Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Somewhere in Cuyamaca State Park (now Cuyamaca Rancho State Park) in the mountains east of San Diego, California. We camped at Paso Picacho, but I don’t remember whether this was near the campsite or spotted during a hike.
This was taken in April 2002, about a year and a half before a devastating fire destroyed large areas of the park.
(It was also about a year before I got my first digital camera, so this image was scanned from a print.)
Ugh. Got an idiot posting about “chemtrails” on my rainbow cloud photo. The only chemical needed is H2O. *plonk*
According to Flickr, this is my most interesting* photo that isn’t someone in costume at a fan convention. It’s #68 on the list!
The photo was taken December 18, 2008, after a storm passed through Orange County and did something unusual: it blanketed the Santa Ana Mountains with snow. Saddleback typically gets a light dusting a couple of times a year, and the next peak down sometimes gets a little snow that melts by noon, but it’s rare for the snow to reach any lower.
The vantage point is a housing development on Quail Hill, looking southeast over the Irvine Spectrum area. You can see the Great Park Balloon near the left. Saddleback itself is out of frame to the right, but you can see its base (the peaks are covered in clouds) in the panorama I shot at the same time.
*Flickr’s “interestingness” is a measure that combines a count of views, comments, and “favorites.” The exact balance is secret, but from what I can tell, comments outweigh favorites, which outweigh views.
Maxfield Parrish Sky, originally uploaded by Kelson.
One night last October, I stepped out of the office building and felt like I’d stepped into a Maxfield Parrish painting. The whole sky looked like this. (Or at least the half that was visible.) It literally stopped me in my tracks.
I spent the next 15 minutes walking around the parking lot, watching the lighting on the clouds change as the sun set and taking pictures.
Santa Ana Mountains Snow – Quail Hill View, originally uploaded by Kelson.
Monday’s storm didn’t leave much snow on Saddleback (though the San Gabriel Mountains were pretty well covered), but it’s been cold enough that I half-suspect this weekend’s storm will leave a bit more.
So here are a couple of views of the Santa Ana Mountains and the Irvine Spectrum from last December, seen from Quail Hill. The first was taken the morning after the storm ended. The second was taken the following day at lunchtime. I’ve also got a full panorama taken at the same time as the first photo.
Santa Ana Mountains Snow – Quail Hill Revisited, originally uploaded by Kelson.
Strawberry Flower, originally uploaded by Kelson.
My wife and I stopped at a nursery to pick up a sage plant this weekend, and there was a shelf of strawberries with one solitary flower.
I have no idea how I managed to get something this sharp with my phone!
The main outdoor swimming pool at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. Taken on a tour last February.
This was at least the third time I’ve been to Hearst Castle, and the second time as an adult. I vaguely remember visiting when I was eight, or ten, or somewhere around that age. Years later, in 2008, my wife and I planned a trip to San Francisco and decided to do it in stages, including a stopover at Hearst Castle. We only had time for one of the four tours, so when we planned another trip this year, we made sure to include another stop in San Simeon. This time we had a little more sense of how much time was involved, and managed to fit in two of the remaining tours.
At some point, we need to head back during spring or summer when they’re running the garden tour.
Morning Glories, originally uploaded by Kelson.
Last year my wife and I found some morning glories growing in our backyard, and decided to train them with twine to grow along the back wall. They did phenomenally well…and then produced a zillion seed pods, reminding us that they’re often classified as weeds.
They’re gone now.
@butterflyb My wife’s got one of those t-shirts still!
Real Life Comics on allergy medication. Oh, yes, I’ve been there.
Sun Halo. All you have to do is look up once in a while.
The whole Santa Ana Mountain range seems to have gotten snow yesterday. I took a detour on the way to work to take some pictures, and ended up on Barranca, where I remembered to stop and take some photos out by the lake at Woodbridge.
Eventually I made it up to a cul-de-sac up on Quail Hill where I took a panoramic photo of the whole area, but I probably won’t be able to stitch it together until evening. I’ve posted a few segments, though.
I’ve been posting the pictures, along with the ones I took of the San Gabriels on Tuesday, in a Flickr photoset.
My company will sometimes do its Christmas party as a destination event. It was in Las Vegas one year, and one year it was even a 3-day cruise. I think it’s a holdover from the dot-com days during which we’d always have an annual ski trip and an annual summer trip. Then it was cut down to one trip. And now it’s combined with the Christmas party.
This year it was held in San Diego, at the Omni Hotel. Since it’s relatively close, we were all on our own for transportation, so alenxa and I took it at our own pace, spending Saturday afternoon in Old Town, hitting a farmer’s market, and so forth. Unfortunately it was casino-themed, and I’m not really big on gambling (though Katie made a killing at blackjack), but the food was really good (it was the in-hotel McCormick and Schmick’s, and while I couldn’t eat the seafood, the steak was quite good, and the chocolate cake was excellent), and I think I have gained at least a rudimentary understanding of craps beyond “you roll the dice and bet on how they land.”
( K2R: Old Town, the Omni, and just how big is that space by the convention center, anyway? )
Now if I could just figure out what to do with this wireless keyboard and mouse…
Last Friday (Oct 3): attended alenxa’s cousin’s wedding, held on a boat that cruised back and forth in Newport Harbor. Lots of people I’d only met once before — at our wedding.
Most of the week: fixing Katie’s computer. Drive dying. Needed to (a) verify that it was the drive, and just the drive. (b) get a new drive. (c) install it. (d) install Mac OS X on the new drive. (e) Transfer all the data. (a) and (e) took the longest.
Tuesday: Finished watching entire series of Blake’s 7. The good episodes hold up quite well after ~30 years. (The bad ones… well, they were bad to start with.)
Yesterday: Checked out the restaurants at the new “Diamond Jamboree” center at Jamboree and Alton. Decided to try Tokyo Table sometime when we weren’t wearing funny T-shirts.
Friday: Finished reading Gateway. About to start on Neil Gaiman’s latest, The Graveyard Book. (I skipped the reading in Santa Monica on Monday, but my brother and his fiancee went to the one in San Francisco last week…and were kind enough to send us the extra copy of the book!)