Jonathan Coulton has a story he tells in concert about the song Shop Vac. He basically says he was up on his roof using the shop vac to pick up leaves and just really enjoying his private time alone with the shop vac when he realized "When did I become that suburban guy with the shop vac?" After that he said the song pretty much wrote itself. Today I had a similar moment. I've been meaning to get out and cut some creepers from the two climbing roses that were going in not-useful ways. While I was at it I finally gave up and did some massive slashing at our herb garden section. I had told the landscaper several times not to cut the herbs back because I wanted to try to give the excess to friends, but I finally gave up on that goal. A while back he did cut some of the parsley and I realized it had totally choked out the tarragon, so I should have cut it back more aggressively. And then when I was trying to get to the climbing rose the sage was just blocking the stepping stones and I said "That's it!" Anyway, if you're local and you want something we have in the back yard, just ask - I'm giving up on saving it or trying to push it on people :-)   This trash can is the result. You can see the long rose creepers, but what isn't clear is that about HALF of that full size trash-can is just from one pineapple sage plant. Sucker had gotten about shoulder high on me. So anyway, I was out there in my special gardening gloves (the climbing roses have thorns!) and my special gardening clogs when I thought to myself "When did I become this gardening old man?" Then I came inside and played Shop Vac to myself. After some thought I guess this isn't much different than baking bread and cookies for Karin's lunches, and I do that throughout the school year. But somehow the fact that I have gardening paraphernalia, that really struck home for me today.

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Tags: gardening, herbs, suburbia, JonathanCoulton

Tony asked in a comment on a previous post for photos of my new satellite dish, which I described as "even-more-ridiculous". It was cloudy and rainy over the weekend, so I didn't bother until today. The problem, which I didn't realize until I got out there and looked with a camera, is that there's no good sight line for the dish. The only really good views are probably from my neighbor's back yard. It's not really that visible from the street, and my side yard is pretty narrow which means if I shoot from there I end up shooting almost straight up and you get no scale. I took a couple of shots, but they aren't very good. Still, I said I'd post shots, so here they are: And then, just for whatever comparison you can get, here's the older 3LNB dish, now down on the ground: Really the dish looks OK on the roof, but when you're level with it, it's a beast. The LNB structures themselves are about the same size on both dishes if that helps any.

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Tags: DirecTV, SatelliteDish

Karl Schroeder released his first novel Ventus as a free e-book under Creative Commons licensing. I haven't read Ventus (yet), but I've read Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce when they were serialized in Analog and enjoyed both of them. Anyway, if you're looking for free SF e-books, you can grab Ventus from Karl's site.

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Tags: ebook, Ventus, KarlSchroeder, CreativeCommons, ScienceFiction

(This post isn't really intended to be interesting. It's merely storing an archive copy of some information that I happen to know right now, but won't retain. If you aren't trying to actively test a new satellite dish install right now you won't care. I suspect somebody might well ask me about this in the next few months, so I'm archiving it here before I throw away the piece of paper I was jotting notes on.) The various internet fora are ablaze with misinformation and balderdash about the upcoming DTV HD signals (from the D10 satellite). Here's some boiled down information on checking your dish setup. All of this worked as of 9/21/07 on my HR20, but may change at any time. Channels 490 - 494 provide tests of the older satellites. It should simply say satellite whatever, transponders whatever on the screen. Channels 480 and 481 are testing the two B-band converter modules that should be installed on the end of your satellite in wires. They say "BBC confirmed working" Channel 498 tunes in the new D10 satellite (103(b)) directly and specifically says you are receiving programming from the new satellite. Until recently you could tune 499 and if you got a "searching for signal" message that was a good thing. As I understand it if you got that message that meant your receiver could see 103(b) but not get any signal from it (because it wasn't broadcasting). If your receiver couldn't see 103(b) then it would fall over to another satellite and get some sort of signal. This was actually what DTV suggested to do at http://directv.com/hdcheck last week, but today it references the channel 498 test. Note that my HR20 still complains about not getting a signal on 99(b) but that location is currently used for "spot beams" of HD locals - and it doesn't spot beam anything to my area. Apparently these satellites are "temporary" and due for replacement

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Tags: DirecTV, test, satellite

(Actually, this might not be just a Bay Area thing. I've only owned the one house, so maybe it's common. What do I know?) Over the past summer Karin and had quite a bit of work done on the house. (Notice I say "Had work done", not necessarily "did a lot of work ourselves".) We've had new windows put in, repainted the exterior (necessary post the window install - the interiors need work as well but we'll do that ourselves), and whole bunch of landscaping. The back yard looks really nice now, we've lost the mint green accent color the house had when we moved it, and the new windows look better and actually insulate. In general I'm really happy with the stuff we've done. The interesting part is that almost everyone assumes we're selling the house. Neighbors, dogwalkers, friends, random passers-by, they all ask the same thing. "So are you thinking about selling the house?" Well, no. We just thought, "Hey since we live here, let's make it nice." I'm looking forward to seeing the back yard next spring. We put the landscaping in for us to enjoy, not for some future owner. Sure, I thought to myself "All of this stuff will increase the property value." and if we're totally honest we need to refinance the house next year sometime so I expect to leverage the improvements that way. But I think the whole way houses here are treated as investments first and living spaces second is just weird. Maybe people would be less concerned about a real esate "bubble" if more people viewed their house as part of their life, and not some sort of weird physical savings account.

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Tags: BayArea, housing