Rand Wacker

Maybe I’m lame and behind the curve, but I’ve just discovered that as I’m Cmd-Tabing through apps on OSX I can hit Q or H to quit or hide things that don’t have the focus. Nice for brow-beating things like Meeting Maker in to disappearing since it doesn’t support the standard Cmd-H when it has the focus.

Busy travel schedule coming up. Tomorrow night I’m heading up to Seattle for some work and then a bachelor party for my best man, Rob. Sunday I come back to the Bay and then Monday I fly to New York City for a week of work meetings. This will be the first time I’ve been there since 2000 and am really looking forward to it!

Tomorrow (Thursday) I’m going to be sitting on a panel at the Email Technology Conference called Can SMTP be Fixed?. WIth representatives from the ASRG, SPF, Yahoo, Ironport, and Verisign, it should be a good debate.

At the beginning of June we started out on an ambitious project to completely transform our upper backyard from the overgrown and unusable space that it is. Through the help of some very generous friends and some hard-working hired helpers, we’ve completed the first stage in only four or five working days (spread over the course of a month of weekends).

Our deepest thanks to our friends Noel, Zahir, Alexandra, Sandy, Wes, Abby, Sean, Erick.

More pictures…

I had a meeting over in Concord yesterday so I decided to take BART from home, catch a ride with a co-worker back to the office, and then I ended up doing the Emery Go Round/BART back home. The trip out was nice cause I had a lot of down-time to get stuff done. Got a little done on the way home but the real surprise was that the total trip didn’t take all that long.

I like about 7 miles north of work (according to my bike computer), and thought it would be interesting to do a comparison of commute options (all one way):

Drive: 10-20 minutes depending on time of day, $1.00 to $1.50 in gas/etc.

Bike: 25-30 minutes, reliably. Kinda smelly when I get home after riding up the last hill.

BART/Bus: 20 minutes ride time, $1.50, 10 minutes wait time, 15 minutes walk (possible to replace w/ bus ride). This is not a bad option considering that at least half the time can be productive, as long as it’s not during crowded commute hours.

All in all, a good set of options. During the summer now I’d say that I’m driving in two days a week, biking two days a week, and working at home one day a week. BART definitely can work as well, especially if I lived a little further afield.

A couple of weeks ago I planted an eggplant, a pepper (Thai variety), and a flat of romaine lettuce, and they are all doing well (except for the lettuce leaves that got paver dust thrown on it from a wet saw). Today I dropped in a third tomato plant (San Marsano), watermelon, and some chard. (These are mostly notes for me to remember later).

One thing that has worked out very well is to create little portable greenhouses by folding a 3 foot by 1 foot piece of chicken wire in to a three-sided cube and then stapling clear plastic over it. I’ve used these little cubes on newly planted seedlings and it really helps them get established quickly. I’ve had especially good luck keeping one of these over my basil plants, as they keep the plants warm enough to prevent bolting just two weeks after they are planted. I’ll put some pictures of these little cubes up pretty soon, and then later I think I will build a whole glassed-in bed for the herbs and lettuces.

I was at a Starbucks this afternoon (I spend a bit of time working there since I have a T-Mobile HotSpot account), and they had a bag of used coffee grounds out for the taking to use in compost/gardens. I’ve seen a couple of posters about this but this was the first time I’d seen the actual bags. I asked a guy behind the counter if it was OK to take one and he said, “sure, want some more?” I ended up walking out with about twenty pounds of oder-licious black gold. Mixed a couple of bags in the compost bin and then sprinkled the rest around the garden itself. I’m hoping that it will keep the cats out from using my planting beds as a sandbox (I don’t think the cayenne pepper is working too well).

Anyways, its kind of a nice service from Starbucks. I’m sure I could get grounds from other local coffee shops, I should start checking around.

I’ll be down in San Jose for the rest of the week at the first annual INBOX Email Event, attending a number of talks, participating in a couple of forums, and spending time in the booth for Sendmail. Drop by and say hi if you’re there!