My Mountain Trail

Pre-Storm Beauty

Friday, November 20th, 2009

They have been predicting storms for the last couple of days, but the weather just didn’t roll in.  Until today. 

Yesterday I flew home from Philadelphia after completing three morning meetings from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m.  It took me all day to get home because of the FAA computer problems (or whatever it was).  When I say all day, I mean I arrived at the airport at 11:15 a.m. Eastern Time and walked in the door at home at 11:58 p.m. Pacific Time.  All day.

Since I have been getting up so early all week, I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep when Lori got up to start her day.  So I got up and went for a run.  It felt great to be running on the mountain, and I managed to beat the storm — and even get a decent picture of San Francisco Bay to boot.  It started raining shortly after I finished my run, and it has been a blustery day since.

The predict better weather for the weekends.  I hope so.  I finally bought some crab pots, and it would be great to give them a try this weekend.  We’ll see!

I Hope this Be More – Behmor 1600

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

The picture is of coffee roasting in my new Behmor 1600 home coffee roaster. Mmm, good!

A few weeks ago I gave up on my iRoast 2 coffee roaster. The replaced power base has been shutting down early for a couple of months. In fact, it only worked right for a month or two. I could get it to complete the roast if I continuously emptied the chaff while the roast was in progress. Finally, even that constant attention was not enough. And I gave up.

I could have called and requested a third iRoast power base, since I have about two months left in the warranty. But what is the point? I have wasted so much time fighting the other two units, it was time to try something else.

After researching my options, mostly at Sweet Maria’s, I decided to go with the Behmor 1600. It is reasonably priced and roasts a lot of coffee in comparison to the competing products. So, I went for it. So far I have roasted three batches of 400g each with not problems. I’m still learning the machine characteristics, but I can tell you that it roasts some fine coffee even with my limited experience. And, I can tell you, it is a joy to be able to roast a whole week’s worth of coffee in one batch.

Autumn

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

The last few days on Mt. Tam have seemed a lot like Autumn, and even a bit like Winter. On Monday we had a “gully warsher” as my OKFree friends might say. Oh, okay, I might say it too. Anyway, we had about 3″ of rain in no time flat, and all the trails turned into rushing streams — not to mention the small pond in the basement. Then things cleared up some and we had the crystal clear atmosphere that you only get after a good storm.

Even better (at least around here) is when you get a good storm and there is residual cloud and fog cover. This picture of San Francisco shows some of that going on as I ran on Mt. Tamalpais on Friday. It was beautiful, which is normal but always enjoyable. This picture was taken last Friday after the big storm (5″) on Wednesday.

This next picture was taken along Rock Springs trail, just below the Mountain Theater. The red leaves are on poison oak, which just flames all over the place this time of year. If someone didn’t know what poison oak looks like, all they have to do is come visit the mountain in late October and look for red leaves. THAT is what a poison oak leaf looks like.

Next up is some more fog as the sun set on Monday evening. It was glorious indeed.

Now I am in Pennsylvania, and it is Autumn here too. And the weather is warm. I doubt that will last much longer. Here is a picture of a playground and trees from across the street from the company I am working with.

Travel Tales

Friday, October 16th, 2009

My Kindle DX really let me down this evening. Here’s the story:

I have been in Philadelphia this week and am traveling home now (this was posted after arriving home). The weather wasn’t good in Pennsylvania so we were delayed a couple of hours by our late-arriving inbound airplane. Not fun, but understandable. Since I have been on a PHP/Javascript/Wordpress learning adventure for the last few months, I decided to download a new book on my Kindle for the ride home. Something about moving from coding to software development. Yeah, pretty geeky stuff.

Anyway, I bought the book, it downloaded to my Kindle, and I headed onto the airplane. Once in my seat I decided to log onto the internet using the Kindle’s browser. I figured I would do a quick search on google and then settle in for the plane-ride and read home. About 5 minutes into the very slow surf on Google, the kindle reset itself. And deleted all my books. Not good. But I have a few minutes to try to re-download the new book and a couple of others.

Long story short, I could not download any archived books. I could shop on the Amazon store, and even buy a book (now I own a book I don’t need and can’t read), but nothing would download. I am not happy.

All is not lost of course. Now I have the opportunity to complain about Kindle and upload it to my blog. I have a javascript book I can read. I can play around w/ some programming ideas. I have some photos to look at that I need to upload to Flickr. But my Kindle is in the doghouse, and Amazon is in the doghouse.

But wait! I just turned the Kindle on again to look at it’s blank face in dismay. Now everything is back! Great! But, I’m still annoyed at the scare, and now I have a book I don’t need. Oh well, just the cost of a programming/development problem on Amazon’s end I guess. Better start reading the developer book… And Kindle is still in my doghouse for a while. Bye bye!