Solar Powered

I am definitely solar powered. It was a dark, grey, cold, and wet winter. Some days I do not even realize how much so until the sun comes out. The past two weeks have given me an opportunity to catch up on some sleep, catch up on chores around home, and generally have a little fun and time for me. I had a great time in Boston last weekend despite the rain. Then I came home to a very unproductive grey day at home on Tuesday. Finally on Wed the sun came out and since then I have actually been very productive.

Around the house, I got some old bulbs in the ground that should have gone in around Christmas. Many were soft and unlikely to ever come up but at least half of them have a chance. I finally mounted the hangers in the basement for some of my tools and my skates and tennis rackets. I also turned over a piece of ground for some mums and emptied out the planters in the front yard. In the home office and leading to stress reduction, I finished my taxes, sent out some invoices, and got some checks deposited. Finally, I have mostly caught up on laundry, dishes, and other house cleaning including a trip to the convenience center to take out the recycling.

For me, I saw the UNC Tar Heel Women's Basketball team off to the NCAA tournament and took photos, went for a trail ride, and got a layer of hair off my shedding animals - all in addition to some extra sleep. I am having an urge for a road trip at the moment though. Probably because a friend of the family has been blogging about a road trip from Minneapolis to Arizona and back. They started last week with a stop in Iowa, headed for Spring Training, and were at the Grand Canyon today.

On the technical front, I renewed my efforts with the Fedora Release Notes and User Guide for the next release, paid some attention to the Desktop Help Summit and the Fedora Marketing FAD, and downloaded the alpha media for both Fedora and Ubuntu.

I am particularly proud of a couple of other accomplishments on my Fedora 12 laptop. I should not be surprised at all at how easy it all worked out, but I finally took a few minutes to get my internal wireless adapter working and I also finally got the all-access.cbssports.com sites to play the audio of the women's basketball games using moonlight. I'll be able to listen at home to the very late game tonight instead of going out and I am listening to the "early" game for that location right now - it is making me really appreciate how good we have it in the announcing category with the Tar Heel Sports Network! Brad and Jan are GREAT!

-SML

Oh me, oh my.

Lordy, Lordy;
my best friend just turned 40!!!

Otherwise known as 22 with 18 years experience.

Growing old is mandatory, well, it beats the alternative anyway.
Growing up is optional.

To A: Have a happy one!

-SML

Up next: the Runner Up

I have been aware of Ignite events for a bit but I didn't realize that they had started in my area. Apparently last week was the second one for IngiteRaleigh and was a huge success. There was also a local TEDx event yesterday. Someday I may make it to one of these events.

But what surprised me, as I discovered after the fact about these events, was the "Try these other events" section that pointed to FizzledDurham. Apparently if you submitted a talk to IgniteRaleigh and were not chosen, you can sign up to present that talk at FizzledDurham. I know that there are many more worthy talks submitted to Ignite events than time allows - even at only 5 minutes per talk - but still, I think I would feel like presenting at a Fizzled event would be at best an "also ran" honor. Maybe because of the name.

-SML

Check off another one.

I have updated my travel map adding the Falls Church, VA Zpizza and the Annapolis, MD Whole Foods. Both visited for the first time in the past month.

View the map on the right hand side of my blog or directly.

-SML

A Long February

It has been a very cold and wet and snowy February in NC.

The above photo is from Feb 13th - the third weekend in a row that snow fell in the Carolinas. It was not a lot of snow (left) and definitely one of the more mild storms of this winter, but there is still some left on the last day of the month (right) - and a chance of more this week.




The squirrel also thought it was excessively cold and moved into the bluebird house this winter. He likes to lie flat on the top, looking down over the edge at the ground.






On the other hand, there are signs of spring.