farmhouseproject

busy bobs

Greetings and Happy New Year once again. I have once again been remiss in updating this thing, I'm sure noone is surprised at that. I fixed a few bugs, and in case anyone noticed I apologize for breaking the webtree for as long as I did. New Year's resolution: better backups for the site Just In Case. :)

It has been a busy time for us. D got all A's and B's on his latest report card and had a couple interesting projects to complete. For TAG he participated in a culture fair and had to prepare a report about Mexico. He wore a sombrero during the fair and we made enchiladas for passers by to sample, and it was reported to be a hit. He also joined 4H so he could participate in First Lego League, a yearly contest in which kids build robots out of Lego Mindstorms to perform a task related to the contest theme, which this year was Food Safety. They prepared a speech and visual aids and handed out cookies to the judges (a masterstroke!) and seemed to have a good time overall. Alas for their poor robot, he malfunctioned somehow and was only able to finish one mission successfully. I'm sure next year they will do even better though. It was worth it just for the T-Shirts, if you ask me, they are black and say 'Lego Wolverines' on them. :)

Work has also been busy - I closed over 1000 tickets this quarter which is a personal record. The boss says I am on track to get a promotion and a raise someday, but I don't believe him as I don't feel like I've been doing anything differently than I did my first couple years there. On the other hand it feels like I have been studying for one thing or another for months. I'm trying to pass this internal class called 'Greybeard' which is all about the details of the linux kernel, and it's really hard. I completed the Linux Professional Institute certifications at level one and will take level 2 in March. I got some weird Novell linux certification that I totally forget what it is, but they mailed me something to frame so I must have done it. I also am scheduled to take a class on fiber optics in Omaha at the end of the month. I have never bothered to be certified in anything before, but it's hard to find a reason to say no when it's free and on work time.

Christmas came and went and Damien says thanks for all the Mario plushies! He got mostly everything on his list this year and is happy as a clam. I got him the same sort of Lego Mindstorms that they use in First Lego League so that we can practice (and because it looks sweet, of course.) He also got a model SR71 jet which he put together right away, and an awesome Mario/Bowser chess set. He says he has never won a game of chess yet, but we will keep practicing. :) Finally he got a Nintendo 3DS last week after his original DS decided to have some buttons stop working. It takes pictures and videos as well as playing games and seems to be a pretty nice piece of hardware. He sure likes it, at least. :) Google gave me a Galaxy Nexus phone as a holiday gift, and I must say it's pretty nice. I still haven't hooked it up to service but it is like a mini tablet and works pretty well on the wifi at the house. Santa brought me a new winter coat (for next winter, I guess, since it has hardly been below freezing this year), socks and jeans, and a Honeywell weather station (yay!) which I have been in the process of hooking up since the holidays. I need to hook it up to a computer running windows, alas, so I will have to do some homework to get charts and graphs onto the site. However it has a base station that displays info on its own, and it is pretty darn cool. I hung the temp/humidity probe on the porch swing and hung the wind/temp probe on top of the highest grain bin. It's 15 degrees colder at the top of the bins than at the swing right now, and the wind is 26.6 mph. I still am not quite sure where to put the rain gauge but I guess it hasn't rained yet so oh well. ;)

I feel like I should mention Caucuses, since I'm sure some of you went out to cancel my vote for Ron Paul. :) A third place finish in Iowa and second in New Hampshire, if that keeps up pretty soon you might start to think he can be elected. In our precinct I got to be secretary and count all the votes, and managed to get a seat on the county central committee. We'll see how that goes. :/ I also got to be a delegate - along with one other person who was vocally pro-Paul. Perhaps the others were quiet Paulites too, he got 22% of the votes in the room that night. :) We will go to the county and hopefully state conventions with the goal of making it to the RNC where we will be among those who actually vote for the nominees. Of course, scruffy ol' me has little chance of getting establishment republicans' votes, but nothing ventured nothing gained. I am sure there are Paul delegates in every precinct as it was drilled into our heads at the Caucus Strategy meeting I went to: STAY TIL THE END AND GET ELECTED. So, I did. Did you? By the way that night of the Caucus training, Dr Paul was in Council Bluffs and I was fortunate to have time to hear him speak. I took a couple pictures. :)

So that's mostly what's been up. I guess I have been busy at work and not thinking about projects, but I have a goal of entering 1000 more people into webtree before springtime - and I will be thinking about weather graphs for sure - so hopefully I will remember to post an update or two in the meantime. I hope you are all well and that you all have an excellent New Year.

druthers

Fall is here and winter is coming again already. Time continues to march forward even as I wish I could turn back the clock. We had an interesting summer: Damien took swimming lessons, we visited with old friends (hi Schiff, hi E, hi Clara), went to the Iowa state fair and the Ames straw poll so I could vote for Dr. Paul, went to the zoo twice - once with family and a couple of D's friends for a birthday party - watched a lot of Star Trek, and who knows what else I've forgotten since I have lousy recall and didn't bother to let you guys know what we've been up to. Life goes on. I hope you and yours are well.

I've made some changes to the software here, upgrading everything to the latest stable version and in the process breaking things. It's still not working as well as I would like but I have devoted very little time to it. I've barely posted anything in months, and I sort of feel bad about it. I've let my distaste with the Eternal September of the Internet stop me from doing pretty much anything with this site, or really any site. I'm sorry about that, a bit. No new webtree nodes, hardly any new pictures, and no updates. I suck. I could rant at length about the reasons why, but suffice to say that it is a mix of sadness in my personal life and annoyance at the state of the net. I'm sure noone really cares. :)

I continue my quest to learn python, even though I've not solved any more Euler problems. I came to the limit of the math I could easily do without even getting to 'level one' on the site. :( I not only need to learn more python I also need to study more math to progress farther - and I will, eventually. I've been studying with some coworkers and working my way through a python class offered at work so I can at least honestly say I've not been completely slack about it. It remains an important goal.

We took some time this summer to clean up around the farm, picking up and removing scrap metal, tearing down part of one of the old sheds that was in the way of the grain bins, and generally making things more organized. Matt doesn't seem to have the packrattish tendencies my grandfather had - it is starting to look positively sparse around here. It was some bit of work but was nice to see Greg and Jeanne for a few days, even if it meant having to be up on roofs tearing off sheets of tin. :P

Jeanne asked me a question I seldom consider lately: 'if I had my "druthers" (her word, she's so quaint) what would I be doing?' I guess I'm doing well enough at Google, and I honestly can't think of a place close to home I'd rather work. I still feel privileged to work there, and lucky I have a good job when so many don't have one at all. I am increasingly aware that Google is an advertising company, though, and I would perhaps jump to a place like Canonical whose mission is Free Software - if I had a chance. Alas they are based in Africa and very unlikely to open a datacenter in Iowa so I am as satisfied with my work as I am likely to get, and moving away from the farm is not on my agenda for the forseeable future. I'd have to get a new domain name, and who wants the hassle. ;)

My mom told me once, after I moved back here when I got divorced, that she was sad to see me turn inward so much. She said I used to be an explorer, and curious to find new things and people. I remember that person, that drive to share ideas with people and learn from them. I poked my nose back into the world for a while, but I have allowed my recent heartbreak to move me even farther away from the person I once was, and I am still not sure how to address that. I can't seem to force myself to go out in the world and interact, and even if I did I doubt it would help. I'm grateful for the fact that I work with people who are understanding and smart, and who don't press me too hard to be social. I think I went a little crazy this year, not that I'm normally totally sane. Thanks, guys, for helping by not prying. I hope I can once again become the person my mother remembers someday.

So, yeah. I got nothing. But I know this site is as much (or more) about posting pictures of D so grandma can see them (hi grandma!) as it is about me writing pithy updates on the front page, and I've been derelict in that. I'll try harder. Thanks for being patient with me. I guess to answer Jeanne, if I had my druthers I'd be happier. Lord knows I don't have anything to bitch about compared to many of my countrymen, so I should suck it up and deal.

Minus

I had a Google+ account for a while, but now I don't. It was fun to test and I filed a lot of bugs, but I don't want to have an account there. I just don't want all my info in a fully indexed, conveniently subpoenable centralized database. For the same reason, I don't have a Facebook account, nor a Myspace. I like my Google in anonymous mode, or whatever passes for anonymous mode. Alas, Google+ requires a public profile, and with my real name on it, no less - I hope that Google+ remains optional. :( Anything I have to say I'll say here, and noone much will see it, and that will be fine. People who check here are much less likely to be interested in me because I work for Google anyway. Thanks for that. :)

Call me old fashioned, but I don't want to be target marketed so I've opted out of Google's targeted ads and opted out of their web-history. I did this a long time ago, and I make sure to check the Google Dashboard periodically. I've similarly opted out of another hundred or so other ad tracking networks using TrackerBlock from PrivacyChoice. It is to Google's great credit that they offer an easy way to make it known that you don't wish to have your usage data collected, aggregated, and analyzed. Surely, even knowing where to look to opt out of those other ad networks is not trivial.

Not only do I not want to be served ever more precisely targeted ads, I'd also like to avoid the filter bubble effect as much as is reasonable. I would not be well served if every search returned only things I already agreed with, or thought to be true. It is important to know that the earth is round, despite one's fervent current belief that it is flat. If every search is informed by the current biases of the searcher then it will be that much harder to break free of the echo chambers we create for ourselves. This effect will be compounded when Google knows your friends and their interests and can show you things that they thought were interesting.

I know I'm weird, and you probably think I'm making stupid monkey noises about nothing. Maybe I am. I still like Google quite a lot and I'm not going to quit or anything, but I don't have to love everything they do. I never used Orkut either and I bet noone thinks that is weird. :)

no groundhogs here

It's cold and snowing big flakes again as I write this, I see snow shoveling in my future again. Punxsutawney Phil didn't predict more winter this week, but that was no consolation as there were 3 straight snowdays and we were confined to farmhouse. I took Thursday off too, just because I could, and puttered around the house alone cleaning and being boring. I still haven't taken down the Christmas tree, though, so I'm sure Scoop laughs at it every time he drives by. One of these days we'll get around to that. :)

Webtree continues to grow thanks once again to Grandma Lola and to Uncle Keith. I've spent time going through the Gemmill book that I got from grandma but the going is slow. The manuscript is not really organized for family tree data extraction, but I've got my head around it well enough to have begun entering data from it. I also made it to the county history center and found Aunt Margaret's book! I have all her data on the Mattsons entered, which is about 1/5th of the book. I'll get the rest of it as time permits. :) Keith sent enough clues to keep me busy forever, it seems that our ancestor Nicholas Yager was a member of the 2nd Germanna Colony from Germany which landed 1717 in Virginia. There's a lot of interesting history in our tree! Next time I'm in town I'll drop in to get the book on the Yeager Union Church from grandma and try to add some of that.

In other news, I've added a radio station to farmhouseproject. There are bugs in the system still (for instance, there are often no artist or song titles listed), but the idea is that logged in users vote to hear what's played next. Of course no one logs in here but me, as a rule, so it will hopefully automatically DJ itself when I'm not paying attention. :) If it's working correctly you can see what's playing in the column to the right, and you can click there to listen, also. I hacked it together using ampache, mpd and icecast so its a bit creaky. Work progresses and I'll be adding more tunes and hopefully working out the kinks as time goes on.

As always there are new arts and pictures of D and me and the cats. Things are going pretty well other than the cold and snow - we can't wait for spring. Thanks for visiting. :) May all your days be warm and your sidewalks never freeze!

2011

Happy New Year from all of us at the farmhouse!  I hope 2010 treated all of you well and you have an even better 2011. :) I hereby resolve (again) to bring you more updates and to try not to be such a hermit.  ;)  Damien got almost everything on his Christmas list this year and he says "thanks" to everyone for making his holiday special.  His mom got him the Nerf rifles on his list and they are as terrifying in person as they looked in the store, but he seems to really like them and noone has lost an eye - yet.  He got a lot of science and astronomy items that we'll be poking at in more detail now that he's back from his mom's.  (Speaking of astronomy I got him up to watch some of the recent full lunar eclipse, by which he was suitably impressed, and I did take some crappy video of the event which I might even upload somewhere, who knows.)

Santa decided I had been insufficiently good this year to bring me the weather station I wanted but plans for tracking the weather here at farmhouse have been brewing in the back of my head for a while so perhaps I'll proceed toward that goal later this year.  Santa did once again bring me socks and underwear (when I was little I'd have taken that as positive proof that I had been a Bad Boy) and also a new Stephen King book. :)  I'm not exactly gentle on my books and I've certainly lost and loaned out some over the years but I mostly keep each one and have read them all, most several times.  Over break I took the time to inventory my precious books and move the inventory into the farmhouse database to show off and to share if anyone would like to borrow some.  You can see the Library link above. :)  A quick seach shows 42 Stephen King books in the database, by the way.

In other news I met Kathy and Sheryl at the Library the other day when I was trying to track down some farmhouse history.  Sheryl told me of some project to preserve the history of the land out here, with a promise of details later. I've been curious about who built this old place so I was doing some snooping.  Mom has said this was the "Hughes place" once upon a time and was built around 1910.  We'll see what else we can find out. :)

Also the webtree (which thanks to all of your help now has over 1600 people in it!) seemed to catch her interest.  Sheryl I gave you my info but I didn't think to add you an account so you can make changes to the tree!  Mom told me that much of the data I got from her came from Sheryl in the first place, so I should pick your brain more.  Keep in touch!  For now I go, Damien is playing with Austin and they are hugely loud and need to be toned down a few notches.  Once again, Happy New Year to all! :D

Happy Holidays

Thanksgiving is over, we came, we saw, we ate a lot of birds. :) Another year is almost over, I am another year older and I'm still alive and hacking. Damien is looking forward to Christmas and it's nearly time to decorate the tree. He's got his list out and if you haven't heard he has Nintendo DS Lite games on his list this year. He also mentioned Lego Starwars and Lego City sets, but nothing specific, and 2 different Nerf rifles, something called a Vulcan and another called a Stampede. They look terrifying to me. :) He also wears size 10-12 and could use jeans and shirts and whatnot as usual. I haven't been thinking too much about stuff for me but perhaps a new winter coat, the and I've often wanted to install a weather station here at farmhouse so I could measure the insane winds here and plot pretty graphs. Nothing super necessary though, things are going ok for once.

Mom got the house all fixed so I figured it was time to break it again. The south door blew open overnight this last week, and in the process of throwing out all the cats I broke the window in it. >.< I've been trying to keep the hole plugged but when the wind hits 50mph or so it's hard. Mom is scheduled to arrive with some wood and we'll fix it up in the short term until a new door arrives. Other than that the house looks nice, the siding is 100% done, and there are new gutters and spouts all around. She even had ancient holes in the foundation plugged up so the cats and wind cant get in. Amazing!

Already ran out of propane once out here for those of you who are keeping score in the ongoing saga of jager vs ufmc.  Not sure what you have to do to get them to consistently ensure there is gas out here but I'm still working on them I guess. Other than that all is well here and I hope things are well with all of you! I've added some pics from Halloween and some random snapshots of Damien and the countryside and whatever. Also I've added a small section on politics, since after listening to Bill vs. Bob it was clear they could use instruction. ;)

Hope you have a merry Christmas and I'll probably see many of you at Becky's next month. TTFN :)