Wirelessly yours

Mom and I spent most of yesterday in Medford getting her car worked on at Lithia. It's still there and we had to rent a car and it's still going to cost over $1000 to finish getting the defroster fixed. Dang it Toyota! don't you have any pride or sense of responsibility in your product? Does the word "integrity" mean anything to car manufacturers? Granted the Camry is a pretty nice car, but come on!

While we were in Medford I grabbed a wireless router at Circuit city (Netgear WGR614 or somethin' like that, 29$ after rebate...) So that I am now blogging to you from high in the vaulted loft of my barn. The 21st century has some pretty dang cool things. In 1979 you couldn't have had your own wireless digital network for any amount of money. Now it costs about 64$ if you buy everything new. I supposed off eBay you could get a complete setup for a lot less. 5 more years and they'll come in your cereal box ;-)

Cloudy day but only the faintest trace of precipitation. Gotta go be useful.
Y'all be happy now.

A good night's sleep

Wow, got over 9 hours of sleep for once. Delightful. Lots of weird dreams though. Dreamt I was leaving Grants Pass via the south exit when suddenly my car and everyone else's just stopped running. Had to walk the 6 miles to home. But then I came across a dude pulling a trailer on Foothill Blvd. and (as is the logic of dreams) his truck was running so I got a ride with him the last 3 miles.

Today will only be slightly a day of rest for me. Lots more clean-up to do before we can have a real day of rest. Plus I want to work on some of the projects I had to post-pone during the harvest season.

Hope you all have a restful and rewarding day.

Last Day !!!

Last Day! Last Day! Last Day! Last Day! Last Day! Last Day! Last Day! Last Day!

Ok, so I'm obviously pretty excited about today being the last day of sales at the produce stand. Still lots of work to do in the end-of-season tear-down but at least the artificial timing constraints imposed by a commercial outlet will be gone. And best of all I won't have to put up with anymore corn-peelers.

Tonight we will have celebratory pizza. Wish I had a girlfriend to invite over to share, that'd make it a perfect evening. But, oh well. I've never been able to summon tears for overturned dairy products.

Gotta go get girded. Y'all have a super day.

This is really cool too

Adrian Bower explaining Reprap. Very cool project.

This is freakin' super cool

Scientists Create Quantum Cascade Laser Nanoantenna This could reveal many new valuable answers about how cells function.

Autumn vicissitudes

A thick, creepy fog shrouded the world this morning. Around noon the sun burned through and brought a smooth warmth to the colors of the world.

At lunch I saw a delightful goshawk harassing a murder of crows. At about 2/3rds the size of a crow I could imagine what a feast one of them would make for her.

Tired now. Still much hard work to do before we close. That'll almost certainly be this Saturday. After which some small part of the world will enter into a new phase of things.

Good night and many blessings upon you all.

Fall in bloom

It was such an amazingly beautiful fall day yesterday that I couldn't bring myself to leave it and sit at the computer. But a chilly, foggy, breezy morning like this makes it easy.

We've got one week of the sales season left. Should be pretty easy to get through especially since the entire week is supposed to be a lot like yesterday. That warm but mellow autumn sun and all those vivid colors on the land create a perfect atmosphere for a finale week.

Wishing y'all a lovely day.

Anybody ever hear of UAT?

Saw this ad for degrees in artificial life design and programming on G4tv last night. I've been working with artificial life since high school (cellular automata and a simulation of planaria worms for instance) as well as genetic algorithms since about 1989 so I was interested.

But I can't find out much about the school : University of Advanced Technology. If anyone knows anything about them give me a shout out.

Wishing you a fine and blustery Halloween season evening.

Reading Wednesday

Uhg! what a slow day in business. Stupid ODOT had the road blocked up all morning, totally killed the chances of anybody stopping.

We had vigorous rain showers and some small winds this afternoon. Enough to shake all the water from the awning in front of the stand. Probably didn't help the customer's mood either. It is a very lovely fall season though; nothing can kill my delight in that.

The extra time was used, if not wisely or productively at least not frivolously. Read a bunch and formulated some things for the new version of my web-blazer.

Hoping you are all productive and happy.

Lovely Fall Sunday

Ran to Medford, got supplies. Mellow autumn sunshine all afternoon long- after a dim gray morning of fog.

Foliage color is getting like flashbulb quality brightness in places around the valley. Will have images soon.

Last week of picking corn and we're supposed to have rain starting tomorrow after 11am.

Got a last few chores to do this evening so I don't have to do them in the morning.

Y'all have yourselves a mighty fine night now.

beneath the sea of fog

It is cold and foggy out there this morning. Supposed to get warm later. We used to go into the mountains to cut firewood and often passed above these thick blankets of fog to look down upon our hidden valleys. Occasionally a hilltop poked out above the fog, looking like some island or wizard's fortress.

Dad is off helping Terry with his landscaping so mom and I will run the stand ourselves today. No biggie, with so little business and so little to harvest we can easily handle a day like this.

Well, gotta go hook up for work. Y'all have a fine day now.

A nice autumn day

Had a pleasant day down at the vegetable stand. Finally got a load of good corn in from the final field of the season. Sweet and delicious. That field should have made a week ago but the cold, wet weather held it off.

Many small birds and at least one flock of wild turkeys have began to make use of the residue in the earlier fields. Our farms produce a huge outflow of life. All sorts of fowl and fauna plus lady bugs by the ton. I always have to laugh when I hear an environmentalist rant against agriculture because of all the life it destroys. Dang stupidest thing I ever heard.

Hope you all have a happy, insightful and open minded evening.

Nice boring rainy day

Slow business in the rain today. The Douglas fir tree besides our stand played eerie Halloween creaky music on the metal side of the building.

Got some reading done and a little more work on the ol' WebBlazer speed reading software. That was a fun project and I'd like to get it back on the market again but I feel it is necessary to add a couple more features before I go to the trouble of building an install package.

Not much else to report. Stay dry and be happy.

Anybody want a nice farm?

Not mine though, my brothers. They've run into a bit of financial difficulty and so are getting ready to sell their place.

It's a really nice little farm, about 7 acres with a Huge barn on it. My brother has raised turf and horses there.

Here's a google earth of the location. The largest gray rectangle is the barn.

View Larger Map

That's an older image so you can't see all the trees they've planted around the border. The place is about a mile away from 2 different I-5 exits with easy access to three large communities; Rogue River, Grants Pass and Medford. It's surrounded by pastures and nearby mountains with the Rogue River itself just a stone's-throw away for lots of recreation, fishing, boating, kayaking, etc..

I'm not sure how much he's asking yet (will get back with some more pics and a price) but it's going to be well below market value and equity cap due to circumstances.

Gotta go get to work now, hope y'all have a great day.

Harsh week

Bad weather, slow traffic, low product supply along with a menagerie of outside events pressing in on us made this a difficult week.

Dad and I spent this morning planting Brussels sprouts and other mixed cole crops. Had to cover that with deer-x even though there's a pretty effective fence around the field. Would be just like one to find a way through the barb wire.

Then we spent the rest of the afternoon picking mixed pumpkins, winter squash and gourds. And I do mean mixed, a lot of these things are volunteers from last years pumpkin/gourd/squash patch and some intermingling of bloodlines has occurred. With delightful results. I'll try to find time for some pics.

Getting tired now, gotta go get ready for tomorrow.

Hope you all are well and happy.

Tektenamaru

Numerous forces both social and natural are at work producing tremendous stresses on my family and I at the moment. Too complex and varied to enumerate suffice to say an ominous looking cloud hangs overhead both in the figurative sense and the "tomorrow's forecast" sense.

This sort of thing is to be expected going into fall I suppose. It was about a year ago when Cassie had her accident and 2 years ago we lost uncle Tobe. These and many other traumatic experiences seem to proliferate in the history of autumn.

Halloween is a thoroughly appropriate holiday for the season.

Wishing you all wellness and safety.