Category: life

where everything else happens

Wonderment

Stepping gingerly over the domesticated sastrugi that makes up our deck after two weeks of winter, I unlatch the cover and open it. A moist comforting blanket of fog rises and surrounds me in the chill, dry wind. I slip in. The heat is as bracing as the cold I just left. Leaning back, the vastness of the sky unfolds above me.

Darkness that is the outlines of juniper and pine trees.

West coast air traffic coursing through the sky, navigational lights blinking.

A meteor falling north to south.

Cygnus has almost completed its flight over the western horizon, his beak almost touching the Cascades.

Jupiter shining brightly above China Hat Butte.

My brain soaks in the fact that some of the lights I’m seeing are in real-time, and others have spent billions of years traveling before landing.

Landing in my eyes here in a tub of hot water just west of the middle of nowhere Oregon after a journey across billions of years of space and time.

Makes one wonder.

Central Oregon Skyscape

Central Oregon Skyscape

My commute has been radically transformed as part of this relocation from North Puget Sound to Central Oregon. Whereas before I slogged my way up and down the superslab of Interstate 5, along with a few million other motorists – now I wander a series of high desert backroads. I no longer risk being creamed by a inattentive dork yakking on a cell phone, but instead have to keep my eyes open for deer, and soon, elk. I miss the views of Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker, and the waterways of Puget Sound, but now I have spectacular sunrises and sunsets almost every day. Last night it was a thin crescent moon. Last week though, on Friday evening the sky was lit up with brilliant orange glow as the sun fell behind the Cascades. I pulled over a few times and shot several images. I like these two the best. The top one is an unusual cloud formation in the southeast over the Horse Ridge area.

Another is this image of a dead juniper tree with the same eastern sky at twilight behind it.

Dead Juniper at Twilight

I originally stopped to shoot a hawk that was perched atop this dead tree, but it flew off as soon as I pulled the camera out of the car.

Stay tuned for more.

Meanwhile if you like these images, I’ve placed them up on my photo storefront where you can buy framed prints. (click the link, or the photo below for details)

Central Oregon skyscape. Sunset near Alfalfa Oregon.

Life Update

I’ve been too busy at work and home to post here of late. I’ve been trying to settle into a routine here in Central Oregon, but still haven’t really got the house sorted out. Nick & Sue have had over a month to unpack their things, but I’ve been on the road for Facebook, learning how they do things in their existing datacenters for most of the past three months (when I wasn’t moving from Washington to Oregon.)

I spent yesterday unpacking the workshop. It sort of became the “catch-all” spot to throw stuff while we unloaded the moving truck. The shocking realization that this workshop is probably one-sixth the size of our former barn sort of hit me as I was unpacking. I always had plenty of open space in the barn. Not so here.

I barely made room for one car. It is going to be a while before I genuinely have the place set up for car maintenance and repair. I’m going to have to build an addition on to it first to set up the home-brewery. Stay tuned for that.

Work is great. It is wonderful to be on-site in Prineville. There is so much to do, and be a part of! I can’t wait for the whole crew to be here at once, and the real datacenter work to begin. Meanwhile it is all about completion of the first phases of construction and commissioning. I’m doing my best to document it all with my camera. I share daily snapshots with the rest of Facebook on our internal websites. You can keep tabs on what we’re doing by photos posted on the official site, some of which are off my G1. See if you can spot them.

My commute is a refreshing change from the Seattle freeways I’ve been battling for most of my life. It is all two lane roads through the Central Oregon High Desert – sage and juniper, mixed with cattle grazing land. If I keep my eyes open I get to see things like this:

Young coyote hunting mice near Powell Butte, Oregon.

Apologies Dear Reader!

Since mid-summer my life has been… topsy-turvy… and you dear reader, have suffered for it.

Both Sue & I found new jobs – 500 miles away from the place we have called home for over twenty years. I joined Facebook as part of the new datacenter in Prineville, Oregon, and Sue will be a Public Defender in Jefferson & Crook Counties of Oregon. This lead to a search for a new domicile, and an attempt to sell our old one. All the while I’ve been “on the road”, having spent several weeks in Silicon Valley and Northern Virginia at Facebook’s existing datacenters learning the ins and outs of Facebook’s systems.

Finding a new home also meant finding a new school for Nick. A huge life-change for a 16 year old, deeply involved in academics and athletics.

We found a wonderful home in the hills SE of Bend, Oregon. Sue can board her horse nearby, Nick has X-C coaches that are awesome, and I have a pleasant, two-lane twisty back road commute to work, with stellar views of mountains and hills.

Selling our old house became an exercise in futility (we’re trying to rent it now).
Buying a new place became an exercise in frustration (banks are not lending money anymore).

Sue’s mother passed away suddenly in August while I was in Virginia. She had just been at our home in Washington and seemed to be doing very well. Quite sad.

Nick & I lived in a hotel in Bend for two weeks in early September while he started at his new school.

We moved in Mid-September, Sue & Chris arriving with pets, and a moving truck arriving with our goods. (We’re still unpacking.)

Chris returned to college at the end of September.

Now, once again, I’m in Virginia for several weeks.

Sue starts her new job soon, and …hopefully… life should return to some semblance of normality by the end of October. We’ll all be in the same place, and settled into a semi-normal schedule.

The short end of the stick for all of you is that my writing here has been minimal, and spotty. I hope to change that asap. I post to Facebook often, so FB users can always follow me there, but I try to reserve this space for more in-depth thoughts, “Car photo of the day/name that car” stuff, and of course, car adventures. All of the above will resume soon. Apologies for the dearth of posts of late, but I’m sure you understand.

Thanks for hanging in there!

A day off in Northern Virginia

National Airport

I’m on the east coast this week, in Northern Virginia to be specific, visiting my new employer‘s facilities. As I have some downtime over the weekend, I figured I’d hit some sights that I’ve never seen. When I was a child I had relatives in Maryland and visited all the major sights of the Capitol: the Lincoln and Washington Memorials, the Capitol, and of course the Smithsonian museums. This time I decided to drive down to Manassas, the site of the first major battle of the US Civil War. I brought my camera along so I could share.

I stopped at a few sites of minor skirmishes, but the main battlefield at Henry Hill provided the best photographic opportunities…

The guns of the Union Army line.

An odd 1930's statue of Stonewall Jackson done up in what can only be called Stalinist/Superhero style

Guns of the Confederate line

Where Bartow fell

The Union Memorial, erected right after the war

Henry Hill

Where Thomas fell

Rickett's guns

Where Ramsey fell

After Manassas I drove to the Capitol and stopped along the river to shoot low-flying aircraft (seen above) and then over to the Jefferson Memorial. I’ll post those images soon.