Weekend Preview

Friday was a boring day for me--lots of quarter-end work then David and I went out for pizza. It was an exciting day for David. After nearly five years with Lightwell, a US-based IT consulting firm, he gave his notice today. He is moving to a British IT firm that does interbank trading. Or something like that. I’ll never really understand what he does. He writes software that is used in various applications. Inventory management at Lightwell and now trading at the new company. I’m happy for him as he faced a litany of issues at Lightwell, where he also had to travel frequently.

I’ll put up a few photos from tomorrow’s hike in the Sperrin Mountains northwest of Belfast.

I find it annoying that my camera seems to make things darker than I remember. The people on the hike with proper cameras (big long lenses, manual settings) publish photos afterward that are much brighter.

What I liked was we were often looking out at patchwork quilts of green fields, the quintessential Irish landscape. According to the trip leader, whose photos are fabulous, my little camera lacks dynamic range, so the bright colours and dark colours are flattened.

There were a dozen people on the hike, a nice size. This is Maggie, a hardcore vegan who will stop to admire and/or talk to every animal on the hike, including a dying bee, whom she moved from the roadway to die in the grass.

I am a sucker for a picturesque ruin. Here again, the camera didn’t capture what I saw. And here is a kissing gate:

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