22 February 2009 Winter in West Woods

19 November 2009 Geomeets with Friends

18 November 2009 Driving Home on the Thruway

16 February 2009 Waymarking in Westfield

15 February 2009 Visiting an Old Park (Allardale) and Exploring a New One (Plum Creek)

14 Feburary 2009 Caching Cleveland










Like so many caching days lately, this was a short,cold one. He did, however get to visit the history of the area in Lakeview Cemetery and got to make a rare visit to the West Side Market.

13 February 2009 Be My Valentine






We were a day early, but stopped at a favorite place to spend time. We got here after 7 so I was a little surprised that the ice cream parlor was almost empty. By the time we left most of the tables were occupied and the candy section was really busy. Ali settled for a hot fudge sundae and I had a pineapple sundae with chocolate ice cream. Yum.

8 February 2009 Grumpy






Even a trip through Holden couldn't brighten my mood today.

7 Feburary 2009 Scenes from Geauga County





Note to guy standing on slushy ice at Punderson: 134 people were rescued from Lake Erie ice today. It's always a bad idea to try for one more day on the ice when it's over 60 degrees.

It's been a long time since we stopped at this gazebo for photos on our wedding day. It was a lot warmer that day too!

It was my first day out caching since January 2. We only found two today, but it was great to be out. It was a lot warmer than the pictures make it look.

1 February 2009 Blue Skies

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see...



It was a special day today. The dogs joined us for a walk. Our snowshoe tracks from the day before gave them plenty of room to walk. We enjoyed the blue skies and the dogs got a great walk. Later, back at the house, I finally got to see a pine siskin... many of them actually. Ali keeps reminding me that the days are usually much sunnier in February. :-)



Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on...

(Thanks Irving Berlin)

31 January 2009 Snowshoes







We drove to PA this afternoon. I saw a couple of great shots I wanted, but Ali was driving so I figured there would be more to see once we got to our house and went walking. Once we got to the house my mission changed from walking around with the camera to finding a place to leave the Subie. It's a courageous vehicle and seems to go just about everywhere, but 24-30" of snow on the ground was a bit too much to ask. I spent most of daylight after we arrived getting the Subie into a place it could sit for the night.

We did get a chance to pull on the snowshoes and walk a bit of the property. It was quite peaceful on the trail.

28 January 2009 A Record January?








It seems hard to believe that the weather people are claiming we are near to the record for the snowiest January ever. It hasn't been a pleasant month, but it doesn't seem like nearly the worst ever.

This morning no one seemed to have plowed. The village next to us hadn't bothered so I went down the road into the valley in a controlled skid. Once I got to the bottom, I knew there was no way I was going to make it up the other side. Fortunately there is a county park at the in the valley. Even better, the park service had decided to plow their parking lot. I took a break from my drive to the office and walked the trail. It was a great way to start the day.

25 January 2009 Walking in the Arboretum

24 January 2009 Sittin' with Sandman





I was supposed to be in Pennsylvania today for a geocaching event. The event is based on the TV show the Amazing Race. I've spent most of my free time for the last six weeks getting ready for the event. Instead I spent last night and today (and tomorrow) babysitting my sick cat Sandy. He's getting old, but was doing really well so I agreed it was okay for his teeth to be cleaned. He was okay for a few days and then things got really bad. He stopped eating and eventually drinking and then everything else. After a couple trips to the vet and an overnight stay, they pronounced him ready to return home.

Since at least one of us needed to be in Pennsylvania for the event we were co-costing, I decided to be the one to stay home with him. It's been really quiet day-and-a-half. He's eating again so that's super, but he still doesn't want to drink any water. At least he's purring a lot. I hope our efforts can give him some more quality days. I missed seeing my friends today, but I'm not sure I missed the really cold weather.

22 January 2009 Days Passing




I've spent time in the last month working with a team on a Kaizen event at my home site. Part of the event was clearing an old document area. I've been hands on because there are a lot of financial, legal, intellectual property, and hr records being reviewed. Early on, one of the participants commented that this is what it all comes down to, we generate paper to get an order, generate paper to make the order, and generate more paper until we get cash from the order. Then some number of years later, we throw it all out.

Over the last month, I've been more than a bit down. This week a colleague stopped by to review the documents he had in the area. He retired just recently. We had worked together over the years to build one of the products from nothing to an established, successful product line. He as the product manager and me as the engineering manager. When he was done reviewing the docs, the seven boxes were reduced to two. In a matter of minutes, the last twenty years were shrunk into two boxes. All other traces of getting up in the morning to come to the office or traveling for weeks at a time were gone.

We recently got a new office toy, a copy machine that scans and sends you an e-mail of the scan. I can load 50 or so pages and have an e-mail of the scan waiting before I return to my office. It is an amazing tribute to technology. Over the last few months I have been taking an extra hour or two after the day ends to review all the paper in my office. The keeper stuff gets scanned and shredded. Everything else just gets shredded. It's been really effective. Over a third of all the files in my office are now in cyber space. The newest stuff never becomes paper. It just gets organized as electrons. Maybe my melancholy is the knowledge that some day soon no one will even need to tip my files into a recycle bin. A simple select and delete will send them and my work away.

While cleaning the area, we also cleaned out a number of old marketing items. The posted image is a scan of a photo taken of the two of us years ago. It was for some marketing brochure. These things always look staged. At least as long as this blog remains in cyber space, this image will mark the work we did together.

20 January 2009 Yes We Can

18 January 2009 Winter Walk








We wanted to ski today, but finished some must do items too late for skiing at Holden. Instead, we stopped at the park on our way to do errands. It was a great day to be out.

16 January 2009 Torturing Data




A colleague once told me, "If you torture data long enough it will confess to anything." During the cold spell, the local paper presented this as data.




I thought, hmmm... could this be real? Does it show a warming trend? It is thirty years of data. Well, I'm a statistical geek, it's cold out, and the days are short, so why not plot a few more years. Here's what they look like.




It looked so cool until it got a few more years. The last thirty years really said it's warmer. Not so when an additional 35 years are tossed in. The stretch from 1952-1956 with only one day of zero was really interesting. Why did I stop at 1944? I got bored.


I did find the distribution by month interesting, and scary. I was hoping we were near the end of the cold stuff.