The Thing With The Stuff

The lost city of Bayocean

If you enjoy watching short documentaries, and you’re interested in learning more about Oregon, you might check out the Oregon Public Broadcasting show called Oregon Field Guide. Tonight I watched a really interesting and very sad episode about the lost city of Bayocean, Oregon. Apparently in 1907, a family of real estate developers founded a…… Continue reading The lost city of Bayocean

Good things

When your job involves a lot of finding where things are broken and fixing them, it’s easy to get in the habit of only paying attention to broken things. To help me offset all the criticism I regularly pile on my own head (there’s a lot), a friend recommended a simple little app called 3…… Continue reading Good things

Caturday

Dancing with production

I always enjoy the excellent podcast Hurry Slowly (hat tip Josepha Haden Chomphosy for the recommendation), and a recent episode called “Are you Satisfiable?” really resonated with me this week. The episode centers on the ideas of writer, facilitator, and activist adrienne maree brown, who recently published the book Pleasure Activism. The whole interview is…… Continue reading Dancing with production

Innovation and Empathy for Loss

In reading Megan Risdal’s excellent article, Reflections on Stack Overflow: Building Successful Communities, I was struck by a particular passage: Have empathy. Loss aversion is a very real thing. Even if simplifying something is the best thing for users by all other accounts, taking something away still hurts. And this impacts not just end users,…… Continue reading Innovation and Empathy for Loss

Talking leadership, events, and open source with Cory Miller

I had the distinct pleasure of chatting with my friend Cory Miller about leadership, event organizing, and open source today. Check out that conversation if you’d like to hear about the three epiphanies that have changed the way I think about my work! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jVMxNhPKpM Cory has a ton of great content on his Youtube channel,…… Continue reading Talking leadership, events, and open source with Cory Miller

Post-summer camp study hall

After I pick the kids up from summer camp every day at 4, I still have an hour of work to do (at least). If the kids want to watch some tv, they have to spend some time with their workbooks. So our afternoons frequently look like this, with all of us working at the…… Continue reading Post-summer camp study hall

Sweet peas

With a sunflower chaser.

Worth reading: The Skamania County Pioneer

I spent a weekend on the Columbia Gorge recently, and happened to buy a copy of The Skamania County Pioneer, the local paper, in a Stevenson, Washington. 1. There are still local newspapers in small towns; isn’t that good to know? 2. This paper has a Sheriff’s Incident Log that is pure, unadulterated GOLD. Out-of-towner…… Continue reading Worth reading: The Skamania County Pioneer

Cauliflower and Rutabaga Curry

I really like eating vegetarian lunches, to cut down on my meat consumption, and also because most vegetarian meals are high in fiber and low in calories. This usually means that I cook a big pot of something over the weekend that I eat for lunch all week. It might sound like a lot of…… Continue reading Cauliflower and Rutabaga Curry

Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening

I had a nice solitary walk around the neighborhood of the house where we spent the weekend in Bend. The light at sundown with so much snow on the ground is pretty magical, all glowy and diffuse.