Weekend in Inverness

Pt. Reyes, not Scotland. We rented a friend's house high up on the ridge overlooking Tomales Bay. I woke up on Saturday morning at 5:30 - it usually takes a day to adjust to a more normal schedule. So I sat in the hot tub on the deck and watched the dawn across the bay. I felt Californian.

Fog over Alcatraz

The view from my window. The slight rise of Alcatraz in the breeze is enough to make the fog quite a bit denser.

Visit from Tycho

Tycho is visiting from NY for a meeting and hanging out with us for the weekend. He's as entertaining as ever. He's decided that everything we do must be documented, so we've now got lots of photos from the last two days.

1. A mouse somehow has moved into our kitchen. It looks more like a pet mouse than a pest. We can't catch it, but Tycho did snap some photos of the critter.
2. Another mouse, being eaten by a snake, seen on trail between Muir and Tennessee Valley beaches.
3. A lizard.
4. Tycho
5. Us


UPDATE: House mouse caught & released into the wild around 9 pm last night. We caught it fairly easily in the end, then put it in a box. It was more curious than fearful, making me think again that it was a lost pet. But it seemed unlikely that we'd find the owner if there is one, and no one in our house was particularly interested in taking care of it. Anna's rat cage was long gone, so we had to let it go.

Nature red in tooth & claw.



On the bluffs between Muir beach and Tennessee Valley.

The trip to Angel's Landing

We climbed up to Angel's Landing in Zion NP today. It's 2 1/2 miles with 1500' of ascent. Quite a hike - a switchback up the cliff base followed by a walk through a slot canyon and a steep climb up Walter's Wiggles to the staging area. (OK, I was having Everest fantasies). The day was gorgeous - cool hiking weather, sunny and not too much wind.
The last half mile is along a rock fin jutting out over the Zion Canyon valley. In several places the trail is no more than a few feet wide and sometimes runs along the side of the cliff, with chains set into the rock for handholds. Two of the five of us decided to skip the last stage. Catherine, Anna and I headed out to the tip.

"White knuckles" doesn't do it full justice. And on the way back, Anna slipped and fell headfirst on one of the cliffside segments. She managed to arrest her slide with inches to go before the edge. I was right behind her and grabbed her leg, as did a guy coming up the other way (who may have been partly responsible for her slip, by refusing to give way on the chain), but she had already stopped by then. So the good news is that I still have a daughter. The bad news is that I'll have that image stuck in my head forever.

Ping, pong, ping

Back & forth & back & forth I go, twixt Berkeley and Southern Cal. Earning a few simoleons working for a money manager behind the Orange Curtain. Not a bad gig - the commute is just over three hours, door-to-door, Monday morning and Thursday evening. Fridays off! Three day weekends every week! Woohoo!

I found* a nice little (very little) cottage 6 blocks from the beach which I have yet to see (beach, not cottage). My colleagues there are the usual quant finance crew of Russians, Chinese and Indians, plus the occasional European and American. The view from the quant dungeon is fabulous - from the 6th floor looking out across the channel to Catalina.

Nice, as long as it lasts... I'm not loving spending so much time away from home, and everyone here pretends to miss me, but they also want me to be working. It makes everyone feel a bit more secure.

* Thanks, Craig Newmark!

Marin Headlands

Perfectly clear, warm, a very slight breeze. An absolutely stunning view of the Golden Gate, bridge and city. It's always fun showing off that view to visiting friends. Quote from a New York City 13-year-old: "That's not such a big bridge."

Networking down the house

When we remodeled in 2005, I had the electrician install CAT5 cabling connecting the downstairs and upstairs to the water heater closet, and also one phone line to the same spot. My idea was to put the wireless router in there, because it's central and higher than where the computer sits. I wanted the electrician to connect everything up (put in jacks) but he said "I'm not a network guy" and left the ends dangling, which is how it sat ever since.

Now, 4 years later, we started having too many wireless connection problems probably because all our neighbors now also have routers, so I decided it was time to finish the job. Task 1 was to terminate the cables. Rather than put in a jack, I decided to just add connectors to the two cables I needed - one ethernet, one phone. I had to open up the jack at the other end of the ethernet line to check which of two possible cable configs the electrician had used. That done, it only took two tries to wire the other end - I did it mirror reversed the first time. Thank you ACE Hardware cheapo crimping tool. You worked just great!

Task 2 was to get the phone line working. We have 2 lines into the house. The electrician had only wired the first one into most of the connections, including the one to the water heater closet, but our DSL is on the second. So, under the house I went to where the junction box connects to the house cabling, armed with wire strippers, headlamp and a walkie-talkie, with Anna at the other end looking at an ohmmeter to tell me when I'd found the right cable. It didn't work because I'd turned the meter off, which Anna cleverly noticed. But with that resolved, we figured out the right cable, and I connected the second line and wired the jack so that would feed into the DSL modem. Thanks again, crimping tool!

All done! A nice strong signal throughout the house now.