I’m not here.

Of all my daughter’s animals, I’m most fond of Pierre. He’s quiet, cute and small enough to fit in my backpack, important because I opted to ride my road bike today on what might be one of the last warm, dry days of the year. Because I had limited space, this was the first time I interfered with my daughter’s wishes, choosing not to take Gus — maybe tomorrow buddy.

Another stunning sunrise greeted the morning commuters.

While I photographed the rising sun, Pierre opted for a quick sit on the handlebars.

Not to be outdone by CG, Pierre, some guys from work and I took the bus to Pike Market for lunch — for those who care (no one I’m sure) this means I am no longer a Seattle bus virgin.

Lunch: Uli’s Famous Sausages. On the way out one of the guys from work suggested Pierre sit atop Rachel, the Pike Market piggy bank — I concurred.

Thanks Pierre!

Ironically, my daughter offered some advice this morning she had never before proffered: “Daddy, be safe on the big boat!”

Down the driveway and up to the road I pedaled with Curious George tucked safely away to cheers of “Bye, bye Curious George!” He spent most of the day in my bag but his opportunity for further fame arrived on my daily walk for an afternoon espresso at my favorite local coffeehouse, Zeitgeist.

Hands off the coffee George!

Back on the boat for the ride home CG decided to soak in the sun and pose with the Olympics visible on the horizon.

It was at this moment, with the wind blowing off the Sound, that CG almost got me in trouble as he toppled backwards flying toward the deck below. Fortunately for all parties, years spent honing the “no look” binkie catch paid off and I snagged CG before his escape completely materialized — troubly monkey!

One more photograph and back in the bag before he could get into any more trouble.

My daughter and I photographed more spiders spinning their webs this morning. When the sunlight hits the yard just right concentric forms glisten and shimmer just about everywhere the eye lands.

I love my daughter’s company as we wander the yard in search of photographs. She often chooses the subject and position: “Daddy, what about this tree?” Today she wanted to “help” with the tripod — and I couldn’t convince her otherwise.

Today Baby Ralph traveled on the big boat to be photographed from our office’s rooftop deck.

Baby Ralph is so named because of his resemblance to the other Ralph.

I find these photos amusing — if you don’t, my apologies. I’ll move on eventually.

“Daddy, daddy, wait!” Away runs my daughter to arrive seconds later with yet another animal, Bernard.

I haven’t been cycling with my regular camera (these have all been iPhone shots) but I’d better start. The skies this week have been incredible shades of blue, orange and pink. Sometimes Rainier and its flanks are glowing and I spend the entire ride enjoying the majesty surrounding where I live: mountains, trees, water, boats, harbors, skyline — it’s beautiful.

I’ve been called out more than once on my closing comments, but I do love living here.

My daughter greeted me twice last week as I was readying to leave on my bike with an “idea”. “Daddy, wait” she said as she ran back into the house, appearing moments later with one of her animals. She wanted them to experience the joy of the morning commute on the “big boat” — into the Ortliebs each went.

I think Gus got the better deal of the two, enjoying the sunrise over Seattle, while Balsamic suffered through watching me work at my desk.

I travel with a laptop everyday: to and from work, to coffee shops or to friends’ houses. While I use new, randomly generated passwords (courtesy apg) my home directory had not the same level of security.

That’s changed. Both my sister-in-law and a colleague had their laptops stolen recently and so encountered all the usual headaches and fears about personal and corporate information in the hands of nefarious individuals.

Wanting to quell any such concerns of my own I completely re-worked my security and backup strategies.

I use a Mac … enter File Vault and Time Machine. The web contains many complaints about their pairing but, for me, the limitations fit my workflow.

The main limitation to the marriage of File Vault and Time Machine is the latter can only run if the user of the former is logged out. Fine by me. Some of my applications, namely those using sqlite (Yojimbo comes to mind), should not be running while a Time Machine backup is occurring because the state of the backup could potentially be inconsistent.

To remedy this scenario, I had been quitting all applications prior to manually initiating Time Machine. Now I log out. It’s actually safer and more robust. Perfect.

There was one issue in the migration, namely any directory in my home directory which I had excluded in Time Machine is no longer excluded since Time Machine now only sees a directory of data chunks, not a proper file system. Since this included some monster VMWare images I have no interest in backing up I moved them out of my home directory and voilà, problem solved.

In addition to the switch to File Vault I updated System Preferences to ask for a password after sleep and to disable automatic login.

The upside of all this is my backups on my external drives (one at home, one at work) are encrypted, my laptop is encrypted and I rest a bit easier. Nice.