Published: July 5th, 2010
Posted in Bay Area, Food, Holidays, New Friends | 1 Comment »
Published: April 25th, 2010
Posted in New Friends | 3 Comments »
Published: December 26th, 2009
If there’s one gift that won’t wind up in a landfill in three months, it’s pictures of the grandkids.


Posted in New Friends, Photography, Shameless Self-Promotion | Comments Off
Published: November 29th, 2009
Posted in Bay Area, New Friends | 2 Comments »
Published: October 29th, 2009
Yes, I’m still taking pictures, and Kelly is still volunteering at Xenophon, where we get to hang out with the nicest imaginable kids, horses and volunteers. Wonderful.
Posted in Bay Area, Family, New Friends, Photography | 3 Comments »
Published: August 4th, 2009
The normal state of affairs as up to eight birds jostle for a seat on one of the two perches.

Posted in Loft Life, New Friends | 4 Comments »
Published: July 30th, 2009

A couple of these buggers probably eat half of the seed I put out.
Anyway, I had no idea how pretty doves are until I saw this shot.
Posted in Loft Life, New Friends, Photography | 2 Comments »
Published: July 29th, 2009

I mostly prefer birds that live outside to those that will live indoors with us – forever, it seems.
Here’s one I shot through the living room window.
Posted in Bay Area, Loft Life, New Friends, Photography | 2 Comments »
Published: July 20th, 2009
Posted in Bay Area, Holidays, New Friends | Comments Off
Published: July 18th, 2009
I’ll admit it – I’ve been spending time on Facebook in the last week. (OK – I’m a little slow when it comes to adopting certain technologies.) I’m conducting a little research to see why this social networking site is so popular. What’s that? 200 million active users??? I’m slowly beginning to understand its appeal. It’s dead simple for anyone to “publish” their thoughts and whereabouts. It’s easy to share images and video clips. Grampa can see the latest image of the kids, we can all see what our friends ate for dinner. Long-lost friends can be located – and then (thankfully) just as easily removed from our Facebook feeds forever.
The question I seek to answer concerns the value of time spent on Facebook. I’m sure I have the world’s greatest friends and am subscribed to all the right groups, but still, less than one entry in twenty posts leads me to anything memorable or worthwhile. The rest of the time is well, I won’t say “wasted”, but something close to that. Sort of like the time spent watching YouTube Featured Videos – 20% entertainment, 80% annoyance.
Another problem with Facebook can be blamed on Twitter culture. Too much of Facebook content consists of 140 or fewer character rants or blurbs. Facebook and its ilk have sucked a lot of blogs dry as ex-bloggers now devote too much of their time to sharing iPhone snapshots of their pets.
Whenever I hear something described as the latest craze in social networking I’m reminded of the CB radios we all had to own in the seventies. We all loved imagining all those other CB’ers clinging to our words as we revealed the location of the smokey in the westbound lane. What power! What fun! Eventually though, CB channels became “intolerably noisy“, and the fad died out.
So, is Facebook a fad? Yes, but it will be supplanted by something similar. Intolerably noisy? Guess that depends on your friends. Does this sort of application have a role in the workplace? Most definitely!
Bottom line? Would I recommend Facebook? Yes, actually, I would! For most people – especially those who never will have a blog – it’s better than nothing.
Posted in Computing, New Friends | 2 Comments »
Published: June 1st, 2009
It’s been a while since we’ve seen Lhotse. She’s growing up fast.


Posted in Bay Area, New Friends | 3 Comments »
Published: May 7th, 2009
Andrew caught this fantastic shot of Sophie and Ursula on their first visit to Disneyland.

thedude and Kellster like the shot so much that we made a magnet out of it and hung it on our refrigerator. That’s saying quite a lot, because like at least nine other people on planet Earth, thedude also hates refrigerator magnets!
Posted in Contributed, New Friends | 1 Comment »