A Day At The Beach


A Day At The Beach, originally uploaded by carl.setzer.

My family spent the early part of the day at the beach along the Edmonds waterfront. Quite a bit of marine life readily viewable. The three of us delight in tide-pools. Quite the variety, from three different crab species (red-rock, dungeness & kelp), a couple gunnels, shrimp (possibily dock shrimp, but I’m not too sure), a regular convention of nudibrachs, sunflower stars, ochre and blood-stars. These were the stand outs. There also were all the standard players: sea cucumbers, anenomes, barnacles and the like.

Via BlackBerry

More Twitter Thoughts

There are a good many things I like about Twitter. Most exciting is the range and speed of communications. With that is a serious problem: filters. The receptive element of communications gets overwhelmed by the volume of data. Breaking down the stream into manageable chunks is cumbersome. There are some good tools, though. I have become somewhat fond of Tweetdeck. It helps separate out some of the streams (replies and direct messages, in particular). It does a good job letting you set up groups and favorites. Thus the stream is far easier to manage. This, for me at least, makes this the best Twitter client I’ve worked with so far.

More Twitter Thoughts

There are a good many things I like about Twitter. Most exciting is the range and speed of communications. With that is a serious problem: filters. The receptive element of communications gets overwhelmed by the volume of data. Breaking down the stream into manageable chunks is cumbersome. There are some good tools, though. I have become somewhat fond of Tweetdeck. It helps separate out some of the streams (replies and direct messages, in particular). It does a good job letting you set up groups and favorites. Thus the stream is far easier to manage. This, for me at least, makes this the best Twitter client I’ve worked with so far.

Bears?

We have a bear running around the Seattle area. Amazing for a bear to racing around our urban confines. What’s fun, though, is how the social media scene is taking this and running with it. Twitter has a few threads: #bearalert and #seattlebear. Also, someone has started posted to Twitter as Seattlebear. If you’re interested, you can go to seattlepi.com and vote on a name for the fella.

Bears?

We have a bear running around the Seattle area. Amazing for a bear to racing around our urban confines. What’s fun, though, is how the social media scene is taking this and running with it. Twitter has a few threads: #bearalert and #seattlebear. Also, someone has started posted to Twitter as Seattlebear. If you’re interested, you can go to seattlepi.com and vote on a name for the fella.

Living La Vida Layoff

My friend Bill forwarded me a great piece from siliconvalley.com discussing the ways that layoffs have been impacting people’s family lives. My layoff has affected me far more deeply than I would’ve expected. Fortunately, on the whole, I’d say the experience has been positive. This interim gives me much more time with my son, which I take with relish. The tension that I have felt with my wife has been externally focused. The feeling is as the two of us facing out, backs together. For such, I’m quite grateful. The opposite would be an aggravation beyond pale.

I have focused on growth and understanding during this time. Watching the news, it’s easy to see the greater state of the economy. It’s easy for me to not take the quiet after the hundreds of resumes personally. I quite expect that this economic mess will take years to fully recover from.

Many years ago I decided my life would not be about wealth or power, but about service and impact. And about living my family life with quality. One of the people quoted said to his wife, “I don’t care if we lose everything, as long as I have you”. I couldn’t agree more. As I’ve often hear said, “no one has wished, on their death-bed, that they’d worked more.

Living La Vida Layoff

My friend Bill forwarded me a great piece from siliconvalley.com discussing the ways that layoffs have been impacting people’s family lives. My layoff has affected me far more deeply than I would’ve expected. Fortunately, on the whole, I’d say the experience has been positive. This interim gives me much more time with my son, which I take with relish. The tension that I have felt with my wife has been externally focused. The feeling is as the two of us facing out, backs together. For such, I’m quite grateful. The opposite would be an aggravation beyond pale.

I have focused on growth and understanding during this time. Watching the news, it’s easy to see the greater state of the economy. It’s easy for me to not take the quiet after the hundreds of resumes personally. I quite expect that this economic mess will take years to fully recover from.

Many years ago I decided my life would not be about wealth or power, but about service and impact. And about living my family life with quality. One of the people quoted said to his wife, “I don’t care if we lose everything, as long as I have you”. I couldn’t agree more. As I’ve often hear said, “no one has wished, on their death-bed, that they’d worked more.

Harry Chapin

Just listened to Cat’s In the Cradle by Harry Chapin. Funny, really, how a song that I’ve listened to my whole life can be so profoundly impactful. The narrator’s connection with his family, the sorrow he feels from his disconnect with his son is something that I have committed myself to avoiding. I try to be present each and every day in my son’s life. Perhaps I’ve had to sacrifice for this, giving up opportunities to advance, to grow more mighty in some enterprise. However, those opportunities seem so empty. I’ve always preferred to be at home then in some office. The promise of greater salary, power, or prestige has not held a strong enough attraction (that’s not to say that there hasn’t been any attractiveness to these choices – just not enough). Perhaps it’s the power of this song, or, more likely, having watched too many people die too young, I realize what is truly precious in this life.