Observations From The Edge:The (b)log

The Update Log

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Please check the Calendar for links to the park sites, and of course my future plans. Blue underlined bits are links to something; usually a PDF file describing an event. Thanks for visiting!

2010(29) Tue Jul20 22:48PM; Wow. 852 CDs into the slot on this macintosh. Digitizing my life. And the CD collection was simply low hanging fruit. Already reasonably compact by nature; the collection spans 9 200 CD wallets, where each CD takes two sleeves, one for the booklet, and one for the CD. There are a few anomalies; but fewer than what I'd expect for such a collection. I suppose I should put the catalog up on the website; this will allow my guests to select their music in advance if they so desire. I'm time shifting my house to determine what the right thing to have done now will have been at various event horizons in the future. There's that point where I want to stop rolling and settle back down in the house in Leucadia. If there's that point. If there's that point I know it is at the very least 8 years from now. (Man it is so tempting to write stuff like: "at the very very very least" but that would be wrong.) Will the Lemens stay that long? Will they want to stay longer? Things to contemplate as they can potentially impact the choice of materials and choices of space utilization. But hey, a small step, ultimately cedeing one more shelfs worth of space to the tenants...

2010(29) Tue Jul20 12:16PM; Another day in the land of gnatcatcher...

2010(28) Wed Jul14 15:35PM; Updated the plant list to include common names.

2010(26) Sun Jul 4 15:39PM; Food. Eating. All of that. Cooking, eating and cleaning up afterward is one of those things that's best done as a team...

2010(25) Thu Jun24 12:48PM; Argh. I want to add a "Keithness" page too...

2010(24) Thu Jun17 00:52AM; Wore Tevas for the first time in I can't remember when. Internet accedd highly restricted.

2010(24) Mon Jun14 21:00PM; no wifi tonight afterall. Worked on Bob's poetry book instead Maybe better...

2010(23) Wed Jun 9 16:58PM; Did a quick patch to the homepage to add the link to the plantlist so I could be in compliance with what I'm talking about at City Hall tonight.

2010(21) Thu May27 22:51PM; And then, I thought I took them out... I guess it was just the hospital images that got censored.

Anyway, the point is I need to get back to this space; even if it's just writing about my daily walk, whatever that happens to be, and there needs to be a daily walk. And instead, I'm sitting in front of an antique MacIntosh PowerPC G3. Opening files using FullWrite Professional; copying the body text, pasting into a MicrosoftWord file, write the file, and send the file across the wire to my laptop; where I can open it with OpenOffice and eventually do the right thing. Pilates kicked my butt this morning; down dog and plank - yikes I'm out of shape.

I had originally thought to sit and write about how I miss the conversation with Bob; or maybe a poem about oil. Now I'm sidetracked...

2010(19) Sun May16 00:03AM; Pondering: should I include the nude Bob photos in the slideshow?

2010(18) Sat May 8 06:40AM; PDF Log entry for Visiting Las Vegas

2010(16) Wed Apr21 15:39PM; PDF Log entry for Placing the Stone

2010(15) Mon Apr12 21:39PM; Now, there's a change to the homepage for ya. That and, Jason's on his way home. I think he said he'll pull in to Oceanside around about 4AM. Jason. There's a character sketch.

2010(15) Mon Apr12 14:56PM; Photo from just outside Henry Coe State Park:

2010(13) Sun Apr 4 12:26PM; OK, so Amanda (B) and Marsha (L) got me going, and for some reason it being Easter morning, I'm really sharply present to the absence of Bob. Maybe in part to his dedication to his family to attend the Christian driven events, attending in his own style. I love his family, but don't feel that same pull to celebrate these events with them; if anything, these events draw me to want to be in Austin, with what is now the roots of my family.

I digress; not like that's news. Amanda commented on the need for a soul mate, I responded with: to have had, and to have lost, albeit a pain no human should have to endure, to leave this existence without having had at anytime such a connection with another human being; that is my definition of a true tragedy.

I digress; not like that's news. Amanda commented on the need for a soul mate, I responded with: to have had, and to have lost, albeit a pain no human should have to endure, to leave this existence without having had at anytime such a connection with another human being; that is my definition of a true tragedy.

And indeed, where to find, and then, where to find AGAIN? and so how does that not start me down the rabbit hole; even though he firest thing I declared on FB this morning was that I wasn't engaging in any rabbit egg hunts. Silly me. I seem to have a way of doing this to myself.

What a cool thing I had with that Bob guy. We were a team, and worked well together. I can certainly now see where I was holding back, and failing to give in to the whole partner/team thing; but then one of the many facets of that relationship was the fact that the both of us are rugged individualists with a personal presence and style not commonly found. And it's the last three words in that last sentence that Marsha got rolling with me.

There were certainly a lot of things about Bob that caused me questions; I can remember several very heated discussions, call them arguements if you must; never at any time did I question his love for me. I certainly questioned his motivation in a broad spectrum of things, as it were, from the bedroom to the boardroom. I can recall being more infuriated with him than I thought possible with another human being; on multiple occasions. The converse was also true. I recall several events where either something that I said or did caused him great anguish. Only he truely knows this, but I believe he saw through my faults to never question my love for him.

I am very clear and certain that where we were at the end was complete, albeit unfinished. I knew he knew I loved him and would hold him to his very last breath; as I had thought he would be for me. In reading his journals, I now see myself in him, and I feel that he found himself in Pauli's space in the hospital bed. I'm really looking forward to finally getting to know Pauli in the next phase, whenever it is that I join the ancestral mind.

Ok, enough rambling. If you read to this point, you must drop me an email.

2010(13) Sun Apr 4 12:25PM; That's better. Fixed the timestamper. Task that'll never happen: normalize the old data.

Wed Mar 31 21:37:00 PST 2010; ...and just now noticing the extent of the bruising....

Thu Mar 25 06:00:30 PST 2010; Fall out of bed...

Fri Mar 19 15:00:15 PST 2010; April now has calendar entries that represent a plan for heading to NorCal...

Sun Mar 7 15:54:40 PST 2010; Trail Photos Black Rock Canyon - Boundary Trail East

Thu Mar 4 13:58:52 PST 2010; Oh yeah, working on catching up; and planning some stuff for the future. You may catch a glimpse of the planning process, if I'm working on it, by looking at the calendar for April. Until otherwise indicated, future schedule information is for rough planning purposes only; please contact me to make solid plans.

Thu Mar 4 13:56:33 PST 2010; PDF Log entry for Notes from the Joshua Tree Valentine

Sun Feb 21 21:37:09 PST 2010; A much smaller file (16M); slideshow from Joshua Tree Valentine. Hey. I'm still learning how to drive this thing. iPhoto is a completely new world to me...

Sun Feb 21 21:22:12 PST 2010; Slideshow from Mexico. Two choices Huge file (193M) or the slightly smaller Large file (136M).

Tue Feb 16 08:56:47 PST 2010; for anybody watching, there will come a debrief from the last couple trips in a couple days.

Tue Jan 19 00:19:15 PST 2010; Reworked the "Parks" page to be an XML driven table. What's there is only a sketch of the data; but hey, it's more readable, and ultimately more usable in the long run.

Sat Jan 9 14:20:41 PST 2010; Wow. I don't think I've been offnet that long since Bob died. And my poor damaged iPhone fostered my addiction...
I'll redo these titles in a few, but here's the infrastructure:

Carlsbad Caverns Big Room Photos
2010.01.03.pdf
2010.01.06.pdf
2010.01.07.pdf

Thu Dec 31 2009; The LBJ Chronicles.

Tue Dec 29 19:24:38 PST 2009; Shopping at Whole Foods.

Sun Dec 27 18:38:35 PST 2009; reworked my return trip again; got rid of the huge travel days. Added a stop in Guadalupe Mountains NP.
The full route home as planned today: Road Time approx 35 hours 285 miles more than driving direct; and about 15 hours more travel time. And a zillion more times the fun.

Sun Dec 27 16:58:32 PST 2009; Ooops; my link to the LBJ site was to the WRONG LBJ site! Yikes, I'm not going to DC next week!

Fri Dec 25 17:15:16 PST 2009; Christmas photos.

Dec 19 PM 2009; Having arrived in Austin, this will be my last project entry for the year. Time to be with family. Time to enjoy a few special moments with the next generation. I'll be working on my schedule for 2010; and beyond; minimal log entries here; commentary on facebook as always. Here the PDF Log entry for The San Antonio Missions National Historical Park

Dec 17 AM 2009; PDF Log entry Fort Davis National Monument

Open the above image at 6MB or open the above image at 56MB

Dec 16 AM 2009; PDF Log entry Chamizal National Memorial

Dec 15 AM 2009; brief PDF Log entry City of Rocks

Mon Dec 14 10:54:20 PST 2009; More calendar adjustments; I really don't want to spend the night anywhere near El Paso... Chamizal is going to have to be a "drive-by" visit; I'll find my overnight spot by talking with rangers there. A shout today to the super friendly rangers at Fort Bowie/Chiricahua; thanks for all the great clues, even though the Motherlode didn't have the big rolls today. Yesterday's hike, marks Fort Bowie NM as complete.

Sun Dec 13 AM PST 2009; Read about Casa Grande Ruins NM and then look at the pictures of the Casa Grande Ruins Interpretive Signage.

And that takes another one off the list; three down, 379 to go.

Sat Dec 12 17:54:40 PST 2009; Ooops. I missed a key turn on the route to Tonto NM and wound up heading for Casa Grande instead. Camping tonight at Picacho Peak State Park; where it is easily 20 degrees warmer than I've been all week! Details to come in a PDF log entry when I get to internet access. This log coming from iPhone on a good solid 3G connection, as I-10 is just across the valley.

Sat Dec 12 09:47 MST 2009; Having a HECK of a time uploading the Katherine Mine PDF. Hope it's not that hard for y'all to read. It's a great document if I do say so myself. Calendar updated and adjusted to my current reality. Found a wifi cafe along my route to Tonto, just as I was leaving Prescott.

Dec 10 2009; calendar adjustments partial. Read all about the Katherine Mine

Dec 9 2009; PDF Log entry (large, 2 photos) Freezing

Dec 7/8 2009; PDF Log entry Hitting the Road

Mon Dec 7 21:02:24 PST 2009; Whoohoo! Calendar updates. Traveltime now has a link to a route-map page. All National Parks mentioned are links to their homepage. Tentative January timeline in place.

Fri Dec 4 18:07:47 PST 2009; Wheeee! The parklist is up on the parks page. It's not pretty, but it's data!

Mon Nov 30 17:04:26 PST 2009; I'm sticking a "Bob Nanninga Save the Planet Collection" (slogan causing him to stir beneath the ground) into my traveling hardbound copy of Tabithas's Garden; and thinking it's been a while since I've put anything in the blog, and did, afterall spend quite a bit of time picking my path to Austin. As can be seen on the December (and soon January) calendar pages. I'm visiting various friends along the route; if you're along the route and we have not spoken, we should!

I'm also going to need to get out of the habit of editing this file directly on the server; especially where my connection to the web is tenuous at best....

Note on reading the calendar. TT=2:24 translates into "expected travel time from morning location to evening location" which dictactes, pretty much the structure of the day.

Fri Nov 20 21:38:30 PST 2009; Found an off-line logfile needing posting. Sigh. I'll get this down soon.

23 October 2009 Friday RV Shopping

The choices are mind boggling. Both in the insane number of options; and in the sorts of things that I would expect to see as options, but missing. For a "small" unit (at or under 25' in length), there are essentially two options for the "frame" "the diesel Mercedes/Chrysler Sprinter" and the gas Ford.

History buffs will reminisce about now historic other vehicles, but the new stuff is all pretty much one or the other. At least in what I was offered to view at what is touted to be the largest RV show in California. What is available on those frames varies widely. From some very tight but clearly efficient van conversions, where the essential panel van is transformed inside to a roving living space; to a micro version of the huge motor-home units with rooms that pop-out on all sides.

Within this latter scenario, there are about as many variations available as there are variations possible. Bathroom/kitchen placement varies greatly, the number of seats, beds, size of kitchen counter, sink, etc. etc. etc. Mind boggling.

And along with it, goes the price tag. Which changed dramatically as the day went by. One unit I was particularly taken with went from $74,950 in the morning to $64,599 later in the afternoon. And the "MSRP" sticker in the window: $92,000.

==> Fast forward 11/15/2009

Bought it. Picked it up, drove it home; Chanterelle has accepted it as "home" and at this very moment, I sit in front of Dr. John's house in Morongo Valley, being buffeted by the wind, thinking that this is one of those moments that Marge Mitchell talked about. Times where I become painfully aware of Bob's absence. Not like that isn't every moment of every day for me; but it becomes specially poignant when I'm hanging out somewhere where we'd be hanging out; he'd be reading a book, stalking wildlife with a camera, or making lunch. Of course, after having smoked a rollie to prepare for said relaxation event. I took a lovely "stroll in the park" with Dr. John this morning; "stroll" being a 4 mile loop hike; "park" being Joshua Tree National Park. Most specifically, we took the loop from the Blackrock Canyon backcountry board, one mile along the "California Riding and Hiking Trail" to the "Fault Trail" and back to the board along the "Short Loop Trail" elevation gain: 520'. This loop offers some highly panoramic views across the desert cities (Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree); as well as some lovely backcountry vistas replete with desert flora and fauna. This trail hit my "strenuous" category, not from the length or climb, but from the fact that it is shared with horses; and is a very soft sandy trail. For my hamstrings, this adds a difficulty factor approaching several degrees of incline. Sorry there are no photos to share today; I still need to buy a camera; and to be honest, the hike was spontaneous. And this very moment is a beautiful thing. I'm sifting through the remains of the data from my poor Palm Treo device; watching an incredible sunset out the back window of the Enterprise, and my science officer is purring quietly at my side. SOMA FM is providing the GrooveSalad soundtrack via an app on my iPhone...

Tue Nov 10 17:28:39 PST 2009; OK! The TV/monitors in the motorhome make for a decent second monitor. Now to figure out how to make the cabling tidy...

Mon Nov 9 22:22:53 PST 2009; OK... Now I have 412 of the website "home pages" associated with the 380 parks listed in the passport. The remaining still require some consideration.

Mon Nov 9 18:46:33 PST 2009; Pretty much settled in to the Enterprise now; Chantrelle is practicing kitty olympics inside the RV. I view this as a good sign; she's adopted this as our "house" and when we warp through space and time to different planets she'll be able to take shore duty. It should be interesting to hear what she has to say about the other worlds out there. I know she's pretty upset that the home she grew up in has been occupied by alien forces, and that theres a singularly calculating old cat holding down the throne room. "White cats. They always get their humans to protect them fiercely; in fact I can tell that she's got my last bearded monkey under her spell."

It's going to take a while to shift into Chanterelle's point of view; but I think I can see it pretty well. So, there's a polychrome of topics I could/should/would be blogging on, but most strictly to the point; correlating from the Parks Passport book against the website; 380 Parks in the Passport book (two are double-listed); yet 465 subsites on the National Park website. 85 bits of research to do.

ADD/ADHD is your friend. Well, was in my case. But he's dead now. Sigh. Yup, I'm still pretty messed up sad about that; but, hey, whatteryagonnado?

Sorry Rob; no pictures in this blog entry. Pictures are more of a facebook thing right now until I get the whole camera thing resolved. Oh, yeah, that would be me, I'm the one that needs to go out and buy a camera.

I'm just afraid that Chanterelle's going to freak out when we take off for the first time; thinking about a weekend in beautiful Morongo Valley.

SAT NOV 7 2009; Nativescaping at Chez Condrs. Escondido, Carol Waddell celebrates 60 yesrs. I think I must be agoraphibic. (iPhone entry)

Mon Nov 2 2009; Man, it's difficult to get around to writing a note here. There are so many things to do, and only one of me to do so many of them. Here I thought I got trained by the master of delegation; and I'm not seeming to accomplish this task particularly well. Mmmm. So; a few notes, picked up the "Enterprise" on Saturday; Chanterelle is quickly taking to the space, and in fact, found the perfect spot to vomit this morning. I love my cat; and I love the fact that she gets excited, overeats, and subsequently vomits. Last night I experimented with the space heater in the rig, and it set off the fire alarm; I now know both work.

Wed Oct 28 18:11 PST 2009; Yesterday, gathered the list of NPS sites; 462 lines; mmmm, 383 parks in my little blue passbook guide to the system. This should prove to be an interesting correllation. This will be the underlying data for the reservation engine. Progress.

Oct 27, 1945 My sweet parents walked down the aisle.

Tue Oct 13 7AM PDT 2009; Six years ago. Daddy went off to join Mummy and my beloved brother.

Tue Oct 11 PM 2009; Wild Animal Park hike. Beautiful day, many rare animal sightings: Prarie Dogs, high interaction with Big Horn Sheep, two tigers, two lions, two lemurs. Lots and lots of pairs today. Somehow it's like the anti-spring; animals are pairing up in preparation for hunkering down for the winter. Is this a clue?

Sun Oct 11 10:32:32 PDT 2009; Updated the welcome page.

Wed Oct 7 21:03:58 PDT 2009; WHOO HOO! I found the old site flash file, the flashback link on the homepage NOW WORKS!

Tue Oct 6 2009; Updated the baseline calendar to include links to something interesting relating to each of the items in the baseline calendar. The item will show up on the calendar in green if you have not visited it; it turns blue after you visit. Man, that was a lot more work than I anticipated. If there's something you think of that should be in the baseline calendar, just let me know, I'm happy to make the calendar more robust. It's entertaining to find my calendar occuring in Google searches for stuff I'm looking for to update into the calendar.

Tue Sep 29 20:44:21 PDT 2009; Various tweaks on the website. Pulled the articles over from Bob's machine, and am beginning to consider the task of normalizing them into a consumable format...

Sat Sep 26 11:30 PDT 2009; Researching the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument I discover that this national monument was created by an act of Congress October 24, 2000. One of our newest parks; so new that the National Park Service website doesn't have a page for it yet!

Sep 21 - Sep 24 2009; PDF Log entry (with pictures and text!) Joshua Tree National Park

Fri Sep 18 11:18:59 PDT 2009; Spent the day celebrating my namesakes birthday at the Magic Kingdom. I think I have the most fun there when taking someone who's never been on rides like "Tower of Terror" and "Midway Mania" - with the most minimal of explanations giving the greatest of impacts to the ride. Keith was certainly unprepared for the elevator ride. He pointed out that one of us should have been wearing a pedometer to measure just how far it was that we walked. We walked ALL DAY (well, mostly, we did stop for the occasional adult beverage and snack...). Got my annual pass renewed. Anyone heading to spend the day at Disney should notify me; if I can, I'll come play for a while.

Mon Sep 14 14:59:55 PDT 2009; I twiddled a little of this, a little of that. Trying to get myself wrapped around building and managing the database of hikes. I'm pretty certain I can adapt the calendar tool to my whims and will; but we'll see, eh?

Wed Sep 9 22:20:03 PDT 2009; Small format change to the log, hope this helps. Someone needs to remind me to archive off the old stuff when the page starts getting to big to load. Thinking about the design of the database to capture all these notes.

Wed Sep 9 10:16:31 PDT 2009; Home! Settled in at the cafe to soak up one of Lori's incredible Latte's, and eat a "Bob Special" breakfast sandwich created by our very own Eleanor. And of course, catch up on the log entries from the past few days... More later, I'm low on battery!

Tue Sep 8 2009; Pinnacles National Monument. There are several excellent loop trails in this seemingly obscure National Monument. I learned here today the key difference between a Monument and a Park. A National Monument is declared into existence by the President. A National Park is created by an act of Congress. I learned from the ranger that Pinnacles, dedicated by Franklin Roosevelt, is working on getting Congress to designate them as a park. Now I need to learn WHY they would want that change... We hiked a loop trail "High Peaks" which is well named, as it winds through the very peaks of the Pinnacles. It took us just over 3 hours, a 5.3 mile loop with a 1,300 foot elevation gain (and, respectively, loss). The park brochure lists it as 3-5 hours. I can now use this as a benchmark. We were pretty much moving continuously with a few brief stops for breath catching and iPhone photography.

Mon Sep 7 2009; en route. Hiked to a pond on private property in Ukiah; overnighted at Hollister Hills State Vehicluar Recreation Area which was blissfully unoccupied Monday night of Labor Day weekend...

Sun Sep 6 11:08:39 PDT 2009; Day "en route" took a short hike into the Montgomery Woods State Reserve. This was an "extracurricular" activity, as the project does not include state lands. We were, however staying with friends in Ukiah, and had access to the Orr Springs hot springs, which is literally a stones throw from the Montgomery Woods. Montgomery Woods is sort of like Muir Woods without all the development. Tucked away to the east of Hwy101 off the north edge of Ukiah, Orr Springs Road is easy to miss; and the various "parking lots" along the way are actually each attached to something of notable interest. Earlier trips along this road failed to include either the State Reserve nor a visit to the hot springs; either of which could be considered a highlight. We spent this night completely off-grid miles down a dirt/gravel trail in a "project house" which makes my "project house" look like a polished piece of work.

Sat Sep 5 2009; Objective: Point Reyes Lighthouse; Point Reyes National Seashore. Drove out to the Lighthouse trail. Various slow starts, stops and lagging; we arrived at the gates to the steps at 4:28; well MOST of our party, as we waited for the group to coalesce, the gate became locked to entry. So, we turned around and headed for Drakes Bay; where we walked east on the beach, observing a bloom of some tiny crustacean, and the antics of a pair of ravens. From here, Jason and I parted with the San Francisco/Oakland based group. Jason and I camped at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park (space 19) for the night. We'd been driving through the fog for quite a while, tired, sun had set, it was time to find a stopping point for the night.

Fri Sep 4 2009; The Coastal Trail extends from the San Francisco Maritime National Park to Fort Funston. It would be possible to accompish this hike in a day, it would be a very full day, and one would need to start early. My group for this hike really isn't an early-start kind of gang. We actually hit the start of the trail around noon, and made it to Golden Gate Park just after dusk. Fort Mason and Fort Point are along the way, and each are potentially worth a full days attention each. Of note along the coastal trail: observe the Golden Gate bridge from the starting point. Watch out for cyclists as you traverse the trails at the bridge. As you pass the various batteries along the coastline in the Presido, observe the Golden Gate bridge diminishing in the distance. The trail is a little tough to follow in the spot where there's a small walk along city streets from Bakers Beach to Eagles Point. Simply pay attention to the maps, and you won't take a wrong turn. We avoided China Beach altogether. A $5 fee will gain you access to all the ships at the Maritime Museum; which would be a day well spent; it wasn't in our objective. One of the really great aspects to this region is the excellent public transport; we stayed with friends in Oakland, took BART to the Embarcadero station; the "F" surface street car to Fishermans Wharf; walked our legs off; dined at the "Park Chalet" at the westernmost edge of Golden Gate Park; walked two more blocks to the end of the "N-Judah" line, which we rode back to the Embarcadero Station to catch BART back across the bay. This whole trail is rarely more than two blocks away from a public transit stop of one sort or another; so if you decide you've had enough, you're not stuck with a 5 mile return walk...

Fri Sep 4 2009; Great day. Took BART from Oakland into San Francisco, transferred to the historic F train to Fishermans Wharf and walked around the edge to where Golden Gate Park meets the coast. Very beautiful, and a workout. Approximate distance 7 miles. Details to follow, I actually wanted to get the Wednesday log uploaded, and write a few brief notes.

Wed Sep 2; See 2009.09.02 Offline Log Entry.

Sat Aug 29 16:24:42 PDT 2009; Checking the caldendar from Hobbit Central, with Shen and Chanterelle.

Wed Aug 26 09:50:35 PDT 2009; at trailhead for sole trail at CABRILLO NM; at 10:50 I was back to the trailhead, but my phone had picked up a TELCEL signal, and AT&T sent me a nice message about the cost of making calls from Mexico... The 1.2 mile dead-end trail traverses some pristine coastal sage scrub, and as there were only two other groups I saw for the entire walk, the place was hopping with wildlife. Towhees, a scrub jay, tons of Western Fence lizards (bluebellies); one squirrel. There are many interpretive signs along the way discussing the habitat, and the history of the area; it's amazing to think that only 50 years ago we were intensely worried about the attacking Japanese. There are a few other short trails marked on the park map, mostly surrounding the display of the original lighthouse; with some pretty nice displays about lighthouse history. Jeff, the ranger at the front counter was very friendly but wasn't up to offering up much outside of acknowledging that the trail on the map is the only trail in the park. I posted the couple of photos I took with my iPhone on Facebook. I need to now think about how to organize THIS website to manage that information. Off to the drawing board!
Lessons learned: Bring: binoculars, lunch.

Fri Aug 21 16:28:12 PDT 2009; Far out! I'm ssh'd in from my brand new MacBook Pro, and it's a completely familiar environment. I doubt that many folk use the "Terminal" program in the "Utilities" folder of the "Applications" folder on their MacIntoshes; but I'm all over the thing... I can rcp files back and forth now. Man, it's like having a UNIX laptop with a cool GUI interface to get in the way...

19 August 2009, Work, work work... The cafe's been requiring a little more attention than I'd rather be giving it, but, there it is. Yesterday I mothballed (literally, para-dichlorobenzene) all my colorful shirts. Interestingly enough they JUST filled my hardsided suitcase. I plan, today, to mothball the remaining clothes I won't be wearing for a while into Bob's old green soft-sider. It's interesting how an article of clothing can elicit memories, and ultimately emotional responses. Greatest yesterday was the green plaid shirt that I wore on our trip around the world. Well, it wasn't in my plan, but I restructured the "Bob's Articles" section of the website; nothing the user can see, but a huge improvement for moving forward on filling that archive.

16 August 2009, more cleanup on the presentation of the website, created some "creature comfort" tools for myself on the webserver. Put "Austin" placeholders in December. Still undecided on date for Cabrillo, I'm thinking maybe late this week....

15 August 2009, rough day for my friend Keith, I tried to balance between eradicating invasive nonnatives and pretending to be fire and pruning the natives. Note that I need to put Texas time on calendar. Dates as of yet uncertain.(iPhone)

14 August 2009, Six months have gone by. I'm delivering the "Robert T Nanninga Save the Planet" book collection to the Cardiff library today. And I'm thinking that there's a real sort of environmental issue when June Gloom extends all the way into mid-August.

11/12 August 2009, Perseids percieved best before moonrise, best tails. Several more after moonrise, but not as apparently bright, and the tails became very thin and ceased to sparkle. Took a brief tour of Blair Valley to check out 4WD components. It's all good! (iPhone)

11 August 2009, cleaned up calendar display, simplified log entry process. (Phew!) Added known calendar data for September.

10 August 2009, added blog entry via putty on iPhone. Painful, but possible.

10 August 2009, ripped calendar technology from Cafe website; added entry for Perseids run tomorrow. Managed to have a lot of fun because I'd forgotten the password to the web server. Hopefully I'll finish the cosmetic work on the calendar later today. But, times a tickin'.

9 July 2009, Changed the structure of files to simplify editing, added my picture to the front page, cleaned up some html/jsp issues. Noted that it's day 138 since going cold turkey on my daily Bob fix. Thinking I need to get in the habit of sitting down to the keyboard each day. This will develop. So will this site. Email me with anything... Man, this sucks, I'm going to have to set up a database to drive this thing, and soon.