It’s not easy being a tree

This past winter was not kind to the lads. It was a very odd winter in that it didn’t happen until what seemed a bit late, then it was like flipping a light switch. A lot of snow, often. It was also too darn cold and long.

The weight of the snow just snapped three of them and they never did anything this spring. As it turns out weather wasn’t the only thing working against the project. The rodents ate all but two of them! There was not even a sign of the root. Only the empty hole.

We had a fairly damp spring, so the two lone survivors are doing okay. I think I’ll keep the grass trimmed back around them and let them do what they will. This fall after their leaves have fallen off I’ll dig them up and maybe try another location. That reminds me, I should have a look and see how many acorns the “Mother Oak” will have this year.

ISS Sighting

OK … here’s a cool story that I just couldn’t keep to myself. Last evening, Friday March 4th, I’d noticed that we were going to have an International Space Station sighting later that evening. Often, especially after a shuttle launch we get regular sightings. Since we live in the country you can usually get a good clear view, because we don’t have light pollution from the city lights. Well I didn’t set my alarm to remind me, but remembered just in time to go to a north facing window, and sure enough … I spotted Discovery and the Space Station without even having to get bundled up to go outside. Pretty cool … huh?

Go to this NASA website to see if the space station will pass over your location. You can either use the major city index, or if you know your GPS coordinates you can use the applet for a more exact listing. While you’re there be sure to check out the image gallery.

Thud

Today was sitting upstairs working away, and I heard a thud against the house. Oh no I thought, another poor bird. Well I went downstairs, and sure enough sprawled out on the ground was a hawk. He was aware of me, but was definitely stunned. His eye’s blinked several times, then he slowly closed both eyes and didn’t move a muscle. I thought he was dead. I went to get a box and work gloves to go pick him up and give him a decent burial. But yikes!!! He was still alive. He let me pick him up, and he eventually hung onto my finger (good sized claws). When I tried to put him onto a branch in an elm tree he wasn’t interested. We have this old stump I use to split firewood on and I set him down. He had one lazy eye, and was sluggish for a good half hour. I took several pictures of him before he eventually flew away. By the way just to give you an idea of his size, the stump he’s sitting on measures sixteen inches across.

Stunned Hawk

Blow Wind Blow

Yesterday and last evening the wind was something else! The environment Canada web site had forecast gusts to 80km/h, but the radio this morning reported that gusts had been reached 110km/h … yikes!

Well I was feeling a bit like a wimp. Mind you I wasn’t scared or anything, but it was working on my last nerve! This house was sounding like a wooden ship on the ocean … relentless creaking. Late yesterday afternoon a gentleman came to the shop. He was visibly nervous. He’d left his cottage for the very same reason

This morning the wind has died down a bit. We had a few broken branches on a tree or two. Scattered leaves, and several shingles (shake) littered the yard! To boot, the first customers of the day had a little story about their restless evening that I thought was post-worthy … so here goes!

Two couples traveling from Vancouver, had arrived several days ago and were camping (trailers) at a Cavendish area campsite. The evening wore on, and the two women became jittery enough to convince the husbands to sleep in the car. I was standing outside chatting with the guys, while the ladies had a look through the shop. We all felt a little less ridiculous when we learned that we weren’t the only one’s that had a restless night!

Hmmm … wonders why there isn’t more wind energy development going on around here!

Bird Brained

Okay, things have been kind of slow in the shop, so I’ve got some time to relate a little story about a recent (and ongoing) encounter with a member of the bird brained sector of the springtime wildlife around the property.

It’s seems that a little finch has set up housekeeping in the rather large yew tree that we have in the front of the house. For more than several mornings I was awakened to the sound of a pecking noise on the bathroom window. Amused at first, this quickly turned to a bit of an annoyance. I still couldn’t figure out what the attraction was, so I decided that something had to be done! First I just put a box of tissue in the window … maybe he just didn’t see the window! Well that didn’t work, so I put a stuffed animal on top of the box. Nope … still no joy! Next a window ornament hanging from a suction cup and hook on the outside of the window. Okay … now he’s working on my last nerve, so I nailed an old beach towel over the window, but it didn’t completely cover the window. A final adjustment to the beach towel, and that seemed to do the trick … well kind of! He’s found the window upstairs and makes a visit there from time to time. At least it’s not at 5AM in the morning. What a bird brained goober! I had a good look at the yew tree, because I figured that he had built a nest and was just being territorial, maybe he saw his reflection in the window and was putting the run to what he thought was an intruder … Nada! The mystery continues!

Hey on an entirely different subject, check out my latest POV-Ray creation.

Opening Day 2010

Well the last week and a half has been really busy, and we’re just about ready to fling the doors to the shop open of the 2010 season. Sid has been busy cleaning and polishing, and things look pretty good. Saturday I got the last of the repairs to the shop completed … should have done it last year, but that’s a whole different story. The header just under the roof line, that the gutters were attached to had begun to show their age. In fact much of it was rotten. It’s seems that when the building was first built, they put the gutters up before painting, with no paint behind them, twenty-five years of rain, sleet, and snow had done a lot  damage … I’m surprised it lasted this long. Almost fifty foot of 2 x 8’s needed to be totally replaced. I also buggered the some of the gutter getting it all down. A good coat of primer, and two coats of paint before hanging the 2 by’s and she looks pretty good now. I still have to get someone to come in to replace the gutters … hey I know my limits!

Today was an off day … probably the last until the shop closes in the fall. I was able to finish up the last of the software loads on my new computer. The POV-Ray project development environment is pretty sweet, now that I’ve got plenty of horse-power. My new machine, Aries, is a welcome replacement for the fossil … It has an AMD dual core 3GHZ processor with 4GB RAM, and a pretty sweet ATI graphics card to drive a new DELL monitor. I also made the move away from the Ubuntu Linux operating system in favor of OpenSUSE 11.2 and I’ve got to say I’m impressed! Novell has nailed down all the frustrating aspects that prompted the move away from Ubuntu. Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Cairo-Dock … task bar for you doze folks. What a slick piece of software! Apple users will know what I’m talking about. I’m quickly becoming a big fan of open-source software!

This will probably be my last post for a while. My fingers are crossed, and I’m hoping for a better season than the disastrous one we had last year. I’m cautiously optimistic, given the state of the economy. All the pundits seem to think that we may have reached the bottom, but I’m wondering how many people will actually be able to afford a vacation this summer.

The “fossil” lives

The sandbox on the fossil is back in action … it’s fondly called the fossil because it’s and older Compaq Evo computer, and it serves it’s purpose as the sandbox for the POV-Ray documentation project. I mentioned in a previous post that I back peddled on operating system upgrade, because of problems compiling the software packages I needed for the project. Well with the addition of a broadband connection I was able to resolve the show stoppers that kept me from moving forward. There are still some minor nags at the system level, but this is a good news post, so I won’t go there.

Here’s the part I’d like to crow about … I’ve been back at the PHP code to pull the documentation sets back out of the POV-Wiki and I do believe that I’ve reached a milestone. All because of what turned out to be an eleven line function that translates wiki mark-up image notation back into html, and sources a given image from the wiki image directory structure. Yeah I know boring stuff to most people, but hey, I’ve led a sheltered life lately, and it doesn’t take much to get me jazzed!

I’m a Happy Camper

Well after more than 10 years of dial-up, I’ve joined the modern age. Not that I haven’t tried, the service was just made available to us recently. First a funny story about the visit from the phone tech … my appointment was scheduled for this coming Friday between 8am-5pm (btw: don’t you just hate that). Well he showed up last evening (Wednesday) around 5:15PM. Caught me by surprise but hey I wasn’t going to turn him away! So in him came … snowy boots and all! Not wanting to tip the apple cart just yet, I said nothing but made sure he saw me cleaning up behind him. Without so much as a “Oh geez I’m sorry!” from him, I then showed him the computers, and the patch panel in the basement. I quickly went about the task of uninstalling the modem and adding the network card, as I don’t have a spare slot. After a bit he came up from the basement, and said he needed to get something from his truck … Ha-ha now get this, he leaves the front door wide open. Since it’s snowing and blowing out, I closed the front door. He comes back in, and more snow on the floor. Still not a comment from either of us! I’m wiping down the steps to the upstairs while he’s doing his thing. Never said a word … no apology! What a goober!

After he left, I got all the cables going like I wanted them to be … man she’s fast now! I even have the sandbox networked too. I can plop files from computer to computer now, and have use of the printer via the neat little router that came with the setup. 🙂

I’m glad I didn’t let that goober harsh my buzz, cause like I said I’m a happy camper!

It Official

Well … maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but “It’s Official” … I do believe that we’ve turned the corner and headed toward spring. It’s 2.7C in the shade on the north side of the house, but what’s even more hopeful, is the cycle of gray days has come to an end. Man alive … now I know why February is nick named suicide month around here! I’d lost count, but it was definitely more than fourteen days without as much as a peek from the sun!

Another encouraging sign is a noticeable increase in wildlife activity. A lot more robins, I’ve heard the cheese-burger bird on more than several occasions, and the chipmunks have started running around. I cleaned up a broken under-dish out in the green house today, further evidence of those furry little b*stards!

If you listen careful enough I’m sure you can hear me saying … whew spring is just around the corner!

You Know It’s Time …

… for a break, when you’ve been trouble-shooting a problem that doesn’t exist! I’d been spending some time working on the php code to extract documentation from the POV-Wiki when I realized that I was chasing my tail, so to speak! Armed with the previous version (3.5) documentation as a guide, I couldn’t figure out why my pattern matching was stripping out a pre-formatted text tag around a particular passage, but not bothering others.

I have a rather lazy programming style when I’m in development mode, so I decided that it was time to go over the code and clean up things in the hopes of gaining some clarity. I was sure that it I’d find something trivial, like a missing space, comma, or punctuation that was causing the problem! I worked late last evening, but no joy 😦

This morning I was back at it when I discovered that the offending passage was NOT enclosed with the pre tag like I’d originally thought, but the passages before and after it were!

Well … I think I’m going to spend the day raytracing, and take a break from the project. At least the code is a bit cleaner, and certainly a more elegant, as I discovered a better way of doing things in the process.