I just crashed my bike. Ow. I’m basically fine, though my knee hurts a bit from where I smacked it on the pavement. I was coming down the hill to turn left on Lake Washington Boulevard and the pavement got ever so slightly damp… sudden loss of traction, I tried to brake harder, fishtail, flop.

Bummer.

Hmm. Burning Man is less than a month away. Maybe I should start actually making plans?

Ava and I spent a few hours working on the front garden at Heden yesterday afternoon. Mr. Nguyen tore out all the weeds when he came by to mow the lawn, so the strip between the driveway and front walk was mostly bare, just waiting for some attention. We planted some more ninebark, a couple of sword ferns, and a various clumps of star creeper, brass-buttons, and miniature daisies which will hopefully spread out underneath the roses and rhododendron. The dead fern in the concrete planter came out and we put in another clump of woodruff, which has been very successful in the raised bed. Over in the sunnier corner we put in a cluster of violet oxalis and some California honeysuckle (which is actually a Northwest native, despite the name). I’m going for minimal maintenance, as usual, and and maximization of ground-covering greenery. It was fun, satisfying work; creating something beautiful with someone you love adds an extra layer of satisfaction.

In the evening I brought out my sewing machine, for the first time in a couple of months. Dawn brought over a few alteration and mending projects, and I cut up a blue denim jacket and sewed a black star in the back. I’m planning to redo the sleeves and put eyelets down the sides so I can lace it up. I’m a long way from the heady roar of creative energy I felt during the spring, but it’s nice to dip my toes back in.

Work is starting to be more ok.

The commute has become the best part of the day.

I have not yet tried to pick any of my creative pursuits back up, but I can feel traces of artistic inspiration seeping back in.

It seems the Patent & Trademark Office may finally be approaching sanity on the issue of software patents. I am sure there will be a lot of uproar over this before any concrete decision shows up, but the current system is a terrible mistake which benefits only a handful of legal trolls.

When I got home from work last Monday, the key had fallen out of my bike’s ignition. I turned it off with a screwdriver and spent the week moping. This morning the locksmith showed up, and $175 later I have a new key (and two spares). Vroom. Happy.

The speedometer no longer works. I am not sure whether this is actually a problem.

It is a sunny afternoon. I had nothing particular going on, so I went to City People’s and bought some plants. I trimmed back the big rhododendron next to the driveway and put in another clump of ninebark. A couple pots of miniature daisies will help fill in, if they take hold. Nothing has succeeded there yet, except the dense green groundcover plant whose name I can’t remember, but the weeds are happy enough, so I am going to keep trying different plants until something thrives well enough to crowd the dandelions out.

Mez is in SF. Lesley is in China. Alexis is in Oregon. It is 8:30 in the morning and I am playing Psycraft, loud.

I rode my bike to work today. I sailed by the line of cars inching up the freeway on-ramp, worked my way across to the carpool lane, cranked the throttle, and roared down the highway with a great big grin. So much fun was this ride that I sailed right past my exit – but no matter, it gave me an excuse to noodle around on some Redmond back roads I haven’t seen before.

No matter how much of my time this job sucks up, and how much of my energy it exhausts, now at least I can look forward to a motorcycle ride at the end of the day.

Interesting commentary on software testing: it’s titled “Testing is overrated”, but the message is actually more like “testing is complicated and no one strategy will solve all of your problems”.

When designing a sorting API, the comparison function should always be a parameter. The default case is less useful than a casual glance might suggest.

Netsukuku: a self-organizing mesh network, with a decentralized, distributed name binding system. It’s about time…