A couple of Saturdays ago I built a garden box, hauled a truckload of horse manure and mixed my soil. For the next several days I watered the soil and turned it until it seemed ready to be planted. I used some string and nails to divide it into 16 1'x1' sections. I numbered them in a notebook so I could keep track of what's planted in each square. The grid below shows how the garden is layed out. The north side is on top, and if you look at the pictures you can see the school in the background. The school is to the north of us.

And here's what I have in each square:
1. I'm planning on putting a tomato plant here.
2. Planning on cucumbers here. Both of these will be climbers, so I need to build something for them to climb on.
3. No plans for this square yet. Any ideas?
4. Planning on putting a pepper plant here.
5. India Mustard.
6. I hope to plant marigold seeds this weekend.
7. I put in four basil plants from the greenhouse yesterday.
8. Parsley (from the greenhouse).
9. Carrots
10. Butter crunch lettuce.
11. Onions (from sets.)
12. Oregano (from the greenhouse).
13. Seeded Simpson lettuce.
14. Bloomsdale spinach
15. Chives (from the greenhouse).
16. Planning on planting nasturtium seeds. The leaves and the flowers are edible, so it will be a fun one for Emma.

So far it's been fun and relaxing to come home from work, look things over, water a bit and pull some weeds. The onion sets sprang right up, but the carrots I planted a week ago are a little slower. This picture may show them finally sprouting, or maybe those are weeds. I really have no idea. When I was putting out the parsley yesterday a sprig broke off, so I took it inside and when I cooked some ground beef for dinner I added some chopped fresh parsley. Emma usually hates little green things on her food, but when I told her what it was she said she loved it.

Link: http://thedisneyblog.typepad.com/tdb/

Link: http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/

Link: http://neekole.com/

Link: http://www.peskyapostrophe.com/index.php/weblog/index/

Link: http://sarahlane.typepad.com/sarahword/

Link: http://www.8bitjoystick.com/

Link: http://stupidevilbastard.com/index/seb/index/

Link: http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp

Link: http://www.tvsquad.com/

Link: http://www.cinematical.com/

Link: http://www.themovieblog.com/

Link: http://blog.largeheartedboy.com/

Link: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/

Link: http://www.curry.com/

Link: http://www.carminegranucci.com/

Link: http://www.chattablogs.com/quintus/

Link: http://www.lessig.org/blog/

Just a reminder to update your subscription to the new brendoman.com feed since it's changed locations. We now have seperate post and comment feeds in a variety of flavors. Check out the syndication links in the sidebar. There's also fast subscribe buttons for Bloglines and MyYahoo.

Warriors, come out and play - Joystiq - www.joystiq.com

The game will be beat-em-up in the style of GTA (huge, open levels). We're thinking a River City Ransom for the 21st Century. Rockstar threw the names Double Dragon & Streets of Rage into its description. That's legacy.

If anyone has seen this movie and played these games then you know how sweet this is. This is a great match and hopefully will beat the curse of most movie-to-game titles.

I've got two great games today. First up:

Wild Words - Miniclip.com

This is a Boggle type game but is rather nerve whracking because the tiles keep coming.

Puki: The Swarm

This is a cool looking first person shooter. It's kind of hard to see the guys and they just sort of jump up on you, but it's pretty fun.

Randomize - How many forum members does it take to change a light bulb?

How many forum members does it take to change a light bulb?

1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed
14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently
7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs
1 to move it to the Lighting section
2 to argue then move it to the Electricals section
7 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs
5 to flame the spell checkers
3 to correct spelling/grammar flames
6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb" ... another 6 to condemn those 6 as stupid
2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is "lamp"
15 know-it-alls who claim they were in the industry, and that "light bulb" is perfectly correct
19 to post that this forum is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb forum
11 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this forum
36 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty
7 to post URL's where one can see examples of different light bulbs
4 to post that the URL's were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URL's
3 to post about links they found from the URL's that are relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group
5 people to hotlink to pictures of lightbulbs hosted on geocities
6 people to complain about dead images
3 people to tell them to right click the image and copy the URL into another window
13 to read all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers, images and signatures, and add "I agree"
5 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy
4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"
13 to say "do a search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs"
1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start it all over again.

Yeah, that's about right.

As you can see, we're still having some moving issues. We're trying to get the poll to work on the main page so right now when you comment it gives you a "there is no post to display" error. Your comment still goes through though. Also, I don't know if other folks are having this problem, but brendoman.com still goes to the Powweb servers for me but www.brendoman.com works fine. Because of this, I can't post in the forums right now. The subdomain thing appears to be a propogation issue and hopefully will work itself out. Thanks again guys for being so patient with us.

plainview041305.mp3

I got an invite in the mail to to go the retirement reception for Dr. D. I'm sitting here debating whether or not to go.

I had never taken any of her classes until the semester where I got two clases with her in one semester, Shakespeare and early Brit Lit. My God, the journals. She required a journal entry for every class period, asking provocative questions and reflecting on the reading. She always said qualitative journals were valued over quantitative. I have to admit I struggled - I was smart, but not as smart as I would have liked; so in the end, I had to turn in quantitave journals for my lack of qualitative ability. As a result, with three class periods a week, I wrote an average of 10-12 pages per week for her, not counting actual papers. I think by the end of the semester I had written a couple of hundred pages just for her two classes.

Not to mention the reading. Man. The funny thing was that the Shakespeare class (upper division) seemed easy, but it was the Brit Lit class I had trouble with. So much reading for a stinking 200 level class. I was stressed. It was my second semester as an English major, and I was coming off of an easy first semester with just one class. She was killing me.

I approached her outside of class once, asking if there was something I was doing wrong since I was having such a hard time. Any pointers, etc.?

I will never be able to decide if that was a good or bad decision. After I met with her, she started paying attention to me. Now, I wasn't one for actually talking in class. I was too shy and my voice was too shaky, and I liked to observe rather than make myself heard. But Dr. D decided to ask for my opinion more often, or she would check to see if I was awake. I had been getting away with saying nothing, but now I had to participate in discussion. Ugh. I guess in the end it helped me get that treaured A without a minus she actually congratulated me for.

All in all, she nearly killed me that semester, a semester way too full of units as it was. But I was always grateful. She stretched me to do what I thought I couldn't, and made me delve deeper than I thought I could.

I sort of want to go to the reception to thank her for that, but the last time I ran into her in a hallway and made small-talk with her, when I walked away I realized I was hot and my heart was racing. What the heck? Four years since college and she still made me nervous? I've got to think about this...

Angus

Boing Boing: Bush's iPod filled with infringing goodness

Ever since Bush's iPod contents went public there's been a lot of talk about his choice in songs and such. It also appears that some of the tunes are ones he didn't purchase. I wonder what he has to say about that. Maybe the RIAA will go after him. Or not. I just think this is all kind of funny.

Yahoo! News - Woman Won't Sue Wendy's for Alleged Finger

Anna Ayala is dropping her claim because the police investigations, DNA tests, a search of her home and intense publicity have "been very difficult for her emotionally," Attorney Jeffrey Janoff said.

This just keeps getting more and more strange. Check out the pics of the finger by clicking on the link. Also, dig our new blockquote style.

Son of the USB 2.0 Hi-speed Flash drive roundup : Page 12

Here's a great rundown of some of the top flash drives on the market. The ratings are very thorough and helpful.