Pumpkin Season

Deer Hollow Farm.

Tree huggers

Given Sunnyvale's poor record of not finishing projects, I think the tearing up of Murphy Street is probably a bad idea until the perpetually postponed downtown is finished.

777 at Moffett Field

I have an idea whose plane this is.

Favorite tool

I've had this measuring caliper in my toolbox for years and years. It gets a lot of use. It cost less than $10 when I got it, and it STILL costs less than $10 from Universal Cycles. Made in Germany. Measures in metric and English with a vernier scale to get precision to 1/10 mm -- useful to have when the difference between an ISO headset race and a JIS headset race is 0.4mm.

Slow bowlers

I bowled a 191 last night, but we were by far the slowest team to finish our three games. Not sure why. Three pitchers of beer?

Charles Street Community Garden

Would have liked to have seen a blue sky in this one, but the light was not cooperating.

Saint Jude

Patron saint of lost data.

Workstation

Some cutbacks at work. Our workstations are not so fancy any more.

Fog

At Angel Island over Labor Day weekend.

Cemented Tree

By Vikingsholm, at Lake Tahoe.

Not a chipmunk

Golden-mantled ground squirrel near Lower Eagle Falls, South Lake Tahoe.

Truckee River

A little east of Tahoe City. I had heard that one of the fun things to do at Tahoe in the summer is to float down the Truckee River. There is a place to rent rafts in Tahoe City, and they have a shuttle to pick you up several miles downriver. The water level was a little low this September. We did see one or two boats floating along, including a couple of kayaks. We were riding on the bike path that connects Squaw Valley with Tahoe City.

Fireside

At the entrance to the Village at Squaw Valley. The village is a cluster of hotel buildings with commercial space on the ground floor. Stores include a sports bar; Irish pub; gourmet pizza place; Japanese restaurant; snowboard shop; real estate shop; several clothing boutiques; wine shop; general store; Starbucks; Double Rainbow; video arcade; art gallery...

Fire pit

In the village at Squaw Valley. Piped natural gas.

Courthouse and Museum

Auburn, California. About a hundred years old. Almost torn down in the 1980s.

Tiburon

Sunset over Tiburon, California.

Angel Island Bunks

The immigration center was open from 1910 to 1940. It has been declared a historic site, and there are now daily tours.

Fireworks

Fog rolling into San Francisco, with fireworks near the baseball stadium.

Google map marker

Figure 9 vs knot

The odd-looking device is a "Figure 9" designed to help tighten a length of rope. Tying a length of rope tightly is very handy, especially when going camping.

The knot on the bottom right is a taut-line hitch, a very useful knot that that the Figure 9 is most likely to replace.

I've read a few reviews on the Figure 9 saying how great it is if you're not a "knot person." I kept seeing it at REI. So, for two bucks, I got one to try it out. It seems okay. I don't like that the teeth on it will fray your rope if you're not careful. But what I really think is, it's not that hard to learn to tie a proper knot.

Brick building in Alviso

Letters on the side spell out HG Wade. I think it was a warehouse.

Drawbridge

About two and a half miles north of Alviso, the ghost town of Drawbridge is quietly sinking into the mud flats of San Francisco Bay. The trail from the south will bring you within a mile of it and you can just make out the buildings with a long zoom lens.