Archive for April, 2008

Bike Drive Walk: Getting from there to here

In the last week I’ve driven my car 53 miles, ridden my bike 31 miles, and walked roughly 10 miles. I drove to work once, to Lake Oswego for a meeting, to Powell Butte for a hike, and to Hillsboro for softball games. That’s a lot more driving than I usually do, so I’ll have [...]

An Earth Day confession

I know it might be hard to believe, but for about a year or so back in 1999 I stopped believing in global warming. I caught myself saying things like, “How do we know the Ice Age is really done? Maybe the warming is totally natural.”
Woah. How could I go from living with Earth First!ers [...]

Building a professional community, one designer at a time

When I decided I wanted to be a designer, I was going out on a limb. The year was 1997, and I’d just completed my bachelor’s degree in English, had no design experience, and had only created one (very hideous) web site. Back then, Amazon.com was still in its infancy and I wasn’t even sure [...]

The wheels on my bike go ’round and ’round

I used to be a bus commuter. It was better than trying to drive to work in bumper-to-bumper traffic then have to pay for parking, and at least I could read while I sat (or stood) in a cramped bus. Depending on where I worked at the time, my commute took from 30 – 60 [...]

The grass is greenest right here

As a native Pacific Northwester, I know just how fleeting good weather can seem. People complain about all the rain, more rain, and also the paucity of warm sunny days. The northwest is a land of transplants from other regions, many of whom apparently believe the myth that the weather in the northwest sucks. Perhaps [...]

Mux it up: April ‘08

The smell of freshly mown grass, softball practice in a downpour, growing seedlings, hail on your picnic, budding trees, sunny days, puppies, kittens, and rainbows. Spring is here in Portland! What better reason for a fresh new Muxtape? Get it while it’s hot!
Got a new spring groove to share?

A community of doers

Portland is a small small town in some ways. Working in the interactive industry only seems to exaggerate the smallness, since everyone has worked with everyone somewhere along the line. If I had a nickel for every time I met a prospective client who turned out to be best friends with a friend, friends with [...]

Strut your stuff

Sometimes, I learn about teamwork and collaboration in the least likely places. In the two years that I’ve been a volunteer dog walker at the Oregon Humane Society, I’ve walked with four different teams and had varying experiences on each.
The dog walking schedule is broken down into morning and evening “teams” that work on getting [...]