Boston in the springtime
Just back from Boston last week where, just like you’d expect for late April (???), I got a blast of sunny weather in the 80s 
for the first couple days of the trip. I was there for the Source Boston conference (which had some really interesting talks, btw) and managed to wander around a bit before the conference started and after it wrapped up for the day to get some photos… My two favorites of the trip come from wandering around the Boston Common and through the Beacon Hill neighborhood.
With all of the good weather they’ve been having in Boston, spring flowers were a-blooming and could be seen both in planter boxes:
And they were also in garden patches
.
Oh, and security PSA from the conference: a shocking number of popular mobile applications send everything in plain text. Like the LinkedIn mobile app.
Clipper vacations… get away
OK, the title makes sense to folks from Seattle who hear the commercials frequently . We headed up to Victoria a couple weekends ago taking the float plane up and the clipper back. The float plane was the highlight by far with Butchart Gardens a close second. A sampling of pictures taken on the trip:
Shadow of our plane as we were coming in for a landing in the innner harbor:
The full gallery can be found here: http://kinasacaster.smugmug.com/Travel/Canada/Victoria.
Austin mural
I was in Austin this past weekend for the InfoSec SouthWest conference. While I didn’t take many pictures, I did get a couple while wandering around one morning before the conference. Still trying to digest the fantastic BBQ from the night before Here’s my favorite of what I did take:
It seemed like it should have been some sort of tribute but I didn’t see any names or initials etc. And there really wasn’t any graffiti or other murals or whatever on this section of the street. I wonder the back-story of this.
frosty
Waking up to a rainy morning got me thinking back to some of the cold, clear, frosty mornings we’ve had this past fall and winter… I took some photos shortly after waking up one morning and this is one of the ones I liked better from those…
Seattle Icons
First post after a really long time… Was talking with a couple of co-workers while travelling at a conference and got me inspired to look through some recent stuff and get something posted. Went on a photo afternoon in downtown Seattle in Jan and caught Seattle icons in alignment: CenturyLink Field, SafeCo Field, Rainier and a ferry!. Now if only I’d learned more about post-processing to get Rainier to pop a bit better…
Looking over the lake
My Valentines Day photo selection – this was taken on the ferry on Lake Como on our trip to Italy a few years ago. This was a reflection in the window of a couple looking over the lake and enjoying the view and romantic scene…
Possibly the funniest/randomest part of this ferry ride was that two independent groups of people from Oklahoma were right behind us and talking about the Sooners chances in the upcoming season and analyzing starters and strengths weaknesses. Boomer. Sooner.
Aussie Aussie Aussie
Looking back at our trip from a couple years ago this is the only picture I found with Australian flags in it…
Happy Australia Day
snow-covered Ireland
Finally getting around to posting about pictures that I took on our trip to Ireland over Christmas. I was there for around a week, and we were snowed in for almost all of it. Which means that the rental car looked like this for the majority of the trip:
Even if it was a bit tough to get around, it made for great scenery…
Unfortunately it was also extremely cold and windy up on the hills so I got a bit lazy while we were out hiking. So I’ve got some shots where I took the time to throw on the polarizer and get nice deep blue skies like the shot above and these:
And sometimes I was too cold to bother with it and the skies aren’t quite as nice 
. I’m sure if I took the time to brush up on my photoshop skills then i could ‘fix’ these too.
Good reminder that my photography skills are very much a work under (snowy) construction.
Like normal, you can find more photos online in the gallery.
technology that never fails…
I admit it, much to Clodagh’s chagrin, I’m very much a gadget person. I lasted with Windows Mobile for years because it was the best smartphone for me – being able to send work email has generally been a hard requirement for me. Last year I moved to the iPhone and I’ve generally been quite happy with it and it’s been as user-friendly and reliable as advertised. Lately my iPhone has been a bit crappier and I think it culminated last weekend when I was out playing golf and trying to use the GolfCard app to track scores, the type of shots, etc. And it crashed on me losing my round 14 holes in. Three times in a row (I’d re-entered the data twice). This is not to mention that battery life is worse after updating to the latest version of the iphone software. So much for wanting to stay with the latest and greatest .
Oh and that technology that never fails? Paper scorecard plus a golf pencil .
my head is in the cloud…
I’ve mentioned it on facebook, but not here yet – about a week and half ago I started a new job over in Windows Azure. It was a hard decision in some ways because I’d been in Windows Servicing [really old link for definition] for so many years (so much for the couple-year-plan when I first joined ) and the mission, customer value, good people to work with and hard problems to solve were all something I very much enjoyed. That said, 1.5 wks in, so far I’m glad I’ve made the move. Ask me again in a few months . In a lot of ways, I’m already recognizing that I maybe should have moved earlier. I think a piece of advice I heard a VP give after a talk sums a lot of it up (paraphrased): ”You should stay in your group until you’ve shipped one or two product cycles. When you’re in the back of the meeting and you’re the guy rejecting all of the ideas brought up to improve the next version because they’ve been tried and you’re pointing out how they failed last time, it’s definitely time to move on.” Times change, ecosystems change, assumptions change and the reason something failed last time might not hold true anymore.
Anyway, random thing that’s really cool about my new job is that to familiarize myself with <movie trailer guy voice>”the cloud” </movie trailer guy voice> is that I’m actually writing some stupid small apps that use it. It’s the first time in the last few years that I’ve actually written code and while it’s not something I’d want to spend all day every day doing right now, it’s a lot of fun to get a bit back into it. Yes, I’m a geek. Oh, and Azure is super cool. I’m not biased at all (already) .