AND a dollar Short

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Yep, I’m a day late with this. The weekend got away from me, but I did get a lot done. Not a lot in the garden, but the garden’s doing fine on it’s own right now:

Bilbrey garden 21 May 2012

Bilbrey garden 21 May 2012

As you can almost tell even in the small format, the peas are going wild, as are the potatoes. Everything else is just trying not to get left in the dust. But it’s early days for this growing season.

The old lawn mower went the way of Fat Albert’s car – spitting fuel sideways and back while making a lot of noise. It wasn’t an expensive one, but the expense and delays I would incur to fix it means that new makes more sense, so I bought a new Troy-Bilt self-propelled mower on Saturday. Marcia keeps asking me if I want a tractor or a zero-turn riding mower … But for the cost of an inexpensive tractor, I can buy five of the mowers I bought on Saturday. So for now, I walk. Also, the Troy-Bilt has 20% more horses than the old Toro, and doesn’t bog down in the tall grass where the Toro would fall over. So, win-win.

The first week of my database “capstone” course is also done. Gonna be a bloody busy summer. I’m very happy, though, to be taking another class taught by Reggie Haseltine. He’s one of the best instructors I’ve had, full stop.

*      *      *

Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

1st Lt. Alejo R. Thompson, 30, of Yuma, Arizona, died May 11 in Bagram, Afghanistan, when enemy forces attacked his unit with small-arms fire.

Sgt. Wade D. Wilson, 22, of Normangee, Texas, died May 11 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

Spc. Alex Hernandez III, 21, of Round Rock, Texas, died May 12, in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Sgt. Brian L. Walker, 25, of Lucerne Valley, California, died May 13, in Bowri Tana, Afghanistan, when the enemy attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.

Pfc. Richard L. McNulty III, 22, Rolla, Missouri, died May 13, in Bowri Tana, Afghanistan, when the enemy attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.

Staff Sgt. Israel P. Nuanes, 38, of Las Cruces, New Mexico, died May 12, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained during an enemy attack with an improvised explosive device.

Sgt. Michael J. Knapp, 28, of Overland Park, Kansas, died May 18, in Asadabad, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an indirect fire.

Sgt. Jabraun S. Knox, 23, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, died May 18, in Asadabad, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an indirect fire.

Garden Progress

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Moving right along, I managed to take a picture this evening as the clouds started rolling back in. Here’s the state of the garden today:

Garden, 15 May 2012

Garden, 15 May 2012

The potatoes are coming in nicely, as are all the other plants. The snow peas … they’re in production. I’m pulling a meal’s worth out every two days, and they’re barely started yet.

*      *      *

School is started too, and for grins, the first project in CMIS 485, the capstone course for databases, involves PHP and an Access database. Yeah, Access. Whatever. I’ve mostly completed the design of the required tables based upon the ERD, and I’ve got one question into the instructor about apparently duplicated fields. Beyond that, I’m going to roll as fast as I can in this class, getting ahead before the next class starts in three weeks from yesterday.

Another Sunday

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My day started in New Jersey. Seriously. I spent Thursday evening through this morning in New Brunswick, New Jersey attending PICC’12. What a great conference. Sponsored by LOPSA, and hosted by the New Jersey chapter of LOPSA, it was two superb days of new friends, meeting in meatspace folks I only knew electronically, good food, and some awesome technical training classes. My major focus this time around was on configuration management, security, and IPv6.

I can’t recommend this conference highly enough. Only a three hour drive for me, it’s also right close to the train and near to Newark airport. Think about it for next year for yourself. Oh, yeah, it’s inexpensive, too. Conf + food + hotel + gas was under $900.

Special thanks to William Bilancio, Thomas Uphill & Benjamin Rose, Aleksey Tsalolikhin, Shumon Huque, and Jesse Trucks. These folks were crucial to making the conference super for me.

*      *      *

Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

Master Sgt. Gregory L. Childs, 38, Warren, Arkansas, died May 4, in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Sgt. John P. Huling, 25, of West Chester, Ohio, died May 6 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Thomas K. Fogarty, 30, of Alameda, California, died May 6, in Ahmad-Kheyl, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

2nd Lt. David E. Rylander, 23, of Stow, Ohio, died May 2 in Logar province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Spc. Junot M. L. Cochilus, 34, of Charlotte, North Carolina, died May 2 in Logar province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Sgt. Jacob M. Schwallie, 22, of Clarksville, Tennessee, died May 7, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Spc. Chase S. Marta, 24, of Chico, California, died May 7, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Pfc. Dustin D. Gross, 19, of Jeffersonville, Kentucky, died May 7, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Petty Officer Second Class Jorge Luis Velasquez, 35, of Houston, Texas, died as a result of a non-combat related incident in Manama, Bahrain.

Best Two Out of Three

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One more day of weekend to go – I’m taking Monday off work, for a variety of reasons, some of which will be explained later. But Saturday and Sunday I was in the yard, planting: Both in front and in back. That process is pretty much done. I didn’t get the watering system fettled for the season yet, and that was my original goal … but the rest of the plants was an important part, too. So, tomorrow for that, I think. Pictures tomorrow, too.

I also have to replace the kitchen sink faucet, since it gave up the ghost just before supper tonight. Fortunately, it wasn’t a catastrophic water-everywhere type of #FAIL, just a handle came off, broken bits inside, can’t get any water out at all type of #FAIL. C’est la vie.

*      *      *

Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Master Sgt. Scott E. Pruitt, 38, of Gautier, Mississippi, died April 28 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Pfc. Christian R. Sannicolas, 20, Anaheim, California, died April 28, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.
  • Sgt. Nicholas M. Dickhut, 23, of Rochester, Minnesota, died April 30 in Zharay, Afghanistan, from wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with small arms fire.
  • Capt. Bruce K. Clark, 43, Spencerport, New York, died May 1, in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan.
  • Staff Sgt. Zachary H. Hargrove, 32, of Wichita, Kansas, died May 3 in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Garden and War

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Yesterday, I mowed the yards, and little else, since rain was inbound. We got another 2/10″, which is all to the good – perhaps a total of 1.5″ over the last week. That’d be a wonderful regular event.

Today, I planted all the seedlings in the garden.

Seedlings in the Garden

Seedlings in the Garden

It doesn’t look like much right now – 28 or so tiny tomato seedlings spread out through two beds, zucchini and butternut squash, cucumbers, and half-inch tall jalapeño plants. None of the cerrano peppers germinated. I’ve got spares of some of the tomatoes bedded for now where the cold frame was, in case of a late failure … and everything’s documented, so that I can preserve seeds for next year from this crop. The main purpose for this picture is to provide a baseline for the jungle to come.

Snow peas and tomato seedlings

Snow peas and tomato seedlings

The snow peas are doing very well. All about eight inches tall, and starting to flower. I sense YUM in our future.

*      *      *

Walking the dog after her supper tonight, we were lucky that her feet weren’t cut on the broken glass left behind by an asshat who was done with her bottle of Smirnoff. It covered a chunk of sidewalk. Fortunately, Lexi was trailing me, so that when I crunched, I stopped and made her walk around. After the walk I went back and swept it up and disposed of it. I suppose it’s true in any neighborhood – some are always going to be asshats.

*      *      *

A bad week in Afghanistan for our troops, sadly. Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

Staff Sgt. Joseph H. Fankhauser, 30, of Mason, Texas, died April 22 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

1st Lt. Jonathan P. Walsh, 28, Cobb, Georgia, died April 22 in Paktia, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Pfc. Michael J. Metcalf, 22, Boynton Beach, Florida, died April 22 in Paktia, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Chief Warrant Officer Nicholas S. Johnson, 27, of San Diego, California, died April 19, in Helmand province, Afghanistan, when his Black Hawk (UH-60) crashed.

Chief Warrant Officer Don C. Viray, 25, of Waipahu, Hawaii, died April 19, in Helmand province, Afghanistan, when his Black Hawk (UH-60) crashed.

Sgt. Chris J. Workman, 33, of Boise, Idaho, died April 19, in Helmand province, Afghanistan, when his Black Hawk (UH-60) crashed.

Sgt. Dean R. Shaffer, 23, of Pekin, Illinois, died April 19, in Helmand province, Afghanistan, when his Black Hawk (UH-60) crashed.

Spc. Manuel J. Vasquez, 22, of West Sacramento, California, died April 24 in Paktika province, Afghanistan.

Spc. Benjamin H. Neal, 21, of Orfordville, Wisconsin, died April 25 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Spc. Jason K. Edens, 22, of Franklin, Tennessee, died April 26, in Bethesda, Md., of wounds sustained April 15, in Laghman province, Afghanistan, when the enemy attacked his unit with small arms fire.

Spc. Moises J. Gonzalez, 29, Huntington, California, died April 25, in Balkh province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when his vehicle rolled over.

Lt. Christopher E. Mosko, 28, of Pittsford, New York, died April 26 while conducting combat operations in Nawa district, Ghazni province, Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Brandon F. Eggleston, 29, of Candler, North Carolina, died April 26, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.

Sgt. Dick A. Lee Jr., 31, of Orange Park, Florida, died April 26, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.

Staff Sgt. Andrew T. Brittonmihalo, 25, of Simi Valley, California, died April 25, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained from small arms fire.

Eventful

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The week, that is. Eventful.

First, I’m past halfway now, and on the long slide down into the twilight time. Yep, I turned 51 on Tuesday. It was a fun day: I worked my normal 9 hours, did some light VMware reading in the evening, and retired at my normal time of the evening. Do I know how to live it up, or what?

Regarding the light VMware reading, I’ve been boning up in preparation for a VCP vSphere 5 certification exam, which I took this afternoon.

Event the second – I did not pass that exam. Sigh, I suck. Well, in my defence, perhaps 20% of the exam covered upgrade topics, which neither the training class nor our work environment nor the VMware mock exam have anything to do with. So, some expanded scope in my reading, and I’ll sign up to retake the test in a month or so. I was hoping to have it out of the way before school starts up again in mid-May, but that wasn’t to be.

*      *      *

Lexi a-bed

Lexi a-bed

Lexi now retires before we do, often enough. For a nearly three year old dog, that’s rather pathetic. But she definitely thinks that she is people. This was last night, shortly after 9 PM.

*      *      *

At that time, I was still battling learning more about networking on OpenIndiana. The network was broken after an upgrade, and I had to learn how to fix it. But my normal tools for learning are manual pages. In this specific case, the manpage for ipadm was/is missing. Not a borked install, but actually missing from the distribution, a known bug. Hmmm. Still, thanks to generous souls who post online, the Goog helped me find the answer. I had to delete the interface, recreate it in a persistent mode, then set the IP address. Explicitly:

$ ipadm delete-if e1000g0
$ ipadm create-if e1000g0
$ ipadm create-addr -T static -a Q.Z.N.Y/24 e1000g0/v4
$ ipadm show-if -o all

Yeah, you see that I bowdlerized my internal IP there, you can take it as read that it’s in a non-routable range and leave it at that. There are other steps to networking in a modern Solaris without using the bloody awful NWAM (network auto-magic) facility. But you can look those up. But when you want to set an IP on an interface with ipadm, and it whines, saying that you can’t set an IP on a temporary interface … just adapt the steps above.

So Much For Relaxing…

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I was going to take a weekend to relax. Really I was. But I’m on call, see. So my Saturday started with a page at 0608 – a dead system. I was at the office by 0715, and fixed that, then worked on a couple of other tasks before heading back home. So … I washed the car, cut the lawns, finished the mulching, and cleaned up the side yard. That put paid to Saturday.

Today, Darlion (nee´ Harmony), the 2007 MacBook Pro was laid to rest. It had shut itself off several times in the last couple of weeks. Just a matter of time, really, until it ate data I cared about. So I migrated everything off the system, and issued the (probably) final shutdown command. Supper out tonight at Mi Hacienda with Marcia and LindaRose, yum.

*      *      *

Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Staff Sgt. David P. Nowaczyk, 32, of Dyer, Indiana, died April 15, in Kunar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle was attacked with an enemy improvised explosive device.
  • Cpl. Aaron M. Faust, 22, Louisville, Kentucky, died April 15 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Capt. Michael C. Braden, 31, of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, died April 18 in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Apologies

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Today, I was at work by 0555. We finished up the necessary work, I dropped by the nursery to pick up a couple more bags of mulch, and I was home by noon. So that’s a good thing.

A bad thing is that I managed to not push the publish button on last Sunday’s second post: My apologies, as I really don’t like shirking on my acknowledgement of the sacrifices made on our behalf by the men and women of our Armed Forces.

*      *      *

Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Spc. James E. Dutton, 25, of Checotah, Oklahoma, died March 31, in Logar province, Afghanistan.
  • Cpl. Michael J. Palacio, 23, of Lake Elsinore, California, died March 29 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Staff Sgt. Christopher L. Brown, 26, of Columbus, Ohio, died April 3, in Kunar province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained after he was attacked with an improvised explosive device while on a dismounted patrol.
  • Cpl. Christopher D. Bordoni, 21, of Ithaca, New York, died April 3 of wounds sustained Jan. 18, 2012, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Capt. Nicholas J. Rozanski, 36, of Dublin, Ohio, died April 4, in Faryab province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained during an enemy attack by a suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device.
  • Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey J. Rieck, 45, of Columbus, Ohio, died April 4, in Faryab province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained during an enemy attack by a suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device.
  • Sgt. 1st Class Shawn T. Hannon, 44, of Grove City, Ohio, died April 4, in Faryab province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained during an enemy attack by a suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device.
  • Cpl. Alex Martinez, 21, of Elgin, Illinois, died April 5 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Spc. Jeffrey L. White, Jr., 21, of Catawissa, Montana, died April 3, in Khost province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
  • Spc. Antonio C. Burnside, 31, of Great Falls, Montana, died Apr. 6 at Ghanzi province, Afghanistan of injuries suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with small arms fire.
  • Staff Sgt. Tyler J. Smith, 24, of Licking, Missouri, died April 3, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when he was attacked with an enemy improvised explosive device.
  • Constructionman Trevor J. Stanley, 22, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, died April 7 while deployed to Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti.
  • Lance Cpl. Ramon T. Kaipat, 22, of Tacoma, Washington, died April 11 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Spc. Philip C. S. Schiller, 21, of The Colony, Texas, died April 11 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with small arms fire.
  • Lance Cpl. Abraham Tarwoe, 25, Providence, Rhode Island, died April 12 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. Tanner S. Higgins, 23, of Yantis, Texas, died Apr. 14 in Logar province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with small arms fire.

Third day and done

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I decided not to add a new category: Pain. It belongs here, but it’d (hopefully) be so bloody rare as to be much like a broken pencil.

You saw one before-ish (more middle-ish, really)  picture from the front yard, day before yesterday. Here’s one more deeply before picture: the right-hand bed off the front porch:

Right porch bed before cleanup

Right porch bed before cleanup

You might need to click on the image to get the full extent of the pain this bed caused me yesterday. Bracketing the bed are a pair of golden euonymous bushes (pre-trimming. In the center is our wonderful batch of tiger lilies. They’re being owned, sadly, by the yellow-ish grasses, so those had to do. The tulips and gladiolas have been pretty sad the last year or two as well, so everything had to go, excepting the shrubs and and tiger lilies.

Friday morning, I started work on the left porch bed, and it was a bit of a breeze, really. Weeded it out with a hoe, then turned it over with the rototiller. I turned my attention to the right bed. I started weeding it out.

That was when I realized the depth of my problem with the yellow grasses. They were going to take over the whole bed within another couple of years. So I started trying to take those out. Hmmm. The hoe wasn’t going to cut it. More to the point, the hoe was bouncing off. I didn’t want to use the pickaxe, because I don’t want lots of left over bits for this thing to spring back to life with. So a shovel it was. There went two hours of my day, cutting some “grasses” the size of a love seat from the right hand bed.

By the time I’d actually cleared the bed all the way around, it was about 3 PM. I figured I could “hit the ground running” with the rototiller after shopping this morning (Saturday), and get the whole thing done by around 3 PM. So I spent an hour transplanting some of the tiger lilies into the tree bed on the left side of the yard, and called it a day.

I did the shopping this morning (off my usual Sunday, but I’ve got to go to work tomorrow for an indeterminate period of time), got home, took the dog for a leisurely walk, and changed into the yard clothing. Out came the rototiller, and I attacked the final bed. The ground attacked back, and won! It’s partly due to how dry things are here (we’re really short on rain this spring), and other than a few specific areas, much of that bed hasn’t been touched in 7 years. Sigh. Out comes the pickaxe, there goes two hours.

I amended the broken up bed with some leaf compost, and turned it with the rototiller. I tuned up all of the beds with a landscaping rake, applied the mulch to all of the appropriate places in the yard …

Wait, did I just say all? One more piece of bad news. Unlike topping up the mulch from year to year, this time I pulled it all out and refreshed the whole yard. Well, the whole yard except for the bit on the back of the tree bed on the left side of the yard. I had 25 bags of mulch. That’s 50 cubic feet, and I came up short by about a bag and a half. But from the street it looks great, and I’m bloody tired.

Here’s what some of it looks like:

Transplanted tiger lilies in the tree bed

Transplanted tiger lilies in the tree bed

The right porch bed, after

The right porch bed, after

With a bit of the old clicky-clicky, you can see that I’ve already added some new decorative grasses to the right porch bed. They’re spiky and non-invasive. In a year or two they’ll do a nice job of providing a bit of backdrop for whatever I plant there.

Now it’s nearly time to sleep, but first to walk the mutt. Ciao!

Spring: Sprung

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For the second morning in a row, early temperatures in the mid-30’s Fahrenheit put a bit of a damper on morning yard work. I’ve taken a couple of days off to get the front yard in order. I’m peeling out all the old mulch, weeding everything, edging around the trees, and re-seating border bricks around the beds. What I didn’t count on yesterday was finding that a couple of the beds needed a deep turning.

Revising a planting bed

Revising a planting bed

When I uncovered the bed you see above, the soil seemed a bit lifeless and compacted, in keeping with the tepid growth of the few tulips that survived there. Normally I plant hardy annuals there, but they haven’t done so well, of late. This time, I remembered why: I haven’t turned that bed (nor the one behind it, up against the fence) since we moved into the house, nigh unto a decade ago.

Side note: We’re really short on spring rain this year – there hasn’t been but perhaps a quarter of an inch in the last 6 weeks or so.

Silly me, I attacked the ground with a spade point shovel. That bought me about three inches of penetration. I tottered back into the shed, and brought out the pickaxe. That did the job. I trenched out to 12-15 inches (in both beds, tree and fence), hauling the dirt back onto the concrete pad behind the fence. There I broke it up and mixed it with equal parts leaf compost. Then I barrowed the mix back out and filled the beds. The first partial load has just been tipped in, above. When all was said and done, five barrow loads went back into the bed.

The bed work slowed me considerably, though. I didn’t finish with the de-mulching and weeding yesterday, but I did all seven of the smaller beds/trees. What’s left are the two large beds around the front porch. I do know I’ve amended those quite recently, so no more pickaxe work today. I’m just waiting for the temps to rise into the 50’s so that I can get back to work. Ciao!