A territorial struggle... ~ April 30, 2006

Alas, I had to bring in all the powers of my superior intellect to evict these hard-working insects. I called the "bee professionals who advised that since the bees were already in the wall, it was time to use poison.

Dang. ...I like bees. sniff ...well, liked.

My moment of Zen... ~ April 26, 2006

I have had this bicycle since 1987.... we have a lot of miles under us.

Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here... ~ April 22, 2006

Tedious, detail-oriented, isolated... 'tis my technical-writin' lot in life. But who am I to complain?

The bicycle was a great idea (but I forget my camera). Nevertheless, I put nine miles on the road during lunch which was a great change of pace: now I can actually get into town from my work (which provides a "bike cage" so I can leave it at work which is, as your remember because I keep pointing it out, fifty-seven miles from my front door).

The workplace is desperate for a technical writer. Will they be desperate enough to give me a four-day work week?

Meanwhile..., history and current events run on and I'm stuck ...following obtuse procedures to track the progress of our work....

Now I'm there... ~ April 19, 2006

So, despite the fact that I (and a score or more of compatriots) are keeping our cars off the road (my own commute is 57 miles..., the trip back from Goleta is taking about two hours.

Tomorrow, I take my bicycle. Luckily, my new job has a bike-cage in which I can lock my bicycle up during the day and overnight. So, I'll be able to roam a little farther during my lunch-time excursions. I've got a four-and-a-quarter-mile walk that gets me reasonably close to the country. And those mountains north of Goleta do look pretty in the sunshine.

Here I am waiting to be picked up about 4:20 p.m.:

Still here... ~ April 12, 2006

Wow, it's the twelfth of April... already. The two 90-minute bus commute (out and back) really is a change of pace. I've got to figure out how to make some of that time more productive. Still, one can daydream:

First poppies... ~ April 8, 2006

Eclipse... ~ April 6, 2006

In one of the most curious ratios of the universe, our moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, which is 400 times farther away.

And in the coincidental clustering of random events, those two astronomical bodies end up in a line (along with earth) every few months.

The bus... ~ April 4, 2006

...is a great place to listen to melancholy music. I wish I had more to say, but 124 miles a day, round trip commuting takes it out of a guy. Then there's the mind-numbing quality of cut-and-paste of foreign language phrases and paragraphs (some 14 times over) that's just.... well, crud.

Time to listen to the Holes soundtrack again.

Information forthcoming ~ April 4, 2006

New job's a hassle and far away....

They say there's a special place in hell for technical writers. But now I know....

Technical writing is a special kind of hell.