Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Self-pick raspberries

I decided to make it a separate post so that I don't cross-contaminate words that would make it more difficult to find.


We went there a week and a half ago, and spent an entire afternoon scooting on our bums down the seemingly endless rows of raspberries. At only $2/lb., they were a MAJOR score! It's just a family's front yard with a table for the scale to weigh your haul and a coffee can where you put in how much you owe. Knowing the area, it's more likely that it was a wheat can than a coffee can, but I digress....

By the end of the day we had figured out the raspberry picking technique. First, find a nice row that looks like it hasn't been picked over recently. Shouldn't be too hard this time of year since most people stop picking when school starts up again-- even though they're usually open until October! Next, sit down. Yes, your pants will get muddy and covered in raspberries. If that's a problem, you picked the wrong picking pants! Finally, lift the bottom canes that have been sitting quietly in the shade, undisturbed by children and birds. You'll find huge berries that fall right off into your hand. Instead of picking one at a time from the top of the bush, you'll have several berries at once that nearly drop into your hands.

The most decadent thing in the world is grabbing a giant hand full of freshly picked strawberries, then shoving the lot of them in your mouth. YUM!

Back to school

Well that was an adventure! I'm now running Windows 7, with Sun VirtualBox for virtual machines dealing with anything from graphic design to website development. I almost got away with not installing Visual Studio on my root installation. Alas, you can't run XNA inside a virtual machine. Well, at least not the virtual machines I tried. It needs direct access to the video hardware, and that's not something that's normally supported.

In my free time I'm often thinking about websites or businesses that I'd like to have. Today's thought was a mapping site that links to various self-pick fruit farms. I may have to makes some blog posts whenever I come across one!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Cataloging the Innumerable

Ah, the cool breezes of September herald the beginning of fall. With the change of the seasons, we're reminded of the cycles of birth, death, new life, and probably another round of death. Yes, it's time to kill my computer once again.

It's been a good run of it, though. My laptop's been running fairly nicely up until the past 6 months or so. There's always a point where you install just that one more trial version of something or other, and it all comes crashing down around you.

Taking the lead of one of my illustrious coworkers, I'm going to make a blog post to catalog everything on my system. His is for personal documentation purposes. My list is to give myself a public shaming for having so much crap installed on my box!

Without further ado:

  • Network drives
    • Home network drive
    • Office network drive
  • Web Browsers
    • Firefox
      • Adblock Plus
      • Ask Toolbar (How the heck did THAT slip in?)
      • BugMeNot
      • CodeBurner for Firebug
      • CookieSwap
      • Delicious Bookmarks
      • DownThemAll!
      • Extended Cookie Manager
      • Firebug
      • Firecookie
      • FireFTP
      • FireRainbow
      • FireShot
      • FlashGot
      • Google Gears
      • Google Toolbar for Firefox
      • Greasemonkey
      • HighlightAll
      • HtmlValidator
      • Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant
      • ModifyHeaders
      • MouseGestures Redox
      • Move Media Player
      • Page Speed
      • Save Complete
      • ScrapBook
      • Spiderbar - edderkop
      • Ubiquity
      • XSL Results
      • YSlow
    • Chrome
    • Internet Explorer
      • DebugBar
  • Email
    • Thunderbird
    • Outlook
  • Text editors
    • JEdit
    • Dasher
    • Word
  • Development tools
    • Visual Studio 2005
    • Visual Studio 2008
    • Eclipse
    • CPN Tools
    • NORMA
    • Expression Blend
    • Expression Web
    • Silverlight
    • XNA Framework
    • Python
    • PLiX
    • NUnit
    • RegexBuddy
    • Scratch
  • Databases
    • MySQL
    • SQL Server 2005
    • SQL Server Lite
  • Web servers
    • WAMP Server
  • Utilities
    • Adobe Flash
    • Adobe AIR
    • 7-Zip
    • Tortise SVN
    • AnkhSVN
    • EPSON Scan
    • Google Earth
    • DAEMON Tools
    • ActiveHome X-10
    • uTorrent
    • FileZilla
    • Java
    • Sun VirtualBox
  • Printers
    • CutePDF
    • HP Color LaserJet 2605 2.0
  • Games
    • World of Goo
    • Saga
    • Armadillo Run
  • Art
    • Picasa
    • Photoshop
    • Illustrator
    • FontLab
    • Wacom tablet driver
  • Media Players
    • iTunes
    • VLC
    • Audacity
    • WinDVD
    • K-Lite Codec Pack