The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

3rd Generation

The company I bought this Tender Green Edible Amaranth from does not always have the seed available, so I got to experience how easy it is to let the plants go to seed and save them to make new plants:

Amaranth seeds are tiny little things.

They sprout fast, then the seedlings languish for two or three weeks before taking off. 

This one is growing in liquid nutrient solution in an AeroGarden planter.  As soon as it gets big enough I will cut of the top stems and put them back in the grow hole to root, and move the original plants out to my new raised garden.  Then when the cuttings get big enough, I'll do the same thing with them.  

That way I will be assured of having enough of them to eat.  The leaves are good fresh in a salad, sauteed in butter, or sliced in soup. 

software 4 directory synchronization

I have a new Garmin GPS with the Nulink service, but I am afraid to synchronize it.  My paranoia goes back to when I had to try to synch my Palm OS hand helds.  They would work OK for a while and then the synch program's brain would get scrambled, and I could never get them unscrambled.  I would uninstall and start over a zillion times, but it never worked.  That happened on three different models in a row.  The Palm devices worked great.  Practically my whole life was in them.  I just never could get all the data moved to laptop.  When  attempting directory synchronization what happened was that some of the directories went over and then it would hit one it could not send for whatever reason and the synch would stop cold, leaving all the rest of the directories unsent.

I had to send individual files over with Bluetooth and then there was the whole file-conversion mess.  And subsequently  the problem of getting data from my Pacific Standard laptop onto the Mountain one and back.  When web-based file backup programs became available by subscription that should have simplified matters, but in truth they became more complicated.  Finally I now have a back up service that is affordable and works. 

OK, Garmin's link probably works perfectly too and is probably easy to use, and yes, my maps need updating, but I just keep putting off doing it.  Scared, that's what. 

Test Link

I signed up on a site called Linkbucks and am still trying to find my way around:

Testing

I need to find out what happens when I click the link and also what happens when others do so. 

OK, I get it. If the people stay on the Linkbucks ad for 14 seconds before viewing my post then Linkbucks pays me 4/100ths of a cent for each page view. Interesting...

Cheaper than a Greeting Card

I went to the dollar store to look for a nice thank you card for one of my neighbors and found this instead:

Here are some other flowering live plants they had as well:

All These Cost Only $5

Also,it is raining, so I keep peeking out to see if the little tent I put over my new raised planter is holding up.   

I went out this morning to stack more bricks under the corners of the glass platform, but no sooner had I put stakes in the planter and thrown the pictured drop cloth over them than it started raining.   So I anchored the plastic with bricks, hoping that it doesn't tear, as my little green babies are yet too small to be pounded by the wet stuff.  Also I should have put a 40" x 40" board between the brick base and the glass because if the soil gets saturated from a heavy rain, the weight might be too much for those glass shower doors to support.  I did put plastic stakes under the corners as a temporary measure. 

This Should Keep the Gophers Out

I wanted a raised garden to be able to see the plants better as they grow as well as for the convenience of gardening at waist-level.  I also wanted it raised to keep the rabbits and gophers out. 

So I put a glass shelf over a brick base and then put the raised garden on top of the glass.  So my work surface is 28" high  and the bricks are inset both to give me a place to stand up close with stubbing my toes, but also to make it more difficult for the rodents to get into my veggies.  They would have to climb a foot up and then 5 inches out and 5 inches back in and then leap over a 16" wall.  

If you haven't already seen the photo on my gardening blog, here is how it looked before planting:

I am a Cat Person

Some people like dogs and cats equally.  I only like a few dogs, but all cats.  In general, I prefer that my neighbors have no dogs, but if they must, I hope for small ones, preferably chihuahuas.  At my summer home I have five neighbors adjacent to my lot and all five of them have dogs.  So I don't think I had better get a cat. But I did luck out on one thing.  Two of the neighbors have chihuahuas.   I like Chihuahuas. Also, all of the dog owners have nice fenced-in yards, which their dogs usually stay inside, so that makes me happy. 

I would not like to have anybody's dog digging around in my yard.

As much as I prefer for the others to have small dogs, for myself if I were to have a dog, it would be a big one, but one with delicate features, like whippet. They have the most beautiful eyes. Having a dog, whether large or small is a big responsibility, though, and the part I would dread most would be as I could not bear the reproachful looks. If I were to go to all the trouble of having a pet, it would certainly be one of the family and allowed in the house at least part of the time.  That is another reason why I do not have a pet. The main reason, though, is that I like my freedom to travel and come and go as I like. I frequently skip meals, but could not do that to a cat or a dog.
Also, I think that owners of big dogs should live out in the country, with at least five acres of land on which to run around.   Either a cat or a dog would help keep gophers out of the garden, the dog by chasing them out, and the cat by leaving little deposits that gophers do not like.  On the other hand, check my next post for more on gophers. 

Calendar for January 2010

This is a screen shot from gtdAgenda. I put it here as a reference for myself. Yes, there is a calendar in the sidebar of my blog, but this one is larger and I do not have to scroll down to see it. 

Different Kinds of Search Engines

I sort of divide search engines into my own three categories.  There are my favorite kind which pull up everything about anything, there are specialized ones which pull up a particular kind of response, and then there are the phonies.

Lately when I go to a page that doesn't exist anymore, instead of the 404 error message, a wanna be search engine comes up.  But if you put in a legitimate search term, it spills back a bunch of marketing garbage.  Those are annoying.  It is hard for me to imagine how people can be making money by putting those up, but they must be, or they would not do it.

Then you have search engines which bring up specific kinds of information.  For example, once when I put the term "Rosetta Stone"  into Yahoo's search it gave me information about a group of musicians.  When I put it in a business-oriented search engine, it brought up language instruction software.  When I put it into an all-purpose engine, that one finally brought up the ancient Egyptian artifact that I was researching.   

So when looking for media files, something like Video & Music on Rapidshare might work, but if you want something else there are resources for finding the best place to look. I put the term "specialized search engines" into the Google search box and many lists with thousands of specialized search engines came up. Wikipedia explains that these are called vertical search engine. So I Googlized the term "vertical search engines" and learned that another name for them is vortals.

I love learning new words.

One of my favorite online games

Actually, I have challenges turned off, but I thought being able to link my profile here was extremely kewl:

View my profile Play more games

Who You Calling a Sucker?

This is a sucker from my late Uncle's grape plant:

I was trying to clone his fig tree from a root cutting, because my Uncle's tree has the best tasting figs I have ever eaten. 

When I moved here I made a list of the plants I wanted to try to grow in my postage stamp sized backyard.  Grapes were not on the list.  However, when a family member obligingly dug up a root out from under the majestic fig tree...and it turned out to be a grape vine...and it grew...well, what's a new mom supposed to do?  I had to love it. 

Every day brings a new challenge.