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getting to the root of things |
3/30/2000: It is 40 F and sunny today, going to be one of those really nice spring days. The high is supposed to hit 60F this afternoon. Mmm. I have some red tulips blooming on the south side of my house.
I'm really looking forward to this Sunday, the time change day. This Sunday the getting dark jumps from 6:30 to 7:30. When it doesn't get dark until 7:30, that means we're in the warm lazy part of the year. Also this weekend is supposed to be warm (highs in the low 70's even!) and humid with a possible nice rain, so it's PERFECT for it. Sitting outside, maybe even in short sleeves, a nice wind, eating tangerines, and it's bright out at 7, those are some good times.
I really need to call the city about my porch plans.
3/28/2000: It is 37 F and rapidly becoming cloudy this morning. They're calling for a freeze tonight, even.
Yesterday I had the day off and did lots of reading and writing about the IMF, scanned pictures, saw the movie "Three Seasons", and got one of the VSA people to read some pronunciation exercises onto a tape so that I can study the pronunciation myself now.
Turns out the mystery plant is bloodroot. Now I just need to see where I can get some!
3/24/2000: It is 61 F this morning, with a forecast of scattered showers and thunderstorms for this afternoon. I hope it storms, I really like the stormage. Definitely a warm spring day though and also today we get free staff lunch at work. Whee. I'm going to a party this evening too so it's a good day for food.
Lately I've been listening to a song Nagai Tabi (the long journey) by Okamura Takako, from 1991 or thereabouts. Quite a good song, probably my current favorite right now. I've also been listening to some vietnamese mp3s, mainly stuff by Ngoc Lan and Nhu Quynh. Longtime readers might remember I used to always go to the Sieu Thi Vien Dong supermarket down 54th and University in San Diego and when I was there I'd get tapes for $1.50 at the video/tape shop next door, try to read all the flyers, have huge bowls of noodles, and eat mung bean cakes while waiting for the bus... If anyone in San Diego is interested, to get down there you take the #7 (or 70, 70A, 7A, 7B, all those variants is okay too) out east on University and get off at 54th or the general neighborhood where there's lots of Vietnamese signs and scrumptious bakeries all over the place. Anyways, it's interesting to find the same songs, all the same people, on the web (mainly from www.vietmusic.net). Ain't the internet grand? Also in California there is a Vietnamese language radio station broadcasting from Santa Ana, which is partly simulcast with a station in Houston, if I was on the Amtrak near there I could tune it in on my walkman. I found that radio station in Real Audio on the web too, but I can't recall where at the moment. I'll need to look it up...
At the Radio Free Urbana meeting last night, it turns out the next step is waiting to find out when our area (several states area) will be looked at for proposals. The ordering of the areas is done by random drawing. Once we know when we need to have the proposal in by, we can start working.
Sometime in the first half of April I hope to have Girlzone come into my office. The idea would be to give them some information about how the web works, what web programming is all about, and where the pages I work on for work are. It should be fun, sort of a "take your daughter to work day" thing but wider. At the end of the month they are going to have some sort of technology day with lots of people showing stuff, too, which should be cool.
In Home Improvement news, the latest plans are for building some sort of trellises and/or pergolas in the back and growing some vines on them. I'm thinking I could have a nice place to sit, and maybe if the poles for any pergola are strong enough maybe even do the hammock thing. That would be extremely nice, to sleep out there in the afternoon. I've gotten some books on vines and what not and am sort of looking for plans for pergola-esque things. Hopefully I can figure out their construction... the library has some pretty detailed books though so I'll probably be heading there at some point this weekend to do more detailed searches. Inside the house, I need to get back to painting my trim too. My main problem is that I am lazier than dirt. When the weather is crappy, it's "oh, I should go sit someplace warm and curl up with a book" but then when the weather's nice it's "oh, I should be out wandering all over the place." I'm hoping to take Monday off.
3/23/2000: It is a warm and sunny 50 F this morning. The high should hit 66 F, one of those really nice spring days. So far there aren't leaves on the trees or redbud flowers yet, but the silver maples at home are budding like crazy, and there are leaves on the lilac. I didn't prune the lilac because as of yet there's not much else there to screen my front door and anyways I like it all wild and crazy and just doing it's own dance there. Flowers are coming up now in the shaded parts of my yard, in back by the fence, crocuses and little dwarf irises and whatnot, and now all my daffodils are in full flower, bright yellow next to the house. I'm so glad I put those in, I feel so much better about life in general and my place in it now that I have happy yellow flowers. The vinca too is getting ready to spread, spread, spread, and it's making little flowers the same color as my kitchen, blue purple, and there's green on the ivy. The aegopodium is coming up too, all the ingredients for your Standard Urbana Front Yard.
There is one plant I wonder about, growing in the yard of the brown house with the wonderful woodland garden in between Lincoln and Busey on Nevada St, it makes big round leaves with notches in them, close to the ground. Well, I have another description now, it puts up little white flowers, and the flower comes up straight from the ground with the leaf there wrapped around it and then the leaf slowly opens. Anyone know what that is? They're just now coming up.
Tonight at 7PM we'll be meeting at Mike Lehman's house to discuss the organization of Radio Free Urbana. As it turns out, the FCC is planning to issue some low power (microradio) licenses and we intend to apply for one. The station should cover a few square miles, at least most of central Urbana. We can put out news and general weirdness. I'd like to cover city government news, myself. Goodness knows we need more diversity of voices on the air around here, what with the travesty that was the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Considering that we the public own the damn airwaves to begin with, it's time to start demanding a slice back. Of course the National Association of Broadcasters is trying to stop the allocation of microradio frequencies, because they want to use the extra space on the dial for themselves. Naturally they whine about "interference," despite studies to the contrary (particularly given that the power has already been lowered in response to concerns), and then have the gall to whinge on about what a horror it would be if someone wasn't able to listen to their corporate "community radio" beamed off a satellite with all robotic DJs and a playlist based nationwide, oh yes. Since when is that remotely community radio? If it ain't got local people on the air and it ain't responding to local requests, it ain't community radio. Most of the commercial stations (at least the AM) have at least SOME portion of the day given over to locally hosted shows, but these big programmed franchises are just creepy. I mean, come on, I want to hear news and views from Champaign-Urbana. Regardless of the viewpoint of a talk show, I want to hear LOCAL issues brought up on that talk show, and know that I have some chance of actually calling in and getting on the air. We're a "second tier" market, I believe - things are really bad for people not right here in town. Heck, they get companies buying up their local frequencies and then playing ads at us here in town, mentioning the name of the town the station is based in only in passing...
Speaking of local radio consolidation (and what isn't consolidating these days? Competition my arse), Tuesday's Champaign-Urbana News Gazette had an article about how WKIO 92.5 (Oldies 92) is being bought up by Saga Communications, based in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. That would be the company's 46th radio station. Here in town they already own both WLRW 94.5 (adult contemporary) and WIXY 100.3 (country). So three of the most popular stations are owned by one firm. Swell. These guys already own or operate "broadcast properties" in 16 markets, including 28 FM and 17 AM radio stations, 2 state radio networks, 1 farm radio network and 5 TV stations. They also have equity interest in 6 FM stations in Reykjavik, Iceland. Does anyone seriously think they care about what's going on here in town?
Then of course there's the Rush Limbaugh Problem, namely how many stations can you tune him in on at once, driving from here to Bloomington? The answer is eight. My particular peeve is that he's now on WDWS AM 1400 here in Champaign. Now, I personally think Rush Limbaugh is an idiot (or at least he plays one on the radio, who knows) but I have no problem with him being on the air. Thing is, he's on ALL the air, at the same time. The same station has other conservative-minded LOCAL shows which I listen to with actual local news on them (sometimes the best part is calling in or your friends call in and debate the host into a full retreat, but I digress) but some locally hosted shows have been cut to make room for Rush and The Evil Dr. L (based in LA). People complain about this regularly, including loyal Rush fans. After all, they say, I can always get Rush on WLS 890AM out of Chicago, blasting the Midwest at 50,000 watts, so what's up? It turns out what's up is that (and the host of the aforementioned local show finally had to admit it on the air) WDWS needs them to listen to Rush on WDWS so that WDWS can sell ads. Naturally, that's the way this "efficient" system works, isn't it? I gotta wonder though, wouldn't it be nice for the loyal Rush fans if the show was delayed and broadcast later? That way people who missed it in the morning could listen later at home.
The other Rush Limbaugh Problem isn't just Rush's problem, it's talk radio's problem. It seems that in order to cram in yet more ads, stations have been cutting out pauses and compressing the show in general. Rush is particularly vulnerable because he likes to leave those big pregnant pauses. I gotta say, I fully sympathize with his complaints about it - a guy should be able to have a big long pause for style if that's the way he wants it. He's a big enough name, maybe people will listen.
3/20/2000: It is 46 F and grey today. Supposedly the high will hit 52F and then things will sink back into the 40s. It's officially spring today!
Tomorrow is the primary elections in Illinois. You should definitely get out there and vote, because it's not just the presidential primaries (which it seems we now have next to no say in, not that ANY of the candidates on either side fail to utterly suck), it's the local primaries too and those are the really important ones. There's people running for circuit judge, Illinois House representative, and US House Representative, not to mention Circuit Clerk and County Board. It's also the census and that means redistricting is on the table this time.
I found my umbrella. That's a good thing considering that I just bought that umbrella after having lost my old umbrella. Then the first day I used the new one, I went and left it in a friend's car. Sweet.
3/17/2000: It is 34 F now, and sunny. This weekend it is supposed to be grey and rather crappy, with highs in the mid 40s F.
Yesterday completely sucked, so I didn't get a chance to answer some friendly e-mails or do any writing or anything like that... But it's a brand new day and the sun is out and maybe stuff will happen today! Yes!
3/15/2000: It is 47 F now. I guess it's the Ides of March today. It's supposed to rain later on today/tonight, and then change to snow, so that tomorrow can start off with a high in the upper 30s F and then fall from there. Thursday's weather will be crappy. I sort of wish it would thunderstorm, actually, I'm really looking forward to those warm severe weather days, provided my house doesn't get sucked up (funny how I never really worried about my apartment).
At work I'm starting in on a large project to overhaul the various content registries. They'll still be flat files for a while, but the files will now correspond to the eventual SQL tables that will be implemented in stage 2. Should be interesting.
3/14/2000: It is 47 F now, at 10:33 AM. The problem with this time of year is that the wind chills can be in the 20s F when I leave the house, necessitating extra pants, and then I have to take them off.
Yesterday I had my eyes examined and even ordered some glasses. FWIW, I went to Jones Optical up at the mall because they take staff insurance. It's been over five years since the last time, and sure enough, I've gotten more nearsighted. It's not a huge amount, so the glasses I'm currently wearing are still MOSTLY okay. The weird part is that one eye got worse than the other one, so that the lenses now correct my eyes to slightly different vision quality. That explains why I tend to go cross eyed these days when I am tired - it takes some effort for the brain to resolve stuff. The extreme case of this was one morning years ago I woke up, put on my glasses and WOOOWOOOW, the world was bulging in and out and flashing and generally Not Behaving Well. I'd NOT consumed any Strange Substances the night before, so I put a tentative finger up to my glasses, and wouldn't you know it, one of the lenses was gone! With one eye corrected and one not, vision doesn't align so well. I later found the lens in the bathroom trash where it had fallen out. This brings up the second reason why I need new glasses, namely that the current pair are on their structural last legs. They've been soldered twice, on both sides of the nose, to the point where I'm almost afraid to wash them. When they do break, I'm pretty well incapacitated until I can run to a jeweler to get them fixed.
The new glasses I ordered are copper colored, plain metal. These days it seems everyone is into colored frames, either painted metal or with tortoiseshell. They didn't have any silver ones. Luckily for me there were some suitably plain frames in a large enough size in the cheap bin. I should get them in 10 days or so, as the lenses need to be made in Indianapolis. I got the standard UV protection for computer geeks.
3/13/2000: It is in the upper 30s F this morning, grey and drizzly. Days like this always feel colder than days which actually are colder but sunny. This Saturday it snowed, accumulating around 2 inches, and then Sunday it warmed up to around 45F, and it mainly melted off aside from in the shade. Interesting thing about that is that there is a hard line between snow and not snow in my yard, showing exactly where the shadow of the house is constantly falling. Looks like definitely any vegetables I plant will have to be mixed into the flower gardens on the south side, unless I get permission from my neighbor to use part of his yard, 'cuz my property doesn't go far enough on the north side to escape the house shadow.
Speaking of gardening, I've gotten several books from the library (the Urbana Free Library, five or so blocks from my house, is simply amazing) about shade gardens, shrubs, and vines. The back side of my house (the stripe, between my house and the fence) is pretty much a mostly shady place, so I need to find flowering plants that do well in shade. I've got green plants, and some sunny flowers (which will come up, but late) but I'm thinking some shade flowers would be great there. I'm planning what to do with the paved area that is sunny, and now I'm thinking of leaving paving in the middle, but taking it out just all on the edges (so what's left is an irregularly shaped flat platform), and building a strong trellis/place to sit under off to the side of the paved part (where it won't be paved, or not with the bigger bricks anyway), and growing vines all over it. The question is just where in the little square to put it... the corner would be good, but the back neighbor's tree is hanging over that area in a big way. I can get him to prune it back but that corner is going to be shady (I definitely like some hangover of the tree!), so maybe not the best spot. I could put a big shade thing there and then have the lattice thing against my side fence... That way I'd see it directly out my window and flowers would grow on it. I'm going to have a clothesline and futon drying frame out there too. At any rate, lots of plans. I also talked to a friend of mine who has decided that yes, he will indeed do the porch thing (and I will be helping) so that should be moving along soon, I think I need to talk to the city.
My friend Bill and I managed to reinstall Linux on zax this Sunday. Whee. Stuff, like, actually compiles now that my C libraries are somewhat up to date. I now have spiffy high resolution X too.
It is spring break for the students and so things are really quiet, sort of a pleasant foretaste of summer... I am taking this afternoon off to go and get my eyes examined and hopefully get some new glasses before these ones completely fall apart. They've now been soldered back together on both sides where the nose piece joins the eye pieces. I dread washing them, fearing they'll break. Peeve: Little tiny wire frames are in. Hello? I want to SEE out of more than one square inch, dammit, not walk around looking tres chic in frames barely larger than my iris.
3/7/2000: It is a whopping 61F this morning, with the high forecast to hit 75F!! Tomorrow we should be seeing some severe weather, which should be interesting. It's getting to be that season. After the front passes through, we'll be back to highs in the upper 40s/low 50s, but it's definitely spring. Last night I actually went out and watered my gardens. I've got some purple crocuses coming up now - mainly the light purple ones. The crocuses I naturalized into the parkway are coming up great too. Happy flowers...
Last night I went to a Vietnamese class. There was an ad for it in the student paper so I went, but it turned out that they'd already met four times (they meet once a week). So I have some catching up to do, but it should be really cool. The pronunciation is really hard though, lots of vowels that all sound like schwa. Plus there are six tones, yow. Right now I just know how to read words like "supermarket," "vegetables," and "love" due to always shopping at the supermarkets down East University ave in San Diego...
3/6/2000: It is 52F this morning, with the high forecast to hit 70F. Woo. Very very spring like, spring is definitely early this year. My flowers are coming up, I've got crocuses (some yellow ones!!) blooming, and some cantab dwarf irises. Other things are currently in the green shoots stage. Ground cover is slowly perking up too, I've seen a few purple periwinkle blossoms, and there are fat clusters of shoots in the periwinkle that are getting ready to explode out. I'm hoping that the ground covers cover up the entire garden area by the end of the season this year. Right now I've got a lot of bare dirt (with flowers coming out of it!), which is getting really dry - I think I might actually need to water the plants tonight, as it's not going to rain until Wednesday. When it does, however, temperatures should fall by a good 25 degrees at least, and we might get severe weather.
Friday night I went to see 10,000 Maniacs at the Canopy Club (the latest incantation of the old Thunderbird theater, on Goodwin). It was good, I like the viola stuff. Other than that, this weekend I went to Engineering Open House. One interesting thing was, they had a big magnet in the physics building that they were using to put vertical magnetic field through an electrified pair of rails, on which rested a bar (sorta like big staple). Remember F = I L x B? Hehehehe. The guy would turn on the juice to the rails, current (I) would flow through the big staple, and the B would fling it at amazing speeds right into a large cardboard cutout of Worf, which clearly had seen better days... They were breaking bottles but that got nixed. Darn.
3/1/2000: (yeah, I'm supposed to move the old stuff off now, I'm getting there, I'm getting there) It's in the upper 40's today. I've been quite busy these last coupla days, partly working on more pages which will be linked with this one soon. For starters, you can look at a learning page I've cobbled together (and not yet fully checked!) to get myself wise on some things I need to use for a big project at work.