Parker, ever the office puppy, got his first experience on a beach this afternoon when we walked over to the Dawes Park dog beach. He met a whole bunch of new dogs, had a great time, and has now deposited his sand-covered butt on my office carpet.

It's 13°C (55°F) right now, and it may be this warm again tomorrow. If so, I'll bring Parker—and a camera—back to the dog beach.

Now I must brush my jeans off.

A member of the Windows Vista team explains (via Joel Spolsky):

I worked on the "Windows Mobile PC User Experience" team. This team was part of Longhorn from a feature standpoint but was organizationally part of the Tablet PC group. To find a common manager to other people I needed to work with required walking 6 or 7 steps up the org chart from me.

So after 12 years, you still have to go to the Start menu to stop the computer.

Parker still hates the Halti:

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am very thankful that this wonderful puppy has come to live with us. Since I'm an atheist, I'm not sure what or whom there is to thank for it, so I'll just thank Parker himself for being the wonderful puppy he is.

We're at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters this morning so I can get some stuff done. At this writing he's being a sleepy little angel. Or, not so little, as you can see from this photo I took today at the dog park:

I just discovered my mail on the credenza in the office foyer. A letter carrier opened the door and put it there, with nary a woof out of the office puppy. Maybe this is why:

I'm beginning to wonder about his contributions to the company's bottom line.

OK, I think I've got the ParkerCam figured out. Here's the current arrangement:

Anne just confirmed that the "Parker has halitosis" photo is now a ThinkGeek Action Photo. Maybe it's time to get Parker an agent? Or, possibly, a toothbrush?

I remembered my camera today, but alas, Parker is at home (so no ParkerCam). Here he is Sunday struggling (as any rational being would do) to get out from under a Cardinals blanket:

Last Monday was the first anniversary of this blog. I completely forgot.

As pennance, I will now post this photo Anne took ten minutes ago (she and Parker are at home; I'm still at World Headquarters):

Duh. Today I forgot not only my camera, but also the memory card inside the camera with the photos that I wanted to post. We'll just have to make do with the ParkerCam:

Some memes obscure deeper truths. "Liberal" and "college town," for example, often go together, as in the lede from a story in Tuesday's New York Times:

BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 14 — Voters in this liberal college town have approved what environmentalists say may be the nation's first "carbon tax," intended to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases.

This lede bothered me for several reasons. First, I don't believe that wanting to reduce catastrophic climate change is so much a "liberal" idea as it is a "sensible" idea. Second, if Boulder is "liberal," that makes my home town (Evanston, Ill.) "socialist" and puts Cambridge, Mass., on the loony fringe. And I'm not sure Greenville, S.C. really wants the label "liberal" any more than Evanston wants the label "reactionary right-wing religious nuts."