Author: Andy

Missile-ing the point

The US and Poland have finally inked a deal for putting a missile defense site in Poland. Ms Rice, our secretary of state, claims that it will “help Nato, Poland and the US respond to “the threats of the 21st Century.”

Having not seen any missile based threats of the 21st century yet, I’m wondering if she actually meant the 20th century. It seems putting a pack of wild mustangs to roam freely in Poland would prove just as useful at preventing stateless actors from attacking modern states. I’m not sure how you fire an anti-missile missile at a letter containing anthrax, or a dirty bomb, or a shipment of rocket propelled grenades to Taliban fighters, or global warming, or bird flu, or the increasing dichotomy between wealthy and poor nations, or ethnic cleansing, or religious fundamentalism, or even blatant misuse of public funds. I suppose if the wild mustangs go rogue and start to fly, this plan would make sense. We’d want to make sure we could clean up after a disaster like flying rogue wild mustangs in Poland.

I suppose there were those 4 3 missiles test fired by Iran last month. If we really want to rekindle the cold war, perhaps we should just doctor the map.

Soldier Fly Larvae

Earlier this year my parents discovered a hatch of larvae in their compost bin. They asked me if I knew what they were, but I’d not seen that many of the little burrowers before. My mom called the county extension office and found out they were harmless but I don’t recall what the little dudes were.

As it turns out, the little grubs were Soldier Fly maggots, and they’re excellent vermicomposters. If we’d thought of it, we could have simply given some to the chickens as well.

Alan is going to give me a handful of red worms and soldier fly maggots to seed my compost bin. I’m less interested in keeping compost for gardening, but I’d like to keep food scraps out of the waste stream. The chickens aren’t very reliable for eating scraps either. It’s like pulling beaks to get them to eat lettuce, though they do seem to enjoy the star anise that I can’t get rid of from the various flower beds.

Feline surprise

As of Friday night, I’d caught all but one of the escaped mice again. I moved them from the large bin in to a 5 gallon bucket and placed a screen and weight over it while I finished up evening chores and dinner. Then, I forgot about them. I planned for this possibility by leaving a handful of the corn scratch in the bottom of the bucket, so they were at least going to eat well.

When I went out to get the bucket in the morning, the lid had been disturbed and all 5 mice were gone. The bucket was still standing, so it seems that nature took its course. I suspect the gray cat that I keep shooing away found the bucket, and just as the mice who found the scratch in a bucket, couldn’t resist the easy meal.

Mice

Maybe it’s because Tigger has been gone for nearly a year, or maybe it’s the big bag of chicken feed in the garage, but overnight I caught 10 mice. By catch, I mean they jumped in to the bin that the feed was in then couldn’t get out. And by 10, I mean 6 mice last night and 4 today.

Last night, I put all the mice in a 5 gallon bucket and walked them over to the schoolyard, figuring they’d either end up as owl prey, cat prey, or find a new home in the blackberry bushes. One got away, but I know where he’ll be next.

Today, when I put the mice into the bucket, I got distracted and tried to fix my dying bluetooth keyboard. While trying to get the hardware diagnostic DVD out of the box in the garage, I knocked over a ladder that knocked over the bucket. All 5 mice got a new lease on life. I’m fairly certain I’ll catch all 5, plus last night’s escapee overnight. They’d better get in the bucket before I decide to set kill traps.

Potty?

Barley started growling this early this morning and Michelle said “I think I heard a door open.” I jumped out of bed to investigate and was scared as I rounded the corner to find Ella standing naked in the doorway, signing and saying “potty?” After the initial shock, I was pleased to see that she’d made it through the night without soiling a diaper, and tickled that she’d taken it off and attempted to use the bathroom herself. Now if only we could do it consistently.

I suppose this is a case of having knocked on wood. Just last week I made the mistake of commenting that Ella never gets out of her bed when she’s napping. About 6 months ago she stopped fighting nap time and just accepted her fate. Well, that’s no longer the case. Saturday she got out of bed and played with shoes and got herself dressed (both legs through one leg of her favorite pajamas) before I heard the door knob turning. Sunday she did the same, got up and was wandering around upstairs. I explained that she had to stay in her room during her nap, and she seemed to comply. We’ll see what happens, but we better get the monitor out again.

Year 1, absurd project list

July marked our first year in our new home in North Portland. It’s been a blur in some ways, so I was looking back at all the household projects we’ve completed and I now see why. Since taking possession of the house, we’ve:

  • Installed new carpet upstairs (well, we didn’t)
  • Replaced gutters
  • Re-finished the guest room floors
  • Patched and painted the guest room
  • Replaced window in guest room
  • Remodeled the master bathroom
  • Planted a Trident maple tree (Tigger)
  • Replumbed using Wirsbo Pex
  • Survived radon mitigation
  • Patched the brick patio
  • Built a chicken coop
  • Installed gas insert in the fire place
  • Installed a new furnance
  • Painted over graffiti on garage and added light
  • Added a garage skylight (thanks for the friend discount, John)
  • Moved the gas line in to crawl space
  • Replaced dining room windows
  • Finished basement (well, 80% finished)
  • Planted a Rocky Mtn. Glow maple tree (Seven)

I’m a little shocked to see the list all at once. I also know it wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our family who provided material, moral, and physical support at various times throughout the year. Now I’m hoping for a year off. We need to rewire the house and replace the roof at some point, but both are big and rather expensive. We’ve managed to do the above either with funds left over from selling our house, or on the cheap. I love DIY.

Student Atlas of Oregon is alive

I just got word from one of my instructors and the head of the Student Atlas of Oregon project that our work is now online. As always, it is satisfying to see your work, even if someone did make some changes to it. The final product is pretty nifty, and I suspect it will be much more useful to middle school students than any other current collections of maps of Oregon.

I posted a work in progress view of the cross section map, but here’s the final product. I’d originally made it as a two-page spread, but the format of the atlas changed, and someone else merged the content for the final version.

Bye bye Qwest

A phone saleswoman from Qwest called last night to see if I was interested in any package deals. I was almost gleeful to tell her that we were leaving qwest in 2 days. She hung up, I hung up, l think I enjoyed it more. Take that telecom!

Seen: Tornado damage

My sister just dropped of a CD of some pictures I took on her camera while we were back in Nebraska. Most are of potential rooftop banners, but the last several were taken of tornado damage in Kearney. My uncle Bill gave us a quick tour of the damage, which was really sporadic and surprisingly contained considering it all happened in town.

The first picture is of a garage. The high winds eventually caused a panel on the garage door to buckle, then the rush of air into the garage blew a hole through the roof. Remember, don’t open your windows in a tornado.

The second is an exhibition hall at the fair grounds (I think) that only one half of the building was affected. The building just folded and slumped in place. The skin of the building looks like a deflated dirigible draped over a hangar. Crazy!

Wednesday in Vegas

Wednesday was really quite boring for anyone not intimately concerned with online education or learning management software. I was “in session” from 8am until after 6pm, and despite the potential for some major snoozing, it was actually really informative and useful. Not only was I able to learn a lot that would be very useful to my job, I was able to meet a number of “internet” people that I frequently encounter online and folks from other schools and companies that I routinely collaborate with. I sometimes forget the power of the spoken word and the face to face when so much of my world is RTFM.

The keynote of the day was by Blackboard’s own CEO. Among other things, he was showing off the direction of Blackboard’s product over the next 2-3 years. The upside? The product will eventually contain the things we want now, like ajax interaction, mobile delivery, full CSS styling and easy inclusion (integration is a strong word) of other web applications like flickr and youtube. The downside? Migration, time, and money.

Here’s some pictures of the trip.