Aidan and I sat on the same side of the table - a rare occasion - usually that’s Gabrielle’s spot. But she was gone at Gems camp, and Aidan, sitting there, decided to loop his little arm over mine while having breakfast.
Teresa captured the moment:

OK, so it’s Hallowed ‘een, or more modernly, Halloween, but that’s just a recent invention of the last 100 years or so. As Chaucer said, “men evere seeke newfangle.”
In any case, here are the artistic efforts of the Koetsier household this trick-or-treat season. (More accurately, that would be the art of one Teresa Koetsier ….)

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I hadn’t been keeping up too intensely on matters astronomical the past month or so, so late last week when I went for a night run and saw an unusually bright “star” in an odd location, I assumed it was Venus.
It was intensely bright and yellowish-hued - I could barely help seeing it even during […]

This article on the Online Asian Times by a European financial analyst (who also has posted the article on his blog) summarizes many of my fears about the United State’s current direction.
Ill-advised wars without clear endpoints, money flowing out the door like a river of cheap paper, a focus on the short-term benefits of outsourcing […]

I like this Steve Jobs quote: “a technology in search of a problem.” Saw it here, and doesn’t it ring a bell when you look at some of the consumer electronics products available today ….

Teresa took this wonderful shot of a wading duck about a week ago, near a Langley farm.

It’s not really visible in this small pic, but the whole image is razor sharp, and the contrast of the orange beak and feet with the rest of the photo’s rather monochromatic tone really appeals to me.

Most Wednesdays I like to play noon-hour drop-in hockey. There’s a rink only minutes away from our Bellingham office, and a good bunch of guys who play there …
Today was a great game, lots of people, a couple of shifters, and a high tempo. No goalies, unfortunately.
I was just starting to think about leaving […]

It’s a big day … we’ve recently launched our new calendar-creation site, and today we had our first orders!
The site is an incredibly simple way to create a quality wall calendar with your own photos … and benefit schools as well. (Each calendar bought means $5 goes to a school of your choice.) You also […]

I learned a new word last Friday.
Mike Suto, one of our company’s trainers, left a great job a few years before coming to our company. It was a high-paying, high-profile, high prestige job that was also a high-stress job. Mike had cancer, his personal life was not where he wanted it to be, and he […]

Most days when I get back from the office, my 2-year old son Aidan greets me in the hall or kitchen. I’ll walk in, and sometimes he’ll run to meet me, his little feet pounding the floor eagerly.
“Daddy, are you home?” he says without a trace of irony as I sweep him off the floor, […]

To the woman in the white GMC Envoy on Marshall Road, near the McMillan turn-off, who did not like it when I passed her …
The reason I passed your air-choking earth-killing SUV is because it was big and fat and slow. Plus I didn’t want to breathe your fumes.

It’s a guilty pleasure, I admit, but there’s nothing like a good thriller from time to time. And you’d be hard put to find one better than Paul McAuley’s White Devils.
It’s a sort of near-future science-fictional dystopic whirlwind set in an environmentally devastated and severely depopulated Africa. But someone is gene-splicing and small, white, […]

I’ve picked up Rudyard Kipling’s Something of Myself, which, though I’m only 15 or so pages into, is absolutely fascinating … not least of which because of his so-good-you-don’t-even-notice-it writing style.

Last week I read An Enemy Among Friends, an autobiographical story by Kiyoaki Murata.
Kiyoaki was a Japanese student who, through various circumstances, found himself studying - or trying to study - at an American college as war broke out between Japan and the US on the date “whch will live in infamy.”
It’s a fascinating account […]

I saw a bird die today.
Was jumping down the steps of our Langley offices when a flutter of brown wings hit the window with a muted thump, leaving a thin streak of brownish-red on the pane.
I stopped for a moment, then went outside. Got down on my haunches, searched under the bushes, and peered at […]

I’m met an interesting character on the way back from my San Jose trip last week.
He was about 20 years old, a US Marine, and he was on leave to visit his family and girlfriend in Tacoma. I saw him in the San Jose airport - the particular variety of shaved head he sported could […]

Somehow, somewhere I found a link to Mainichi Daily News, an English-language website of a Japanese newspaper.
It’s a fascinating window into Japan. In Japan, apparently, ‘Office ladies’ put dishwater and laxatives into their male bosses’ coffee, and cats eat old womens’ toes and, after years of oppression, people with large feet are cool again.
The articles […]

… in Valley Fair Mall in San Jose. OK, so it’s Santa Clara.
Lots of cool toys for my iPod. No new iMacs yet, of course …

Doing some usability testing … gotta love the room with the one-way mirror.
[ update Oct 16 ]
(Actually, it was cameras and a projector, but you get the point.)

Teresa and I had more reason than usual to be thankful yesterday on Thanksgiving Day.
We had just come into church - our church holds a special thanksgiving service - when Teresa felt something weird going on. She sat down for a moment in the parent’s room, but it didn’t go away. Her heart was racing […]