable to a clean window and a dirty cat, n'est ce pas?).

Caryn's daliahs fill up another day's picture...

Yeah, I know, I've posted the daliahs before, but they are pretty and, well, it's one of those "having trouble taking any good pics today" days.

Give me a break -- this is 172 consecutive unbroken days of a picture a day. I'm pretty sure that this is the longest I've ever done anything every day without a break.

Cherry season...

Cherry season is winding down. The bing cherries are not a good buy any more (back up to $3.99 / lb), and the Rainier's are, to me, not much different than white peaches.

White peaches, in case you haven't heard me rant about them before, are peaches which have been scientifically designed to appeal to people who don't like peaches. By upping the sugar to a level just short of a Snicker's bar and removing all but a hint of the twang and mouth-watering that makes a peach a peach, the genetecists behind this abomination have managed to create the "anti-peach". The produce code for a white peach at Albertsons MUST be "666".

Anyway, back to cherries -- the last couple of baskets of Rainer cherries I've bought (can you tell I'm cherry fanatic) have been a lot less cherry-like and a lot more "cherry candy" like. Not that I won't continue to buy them while they are on sale, but each one tears at my heart, just a little.

Bool Kogi on the grill

Trader Joe's sells their version of this classic Korean barbecue. Boneless beef short ribs marinated in soy sauce and spices. It grills fast and is YUMMY.

The beef and the fire from the grill captures dinner in the making.

Crane reflection...

Caught this really nice reflection in the windows of the building next to where I work.

It was a beautiful day, but the fog had just started to encroach, and about 15 mintes after this picture, I suspect it was gray and cold.

Geeks' wet dream...

24 nodes. Dual, dual core processors in each node. That's 96 cores of pure processing power. All joined in a beautiful Beowulf cluster.

Tim Allen would be SO grunting right now.

This thing was built to do some SERIOUS number crunching. A 10 hour process will now finish in 7 minutes or less.

How NOT to treat your laptop...

I got a call from one of our remote sales folks complaining that thier laptop was a piece of sh** and that they were being hampered in doing their work. They implied that our staff was incompetent because they had "sent it back 3 times already, to get viruses removed".

So, I told this person to send it to me, and I would replace it with a new one.

This is what they sent me. Note the COMPLETE lack of any kind of padding or packing. They literally shoved it into a fedex box and sent it along.

Ok, so I pulled it out of the box and opened it up. OMG ... This thing needed to be put in an autoclave before anyone touches it without gloves. There was crap spilled on the keyboard, and look at the dust on the computer. It's hideous! As I said in the e-mail to their manager (and my director, who forwarded it on to the VP of Sales), the joystick-mouse looked like something my cat coughed up. This is a $2000 laptop, less than 16 months old. NO WONDER THEY COULDN'T GET ANYTHING DONE, THEY COULDN'T SEE THE SCREEN FROM THE DIRT!!!

Texture Tuesday...

As you may have noticed, Tuesdays don't seem to be really good image days. I tend to get those "late-night-find-something-around-the-house" pictures.

So here is a variety of textures -- rice grains, coffee beans, "pin-head" oatmeal, and large-crystal sugar granules.

Save the Rosemary!!

This is NOT how rosemary is supposed to look. I've had this rosemary bush for 7 years. It's been an important source of flavor for my Rosemary Chicken, my Turkey-Potato Lyonnaise, and many other wonderful recipies. It's given much of itself to us, and now it's in trouble. Thinking it may just be root-bound, we moved it into a bigger pot. Now, we are just waiting to see if it turns back to it's verdant, lucious green.

It's kinda like nursing a sick pet back to health.

Wish us luck.

Painting a big wall...

Huge wall -- almost 300 square feet. Luckily I had some help.

A Rose, by any other name...

Or, in this case, by that very name. This was part of a $4.99 Trader Joe's bouquet. Gawd, I love that store!

Pigeons fly...

Surprise! If you shout at a pigeon, he'll take off and fly. As you might have some recollection from previous posts, I'm a bit of a flight freak.

I saw this guy walking along the street in front of my house and thought he might be a pretty picture in flight.

Depth at the pier...

This is the pier at the Oyster Point Marina.

I chose this picture because of the depth of field. The camera picks up both the entire length of the pier AND the mountains on the other side of the bay.

Small, emergency, backup camera...

Dave Barry, the humorist behind such classics as "Dave Barry Turns 40" and "Big Trouble" used to write, in his daily column, all the time about his "large main dog, Earnest, and his small, emergency backup dog, Zippy". This turn of phrase never stopped making me smile and chuckle (an indication of what an easy target I am for humor).

Anyway, we were shopping today in Walgreens, and I came across this beauty. At 2" x 1 1/4" x 1/2", it's quite the little guy. The pictures it takes, while not quite up to the quality of the mighty D70, are still pretty not terrible. See the picture below for an example.



Alas, this petite picture taker has one HUGE drawback -- there are no Mac drivers for it. I have to download on a PC (or VMWARE Fusion session running XP), then transfer to the Mac to get the pictures into iPhoto. Quelle dommage! Quelle Horreur!

Yet, back the other day, when my D70 batteries died as I tried to take the Redwood picture, this might have been nice to have.

Retaining Wall...

The wife looked over the pics I took today, and she felt like this one had something -- she wasn't sure what it was, she just thought it was interesting.

It's a retaining wall being built next door to my office.

I think that it's the texture of the building blocks that caught her eye.

Rivulets and drops...

Today's texture is falling and flowing water. Shot in the sink against a backdrop of a flexible cutting board.

Gotta go, now I'm committed to do the dishes!

Sun Dog ...

This is a phenomenom that I have always heard called a "Sun Dog". It is sorta like a rainbow, only it forms near sunset. There are always 2, equadistant from the setting sun.

I like this because the sundog beautifully illuminated the cloud. I also like the contrast between the foreground tree and the brilliantly lit sky.