My lawn

I mowed my own lawn last weekend. It felt good. I don't mean the novelty of a new mower, this was something better. But like the new mower feeling, ask me again in year how I feel about the mowing.

Sweet relief

Finally. I am at peace. I've had a tune stuck in my head for months, possibly years. Well not a complete tune, just a hint, enough to drive me crazy but not enough to describe to anyone so I could find it. No artist, no title, not even a meaningful lyric. Over time it would start to fade away, maybe leave me alone, but then a passing car with the window down would fan the flames. Then I'm sitting listening to an Internet radio station and suddenly there it was. The artist & title scrolling along the little display, my mind at rest. Modest Mouse, Float On

Climber falls

Someone fell yesterday climbing the same mountain I did on Saturday. Kinda freaky.

Sunday - Adjusting the fence with a car jack to compensate for the posts that sank. Again, I'm glad we used screws. 

Saturday - Climbing the Yam 

Cloning cells, Suing swappers, Fixing fences

• Koreans Report Ease in Cloning for Stem Cells. Great news. But no surprise it's happening in Asia, people here in North America who are fighting stem cell research are seeing to that.
• Cdn. record labels lose appeal in swapping case. Good news. But the door is still open to lawsuits, it's just a smaller door and you have to jiggle the lock.
• Is my fence sinking? We've had some heavy rain and a couple fence posts look like they've dropped an inch or so. Should be easy to fix, I haven't trimmed the post tops yet so I'll just unscrew the 2x4s on the lower side and screw them in at a higher point. With a little help from my car jack, it should be a one man job.

Fence Photos

I've uploaded my Fence Building Photo Album.

Done

Third full day of fence building and now it's basically done. All that remains is to fill in the bottom part between the fence and the ground with some sort of anti-dog-digging material.

Day of build

Today was a good fence day - we got a lot done. Not all done, like I had hoped, but a lot. Pictures and many more lessons learned coming soon. Right now all I feel is tired and very sun burnt. We should have it all wrapped up with a few hours tomorrow morning.

Day of dig

(the fence adventure continues, once it's done I'll post a complete summary + pictures). Today we finished the post holes. Almost all were drilled by a bobcat (machine). For some reason I had pictured in my mind neat little machine-perfect holes 3 feet deep. The reality is much more cone-shaped (we have a lot of rocks up here) and there is a lot of rocks and dirt that now needs a new home. Why didn't that occur to me sooner? We ended up using cardboard tubes in the holes then filled in dirt around them. These tubes are designed exactly for this and once we were done, thankfully, a lot of the dirt was back in the ground.

Lessons learned

I learned 2 things to today:

1. Get the "one call" people to mark the buried utility lines BEFORE you lay out your fence plan and purchase the lumber.
2. Crawling under a deck to drag out a dog who doesn't want to come out is not fun.

Introducing Jenka

Who's a pretty girl? We're taking it slow, Calgary's a big, noisy place for a Shepherd from the reserves.

Jenka's first day home. 

Fence building

I'm putting up a fence this weekend. I've never done this before (and neither have any of the guys helping me), but I'll post some pictures and the steps I went through. Like today I'm going to Totem to finalize the lumber purchase after planning everything out exactly last night with plastic spikes and string.

Awesome, no broadcast flag

Court Nixes 'Broadcast Flag'

This is extraordinary victory for fair use and innovation.

Here's another article with some background.

Simple pleasures

If you work in an office you know what I mean, for some reason someone bringing donuts, etc. to a meeting is a big deal. Here's a bunch of people with the means to drown themselves in some sort of pool of the doughy rings, yet getting just one, at that exact time, is awesome. It can change the mood of the whole meeting. Maybe I should have brought donuts to my big wiki meeting today.

Family guy is back!

And it's still good. That look Stewie gave Brian after he said "upside down face". Forget robot related sports, THIS makes me happy to be alive.