My Blog

Simple Enough

2010-05-04T14:14:00.003-04:00

I made some of this Gardener's Hand Scrub today and tried it out after I got in from pulling weeds and checking on seedlings. It works great!

So often, I bookmark a project that I'd like to try and never get around to actually doing it. The hand scrub is two ingredients, liquid dish soap and sugar, that you combine in a jar -- the kind of thing I could mix in a jiffy and be done. It just doesn't get more doable than that.

DDT is good for me-e-e!

2010-04-23T00:00:00.004-04:00

The "me-e-e" at the end reminds me of a) somebody falling off a cliff or b) the Castle of uuggggggh.

I'm Dirt Rich!

2010-04-22T22:54:00.005-04:00

Last fall, I filled my square foot garden beds with lasagna sheet mulch layers and let it settle during the winter. Some decomposition happened but not enough that my spring planting flourished. Gaps developed around the edges of my raised beds where the lasagna compost shrank away. I had a big container full of potting mix that Ott and Vonne made for us a couple of years ago. (The tomato that grew in that container led to a little garden bed and then to several raised beds and then to obsession.) I used the potting mix and dirt from that container to fill gaps in my lasagna compost and then I ran out. Seeing as how I was already over budget with my garden, what was I to do?

I found an ad on craigslist for organic compost @ $.10 a pound. Rick and I drove to High Point today and bought 250 pounds. Now I won't be scrounging for compost. I am set for the season. I can happily turn the compost in my backyard bin and patiently wait as Nature does her magic without mentally screaming at it, "Would you please hurry up!" This compost purchase was a gift from heaven.

The people who sold us the compost have a wonderful thing going. Pastor Jeff Moran has formed an organization called the House Gardens Greening Project. HGGP is helping people set up their own raised bed gardens for an incredibly low cost of $80. In addition (this is from the brochure) the House Gardens Greening Project will facilitate the following programs which are designed to promote sustainability and community:

Educational Gardening Workshops

Tool Exchange Center

Harvest Exchange of Fresh Local Produce

Community Farmers Market Twice Weekly

Community Meals Created From HGGP Gardens

Last night, I watched Food, Inc. and the panel discussion afterward on UNC-TV. I am of the opinion that we have become too disconnected from our food sources and that those sources have become much too centralized. The so-called Green Revolution gave us monocultures dependent on herbicides and pesticides, as well as GM foods that biotech companies discourage independent researchers from testing. The movement to take back our food, to diversify, to develop ecologically ethical agricultural practices is the REAL Green Revolution.

Happy Earth Day. I had a really good one. I feel encouraged that people, out of respect for the planet and a growing sense of good stewardship, are taking actions that will ensure many good Earth Days to come.

I Pledge

2008-07-16T00:06:00.001-04:00

I pledge to hold this hope for me
and you and you and all of us,
a supple hope that
when trampled
will gently bend and breathe
before it slowly, invisibly
rises again to reach upward
(ever, always upward)
toward the blazing possiblity
of generosity toward one another,
compassionate openness one to the other,
liberty to love without asking questions
or requiring answers of each other,
readiness to give where there is need,
freedom to have and to hold
without needing to own and to grasp
each other, me and thee
and you and you
and all of us.

SplashKiller

2008-07-14T20:45:00.003-04:00

I got it in my head I didn't want to see splash screens when I started up an application. No reason except contrariness. Wouldn't you know there's a handy little freeware utility that takes care of that very thing.

SplashKiller runs in the system tray and saves you from having to:
1. Find a 'no splash screen' option (if one exists) in the application.
2. Modify your registry to turn off a splash screen.
3. Hack the application itself to remove the splash screen.

If you'd rather the SplashKiller icon not show in the systray, it can do that, too.

Itch -> scratched.

Lifetime Guarantee

2008-07-08T13:19:00.003-04:00

Forever does not belong here.

Permanent is a suspended state of
temporary. The gear has got to
circle, engage the next, the next, and click.
Time must move.

Lifetime guarantees do not hold up
forever and a day.

Comodo AntiVirus & Apache on XP

2008-07-04T20:27:00.003-04:00

After I installed Comodo AntiVirus today, none of my localhost pages would happen. I typed the URL in the address bar, hit enter and watched the page try to load. Loading, loading, loading, nothing. Just blank page loading.

I restarted Apache and the same thing occurred, which is to say, nothing. Shut down Comodo AntiVirus. Still nothing.

Comodo AntiVirus and Apache 2.2 do not gee-haw. I read in this Comodo forum thread to add "Win32DisableAcceptEx" (without quotes) to httpd.conf and this worked. I now have Apache and Comodo AntiVirus both running and I can get to my localhost pages again.

Found Some Good Freeware

2008-07-04T16:34:00.005-04:00

For a couple of days, AVG said it couldn't update because of this error message: @update_result_missing_ctf. "What's a ctf?" was my question and I asked Google to find out for me.

I never did find an explanation but in my wanderings, I came across a recommendation by a satisfied user of another free anti-virus app, Comodo AntiVirus. I uninstalled AVG and installed Comodo AntiVirus and so far so good.

Comodo has nice products, all free. I downloaded and installed i-Vault, a password manager, but uninstalled it when I found it doesn't work with Firefox. Not just Firefox 3 but any Firefox. I can't imagine what kind of super dooper software would inspire me to give up FF for IE. But a password manager is not it.

Comodo AnitSpam uses passcode authentication so I stuck with SpamBayes. I didn't want somebody to have to jump through hoops to send me an email message, just because I forgot to add them to my authencated senders list. And I would forget all the time, definitely.

I briefly considered the firewall software but decided against it. I did install BOCleane Anti Malware. I haven't explored all the settings, etc. but, as far as I can tell, it is sitting there doing a fine job.

I came across another app today that I was tickled to discover. IObit Smart Defrag has an "install it and forget it" feature that defrags your computer in the background. I set it to start up with windows and now I don't have to even think about defragging my computer anymore. IObit Smart Defrag has it covered.