Flickers of Autumn...

Yesterday afternoon, while I was enjoying lunch with my wife Wendy, the strangest thing happened. We were sitting there, watching the news, or the Bonnie Hunt show, or something similar while eating, and a Flicker landed on Wendy's pole that hold the bird feeders and bath. It was a male flicker, looked at us for a few minutes, regarded the feeder and the empty suet cage, and then left.

Today, about the same time, a female flicker came by. It landed, hopped down to the feeder, tried to eat a couple of seeds out of the feeder, then did the oddest thing. We also have a suction cup bird house mounted to the window, should a chickadee or finch ever decide to make use of it. Well, this flicker jumped over, grabbed onto the front of the birdhouse like it was a tree, and hung there for about 20 seconds chirping quietly before heading off for some nearby trees.

Now all we need to do is get some suet for them, and we'll have the pleasure of their company for as long as they are in the area. They really are very attractive birds...

The 2008 Presidential Election

Something to track results by as they come in. From MSNBC.com - Enjoy!

Waning Gibbous

These two shots are kind of for my dad. Both are very similar, but with the minor exception of being shot with two different lens combinations.

The first shot was taken with a 100-300mm Zoom with 2x extender. The extender caused the lens to not be able to accurately auto-focus, and does not have image stabilization capabilty. Manual focus was used to the best of my ability for the subject at hand... The second was taken with a 70-200 Zoom with 2x extender and image stabilization, where the extender is designed specifically for the lens and the autofocus worked flawlessly.

And now for the images... click to see full size (cropped so that they are actually viewable), and use the back button to return to this page.

In the still of the night

This one was taken last night as the air started to chill and the clouds evaporated. I almost had a chance to shoot an airplane flying across the face, but was still setting up when the plane was on approach. Missed it by 30 seconds of readiness... That'll be a shot I sit out for next month...

Here it is. Extraneous sky cropped off the image, if you view the full size piece, those are the actual pixels.

Crisp skies, light clouds...

Last night, the clouds were blowing through, and allowing the moon to show its face, so grabbed the big lens, its doubler, and the tripod, and ran outside for a couple quick snapshots. The first one through a bigger hole in the clouds than the second.


This one has a nice, ethereal feel to it. :)

Playing with your pets.

Just a few snapshots of our dear little friends of the furry kind. Hope you enjoy. :)

Sophia sleeping with a stuck lip. So cute.


Ensconced deep within her snugglesack.


Growling and tugging away with a mouth full of her stuffed hedgehog.


Imp pretending to be a piece of garden art, hoping the birds will just ignore her.


Imp dressed in the latest fall fashion... She really was not happy with me for a few minutes this time.

It's definitely Fall...

Last night the mercury dipped, and most of the Puget Sound region saw freezing temperatures over night, so this must really be Autumn... That and all the trees are making the change from green to yellow and red, and starting to drop leaves all over the place.

Here's a picture from the middle of last month, the harvest moon from September 16th:

Highpoint at Night

I recently carried a camera along on the evening dog-walk with Wendy and our friend Penny, as I've wanted to try and get a picture of the pond for quite some time. Next time I'll have to also carry a tripod, and I'd like to try an image-stabilization lense, and see if the results improve any...

This first picture is probably the best as far as image quality. Most of our condo (And one of the Parkside homes) reflecting in the Highpoint Pond.

An image of the Redwood at Highpoint condos, and the stream feeding into the pond.

My favorite composition, this has has a nice feeling, but is unfortunately a little blurry. One of the problems with trying to hold a camera steady for a 1/3 second exposure at night...

Time is on my side, yes it is...

Just had that little bit of music running through my head for some reason, had to share.

So, I seem to be among the ranks of the unemployed at the moment, searching for a new position within the realm of Software Development again. I have a few prospects, an interview later today, and another interview expected to be scheduled any time now. Just waiting for the email to come through.

In the meantime, I've been doing a little more reading, updating my mobile device to the latest software (have a couple of things to test before I update Wendy's device...)

The new version has some nifty features, and a few changes from previous that would be even more usable if I had a job... but anyway...

To the point - I recently started using Mobipocket to be able to read digital books from the library. It's a little different than reading a paper copy of a book, the page is very small and doesn't contain a lot of text, so getting used to "turing" pages frequently was a little bit of a step. Now I kind of like it though, as I can leave the application running in the background, and access the book at a moments notice. And I have my phone with me at all times anyway, so it not like having to carry an extra book to have something to read when I want to, you know?

Right now I am reading Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon that I checked out from the Seattle Public Library. I haven't downloaded much of anything else yet, as I'm kind of a "one book at a time" type guy.

Anyway, since it had been a while since I'd posted anything, I thought I should start writing again, and see where it leads.