This is an update on my blog entry "Gardening Around the Homeless" dated 10 April 2006. We live on the bank of the Guadalupe River in Willow Glen, California. In 2006, I started to create an informal cactus fence to deter homeless transients from passing through or camping on our river bank. I am even more motivated to continue this project by two big river bank fires recently caused by homeless campers just upstream of our property. I have planted both Echinopsis and Opuntia (prickly pear), plus some Yucca for height; they are all growing well.

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Here in the Sun Labs area of the Menlo Park Campus is a coffee bar bulletin board which has been accumulating comics for years. Some are cut or torn out of papers or magazines or comic-a-day calendars, others are printouts. Most are either from Dilbert, XKCD, or Doctor Fun. Since XKCD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License, the original comics can be included in this blog. Old Dilbert cartoons are harder to search for and are very restricted in how they can be reproduced. Doctor Fun is no longer published but there is a good Dr.Fun's Cartoon Search page.

The most melancholy cartoon is by Sipress from the 3/23/2009 New Yorker, showing the head of a company speaking to a large group of employees gathered in his office: "We're still the same great company we've always been, only we've ceased to exist." One of the funniest is a chart comparing How the HR department reads your resume vs. How a programmer reads your resume. (I haven't been able to tell where this comes from, but I found copies all over the net.) My addition to this board was a page from The New Yorker (9/21/2009) with a story by Paul Simms called "Attention, People of Earth".

Below is a sample of what some very educated geeks think is funny.

Doctor Fun

• Hiram P. Doodle and some of his many patents
• The HP DittoJet

XKCD

The Board

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

The new Willow Glen Lions Club was one of many organizations providing volunteer crossing guards for the Trick-or-Treat Trail sponsored by the Willow Glen Business Association on Lincoln Avenue. Thousands of little kids walked the trail, collecting candy and treats from the local businesses. Since Halloween was on Saturday this year, children went to school in costume the day before. The Trick-or-Treat Trail was on Friday, timed so that kids could go right after school. There were many dogs in costume too because of the special contest for them.

On Halloween itself, John and I had dinner with some friends in Palo Alto and then made the rounds with their kids. One Palo Alto house had a very elaborate witch's cave, another had an Area 51 scene, complete with spacecraft on the roof, jeep on the lawn, and creepy alien experiments. We saw the house that dresses its concrete goose for all holidays and admired her witch's costume. Rumor had it that Steve Jobs' house had the most elaborate decorations but the kids were tired so we didn't go see.

Willow Glen Trick-or-Treat Trail

Palo Alto Halloween

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Every few months, the women of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church (Saratoga, California) have gathered for Chick Flick Nite. Marian Abbott coordinates the event on behalf of the Episcopal Church Women (ECW). We started a year ago with "Calendar Girls", followed by "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day", then "Shall We Dance?". Last Friday, we dressed up for Halloween and watched "Young at Heart". We bring snacks and enjoying snickering and laughing out loud in the company of women.

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

It's been a long hiatus from blogging for me, but I'm back! Here, I'll make some excuses:

1. I usually take the summer off from blogging, and it just kind of got away from me

I ended up suffering from a "persistent, intractable migraine" which had me cowering in a dark room for over 3 months, and even in the hospital for 5 days. I'll can now tell you what true misery is like.

Ok, so I only have 2 excuses, and only one of those is really a 'reasonable' one. Fine, I can accept that. But I'm back and should be back to blogging regularly shortly.

Some things I hope to be blogging about soon:

1. My trip to China with Roger this summer

My current work on a Sun SPOT Application Exchange marketplace -- similar to, but of course way better than -- the Apple iTunes store, right?

Some new "Stupid Spot Tricks" with some new sensors I've gotten including a soil moisture sensor (which Roger has already blogged about better than I will, but I have a project for it so ... ), some gas-detection sensors, etc.

At least that list is longer than my list of excuses for not blogging. I might even write up the experience of the headaches, since it was an epic journey, but we'll have to see on that one.