A new toy.

The newest toy and our next project.

But before we can do anything about that…

We have to fix this.

Yeah, that’s pretty much half of the dash pulled out. Tomorrow night the other half comes out. All because I don’t like cold feet.

There are bits of this truck that are waaaay too far behind other bits.

(Update to the update — Jim got it all done and buttoned back up on Sunday. Good thing too, because there’s snow forecast for tonight.)

 A lazy cat.

Peach in his prefered winter spot.

Work — or not.

NaNoWriMo.

You can find it here.

I’m not actually signed up. Because I’m chicken shit and all that. Mostly because I don’t write novels. At least not with any success. I write short stories. And I plan to write 4 this month. It’s my own little version of NaNoWriMo.

Hm, the weekend picture-taking didn’t end Saturday morning, though that was my plan. We headed out Saturday, late afternoon, to hit up the lumber yard for 2x4s and grab some dinner before heading back home to finish the chicken aviary improvements. (more on that later) I grabbed my camera and threw the 50mm lens on it just in case we were out late enough to catch the picture of our little town at sunset that I’ve been seeing but not getting for a couple of weeks now. That wasn’t the picture I got.

Bad news, the white truck spit the binkie — or rather a fuel pump. Luckily in a convenient parking lo. But not the hardware store lot, which was probably a good thing.

For some reason yesterday was a terribly busy day for the AAA and tow truck guys. (There’s a long story here but only those involved care :)

So I had a couple of hours to sit around and cool my heels. But hey, what luck, I had my camera with me and it was getting to be late and the light was getting interesting and well here you have them. A handful of things that I shot in a suburban parking lot. Just goes to prove that you really can find something to look at no matter where you are.

[Show as slideshow]

I’m also using this post to try out the NextGEN gallery plug-in. I need something for using on this blog. I also need something to build a portfolio site in but that’s taking way too long and has been way too much of a mess. Be warned — there are a lot of crap WordPress “portfolio” themes out there. Expensive ones too.

Last weekend the front bed with the cedars in it got new shrubs.

Continuing the theme of happy flowering shrubs and brooding conifers that we started with the cedars and the (now gone) buddleias we’ve added more happy and more brooding.

Starting with the happy, a flowering currant. I’ve seen this plant on both the lists of –plants that birds like– and the lists of –plants that deer don’t like-. We shall see. The shocking cerise of the flowers is a nice stunner — at the far edge of the bed.

flowering currant, shocking cerise

And now a little gloom. Okay, maybe not so gloomy. This little White Cedar cultivar has a lovely fluffy, bunny look up close.

Heather Bun, what a terrible name.

Contrasting nicely in form is this whipcord Western Red Cedar. It’s an Iseli introduction. I’m always happy to see that they’re still in business and still developing  interesting plants.

whipcord western red cedar

Also along the back of the bed there’s a white flowering quince. I know, I know, flowering quinces are supposed to be that red-orange color. But this one is so pretty… I also like how well the wrecked, stick-figure angularity of the this particular one is already developed. (I’ll plant one of the properly colored ones down by the farm sign, I promise.)

flowering quince — Jet Trail

These creamy flower clusters were irresistible.

close up of the flower clusters

There are three of theses little red twig dogwoods. The variegated leaves will contrast nicely with the green wrinkly currant leaves behind them.

nice shrub dogwood with ivory edges leaves

The other gloomies. Two nicely colored conifers. The juniper in the front will have a purplish cast during the winter, the yew in the back will be somewhat bronze. Both will head more toward full green in the summer.

just being to lose it’s winter purple

Now I just have to be patient. And diligent with the deer repellent.

These ruby slippers from Ahmet Baytar are all Dorothy from Wizard of Oz grows up.

The original are in the flash gallery on his site.

Ahmet Baytar Fall 2009

Last week Jim got a new guitar — something a little more challenging…

jim playing his new guitar (taken from the balcony)

We drove to town this afternoon to get the mail (Yeah, I know no way for us to get out = no way for the mail to get in.)

I got these shots of Cherry Valley and the Snoqualmie River (from a moving vehicle…)

<click for larger images>

Note that the little white peaks in the last picture are the tops of a set of 6 industrial sized greenhouses.

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This is also a chance to try the WordPress gallery plugin that now comes with the vanilla install. meh, not bad, but not great either.

This photo of Woodinville-Duvall Road through the Snoqualmie valley was sent to Jim by Jerry one of the fellows in SVARC. The “un-official” version is that it will take 4 days to fix. We surmise that it’s damage to the road surface and not to the underlying bridge structure because the traffic camera showed an ambulance crossing earlier this morning.

woodinville-duvall road 09 jan 2009

W-D road rarely closes due to flooding. Now we’ll have to wait for 124th to open. Which could be days yet.

At 11:30(ish) this morning the traffic cameras on 124th (south of town) showed:

124th from the 203 roundabout facing west

124th from west snoqualmie valley road facing east

Live camera coverage for the morbidly natural disaster obcessed here:

Traffic camera of W-D Road here. (It’s off-line at the moment 11:22 am)

Traffic camera of 124th (our next best hope) here facing east across the valley and here facing west.

I was upgrading WordPress installs this morning and found this in the drafts folder of my old blog Magpie’s Shiny Things.

Is Google the Next Microsoft

Yeah, probably, so what?

The market demands that there be an easy, no brainer, can’t possibly get in trouble for choosing solution for the vast majority.

Tools need to be one stop shopping, easy standardization and all from a single source — If you buy all MSFT products they work together (mostly.) If you use all Google web apps they work together (not yet but Google understands how important this is.)

Just like in the past (and present) everyone else had to offer the ability to read and write to the MSFT file formats in their applications everyone else on the web will have to do so the same with the new Google apps.

So Google will be the next 800 pound gorilla and the sun will continue to rise in the east. (Unless of course MSFT gets it act together and manages to get Live really working.) And we, the masses, will learn that Google is not a benign grandfatherly entity that opens doors to the wonders of the ‘net.

Not much changes, if I were writing this 20 years ago the question would be Microsoft is it the next IBM.

The answer is more clearly yes today than it was in Sept 2007 when I wrote this.

I will be reviving MST. Somehow adding my thoughts on Web Development to a blog meant to be read by family and friends who want to compare the state of our various flower beds and sewing projects seems well… odd.

A few months ago I moved some things — including the files for this blog — around on the servers. It all seemed to go just fine — until…

I upgraded the wordpress installs. All the older image links broke. Luckily I figured out just how they broke. It’s taken a couple of hours but all the images and links in the older posts and gallery pages should work again.

So here’s what Jim wanted me to make him.

A box for his Nintendo.

It’s similar to the folding box. In fact it started out like the folding box but then I closed up the sides so that it would be easier to use the DS while it was still in the box. (Hence the drop front.) In this case the back side corners are closed only by the book cloth liner. If I had it to make again I’d glue the side boards together.

The box is closed with a button and a loop of elastic.

All together not bad for something I made up on the fly.

One thing that I love about drop front boxes is how they seem to be a part of whatever they hold rather than just incidental to it.