Well, I got ambitious and decided to replace a few of the more non-functioning of my sprinkler heads the other day. I identified a few, and began to dig the first one up. The western side of my house doesn't drain very well, and as a result the dirt stays rather moist after a rain. Over the years, the roots have permeated (Jeff, usage?) the ground and made it almost like peat (not Pete). This made it very difficult to dig through. So, I pulled out the ole pick-axe. My system is about 20 years old, and is constructed rather bizarrely. They use what I would call a "curly-que" of elbow joints to couple the head to the pipe, presumably to reduce the torque on the main PVC pipe delivering the water. This particular head had a much more elaborate structure coupling it to the pipe in such a way that the "curly-que" reached much higher toward the surface. Not realizing this, I hacked it with the pick-axe, and now have a neat little fountain.

So, today I went to the brand new Lowe's down the street (across 35 from the soon to be opened Ultimate Electronics, Toys 'R Us, Ross, Chili's, Johnny Carino's, etc...Take that B-Dub!) and picked up some PVC weld. This stuff is pretty cool. You fill the crack, than "activate" it with heat. You're supposed to use a blow torch, but I don't have one, so I used a lighter...It took a while.

While I was heating it, the ground caught on fire (remember the peat-like roots). This was really a bizarre sight. It finally went out when it got to the place where the roots went under the dirt, because most dirt isn't flammable...thank goodness. Anyway, I let it cure for a while and then fired up the sprinkler. I hadn't sealed it all.

So now I have to wait until it dries out before I can do anything else.

Well, that one's somewhat anti-climactic, but I'll submit it anyway...for the sake of community!

I thought this would be an interesting venue for logging my video ideas and getting feedback on them from some of the people whose feedback I need the most...insensitive jerks. Just kidding. Here's one I thought of this morning. Kind of an excuse for a very action/stunt oriented short, so I can get sued by the parents of some of the youth who'd be my actors.

It's a spoof of the Matrix called "The Metrics" (or something like that). The world is not as it seems. Even though we use English system units, everything underneath is run on the metric system. Anyway, you get the idea. Agents, super-powers for some reason, etc. Maybe it's only funny to me. I'm prepared to accept that. I deal with alot of metric system vs. english system crap.

I've got some more of these. Expect to see more in the next few days.

You may be wondering why I'm being particularly quiet. I my readers will recall, Becky is out of town...still. Our anniversary was last Thursday, so I've been getting a few surprises ready for her return. I'm very excited about them, but, on the off chance that she should stumble onto my web log while in Germany, I will not mention them. I'll relay her reactions to you when she gets back.

Andrew and Sara came up yesterday evening. We played some ping pong and went to Red Lobster. For those of you wondering...yes, he can still beat me in ping pong. I usually lead until we tie up at 12, then he leads until about 21-19. I rationalize it by saying that I win the first half of the game.

I successfully fixed my broken sprinkler head. Today, I went through a full diagnostic of the system and targeted a few more heads to replace, as weel as an entire zone in the back that doesn't turn on. Not having a map of the pipe and valve locations will make that one a little difficult to fix. I'd say the whole thing's in pretty good shape for being 20 years old.

Yesterday was the "Grand Openning" of the Super Target openning in North Austin. My friend Jen (Dave's wife) works there and knew they were having fireworks to celebrate the openning. She and Dave invited me to come watch them. Many of you know I cannot pass up such a mixture of technology, fire, loud noises, and bright colors. Jen picked us a spot that was VERY close to where they were being shot from. I had assumed it would be a few rockets and mortar shells and it would be over....I was wrong. It turned out to be a show rivalling many of the 4th of July shows I have seen over the years. And being so close made it even better. It lasted for a long time, and the finale was absolutely deafening. We were so close that the fireworks filled practically the whole sky and made you feel as if you had ascended into the sky and were right there with them. It was really cool.

Hey hey! remember me? The last few weeks have been some of the busiest of my life. Sorry for the prolonged absence. I've got to fill you in on several things, so to be efficient in helping you through them, I'll start with a list:

• I've been working on a skit/video for out church's youth-led worhsip
• Becky got her french horn "renovated" for lack of a better term.
• Becky is in Germany for three weeks
• My sprinkler system broke.

Josh (our interim youth guy, who is younger than Andrew) asked me to get some volunteers and come up with a skit for the youth led service that was this Sunday. So, it put together a sign-up sheet. I added an extra category for favorite Brady Bunch episode like Peter and I did in Cal II, which just confused people. They thought I wanted to do a Brady Bunch skit. Peter's probably the only one who understands that so I'll move on. So, as usual, I procrastinated until I thought we had just enough time to put it together and do it, at which point I found out I'd lose an entire week to the youth mission trip. Josh gave me a skit book, which should have been titled "Worst Skits Ever" and written by Webdell. (just kidding)

Anyway, it came down to last Wednesday, when we were going to finish filming our outdoor scenes. Why didn't I guess that that's when the hurricane would blow through. So, we went down to Wal-Mart and bought 12 sheets of that bright green posterboard and did all the scenes in front of a green screen. Needless to say, this added quite a bit of editing time. To make a long story short, I was up until 6am Sunday morning working on it. What I came up with was very similar to Blue's Clues, so I wished I had B-Dub to play the main part. I'll try to make some screen shots later if you're interested.

Ok, that was way too much, I'll try to keep my other points shorter. In fact, I'll combine the next two.

Becky is in Germany right now doing something called "EuroBrass". It's a christian group that tours the Germany area doing concerts and stuff and encouraging the German-based churches in their work. Since Becky is starting grad school in the fall doing horn performance, she's been wanting to get a new horn. (Don't worry the stories will converge). She did alot of research and tried out several horns. Her friend Janet (who is also in the EuroBrass thing) has a friend in Dallas who does custom horn stuff. He looked at her horn and gave her an estimate of the work that needed to be done and what he'd charge for it. We'd essentially get a new horn worth much more than we'd pay to have the work done, and we could sell it in the future to get a brand new one. Anyway, we wanted to get it taken care of before she left for Germany so she'd be used to it when she came back and had to do auditions for ensembles at UT. The guy did awesome work and the horn turned out very nice. So now she's in Germany with her "new" horn.

She has a horrible fear of flying, so she got some medication to take on the plane to help with anxiety. It must have worked really well because she said the flight was good.

I'm starting to think I should have broken this up into multiple entries. Oh well.

I had noticed that zone 1 of my sprinkler system wasn't spraying with quite the pressure it used to , so I turned it on this evening to have a look. When I did, up from the ground came a-bubblin' crude...water that is...clear gold...Texas tea...ingredient. One of the heads had broken off the main pipe and the water had created a tunnel to the surface. I dug it up and found that a large root had been pushing on the head and had finally forced it to pull away from the pipe. I got in there with my axe and chopped out a section of the root, which turned out to be about 6" in diameter. When I pulled the root out, the head came with it. The root has grown around the head so I couldn't even pry it out. The threads on the pipe seem intact, so hopefully I can buy a new head tomorrow and fill the hole back up. If there's more damage, there'll be more work for me.

Well, hopefully that brings everyone back up to speed. Our anniversary is this Thursday, so we'll miss it once again due to Becky being on a mission trip. Man, her priorities are screwed up.

I found a really cool logging component today in my search for...a logging component. It's a port of the very popular and useful log4j logging component for Java. It's called log4net oddly enough. It's very well executed, making ingenius use of static members to create more of a logging "environment" than a simple logging component. It's completely configurable on the fly for named hierachy as well as logging levels.

Some of you may ask, "Why do you need a logging component with all the trace functionality built into the framework?" Well, you've got alot of nerve, mister! You'll be happy to know that log4net makes excellent use of these built-in features, as well as adding a whole slew of extensible options. Just go check it out and I'll shut up. It's also licensed with the Apache license so there's no worries about paying anyone for use in a commercial application.

While I'm on a soapbox about delicious open-source/free tools for the CLR, I'll also mention the following tools I use at work:

• NAnt - An open-source build tool based on Java's Ant. I use it exclusively at work since no one will pony up the dough for Visual Studio. I've found I have much more control over my builds.
• NDoc - An amazing documentation creator that uses the xml files created when building with the /doc switch on the C# compiler. The documentation comes out looking just like the framework documentation.
• NUnit - A unit testing framework that was originally based on Java's jUnit, but completely rewritten to take advantage of the CLR's marvelous features.

Well, we made it home, after two multi-delayed flights, we made it home at 10:45pm last night. I just mowed the jungle in the backyard. I've been wanting to get an edging device, that will give you that well-groomed mini-trench along the edges of the yard. The best thing I saw was the Black and Decker Edge Hog. I've been very pleased with my Leaf Hog, but the Edge Hog didn't seem near as versatile as it should be. Brandon Welch and I had a really simple but cool edger the summer we mowed lawns. It swiveled to provide both vertical and horizontal edging as was about half the size of the Edge Hog. The Edge Hog does have the ability to edge AND trench, although I'm not sure what I would do with a 1/4" wide trench.

My solution was to get some new trimmer string to use on my existing weed-eater. It has a square cross-section and worked 50 times better than the string that came with the eater. If anyone has any comments on edgers, feel free to leave them and we'll all benefit from your no-doubt marvelous knowledge.

Well, I didn't intend to get into lawn care quite that much. We're glad to be home.

Oooh, while I was out, I discovered the new Lowe's is open, and they're building a Chili's and Johnny Carino's right down the street! Two of my favorite restaurants! whoo hoo.

NOTE: I've realized that my links to MapQuest aren't working the way I intended. To make them work right, after you get to mapquest from the link, zoom in all the way. Each map may look almost identical at the default zoom, but if you zoom all the way in, they are centered in different places. (unless I was doing something stupid...some of the ones in Wood's hole all point to the same place.) I also recommend switching back and forth between the map and photo if you're really interested in where these places are.

Well, this is actually the lowdown from yesterday. Nothing's happened today yet, except Becky made pancakes for everyone...and they were yummy.

Anyway, we left "The Cape" at about 10:00 yesterday (Everything happened yesterday so I'm not going to mention that again). When we got to Boston, we went straight to Matt's place (Matt is Becky's oldest brother). There, we lubed up with sunscreen and such and headed to Fenway Park. We took the "T", which is the public transportation system. There is evidently some differentiation with the "T" and the subway, but I couldn't figure it out. The parts of the "T" that we rode were a light rail sort of a thing. I've decided that Austin would greatly benefit from such a system with some minor alterations. Anyway, our seats were behind right field. It was pretty fun and the Red Sox were beating the Detroit Lions, but the sun conspired to make it very hot. I had a couple of hot dogs and some water, all of which were extremely overpriced.

We left before the 7th inning and went to some souvenir shops near the field. After everyone was satisfied with the level of souvenirism, we headed back to Matt's place and walked to Coolidge Corner near Matt's house, which has alot of stores and such. I was tired of walking, so I just sat in Starbucks.

We managed to get our dinner reservation moved from 7:00 to 6:00, which was good because we were all tired and hungry. We hopped on the "T" and headed to the"North End", which was teaming with Italian restaurants. It really felt like we were in a big city in Italy with the buildings all really close together and people of the Italian persuasion walking around talking in an italian manner. The restaurant was called "Vito Dolce". I had linguini calamari with a spicy sauce. (Calimari is squid) It was yummy. I also had some of the best cheesecake I've ever had.

After dinner, we headed back to our car (which was parked in front of Matt's place) and headed back to the cape. I was covered with a thick layer of salt from all the sweating I had done, so I took a shower in the outdoor shower in the dark, which is harder than I thought it would be.

When I tried to go to sleep, there was a very creative bird singing outside. He had about 25 distinct calls. He would do one call about 5 times, then switch. It was odd because it was the ONLY bird singing, and the only other sound being made other than the pure tones of the fog horns. It was so out of place that I was forced to the conclusion that it was not a bird at all, but rather some sort of singing device, like a bird call record or something that someone had playing over their stereo, which they had moved outside...probably because they had become annoyed with it.

So today is going to be a relaxation day with nothing in particular planned. I'll probably read some more of Flatterland, a modern sequel to Flatland written by Ian Stewart, who also did the notes in my annotated edition of Flatland. We're headed home tommorow, so (unless something really neat or unusual happens) this could be my last vacation entry.

Well, we had a FULL day in Boston. Red Sox won, it was wicked hot, we walked all over the place, rode the "T", ate italian food, and much much more. Call now and we'll include...oh...nevermind. Anyway, look for some neat pictures tomorrow.