Blogrilla

Yes, I still need to finish wiring the model rocket launch controller.  And I still intend to learn more about Flash - we have a copy at the house now and I don’t want the investment to go to waste, but I haven’t had the time and inclination to get involved with it lately.

HOWEVER, the good weather is here and I should do more outside.  Also, I think the kids have no proper appreciation for home-grown vegetables.  Anyway, I’m not much of a gardener.  Let me rephrase that.  I am not a gardener.  I don’t know anything about gardening.  Nonetheless I love sweet corn on the cob.  So I have resolved to plant a small stand of corn and grow some so that in September I can have some of my own, home-grown corn on the cob.

I have learned a little bit about growing corn so far:

1. it pollinates by the wind, so you need a certain amount of corn plants in close proximity to each other in order to ensure your plants will produce corn.  If they’re too far away from each other the corn won’t get pollinated and therefore won’t produce corn.  I always see row-after-row-after-row of corn, so I was inclined to plant it in rows.  That’s what the pro’s do, right?  But I read somewhere that you can also plant it in a grid layout to encourage pollination.  That’s my plan.
2. Our local bee population isn’t doing well this year, so pollination is projected to be a little bit of a problem.  The nice lady at Mahoney’s Garden Center encouraged me to crack open a beer after the flowers bloom and go out side and tickle the corn flowers with something soft and gentle like a feather duster.
3. Two corn kernels per location - 1″ down
4. Plant the corn when the soil is at least 50 degrees 3″ down. I was afraid it was too late, but my corn (Silver Queen) looks like will take 92 days to maturation, which means it should be ready in the first week of September.  And that’s just about perfect!
5. One website talked all about how much phosphate and nitrogen should be added.  I don’t know what I need.  So again, the nice lady at the nursery gave me some advice.  I got some organic fertilizer called Plant-Tone from Espoma.  I am supposed to mix half the bag in when I till the soil and when the plants are 18″ tall I should add the remainder of the bag.  ( I also added a little to a pair of struggling houseplants in my cube.  Hopefully that will give them a fighting chance ).

That’s it!  That’s what I know about raising corn.  Is it enough?  Will I get some corn out of this?  Its only a modest plot of land that I am willing to devote to this so I hope its enough to do the trick.

Otherwise, the weekend promises to be quiet.  I suspect I will wind up in the backyard for a lot of it.  Liz has a list of honey-do chores that I need to take care of.  Grace has another t-ball game.  She’s enjoying it so far and seems like would like to go on and try it again next year.  Except that i think they’re supposed to play “Baseball” next year.  Hmmm… I should work with her more to get her used to hitting pitches and catching balls.

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Last night me and my buddy from across the street went to see the Celtics play the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals. 

First things first: Holy cow, was that a close game!

We had a good time.  The seats I got were… not great.  Yes, they were in the balcony, which necessarily puts you a certain distance from the game.  However, we were also in the third row from the BACK of the balcony.  The good news is that the TD Banknorth Garden has taken “Stadium Seating” to a whole new level meaning it was close a vertical drop from my seats to the balcony railing.  We were HIGH up!  But I have to admit that we could see everything really well!  I’ve heard people say that there isn’t a bad seat in the  house, but I didn’t believe them.  Now I do - even in my not-great-seats, I had no trouble seeing all the action.

We stopped for a couple of beers at a sports bar in the neighborhood before the game and had a couple of dogs at our seats.  I got a new baseball cap.  I think I must be nuts.  The college-aged hottie behind the counter of the store was TOTALLY flirting with me.  The cap I bought was supposed to be a $25 hat and she knocked it down to $10 for me.  She laughed at my stupid jokes and smiled and batted her eyelashes.

All in all, it was an excellent game.  It was even relatively easy to get out and get on the subway that takes me to within a mile of my house.  The game ended at about midnight and by 12:30am I was tucked in my bed all snug as a bug in a rug!

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We had a good memorial day weekend. On Monday we went spent the day doing touristy things in Salem, MA. We took a tour of the city and walked around visiting our favorite restaurant, some historic sites and Winter Island city park where there was a beach and a playground.

Me? I got cooked and grouchy after a while. I hadn’t expected to spend much time in the sun so I hadn’t put any sunblock on and although everyone expects Swedes to handle the sun well, our alabaster complexion doesn’t really do much to alleviate the UV rays. I found some SPF30 after a while so I think I avoided the worst of it.

The kids had a good time playing on the beach. It was maybe 80 degrees but the water was closer to 50 so nobody really wanted to get in to the water past their ankles. I took some photos that I will post when I get a chance.

I had to work on Saturday morning doing an upgrade for our SAP Enterprise Portal at work. It came off without a hitch and I did yard work for the rest of the day, which suited me just fine.

On Sunday the girls wanted to walk with Brownies and Daisies (both junior versions of the girl scouts) in Melrose’s Memorial Day parade. I’m not registered as an official volunteer with either organization so the original plan called for Liz to walk with them, but she wasn’t up for it. I went down to drop the girls off but when it turned out that there were literally no other Daisies. As an alternative Grace said she would like to walk with her elementary school. When I asked the organizer where they were lining up she pointed to the end of a line and said “After the Roosevelt School”

“But…” I stammered “ there’s nobody after the Roosevelt School!”

She agreed that attendance was sparse for our school, but she insisted that’s where they belonged. We found about ten more people and made a meager showing of rotten school spirit.

Luckily Grace didn’t seem to mind. She had a great time walking the mile-or-so from downtown to Pine Banks park. We waved to all our friends. It took three hours from the time we lined up until I got to relax again, but the everyone had a good time.

We also saw the new Indiana Jones movie. I was unimpressed. Well, that is, it was a decent movie, but it wasn’t a great one. I expected more from Indiana Jones and Stephen Spielberg. Ben went back on Sunday and saw it as part of a birthday party.

I also finished mounting the hardware in the model rocket launch controller. It looks pretty intimidating right now. All I have left to do is wire up the inside of it – again, I will post photos when I’m done.

Now I’m back at work and everything is back in order.  The girls have a dance recital weekend after next (June 8th, I think).  I believe that is our next big event.

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Tonight I am going to see the Celtics beat the tar out of the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Eastern Conference Championship.  I got my buddy from across the street to come with me.  The game starts at 8:30pm and should go until about 11pm, I think.

Its been a good series so far.  Each team has won two games in a best-four-out-of-seven scenario.  I am pretty excited about it!

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2GB USB Cross Style MP3 Player/Voice Record (Black) CN-12G

Personally, I think this is totally tasteless.  Who can rummage up the most tasteless religious item for sale?

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I’m not sure if you’ve heard or not, but the Boston Celtics are in the conference playoffs right now against the Detroit Pistons.  The Celtics have had their best year in the last tewnty but they’ve had a rough post-season.  They barely squeaked by the Cleveland Cavaliers last week.

So far they’ve won one game and Detroit has won one game out of a possible seven.  They played their first two games here and now they go to Detroit. 

Then they go and play two games in Detroit.

Keep in mind that the Celtics have lost ALL of their post-season away games.

So, if they lose those two games.  They will be down three games to one when they return for game five here in Boston.  If they lose that one too, then it will be all over.  Alternatively, they may WIN both games and be in a position to seal up their chance at the championship.  In any case, it should be a really important game.  “Make or Break” right?

Yup, it will be a big game alright.

A lot of people will be interested in it.  Did I mention that the Celtics have stunk for twenty years so everyone here is all excited and pumped up about this series.  And that game five will be CRAZY!

yup.

I have tickets.

A pair of them.  I got them from FirstDibz.com for only $75 each.  I see that on places like eBay and Stubhub.com they’re going for about twice that.  So I don’t think I will make a killing on them if I sell them, but it could be a great chance to see the Celtics in a playoff game.

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Garmin Vista GPS Bundle - Overstock from REI-OUTLET.com

Good price on the GPS I use.  Mine hasn’t been used in… yeesh, about a year.  Its about five years old by now… maybe older.  It just keeps ticking so I keep using it.

Unfortunately, last night I went to make sure the batteries were still good and when I powered it up it made weird symbols on the screen like there was something wrong with the display.  I switched the batteries and tried restarting it to no avail.  I thought it had died a sad and lonely death.

Then I whacked it on the desk and it started working again!

So I am suspicious that the ol Vista is close to shuffling off its mortal coil and meeting its demise.

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On Tuesday afternoon I came down with some kind of bug at work.  I was suddenly exhausted and achy with a throbbing headache.  I left work and went straight home to bed.  I managed to rest for a couple of hours before the t-ball game that I had promised to coach.

Not many kids showed up and there wasn’t really anyone else from our team who could pitch so its a good thing I went.  I managed to feel good for the duration of the game but by the time I got home I was I felt shagged out again.

After an early night to bed I slept fitfully and didn’t get much rest.  By the time 6am rolled around I was in no mood to go to work, so I called in sick.  I slept most of the day away and when I wasn’t resting I was reading.

Ben and Gabriel have had MCAS testing this week so they haven’t had any homework.  Ben has been taking advantage of the extra free time by going to his friends’ houses.

This morning I couldn’t bring myself to stay home for a second day because I was tired, so I came in to work.  I don’t really feel up to snuff, but I feel well enough to do my work.

This weekend looks mostly open, which will be a nice change.  I still need to get a new lawn mower and a new battery for my drill.  I need to start clearing out the store-room - I freely admit that its a mess in there.

That’s about it for now.

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1440 rpms out of the new v8 | nicjasno.com

Wow.  maybe I’m getting to be easily impressed as I get older but here is someone who made a working V8 dual-cam engine - out of legos!

whew.  How cool in a very geeky way.

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Also Gracie’s regular t-ball coach won’t be at tonight’s game so he asked me to fill in.  Hah!  Coach Solomon!

Right on!

bear in mind that:

• we don’t play with outs
• we play for only sixty minutes
• everyone on a team hits each inning

So my primary obligation will be pitching three balls to each of my team-members - if they can’t hit one in three, then we put the ball on a tee and let them hit it.  Secondarily I assign positions to the kids when we’re in the outfield.

HAH!  Coach.  I bet we can win this one!

(technically they’re all ties, because who can win with no outs?!)

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