We’ve been jealously watching Trina’s plum harvest and anxiously waiting for the blackberries in our area to ripen.
The wait is over. This morning I walked Finney down to the trail at the end of our street and it looks like this year’s crop is going to be a good one. Last year we harvested 4 pounds of blackberries and the jam lasted us about 8 months. This year I think we should target 8 pounds so we don’t run out before next year’s jam session.
My mouth is watering, I better go eat breakfast.
The paperwork I received today had print on all pages… including this one:
There appears to be a different definition of “vegetable” once you get south of the Mason-Dixon line. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining… but I’m pretty sure I just ate 3 years off my life expectancy.
We had a delicious dinner tonight at the Hominy Grill in Charleston, South Carolina. Our entrées came with a choice of vegetables, including “Macaroni & Cheese”, “Deep Fried Cheese Grits” and “French Fries”. No, catsup was not one of the vegetable choices.
Sure, they’re playing a little fast and loose with the queen’s English when it comes to veg, but I’ll give them all kinds of latitude since the food was outrageously delicious. Paula’s ribs were so perfectly prepared that the meat pulled off effortlessly and left the bones nearly spotless. My dinner, the “Big Nasty Biscuit,” has a name that was hard to pass up and the fried chicken breast, home made biscuit and delicious gravy (with a perfect hint of Jalapeño) was anything but nasty.
To top it all off we had wonderful company at the table next door in the form of Timur from DC. He was just starting to eat his way around Charleston and if we weren’t already bound for a wedding party we would have easily been sucked into his wake. His twitter feed will serve as a great guide for what to eat for the remainder of our trip.
I find it’s a good idea to drop in every once in a while to make sure the residents are taking good care of my town. A surprise inspection is always good for morale.
Was doing a web search for an industrial style hose reel. Bing helpfully provided some related searches. Let’s play a little game, shall we?
I’ve been reading about Arduino in Make magazine for years now and decided to jump in. I picked up a starter kit from Adafruit along with Make’s excellent “Getting Started with Arduino” book. The tutorials were a perfect introduction to electronics and provided easy code to get started modifying. Anyone with even the most basic understanding of computer programming can be up and creating in no time flat.
One thing I’ve been wanting to do for a long time is build a weather station for logging temperature, humidity, etc. The parts for Arduino are easy to come by and there are a ton of examples out there to get you started. That was, however, until I came across Make’s really cool Dryer Messenger project. Built with an Arduino, a network adapter and current sensor, this nifty gadget makes your dryer send out tweets when it finishes a load. Yep, no more forgetting your load of laundry only to find it the next day as a mass of un-ironable wrinkles.
Armed with Make’s excellent instructions, a metal project box from Radio Shack and a non-invasive current sensor I set to work recreating the Dryer Messenger. I am using an Ethernet shield instead of the wireless option used in the article, so I had to change the code a little bit… but that was simple given the sample code.
It took a couple of weekends to get it all together and running, but that was more a function of life getting in the way of fun. Now we can say that we are part of the IOT (Internet of Things) revolution. Our friendly dryer, Sam, is now up and running with his very own Twitter account: @3rdPlaceDryer.
Spring cleaning time.
Garage isn’t cleaned out yet… but car fits in again. Only been 18 months.
Last night the SharePoint Experiences design and program management teams did a little pumpkin carving. I decided to make this happy little buck-toothed fellow.
Finney has expressed his approval.
Happy Halloween!