So earlier today, I went for a walk at Carkeek Park.

I took some photos. Here’s the trail leading up the creek. About halfway up I saw a lot of these flowers, which I think are a berry of some kind. Given the berry next to the flower.

About midway up this particular trail, there’s an orchard of apple trees that came with the property when it was donated to the park system. It’s maintained by volunteers, and produces real actual apples. And here’s one of the trees.

While I was taking that picture, a dog ran up to me, barking. He was mostly curious and a little startled by my bright clothes (fuscia sleeve shirt over orange striped T. what can I say; it’s spring). The owner called after him… “Bud! Bud! Stop that!” No result, of course. She explained that he was a nice dog, and was just a little young. I bent over to let Bud sniff my hand. He was a little wary, and ran when I laughed.

And since I was squatting, I was in a position to see this picture. So thanks, Bud!

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

In my years here I can’t figure out why Seattle is so wonderful during spring. Is it because the rains have brought so much nutrient to the plants that they explode with booming energy as they wave their flowery genitals in the air? Or is it that you’ve spent all summer under overcast skies in miserable drizzle, and finally, you remember what the sun looks like?

An Annotated Manifesto for Growth

Presented here not so much because I’m a design geek (although I kind of am), but because I really like to see this kind of bubble burst.

This is one of our new housemates, Cocoa. She likes to stick her nose out my second-story window and smell things.

One of the cool things about having a skylight over where I sit is that I can watch the moon race by overhead.

Were I to try and watch it waltz across the whole night sky, it wouldn’t even seen to move. But the speed with which she races the distance between one side of the skylight and the other seems quite dizzying. Ok, maybe not dizzying, exactly. But still somewhat faster than you’d think.

Quorn

I went for a long drive today, to the Olympic mountains. Hurricane Ridge was my destination.

No pictures, because it wasn’t a picture-taking day; it was a go and spend time alone in a car day. I have those from time to time.

I’m in a frame of mind where no matter what I’m doing, I think I should be doing something else more productive. Like, instead of sitting at the ‘puter writing a program I should be mowing the lawn. Or if I’m mowing the lawn, there are a million computer programming ideas in my head and I should go deal with them. That sort of thing.

So when I got to Hurricane Ridge, I fell asleep in the car. I felt a little tired, probably due to the altitude (the road to the ridge goes up from sea level to something like 8,000 ft. in 20 miles or so), and stretched out in the back seat. I slept for an hour and dreamed rich, detailed dreams that tied all the concerns of my life together into once nice tidy package and presented it to me. I can’t remember how the dream went, specifically, just a sense of symmetry while waking up.

I woke up an hour after parking the car, and had a moment of disorientation.. Where the hell was I? Oh yeah. The top of some of the most beautiful mountains on the planet. Poke my head up high enough to see out the window. Surrounded by a barrier wall of faraway mountain peaks, guarding against all that’s ugly in man. Below the snow line, seemingly tiny trees making a velvet texture draped gently over some granite form. Wind whistling in various nooks and crannies of the car. Roll down the window. The silence of snowbanks melting onto a parking lot.

In a month or so, this ridge will be mostly free of snow, and there will be people up here. It’s a popular destination for tourists and locals alike. Go to the top of the mountains and gaze and take pictures and feed the little birds and watch the other tourists.

I can’t help but think of the time when my parents came to visit and we came up here. There’s a mile or so of paved trail that follows the ridge. Imagine me and my dad taking turns pushing my mom in her wheelchair down a paved path that’s right exactly on the ridge of a seriously high mountain range. Nothing at all to stop an out of control wheelchair from zooming right down into the valley… Mom was up for it. We asked her and asked her… “You cool with this?” She was. We got her back safely.

So I’m trying to figure out if anyone out there has used HotDispatch.com. It’s a sort of clearing-house service for connecting people with technical questions with people who can answer them. I figure Xanga’s not the best place to ask, but what the hell.

Released an update to a REALbasic plug-in yesterday.

Not that Xanga’s a thriving Mac developer community, but…

Son Of Still More Noise III: The Rebirth

Shades of The Judys… Atom and His Package.

I found this guy on Gnutella. He has a song called ‘Anarchy Means I Litter.’