A Person, Artist, Software Engineer, Geologist.

I was doing what I normally do during the week and that is looking for places to fly fish.  This last week I tried out a new area on the South Mills River via the Turkey Pen road and trailhead.   Drive on a short gravel (2 miles long) road to the trail head, then a short 1/2 wish mile downhill trail to the river and suspension bridge over it. Once over the bridge there are rough trails (very) on the banks of the river for accessing campsites and fishing spots. easy right? This is where the trouble started... The terrain in the Appalachian is quite hilly and twisted as the forces of erosion continue, the rain abundant and the river contains many twists on its downhill run.  The foliage on the banks is quite thick and deep so, even from 25 feet away, you may not even see the river.  These two factors make location awareness a bit tricky as the same foliage, twists and terrain keeps repeating along the banks.  When I crossed the suspension foot bridge I failed to m...

Summer heat is peaking and I'm looking forward to the waining temps.  We gotback from our trip back to Utah where we stayed at our empty house that is in-between renters.  Got to play fix-it man again for a while.  It's not that it needed a lot of help but more of keeping ahead of issues that where starting to appear.  Save now or pay big time later.   Just before we got there some mice had chewed through some of the sprinkler valve wires, preventing a couple of the circuits from working.  Replace a couple of heads that still sprayed but did not rotate (just old age) and replaced the old toilets with new low flush volume ones.  The past tenant liked the old incandescent bulbs for some reason but kept my LED's, so I had to restore the LED's back to there proper place.  Garage opener bulbs needed to be replaced so there would be light if someone used the opener or entered the garage.  You know, small but important things like this. Off all the ...

Being that I quit work a couple of years now (and nave not missed it a bit) I feel I have some suggestions for friends of ours that are looking beyond the office (or regular gig). If you miss work, you will be in for pain.  Just let your old work life go.  It’s been good (maybe) to you but it’s time to move on.  Life is all about change, this is what it looks like. The more hobbies / passions you have the better but it’s still a lot of time to fill.  It’s one thing to enjoy doing something on the weekends, but now you have 2-1/2 times more weekends to fill.  It will take you some time to figure this out. Enjoy some Zero-Days (from long distance hikers where days not hiking are called Zero because they are hiking zero miles).  Don’t feel bad about not always being busy, just reserve some time for not doing a whole lot.  Unless you have a “border collie” spouse, then hide on this days. Try lots of different things.  Even those things you wanted to d...

Here is one of my distractions. I’ve been hiking in Rocky Fork State Park (in TN, just across the state line) for about 1-1/2 years and I’ve seen this stream that runs through it.  Been scoping it out for a while for fish and have seen plenty, but never fished there because I don’t have a TN license and non-resident licenses cost.a bunch more than resident ones.  But I took the plunge and bought one the other day and fished this stream. What a joy.  Small, clear, wild and lots of native / wild trout in it.  I used my Tenkara rod because of the over growth and small fish size.  Worked great.  First day out caught 4 fish, hooked but lost 2 more and had lots of bites.  In the park only single hook artificial lures are allowed which is great for fly fishing.  I also crimp the barbs on the hooks to minimize and damage to the fish. The stream was clear, cool and not a single piece of trash, waste or human pollution around.  Only light p...

Be not afraid, go ahead and post what you want. It’s not all going to be great stuff, but it’s an evolution of thoughts process and where one may be going.  In my case it’s all over the map, but still making progress.  I’ve got a list of things I want to paint and it’s sometimes hard to sit down and do them.  It’s not something that I just sit down and start to paint, I’ve got to get into the mind set, clear my mind of all the other items of distraction.

Sometimes you're just going to be lucky, so be prepared for it. I took this photo down on the forgotten coast of Florida's panhandle.  Bobbie and I where doing some work on her uncle's beach house and we where driving back to Port St. Joe heading back home.  I wanted to get a photo of the layers of trees (foreground, background) that gave a kind of spooky dinosaur era effect.  I rolled down the car window (while driving) and pointed my iPhone out the window and took a shot.  Only later when I looked at the photo (and did a little cropping to remove the power lines) did I discover that I had gotten lucky.  It happens sometimes. The composition with the lower foreground blur (from moving) to the twin trees in the center and the tall foreground tree on the right with the line of background tree just turned out great.  Way better that I was expecting.  I just wanted an example for a drawing / painting I wanted to do.

It's been a big switch when I quit my old procession (Software Engineer) and ventured into the unknown.  So this is my current desktop.   First it's a REAL desktop and not a computer screen. Second, I've had to learn a whole new set of tools.  You would think a pencil is just a pencil and a paint brush is just a paint brush, but noooooo, they are tools into you mind and that's what needs re-tooling. The tactual nature of these tools and operation as much more rewarding (and frustrating too) than typing code in an IDE.   That had it's incentive but that well went dry and life changes,  so I changed. The pleasure of creating colors (no RGB involved) ad hoc wise is interesting.  Getting the technique to merge them on paper is very tough.  You do not know what you're going to get, so you just have to go with it. I'm glad that I can do a lot of other things instead of Software, but I hope that others in my past procession work on other pa...