Every time a smart quote is used a pixel dies
Edward Caissie
practicing habitual skills
Comments Off on First Days Of Winter 2013
The first day of Winter brought with it freezing rain. Now this was not so bad by itself, a light coating of thin ice makes for beautiful images and generally does not have a dramatic impact on the trees around Lake Aquitaine …
… but unfortunately the weather forecast and the continued freezing rains that followed left many of the trees around our lake in a sad and broken condition.
Terri and I walked around yesterday (follow the link to her images) taking pictures of the trees and other ice covered pieces around the lake, my images are in the first gallery. We walked around again early this morning (more images by Terri) and this is when I took the second gallery images.
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Comments Off on Monterey Bay Aquarium
One of my favorite places to visit is an aquarium, and as luck would have it Monterey has one, the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We saw some amazing creatures and sites with the following gallery just being a sample.
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Comments Off on WordPress 3.7 Core Contributors
It would seem I have been given props for contributing to WordPress 3.7 … and it wasn’t anything new and exciting. It was actually a two year old trac ticket.
Here’s a screen snippet of the Core Contributors to WordPress 3.7:
The trac ticket, was included with Changeset 25030 and included the trac ticket #18632 which referenced a simple defect with the wp_get_shortlink function. All-in-all, I’m just happy to be able to contribute to the project, getting my name in lights … er, digital print … is just icing on the cake.
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Comments Off on Big Basin Redwood State Park
After our harrowing experience driving on mountain roads to get where we were going. We were almost to the point where we had enough and just wanted to find our way out of the wilderness … and a freeway to Monterey. We pretty much stumbled upon the park, so much so that we didn’t think we were even at the right place and dreaded the very thought of having to return the way we had just driven. Fortunately we had finally found Big Basin Redwood State Park … and with the help of the park rangers also found we could just keep driving and find our way back to Highway 1 and a more or less safe road to Monterey, too.
Before we left, we paid a second time for day-use of a state park and proceeded to take our time following a simple trail through the trees. Here are some of the picture from the day:
To see the NB click here.To hide the NB click here.
Travel Tip: When touring California State Parks, you only have to pay once … and just remember to display your ticket in the driver’s side front window … for any State Park visit that day.
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Comments Off on San Francisco to Big Basin Redwood State Park
I expect this will be one of many posts describing our vacation in Monterey and San Francisco.
A little back story before the first gallery of pictures …
… Terri was away for business in Fort Worth, Texas. She knew this a few weeks in advance and suggested we take this opportunity to have a “real” vacation since it had been 15 years since our last one. So, our plans were set in motion. I would meet her in Fort Worth on Thursday Night and then we would fly to San Francisco Friday morning; pick up a rental car and head south to Monterey. This is when the fun begins.
Terri drove out of the airport and we found our way heading south to Monterey. We knew our check-in time was after 3:00 PM, and it was just past 10:00 AM so we thought some site-seeing along the way just made sense … and with the sign pointing to Half Moon Bay we were off to Highway 1 and an adventure. We found Half Moon Bay State Park and stopped there to see the Pacific Ocean first-hand. A first for Terri and 40 years since I last was near enough to see it in person for myself. We found some interesting sites and even some interesting sounds with a weather-beaten stand-up piano on the side of the road over-looking the beach and the ocean (rumor has it belongs to Neil Young whom supposedly lives nearby where we found the piano).
At this same time, the US government in their infinite wisdom (really, you seriously decided to put all of those people out of work because of some sort of pissing content?!) closed and therefore all of the National parks were closed, too (with serious fines for those found “trespassing”). This made us go looking for other parks where we could see the majesty of the Redwoods which led us to Big Basin Redwood State Park.
Now, let me tell you a story about why you should not turn on the “Avoid Freeways” option with a GPS. We call our GPS, Maggie (short for either Magpie or the actual brand Magellan) … and Maggie did a phenomenal job of leading us on a beautiful scenic route to the park. She said, turn left onto El Honda Road, we turned left. She said “Warning”, to tell us we were going over the speed limit. She reminded us to stay on the road … well, the mountains were making it a bit difficult to keep the satellite lock but Maggie was diligent in making sure she told us to stay on the right road. We stopped at a local deli/market for lunch then got back on the road. Maggie told us to carry on to Old El Honda Road and follow it … and the adventure got real.
Old El Honda Road winds and turns and follows the mountain up … and up … and down … and up … and up some more. All that would be fine, except it also essentially turns into one of those one-lane, nothing on one side and a mountain on the other which can be quite terrifying for someone afraid of heights, like Terri. She did amazing given the challenges of the drive but soon enough we switched places as the emptiness over her left shoulder was just too much. I drove the rest of the way to the top of the mountain, only about five more minutes of hell but we ended on a more proper road that we followed to some similar but not so severe roads that eventually took us to the park … just when we thought we had enough we turned a corner and there was the park ranger station.
These pictures were mostly from the passenger seat of the car as I tried to capture the essence of the drive …
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