Grand Oak withstands Sandy by Shedding

You've seen the photos of many trees downed by Hurricane Sandy. Here's an oak tree that stood steady.

It's interesting that instead of large branches breaking off of this tree, the tree "shed" what seem to be thousands of branch ends which ranged from a few inches in length to a few feet. You can see some of them piled up in a line in the street above. Here is a photo of a typical one.

It's as though the tree knew that it had to relieve the force of the wind so it discarded leaves and tips so that it could survive these immense forces. Reminds me of a ship's crew tossing cargo into the sea to avoid the ship sinking cause of encroaching water making it too heavy to float.

Hurricane Sandy hit Princeton hard on Monday

Southern Way is a relatively short one-way street in Princeton. At the end is Cedar Lane. Although Southern Way was hit hard by Irene, it made out better with Sandy. Perhaps Irene and some other storms in recent times cleared out the weak trees. Cedar Lane and other streets nearby are a different story. Here is the view looking east - to the right from Southern Way.

You can see yellow police tape tied to some of the dangling wires! So let's look a little to the left.

You are seeing the top of an electric company pole pulled off to the left. What caused it? Looking west, towards the second pole further to the left, we see:

Since our electric supply appears to be fed from that end of Southern Way, you should not be surprised that we are without power. PSE&G estimated that it will be restored Monday evening.

Hurricane Sandy approaching New Jersey

The calm before the storm - scenes of the season in Princeton:

Blue Berry Identification

Today, I spotted these blue berries growing near the canal in Princeton. I also noticed them growing in Marquand Park near the parking area.

Someone from the US Dept of Agriculture helped me identify this plant. It's Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, the porcelain berry.

Wow! Mia Farrow tweeted about KDB's Gay Talese video!

Here's a tweet from Mia Farrow about KDB's New Yorker video about the writing lair of the legendary writer Gay Talese: https://twitter.com/MiaFarrow/status/254661331876192256

Marbled Orb Weaver in our front yard

Every day recently that I walked through one part of our front yard, I encountered a massive web rebuilt from the previous day. Finally, I spotted the builder and identified it using Google:

BEACH CREATURES Video

Although this video was published just over a year ago, it's such a great video about a such a great creation, that I decided to post a link to it again. It's about a Dutch artist and his wind-powered sculptures that walk on the beach: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/09/beach-creatures.html

No Budget? No Pay!

Like any public corporation, Congress should be required to pass a budget annually. It has passed a budget and the spending bills required to fund federal operation only four times in the last 60 years! See No Labels: No Budget? No Pay!

Park City, Utah in June

An advantage of working in Telecommunications, is that we take an annual trip to a Telecommunications conference. This year we stayed at a fabulous lodge in the Park City mountains. It's a shame we had such busy meeting schedules and not a lot of time to enjoy the location. With the industry continually changing, lots of training is required to keep up. Over and above the typical areas like T1, DS3, PtP, MPLS, PRI, OC3, Fast & Gigabit Ethernet Line Services, we had significant training on mobility management and cloud options. It was good that the last day, Saturday, was a break from work. We tried golfing at about 6500 feet above sea level on a windy day. By the way, it was our first time on an actual golf course! We had taken some lessons in May, basically learning how to putt and hit the ball down the driving range. It was an interesting experience to say the least. Luckily, the day was set up as a scramble and we had two experienced golfers in our foursome.

Montauk in April

At the end of April, we spent a long weekend in Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island. Being off season, it was very pleasantly quiet.

Joe at the ocean

Val near Montauk Manor

December Trip to Paris

Been very busy. Finally posting that we took a rather enjoyable trip to Paris at the end of December. Weather was a little warmer than in the Northeast US at the time; however, those cool days would feel great about now.

KDB on the Musée d'Orsay balcony

Joe & Val on Ferris Wheel over Paris