What an amazing day. Flew from Tracy to Redding (KRDD) for lunch. Had some amazing Chinese food at Peter Chu's Skyroom. Then on the way home, flew a "Bay Tour" over Golden Gate bridge, around Alcatraz then home. 

Ever since getting my pilot's certificate in June, I wanted to go on a long cross country flight to visit my mom near Portland Oregon. My company shuts down the office in Mountain View for two weeks around Christmas and New Years. I took this as the perfect opportunity to take several days to go to Oregon. The flight should only take on average about 5 hours each way if the wind remains the same both ways. For this particular trip since the winds were from the north, I knew it would take longer to get there than to get back. So we planned accordingly.

This weekend is the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, and it is also just waxing from a new moon, so it's not high in the sky. A perfect combination to see meteor showers. For the past two nights, I have gone out and attempted to capture one with my camera. On the first night I was not successful in capturing any, but last night I was able to capture two.

This is the better of them, the other one has the meteor crossing high tention powerlines, which I could not see with my bare eyes, even though I knew they were there, I still pointed my camera at them.

This image was captured with a Canon 7d and the Canon 18-200mm set at it's widest, most open settings 18mm, f3/5 and focal distance set to infinity and exposed for 30 seconds at ISO 1600 speed.

On Thursday, I took my motorcycle to the shop to get a new battery and brakes. I also needed new tires so I got those as well as a battery tender. Since this is my 3rd battery for this bike.

I didn't go anywhere on Friday or Saturday, so the first opportunity that I had to go for a ride was Sunday. I couldn't find my ear plugs, so the first stop was to Rite-Aid. From there I decided to just, "go". I packed the camera for when I stop or see something worth photographing.

A picture of my Labrador "Buddy" sitting in my kitchen. He doesn't seem to like having his picture taken.

My dumb puppy, pure Golden Retriever biting his lip. I finally got a picture of him without cutting off any of his appendages.

Now if I can only get Buddy to sit still outside. He's a Black Lab, and we have dark hardwood floors and low light. Very difficult to take a picture of.

Here's a pictured of my lunch yesterday, it actually tastes WAY better than this photo portrays.

Chicken, rice, cheese, spices and other yummy ingredients

So I'm sitting here working from home on this conference call since 8:30 this morning for a vendor demonstration and it's about the most painful presentation I've ever been in.

This "Security Incident Event Management" solution seems more like vapor ware then any enterprise ready product. They keep stating, over the next couple of months.

Because of this I started playing with some of the photos from this weekend's party.

Here's a picture of Jen from this weekend.

 Here are some pictures from my birthday "potluck".

I had a really good time, and am glad for all of those who were able to make it.

For those of you in the Silicon Valley who think I'm too far away, please keep in mind that Stefano and Jen live up in the Santa Cruz mountains, and Matthew came up from Merced.

An updated version of my Dark Blue Mean image from 2005.