Miscellany — Comments
05
Apr 09

The Home-Grown Project

For the last sev­eral years, I’ve planted herbs to use in my kitchen exploits—nothing fancy, just basil, chives, mint and rose­mary, usually—but I’ve always pur­chased rel­a­tively mature plants and pot­ted them in larger con­tain­ers. This year, I decided to try grow­ing from seed. After count­less trips to hard­ware stores and nurs­eries, I finally set­tled on a longer list to try:

  • Genovese basil, to use pri­mar­ily as a pizza topping
  • Mammoth dill, as a fla­vor­ing agent in my ongo­ing fas­ci­na­tion with all things pickled
  • Chives, both gar­lic and traditional
  • Flat-leaf pars­ley
  • Rosemary
  • Thyme
  • Oregano

I started the seeds in early March, not long before I left for SXSW, in Planters’ Pride Peat-Free Greenhouse Kits.

Oregano in the greenhouse kit

Oregano in the green­house kit

Parsley in the greenhouse kit

Parsley in the green­house kit

Continue read­ing →

Miscellany — Comments Off
25
Mar 09

SXSW photos, day 2

Miscellany — Comments
20
Mar 09

SXSW photos, day 1

A few pho­tos from the first day of the 10th Annual Twangfest Party at Jovita’s in Austin.

Miscellany — Comments
03
Mar 09

Minor computer catastrophe

Up until last evening around 7, my MacBook Pro was fine. Then it started hang­ing while access­ing files, and I heard the begin­nings of the dreaded Hard Drive Click. Having been some­what smart, I’d been using Time Machine for backup a few months ago, so I didn’t think it’d be much of an issue to recover.

Until I found that my last full backup on the Time Machine drive was from February 12.

I found the orig­i­nal drive that I’d replaced with the now-failing one, and 20 min­utes later (a new per­sonal record for replac­ing a lap­top hard drive), I had a bare drive I need to recover. I couldn’t find my SATA-to-USB dock, so I ripped open an old Western Digital exter­nal 2.5″ drive enclo­sure, and after restor­ing the last Time Machine backup to the good drive (5 hours later, but I’m not com­plain­ing), I hooked up the fail­ing drive to see what was recoverable.

I tried Disk Utility. No dice.

I tried DiskWarrior. Again, no luck.

I remem­bered tales of putting a fail­ing drive in the freezer to sal­vage it, so I tried that today. Five hours in the freezer while I drove to Fry’s to pro­cure a new hard drive, and DataRescue II was able to read the whole disk, but the drive warmed up too quickly to do a com­plete recov­ery (yet). So I’m going to go buy some cans of com­pressed air and drip the coolant on the drive as it tries to do the recovery.

I don’t think I lost much; all my media resides on exter­nal dri­ves, my mail lives on the server, my book­marks are on Delicious, and I was already able to copy my iTunes library files to a safe place. Still, there are some things I won’t be able to replace, and it’s frustrating.

My biggest con­cern right now is track­ing down all the installers for the apps I have, and all the ser­ial num­bers, license files and other reg­is­tra­tion infor­ma­tion. That’ll be the hard part if I have to rebuild. Oh, and the five or six years of e-mail archives I hadn’t got­ten around to upload­ing to the server yet. I hope that’s recoverable.

Oh, well. It could have been worse. It could have caught fire.

The moral of this story? BACK YOUR SHIT UP.

Update: Dammitalltohell, I’m going to have to set up my web devel­op­ment envi­ron­ment again. CRAP. That was a night­mare the first time, and it’ll be a night­mare again, I’m sure.

Miscellany — Comments Off
11
Feb 09

Getting it together

I’ve neglected to revive the pho­tos sec­tion from my old site, but I hope to rem­edy that soon. Until then, this is only a test.

Steve Wynn & The Miracle Three at John's birthday party

Steve Wynn & The Miracle Three at John’s birth­day party

Miscellany — Comments Off
31
Dec 08

Comicraft New Year’s Day Sale

The type­faces that Comicraft pro­duces are of such high qual­ity, I can’t say enough good things about them. As has been their tra­di­tion for as long as I can remem­ber, on New Year’s Day, you can pur­chase almost any­thing in their library for the price of the year in cents, or $20.09 for tomorrow’s sale. Some of these type­faces are hun­dreds of dol­lars each, so it’s a no-lose proposition.

The Big Trip — Comments Off
28
Sep 08

Trip statistics

If you’re interested…

  • Miles dri­ven: 9059
  • Gasoline con­sumed: 202.6 gallons
  • Total fuel cost: $747
  • Mean gaso­line price: $3.69 per gallon
  • Highest gaso­line price: $4.399 per gal­lon (Boonville, California)
  • Lowest gaso­line price: $3.359 per gal­lon (St. Louis, Missouri)
  • Mean fuel econ­omy: 44.8 miles per gallon
  • Cost per mile: $0.08245
The Big Trip — Comments
24
Sep 08

Day 30 and beyond: Gimme a break

I’d been on the road for a month, and it was the day before my grandmother’s birth­day, so I was in a hurry to get home. I drove to Northwest Coffee and picked up some beans for home and a cup for myself, went back to the house, show­ered, said my good­byes and hit the road home. I briefly enter­tained the notion of stop­ping at the Firefly Grill in Effingham for lunch, but I wasn’t hun­gry. A few hours later, I pulled into the garage and began the unen­vi­able task of unload­ing my car.

9059 miles

9059 miles

I’m plan­ning the East Coast por­tion of the trip, spend­ing some down time at home, get­ting things done that I’d neglected on the trip, see­ing fam­ily and friends, repack­ing and fig­ur­ing out what’s next, both for the trip and my future. Thanks for com­ing along for the ride so far, and I hope you’ll stick around for the rest of the adventure.

The Big Trip — Comments Off
24
Sep 08

Day 29: Almost there…

The Oklahoma State Fair was under­way, and my motel was near the fair­grounds, so I chose to get out of town as quickly as pos­si­ble, for­go­ing the promise of migas for break­fast at a local place I’d wanted to try. I got on the inter­state, made my way to the turn­pike, and set the cruise con­trol for another long day of dri­ving. Continue read­ing →

The Big Trip — Comments Off
22
Sep 08

Day 28: OK by U

The alarm sounded early, since my cof­fee date was ear­lier than I usu­ally get mov­ing. I got ready and found the Flying Star Cafe, the place Dana had sug­gested. I’d only seen a cou­ple of older pho­tos, but I was sure the blonde with the tall black boots in front of me in line was Dana, and I was right. We sat and chat­ted for about an hour, me giv­ing a short recap of the adven­ture I’d been on thus far, and Dana giv­ing me tips on places to visit before leav­ing town. Continue read­ing →

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