Diary

7/5/01 - Woah! It has been a long time since I updated this diary. I'm posting more on the Carl's Coins forum and sometimes at Diet Inn. I'm also working now so have less free time. I have read several books and will update that section this week.

The garden is good. We are getting our first plums. The tomato plants are huge. They have small green tomatoes so maybe another week or two before we get to eat some.

4/25/10 - I picked our first artichoke yesterday. It was good! It had very few bugs compared to earlier years. Those bugs scared off my wife and daughter so I got to eat them all myself. I didn't eat many bugs because I washed most all of them off.

The secret was to save up used coffee grounds until I had enough to spread around the stem of the plant. Of course that is totally useless if the ants (who carry aphids) can find another bridge to the plant. So weeds have to be pulled all around the plant and the lower leaves removed as they droop and touch the ground. It is slow going here because we only make 1 double espresso daily.

We saw another fox yesterday. Also a deer in the neighbor's yard. Pretty much wildlife for living in the suburbs, isn't it? :)

Today I battle more weeds and try to plant some tomato plants. I planted a nice Italian parsley yesterday. After planting the irrigation must be turned on or else the plants will not survive our dry summers.

3/14/10 - Wow, it has been a long time since I updated my diary! I started a full time job so spend much less time on my websites these days. I'm enjoying getting back into the working world. I work in the software development industry and really enjoy working with a bunch of smart fellows. And most of the software developers I have worked with in my career have been males.

I'm still reading a bit. But sometimes I get home and am tired. We are still able to eat together as a family which is super nice. After that I am more attracted to vegging out in front of the TV than ever before. I even watch American Idol with my wife. :)

1/11/10 - I've been reading a lot but haven't finished any books! Soon I will have a flurry of updates for my book review section. Our new website: Diet Inn is now up and ready for testing. I have a bunch of ideas for the new Carl's Coins website I will start shortly. We have a blog associated with Diet Inn. Bones blog is most of the blogs from the website but on Google's blog spot so we get broader exposure.

I learned that part of the reason for my poor tomato crop last summer is a calcium deficiency. I put bones and shells in the compost but I guess tomatoes are hungry and my compost just isn't enough. I want to be as organic as possible but this is no problem because calcium from crushed oyster shells is organic and cheap.

12/19/09 - I continue to spend most online time on the Forums or on personal work. I've been posting links to various essays or forum posts on the several blogs I've set up. Those blogs are mainly for linking back to my websites and, once my websites are found, can be ignored.

Hack attempt! My webhost just thwarted a hack attempt. What a waste of resources. It is such a pain to maintain different passwords for different sites. It is even more of a pain to use difficult passwords. This gets worse when you change them.

Well there are spambots, hackers, malware and other evil efforts to invade our digital well being. At the current state of technology we do not have automatic passwords based on our unique biometric markers yet so we must change our passwords every once in a while.

To maintain safety and sanity I suggest:

Use random passwords that include special characters, punctuation marks and numbers. There are password generators and password evaluators available on the web.
It is tempting to use one password for all sites but you must, at least, use a different password for financial sites and other sites.
Write your passwords down and keep the list safe. If you always have your wallet with you and never lose it keep them there. The vast majority of threats come over the web rather than physical attacks. Muggers and thieves want cash not passwords.

11/12/09 - It has been a while since I jotted anything down here. I've been posting to the forum. Anyways (as the young ones say) there are no so many bird suicides this year. We have pyracantha bushes out back. These are 60 years old and huge! The berries are somewhat intoxicating to the birds. They eat too many too, their stomachs buldge. They get scared by a cat or something, try to fly but are overloaded with berries. Some see through our living room which has glass sliding doors on both sides of the room and try to fly that low route. They crash into the glass door and many do not survive.

Well I've been dramatically cutting back the pyracantha. I'm trying to make room for more fruit trees and open up the yard some. So this year there are still tons of berries, but maybe half as many as years past. So fewer kamikaze dive bombing birds.

8/28/09 - I just wrote a silver value calculator on the Carl's Coins website. You enter the face value of your silver coins and the price of silver, press the calculate button and the program displays the actual silver weight in your coins and the total value. I couldn't find a free data feed but I could find a free silver price chart. So you have to copy the price from the chart to my form. I didn't want to pay for that data - if you know where I can get that data for free please let me know.

The calculator form is HTML and the program is JavaScript. It was pretty simple and took about a day. It was great fun for me! I'd just love to find a programming job even if it was an entry level job...

8/26/09 - I just saw a huge beetle by the compost heap. It was a beautiful iridescent green color, very bright and shiny. It was roundish, kind of like a massive bumble bee but squashed. All of a sudden it made a loud noise as it beat its wings and actually flew! It was way more awkward than a bumble bee. But it did rise, tilt and fly to one side or another like a cross between a super miniature helicopter and a bumble bee. Too bad no photo...

8/24/09 - Yup, I've mostly been writing to the forum. I'm also working on a new website. I'll probably let this diary fade away into nothingness...

I am also working on an article about Alum Rock Park. It is a good excuse for me to post photos of my favorite local park. I am saddened to hear that Henry Coe park may be closed due to budget problems. Sigh.

We been picking as many tomatoes as we want, also some zukes. We could use more zukes and haven't had enough tomatoes to make sauce for freezing or anything. I was going to try canning a spaghetti sauce this year but don't have the surplus needed.

8/3/09 - Got back from a backpacking trip, writing it up, will add to Blog page. Harvesting loads of tomatoes, apples are ready for a crisp, not many pears this year but they are tasty. I just can't grow sweet cucumbers - they are very bitter - and will probably not even try next year. Teresa's yam plants are doing very well.

7/26/09 - Fox update. A fox, or some other critter, dug up a yam Teresa had started and planted. Well the foxes got credit for the misdeed and after that point I chased them off when I saw them. Also I peed on a few spots along our property boundary where I thought they were mostly likely to pass. We didn?t see them after that and the remainder of the yams are intact. I thought they were carnivores so there may be another explanation for the yam disappearance but the circumstantial evidence is strong so they still get the blame.

7/23/09 - I've been posting to the forum so haven't been updating this diary much.

Today's harvest: More than a dozen cherry tomatoes, 2 small pears, the last 3 "Santa Rosa" plums, 3 "Heavenly White" nectarines, 3 tiny alpine strawberries, 2 small Macintosh apples. I'll get a bit of lettuce before supper, it is too hot and that will be the end of it.

The pears and apples are not quite ready but so abundant they are threatening to break the branches so I try to pick the ripest, smallest ones so the remaining ones get bigger and don't break the limbs. I could have taken a zuke but will get it tomorrow for a bean/veggie soup.

7/16/09 - Our artichokes are long gone, well they are still here but the chokes are gone. Some have flowered. Plums just peaked, I will pick some more today having dried a bunch already. Nectarines are starting to ripen and we?ve eaten our first. I wish I had berries. My neighbor brought some kind of berries over a few weeks ago. We are picking cherry tomatoes daily and zukes every few days. We even got two cucumbers so far this year. Peppers are not bearing yet ? not sure if they will. Teresa planted yams she started from greens. She put stems in water, roots formed and were planted. Other fruit trees are developing with apples and pears not too far away.

It is neat to harvest food from our back yard! It tastes good too. :)

7/12/09 - After our camping trip I checked out the garden. Peak plum time! There are way too many plums. Nectarines are almost ready. I've been after the zukes so none are too big. I picked a perfect one today along with cherry tomatoes. I cut up a bunch of plums and they are drying now. I got hungry doing all this so will head upstairs to make an omelet with any veggies I can find. :)

7/11/09 - What a great camping trip to Arroyo Seco! I will post the write up to my blog.

7/8/09 - We're heading to the Arroyo Seco river tomorrow for a camping trip. It is on the east side of the Ventana Wilderness which is a large area from Big Sur to Ft. Hunter-Liggett and north almost to Monterrey. It drains the east side of those mountains and ends up in the Salinas river. Contrary to the name it has water year round. You can slide, climb and swim down the stream which has narrow gorges and many waterfalls. I'll report back after the trip.

7/7/09 - Met up with someone I worked with many years ago for coffee. It was great catching up and talking technology.

7/5/09 - Watched fireworks from our deck last night. The traditionally biggest downtown San Jose show was canceled this year. :( There were lots of other shows though.

7/2/09 - I picked our 2'nd cucumber today. I've been picking 3 or 4 cherry tomatoes daily. Zucchinis are growing and we're picking 2 or 3 a week. The plums are starting to get ripe. Good stuff!

6/28/09 - The forecasters predicted 100+ temps today. Teresa, Carla and a friend of hers took off to the Santa Cruz beaches for relief. I admit I was annoyed by all the traffic and the difficulty in finding a parking space. I dropped the girls off at the beach, drove a long way, parked and walked back.

Carla and her friend played music during the drive and talked, played in the water and walked at the beach. They had a grand time and weren?t the least bit bothered by the traffic. Of course they weren?t driving. After the fog rolled in and we got cold we went off in search of a Subway for a sandwich. We parked, walked, and got our sandwiches. I asked if there was a park. There was. On the way to the park we passed a crazy guy who was loudly picking a fight with another fellow but no fight. We found the park and it was full of hippies all wearing tie die. One was playing guitar, some were playing hacky sack. Others were smoking. The girls commented that Santa Cruz was living up to its stereo type.

It was a good trip and refreshingly cool. Turned out it wasn't as hot here as predicted anyway.

6/24/09 - The foxes were around again today. I have been tasked with chasing them away. Yesterday they were so cute, all 5 were playing on our lawn. Mom wanted to stretch out and relax. The kids were running in circles chasing each other. Later in the day we saw dad with a squirrel in his mouth. Teresa wanted them gone but Carla and I thought they were so cute and we liked the idea of having our own wildlife preserve in our backyard. Well in the evening I discovered that one of the Yam plants Teresa has tenderly cared for had been dug up. The foxes got the blame and now I must chase them away. I can?t argue as I really don?t like when animals mess up our food garden.

6/23/09 - The Foxes were in great form today. All 5 were playing on our lawn. The mom looked tired. I could see she still allowed the little ones to nurse. The 3 pups chased each other around and around. One would go through the base of our Box hedge, run along the back to the end and come out the side to chase another who then ran into the hedge. Great fun!

6/22/09 - The Foxes made an appearance today! At least 2 little ones did. They were chasing each other. They ran in circles around a fruit tree like puppies. Cute!

6/21/09 - Evil hackers have messed up my cousin's website. What a waste of the world's resources! Hackers force the rest of us to waste huge amounts of bandwidth, CPU time and money dealing with destructive hacks, spam and viruses. Hacks are the graffiti of the Internet. Spam is the wind blown trash that degrades the networked environment and transmogrifies plain but functional screen space into bytes of boiling bile. Viruses are pernicious diseases hatched in the pores of maladjusted miscreants. Hackers and gang members should be sentenced to individual but adjacent bullet proof glass lined cells that hang from cranes high above busy urban intersections. The hackers should be required to communicate only with spray cans of paint while gang members only communications should be by means of a DOS computer connected to AOL by a 28.8 modem.

6/20/09 - Just saw "Star Trek (2009)". I enjoyed it very much! It was fun seeing the young versions of the Star Trek crews. Uhura is stunning! Kirk is very irreverent. All the young versions of the original characters were well done except perhaps Sulu who was fine, but a bit forgettable.

Part way through the movie I was thinking it would be superb. By the end I ratcheted back that conclusion. It was very good but had some flaws that kept it from being great. The bad guys looked really punk but only Nero talked. The Romulans supposedly waited 25 years for Spock to arrive after some weird, not well supported, time travel twists but they didn't age at all.

The characters were true to the original, the story was action packed and the special effects were great. My wife and daughter are not sci-fi fans like me nor are they trekkies but they both enjoyed the movie as did I. It is entertaining for newbies and satisfying for trekkies. Great job! This is a must see for all sci-fi fans. If you haven't seen it yet you may be waiting for the DVD. I recommend getting out to a theatre now, you will enjoy it.

6/18/09 - Yeay!!!!! First tomatoes!!!! I planted seeds at the end of January, the earliest ever. I've been jealous the past many years when everybody else seems to harvest tomatoes earlier than me. I do get the last laugh because I harvest late - almost always past Thanksgiving and once to Christmas. But I want early too! So this year I got my earliest start ever. I only harvested 2 cherry tomatoes but there are many more green ones. I got a Zucchini yesterday too so this is a nice start to the veggie season.

6/16/09 - Today I noticed a nice platter of ripe black berries in front of our door. Our doorbell isn't working and nobody was around. Anyway our neighbor had too many berries so gave us some. Both sweet and a bit tart they taste great and have loads of anti-oxidants. They sure taste good when liberally applied to vanilla ice cream. :)

6/15/09 - Whew! About 2 weeks ago I noticed our ?new? automatic sprinkler valve was leaking. It wasn?t terribly bad but it was constantly dripping enough to make a pretty muddy spot. Today I replaced it. Naturally I didn?t buy PVC glue because I already had some. Not! Well I did, but it had turned to jelly so needed to be tossed. Back to OSH where I bought a 2 pack of purple primer and glue. I never used the primer before. It dripped down my hands and due to the quick evaporation and sting from little cuts I could tell it is some other kind of solvent. Didn?t seem to make much difference. During this time all water to the house was off. There wasn?t any way to turn off just the irrigation system so I turned off the main water supply. I need to add a manual valve to the irrigation supply ? another day. Anyway a sprinkler riser broke while I was moving things to fit the new valve. I did have enough stuff to repair that. Finally everything works!

I say our "new" valve because I installed it about 8 years ago. The 4 old ones were already here when we bought the house in 1991. They are still working well!

6/13/09 - My mom left and will travel to her home in the San Juan Islands of Washington today. I'll miss her.

6/10/09 - OK, OK, there are definitely 3 young pups in the fox family! Looks like they enjoy our backyard...

6/8/09 - Turns out there are at least 2 young foxes in the family! They were cavorting around this morning. Carla photographed one of the young 'uns. Pretty cute right?

6/7/09 - My mom is here for a visit. This morning at breakfast my wife Teresa exclaimed "there is the fox, and it is chasing something." We all gathered around the windows and it turned out to be a fox family. I believe the photos in earlier posts are of the father. A mother and super cute small child were also making their way through our back yard. Too bad we didn't get photos of the little one!

6/2/09 - I was reviewing math today to see if I could help my daughter who is studying for a SAT Math 2 test. I enjoyed it and was able to remember some things and pick up other's quickly. Some things remain a mystery and I will look into them more tomorrow.

6/1/09 - That fox walked past me while I was near our compost heap. Several minutes later I was in my office and he walked outside stalking a Stellar's Jay. Those Jays are pretty but are mean and their voice is sharp and scolding. The fox had no chance and slinked away.

5/31/2009 - I started up a forum on my Carl's Coins website. I posted my blog essays in the general discussion area and added a link to the forums to the menu on this website. Maybe somebody will post a reply to my essays?

On my walk I spotted a fox. Not sure if it is the same one that goes through our yard. It was a few blocks away so might be. It has a tiny squirrel in its mouth!

5/28/2009 - People vs. Goats? As I wrote back on 5/12 we saw a large herd of goats munching weeds. There was one herder who was snoozing in his car while the goats worked. His job was to move the electric fence so the goats could clear various areas along the park boundary. After that Teresa and I hoped goats would be employed on the other side of the road. The park is owned by the City of San Jose while we weren't sure if the other side was owned by Santa Clara County, the water company or private citizens.

On our walk today we say a work crew clearing the grass near Alum Rock Park. This time there was a truck with about 10 people. They had gas powered chain saws, weed whackers and other power tools. They did cut some thicker branches of the sort goats would not eat. They carted off the organic waste in orange plastic garbage bags.

Comparing either side of the road we had to admire the job done by the goats. They used way less gas, produced only organic waste that could be left on site and whose babies were way cuter. On the other hand the men did have gainful jobs even if they did create much more pollution. In both cases we are happy to have flammable weeds knocked down before we get into the fire season. This work gives our neighborhood a barrier that can be more easily protected in case Alum Rock has a big fire.

5/26/2009 - I fixed the eBay listings to handle a maximum of 100 listings. Previously the limit was 50, this is the first week I listed more than that many items. It took a different eBay API call to make it work.

Also I added a book review CCNA Official Exam Certification by Wendell Odom for Cisco Press.

5/25/2009 - Three days ago I downloaded Google's new web browser Chrome. I liked it because it was clean and fast. Today I tried to print a postage label from PayPal. The label never popped up but my account was charged for the shipping charge. That is no good! I've been looking for a new browser. My previous favorite was FireFox. It was neat and worked very well. It seemed faster than Internet Explorer. Everything was dandy until I couldn't update my LinkedIn profile. I couldn't use every Charles Schwab feature in Chrome either. So I am using Chrome for bumping around different news sites, IE for Schwab and LinkedIn and FireFox for everything else. For example FireFox has a much better JavaScript debugger than Chrome does.

In the old days, say 10 years ago the browser wars were about implementing the standards quickly and delivering features. Now the browsers are trying to be fast with fewer bugs and safer with more protection from phishing and other hack attacks. Unfortunately more and more "standards" are being defined along with backwards compatibility so they have to run just to stay in place. The end result is that there is more divergence in implementation of standards.

These trends are bad for us poor end users. :( I'd love to use a quick, safe and clean browser. However I'd rather use a slow and clunky one if I could get away with using only one! For now it looks like I will use 3 different browsers on a daily basis.

5/22/09 - I spent several hours this past week preparing for my largest eBay offering to date. A client and good friend asked me to list over 100 certified Lincoln Cents. This year is the 100'th anniversary of the Lincoln Cent which was introduced in 1909 to celebrate the 100'th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. Anyway I photographed both sides of each coin and prepared an eBay listing for each one. It was a lot of fun! I do enjoy studying coins and also photographing them.

I've been using JavaScript to calculate BMI and BMR over on the Diet page. While looking for a job it is clear that knowing how to program Java would help. I started looking into it this week and it really has come a long way since I first looked at it in the late '90s! I am loving it!

5/20/09 - We saw that fox again. It walked down our concrete walk - I could have grabbed his bushy tail if the door had been open.

5/19/09 - Teresa and I voted today. We were part of the 25% of voters who bothered. We held our noses and voted yes on all but one measure. All measures but one were crushed. I guess that puts us in the minority of a minority. :)

5/17/09 - It is truly hot today. Teresa and I did our Sunday food shopping routine that I enjoy so much. First we hit the farmer's market, then the super market. Cherries and stone fruit were everywhere at the farmer's market. The cherries were a bit sour, they will probably be perfect next week.

We plan out our dinners for the next week. We check our supplies then go shopping. When I started learning how to cook simple things I also learned how to appreciate the effort involved in planning, preparing and cleaning up. Learning how to cook, cooking some meals and helping plan meals and shopping is the one change in my life most appreciated by Teresa. Up until a few years ago I never ever did those things.

5/16/09 - It was beautiful this morning. I took a walk through Alum Rock Park. There were loads of people. The weather forecast was for a very hot day so I guess people flocked to the canyon to stake out a cool place to spend the day. This was one of the very few times I didn't see any deer. I did hear a bunch of Turkeys though. By the time I got home it was hot.

5/15/09 - This evening was the start of "Fiesta." This is a large fund raiser hosted by our local church. It lasts the weekend but we have been attending Fridays for the past 5 years. Carla gets a ticket book early at church. She gets unlimited rides until 9 PM today. She had a blast meeting up with all her middle school friends - the church runs a middle school.

Teresa and I had fun too. The weather is awesome; cool and clear. We had spring rolls and some other Vietnamese food. We saw a stand selling root beer floats. When we got home we used up the last of the soda left over from Carla's birthday and made floats. Super!

5/14/2009 - Sometimes I just feel good. I'm an optimist in general but today, for no particular reason, I just feel good.

5/12/2009 - There are about 100 goats with a dozen sheep and one large sheep dog in Alum Rock Park. The goat man erects a portable fence. It is electrified by a car battery. He moves the fence every day or two. The goats do a marvelous job of clearing out grass, weeds and low hanging leaves. This produces quick compost and a nice buffer zone in case of fire. Our neighborhood borders on the park where a wildfire would be extremely hard to control so we appreciate the buffer. The animals look healthy and are getting fed. This is a win-win situation for sure.

5/10/2009 - I just buried a cedar waxwing in my compost heap. Recently flocks of birds have been cavorting about. Our house has lots of windows on all sides including a completely glass wall along the front of the house and windows filling three sides of our breakfast nook in back. I guess they see through one window and out another and think they can fly through. Crash! This has been happening lately but most crash victims pick themselves up and fly away, today's wasn't so lucky.

This is unusual this time of the year. In the fall the huge, old pyracantha bushes in our back yard are full of berries. Robins and other birds eat so many berries their bellies bulge and you can even make out the shape of berries protruding from their overloaded stomachs. Many times they try to lift off, find themselves too heavy to gain much altitude and crash heavily into our windows. Carla even makes warning signs for them. Many end up in the compost heap.

I guess the reclamation of the salt evaporation ponds in the nearby San Francisco Bay is progressing and helping support larger numbers of birds. Huge areas of the marshlands birds love have been filled for development or salt evaporation ponds in the past hundred fifty years. I think I will write a blog about this. Looks like it will is already a successful environmental project.

5/8/2009 - Just took Carla and 8 friends to Benihanas to celebrate her birthday. The girls got a table to themselves and lucked out by getting an experienced and entertaining chef. We were at a different table. Our chef was nice and friendly. He was amusing. However my chicken was dried out and the veggies were overcooked. The girls had great fun but this restaurant is not worth the price in my opinion.

As an aside I was surprised at how casual the customers dressed. Shorts, tee-shirts and sandals were prevalent. I had on one of my nicer pair of blue jeans, shoes and a good button down shirt and felt over dressed. The girls were wearing nice dresses and were definitely a positive for the atmosphere.

5/6/2009 - The big event today was my taking Cisco's Interconnecting Cisco Network Devices test. I haven't taken any tests in a long time and I was nervous. The test itself has different kinds of questions. Multiple choice questions are straight forward but network simulations are much more complicated and involved. My test had a couple simulations and simlets first. Further the simulations covered my weakest area. I freaked out, my stomach clenched, my heart started beading quickly. I rushed through that part and when I got to the multiple choice questions I had spent 1/3 of the time on 1/10 of the questions. I thought for sure I would fail. I finished the test with some time to spare. Unfortunately you cannot go back so I regretted not spending a few more minutes on the simulations. I did pass and with a good score too.

5/5/2009 - In addition to lettuce we're harvesting nasturtiums and loquats. I had never heard of loquats until I lived in San Jose for several years. They are tasty and ripe now. The fruits are small and usually have 2 large oblong seeds so will probably never be a commercial fruit. The evergreen trees have large leaves and are attractive so they are frequently used in landscaping. I think everybody should grow at least one fruit tree for the fruit.

We also get herbs but that is nothing new. We harvest fresh rosemary, bay leaves and oregano year round. We also have a new thyme plant which I'm hoping will also be long lived. The Italian parsley is going to seed after producing all winter. This is my first year with on over-wintering Italian parsley so I don't know if it will rejuvenate or die off. I sure hope it rejuvenates!

I enjoy nasturtium flowers on my salad. The girls don't like them so I get to eat them all up myself. I just love the idea of eating flowers. I also like the peppery taste. Click on photo below for a larger image. The photo is of nasturtiums propped up on some loquats all picked earlier today.

5/3/2009 - I cooked lasagna tonight. Teresa was hungry. When she checked out how dinner was progressing she was clearly impatient with my slow progress. I could tell she wanted to take over because she would be so much faster. She survived and we all eventually had a nice dinner.

5/2/2009 - I'm torn between writing more opinion pieces and documenting trivial events in my life. I am leaning towards doing some of each. That means I will break this log into a blog and a diary.

I just saw a magnificent young red tailed hawk. When young the tail is not yet red. This guy flew up and landed on a branch on the pepper tree right outside our bedroom window. It was a very healthy bird. I yelled for Carla to get her camera but she was too busy re-writing her English paper on "Gone With the Wind" to bother. The bird flew to telephone wire, I went to the living room for another look. It then flew away. I see hawks all the time but rarely get this close.

Today's artichoke was the best so far. It sill had bugs on it so I got to eat most of it myself. I do clean off the bugs but the girls really don't like the idea that I had to clean off so many and suspect I may have missed one or more. Teresa did take a bite.

Soon I will write about why San Jose should be the bicycle capital of the world. Perhaps you will find that in my blog while my garden progress might remain with my diary.

4/28/2009 - I wrote about banning plastic grocery bags in my blog.

4/24/2009 - I wrote about my recent emergency room/hospital visit in my blog.

4/22/2009 - Still hot today with cool weather in the forecast. We've been getting all our lettuce from the garden and we eat salad every day. The apple and pear trees are flowering, the nectarine has tiny fruits on it. San Jose, CA is a great place to garden! Teresa has been weeding out back and I like to spend time outside doing chores while she is out there. When I find a job I will miss that.

4/19/2009 - Had my first artichoke of the year last night. Too bad I steamed it too long. It was good anyway. Growing some fruits and veggies and learning how to cook a few simple dishes has really helped me appreciate and enjoy food even more than before. I only learned how to cook a few simple things recently. This morning I made omelets. Today is hot and clear; I love this weather! We went to the farmers market and supermarket - our Sunday food shopping routine which I enjoy.

4/17/2009 - I guess this should be a weekly rather than a daily diary. :) I spent the day studying for a Cisco Certification exam. I did get outside and noticed that one of the automatic valves for our irrigation system is leaking - add replacing that to the to do list. After dinner we played Scrabble. I used a non-word (NOX) but didn't get challenged. I was thinking of a rocket fuel but that is LOX and I don't know if the fuel is a legit word but the smoked salmon meaning certainly is. For the first time in our family experience someone (Carla) used up all her letters in one word (farewell) for a 50 point bonus.

4/13/2009 - While we were eating lunch we saw the fox walk through our back yard today. I guess our yard is part of his daily routine, at least for now. He jumped up on top of our bird bath and started drinking. Later I watered the tomato plants and two military jets flew overhead in close formation. Then I noticed an artichoke is almost ready.

4/10/2009 - We did our walk routine this morning. This evening I cooked a mushroom lasagna. It was loaded with cheese and well received. I learned how to cook about 2-3 years ago so am still very much a beginner. Everyone who knew me when I was younger was amazed when they found out I learned how to cook. Anyway that is the one personal improvement I've made that has been most appreciated by Teresa.

During lunch Carla saw the fox that has been cruising our place and was able to get photos. It was on our neighbor's roof which is a bit lower than our breakfast nook's windows. It looks very healthy with that ultra bushy tail. It is clearly a fox. It is about the size of a cat. You can click on any photo in my websites to see a larger version.

4/7/2009 - Just so you know the weather isn't always perfect here it rained a bit today. I saw a beautiful iridescent green hummingbird out the window. We try to have something blooming at all times for the birds and bees. I cooked up a large batch of veggie/bean soup. I can eat that for lunch just about every day. We freeze most of it and it makes for a great back up.

4/6/2009 - Teresa and I went on our short walk. It is about 20 minutes long. We go around our neighborhood which is very hilly. It is all up or down with no flat stretches at all. We saw turkey vultures, stellar jays and the robins, all common and seen almost every walk. I bought a networking game from Cisco. My plan is to play and refresh my memory of TCP/IP networks. When I'm ready I'll get a certificate which may help me land a job. I played with that, updated my coin stuff and am ready to get some reading done.

4/5/2009 - Nothing special happened today. I watched my eBay auctions end and next week's start. I added the kitchen waste to the compost heap, that kind of thing.

4/4/2009 - Beautiful day for hiking so hike I did. I hiked to Monument peak with some hiking buddies of mine. We saw red tailed hawks, red wing blackbirds and cows. We also saw people hang gliding and wild flowers. It was very relaxing.

4/2/2009 - Cooler, breezy but sunny. Teresa and I walked through Alum Rock Park. We saw several deer. There are always deer in the park. From now on if I write I've been to ARP just assume I've seen deer. I'll make a note in case I don't see any. The garden is off to a good start. We ate out at Anna's. It is a local Mexican place with decent food and great prices ($27 for Teresa, Carla and I tip included.)

4/1/2009 - Good weather. I continue to harvest lettuce. I bought some rebar and cut it into 8' lengths. I will try it out as a stake for my tomato plants. I'm in the process of transplanting tomatoes to my garden. The last few years I used those wire cages. The plants get too large and heavy for them. They fall over and get all tangled up and generally are no help hence the experiment with rebar

3/31/2009 - I startled a fox in my backyard. He startled me too! It was pretty small with a very bushy tail. It was gray with a reddish head.

Help me with my quest oh omniscient oracle:

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