About gardening, computers and random stuff

Cleaning up Christmas

rdata — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:52:13 +0000

I’ve been helping my wife pull down the Christmas decorations. Bailey, our chocolate lab, has been missing his view out to the sidewalk because the tree was in the way so he will be the most pleased of everyone to see the tree down. I think my wife did a great job decorating it this year so I am sad to see it come down.

How long to you keep you Christmas decorations up?

I’m cookied out

rdata — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:10:19 +0000

We’ve had a lot of cookies here at the house. With multiple females making cookies for their cookie exchange, we’ve ended up with a kitchen table full of cookies. ..some are pretty darned good too. Like the mint hearts, or the raspberry bars. My favorite is the chocolate covered ritz cracker with peppermint. Kudos to my wife for trying some great new cookies.

Anyway I’m just cookied out. After being the taste tester for new creations (Al’s white chocolate bark covered oreo drops, among others), I just have no desire for sweet stuff. I don’t think I’ve eaten one cookie in two days and I think I’ve lost my sweet tooth. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not.

Hope you’re having fun this holiday. Please remember to thank anyone who gives you a home made cookie. With the price of ingredients going through the roof, home made cookies are a significant investment.

Cheers,
Doug

Winterizing the garden

rdata — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:43:15 +0000

Normally I’d start with a title of something like: Closing down the garden or some indicator of finality, but my wife says that we leave the carrots an some other root vegetables in the garden and then pull them as needed. Doesn’t sound like we “closing” the garden. I wonder if we leave the fall planting of beets in as well.

To prepare for frost we put a white gauzy cloth over the beds. Evidently this stuff lets in sunlight and water yet keeps the frost off the plants.

We’re off to Lake Bluff this morning to meet a relative so this entry will be cut short.

I’ll detail the steps I take to to close down the yard as I do it. Next is the final mowing.

Windows 7 on Xen Server

rdata — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:21:30 +0000

I am pleased that I got Xen Server (pron. “zen”) installed on this Phenom II computer. Xen Server is another competitor in the virtual machine market, which allows for more than one PC/server to be installed on a single box. Virtual machines are being touted as a “green” technology but virtualization has been around for years.

The reason why I like Xen Server is having a platform for doing test operating system installs will greatly increase my flexibility for experimenting with different technologies. I was dismayed to find out that VMware isn’t really cut out to run on this particular AMD cpu and finding their competitor Xen Server from Citrix was big boost.

The hardware in this Sonata III case is:
AMD Phenom II X3 cpu
ASUS M4A78T-E motherboard with onboard LAN, VGA and HDMI
4 Gb ram
2 x 500 Gb Western Digital SATA hard drives
DVD R+-W drive
D-Link 10/100 Ethernet card, wired

I ran into two roadblocks during the install: The LAN port on the motherboard wasn’t recognized by Xen Server installer (Debian base) so I tossed in the D-Link, and there were some interrupt issues causing the Xen installer to lose connection to the SATA hard drive.

When the install hung, the console gave Errno 2 No such file or directory /dev/hdc as the only error message. Using Alt+F2, Alt+F3, Alt+F1 after the install hung allowed some latitude in troubleshooting. Finding the install log file in /var/log/ revealed a lost interrupt to the hdc. [If you haven't learned the editor vi yet, it's very useful for working in *nix and is installed by default on most *nix installations including the Xen Server ramdisk. Pico is easy, sure, but learning even a little vi will help you function adequately on any Linux/Unix system.]

The cure probably was fully enabling ACPI options on the motherboard..but it may have been something else because I rushed and changed more than one thing. The Xen Server install pauses for 10+ minutes when looking for hardware. In these days of fast cpu’s and cheap memory, adding 10+ minutes seems like eternity when you’re troubleshooting.

The motherboard is back to more normal settings and for now I’m done messing around with the hardware on this box so it will move to a more convenient location and I’ll remote in from now on. Windows 7 install went without a hitch..but it seems a little slow.

Update: Windows 7 runs fine in it’s VM with NO keyboard or mouse attached to the Xen Server box. Sweet.

AMD Phenom II system

rdata — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:57:56 +0000

I’m putting together a system with an AMD Phenom II X3 (3 cpu’s on the chip for you non-tech types). I’m using an ASUS motherboard in an Antec Sonata III case. Pretty nice.

I was frustrated to learn that the Phenom II has some issues running VMware due to some BIOS issues, or was that chipset issues? Anyway, it’s got issues as far as virtual machines go. Guess this will end up being a “single tasker” piece of equipment.

By the way, I LOVE Newegg.com. I got the equipment a short time ago and noticed a flaw / blemish on the Phenom II CPU that would not come off with recommended cleaning. For flawless heat transfer (_very_ important) I guess this is a show stopper. When I contacted Newegg the same day I got the part, they agreed to a return for replacement or RMA on the Phenom II CPU. The replacement just showed up today and I’m putting it through it’s paces on a ASUS M4A78T-E motherboard testing the disk drives etc.

Did I mention that I love Newegg for their RMA process? I could have been left holding the bag on a $125 part but Newegg stepped up and allowed the return. Of course I had to return all the packing material and parts in good condition but on the whole I am very pleased. Thanks Newegg.com!

Just started the burn in tonight and no worries so far. One note: The “live CD” for Fedora 11 X64 version wouldn’t boot on this system, but the “live CD” for a 32 bit Fedora 9 worked great. I’m not installing Linux on this box. Yet.

Making refrigerator pickles

rdata — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 16:38:33 +0000

I remember my mother making refrigerator pickles. She made two kinds at the same time: One with vinegar and one with sour cream. They would sit in the fridge in an open stainless steel bowl and our family would just mow through them.

I wanted to try some pickling so I decided to try the vinegar bread and butter style. I bought a small bag of cukes for $2 at a farm stand to begin my pickling project. My wife, who is much wiser than I on matters of canning asked, “did you get pickling cukes or larger?” I did get the pickling size so my project proceeded unabated. Gotta love those farm stands.

I finally get a breather from the action so today my wife and I “put up” my pickles. We just finishing jarring the pickles and they’re upside down cooling on the counter. There were a wealth of pickle recipes on line, but we ended up using one from the August 2009 issue of Better Homes and Gardens, p 182, classic Bread and Butter Pickles courtesy of columnist Scott Peacock. I’ll be sure to tell you how these turn out.

We have a trellis for the cukes but they were very lackluster producers this year. I think the fennel went sorta crazy (6 foot tall) and shielded the sunlight from the cucumbers. We’ll be in the garden this weekend pulling produce so I guess I’ll get more tomatoes if they don’t go into a sauce. Sadly, not much in the way of cucumbers this year. Lots of fennel though….

Elvis Costello concert was awesome

rdata — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:03:06 +0000

Recently I had the opportunity to see Elvis Costello and the Sugarcanes at Ravinia. (Highland Park, IL). This tour is to support his recent release Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, June 2009.

His group of seven musicians did a bunch of songs off the King of America release, some off of his first, My Aim is True, and lots of others. Of note was the slow rendition of What’s so Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding off the Armed Forces album. At the end he covered a Grateful Dead tune and Femme Fatal from Velvet Undergound as well as other some other artists which I forget.

Surprises: No drummer. Guess the band is pretty tight when they don’t need a drummer to keep it together. Other surprises: Dobro, electric autoharp, mandolin, accordian, fiddle, banjo, stand up double base and pennywhistle besides the usual compliment of guitars. VERY talented musicians all. One note: I didn’t see the backup guitarist and vocalist on the album release notes. Perhaps they picked him up just for the tour but as my friend Andy said, “he’s the perfect backup” musician. He must be one of these legendary studio guys. Now I have to see if I can hunt down his name.

If people have had a chance to listen to the “Almost Blue” release they wouldn’t have been surprised to hear all those Hank Williams influenced arrangements at the show. Pretty impressive performance and no warmup band. Three encores and Elvis sported a stylin’ purple porkpie hat. “He’s the Mozart of our time” was a comment heard before the concert.

Happy Birthday Elvis Costello.

Bee Careful

rdata — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:06:15 +0000

I was planting some hasta plants near the house and there was a small mound of dirt, old sod and wood compost next one of our 75 gallon rain barrels. It was going ok and my wife who was watching me along with our neighbor said “..don’t damage the roots..” (of the evergreen) just as I was putting another shovel of dirt in the wheelbarrow, there was a lot of bees in the air.

There were probably 40 bumble bees in the air and one was between the temple of my glasses and my hair…buzzing. I jumped and brushed off the bee.

Luckily I didn’t get stung. The bees were pretty upset and flying around for quite a while. Never knew that bumble bees have little yellow eggs instead of a regular honey comb. Anyway I did get some pix.

Can you fix stuff?

rdata — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:16:35 +0000

I’ve been out of state a bit helping fix up a summer cottage. It was fun but it raised a question. Can you fix stuff if you’re cut off from the internet and don’t have access to any of your handyman books?

One project was to fix a dryer vent that was disconnected. I suppose I did OK but it took a few attempts to get that dryer vent secured and mounted in the way the owner of the home wanted. “I’m worried about bats and mice” was the big requirement. Evidently the small mammal population was having no problem gaining access via the old dryer vent.

What I did was mount 1/4 inch metal ‘cloth’ over the plastic grid on the dryver vent and used some construction adhesive to hold the plastic vent onto the pipe. It will hold up over the winter. I think.

Real handymen have lots of clamps

rdata — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:54:41 +0000

I figured out why people who fix things have a large collection of clamps.

If I had a dozen clamps or so, I could have fixed those dresser drawers in half the time or better. I repaired a piece that we picked up this spring which was literally falling apart. The parts were in good condition but needed some TLC. Guess you have to plan well in advance if you only have a few clamps and need to get something ready for resale.

Because there was a lot of little wooden pegs to glue, I used Elmer’s “Glue all” rather than a real wood glue. The wood glue would have set up too fast. I probably wouldn’t have done as good of a job if I had to prepare each piece to be clamped in 5 minutes. Using the Elmers “Glue all” bought me an extra 5, so in 10 minutes I was able to follow my friend’s sage advice and glue the pieces up properly. When it comes to gluing wood, “Less is more” he said.

The chest held together just fine and so a rather solid piece went out the door on Saturday. I did cheat and added a couple of screws to keep it stable. I guess I should post a picture of it..not sure I have one but if it’s in the camera I’ll update this post.