When I read this article, it was one of those; “Oh, that is too obvious - why didn’t I think of that !?”
… our use of XMPP for Command & Control could also be refitted to act as a cluster / machine monitor. The cool part of XMPP is it acts as both a presence [...]

I was invited to web conference today. I spend a lot of time in web conferences and phone conferences. This one was being hosted on the Sametime Unyte service (formerly WebDialogs). I was connecting from a new machine so I ran the “system test tool” It said I had the right browser, JVM, plugin, and [...]

I was about to sit down for a little mindless television when the phone rang. It was a recorded message but I actually listened for 15 seconds. It was an automated system announcing that U.S. Congresswoman Thelma Drake (2nd District Of Virginia) was having a teleconference town hall meeting and if I stayed on the [...]

I headed down to the job site today and given the nearly perfect weather - amazingly 78 and dry - I figured Zen and I could get some play time around the place. Now remember, there are 91 acres of land - that’s just short of 4 million square feet of space - and Zen [...]

There is not too much I can do at the moment on the farmhouse. If all goes as planned, the steel arrives in less than two weeks. It will still be a while before I get my shop out of storage.
I have designed the bathroom as a wetroom. Wetrooms are pretty popular in [...]

I am a very visual person - just as anyone who has tried to give me driving directions, street names are useless to me, I need landmarks.
Anyway, I’ve been struggling we a problem. I finally found the solution.
What is this ? (click on image for a larger view)

When I was growing up, “tanking” was a bad thing. To “tank” was slang for “a very bad performance” as in “tanking on an exam” and “tanked in the final game”.
Anyway, it was with a bit of humor that I find the term “tanking” is also used describe the complete waterproofing of a [...]

I have been trying to figure out the tile pattern for the wetroom. I was considering tiling the entire room in soapstone but I’ve decided to hold the use of soapstone to the kitchen. I also like the look of pebbles. These come in 12″ sheets so the installation is pretty easy and the [...]

There is a thread running around for “Yellow Day” pictures. Here is mine …

I just ordered a new “product” from “The Company”. I have had one of these “products” for two years now am 100% satisfied. So, when I needed another, I bit the bullet, payed the price and ordered it. I want my “product” to be just for me so I have opted in both cases [...]

This blog post has been rattling around a couple of weeks. If I were writing a book, this one topic would be an entire chapter. As such, I’ll try to break it into a few parts.
“Conformity” has to do with the huge chasm between cookie-cutter homes and architecture and “everything else”. I use [...]

In part 1 I described the “joy” of getting finance for my farmhouse / shop project. Next came the challenges of actually closing on that financing.
The commercial lending department needed an appraisal on the construction project. Since it was new construction the apraisal would bve based on plans, specs, and quotes along [...]

I dearly love my Thinkpad X60. It is light, it is quick, it has a biometric reader, and it is mine (not my employer’s). However, it has one really big drawback - it has only  a 1024×768 screen. My official work computer is a well used Thinkpad T40. The “company” announced I was allotted a [...]

Last year the figs started to ripen around late August. This year they are a bit early and the weather is not cooperating.  I thought my biggest worries for the figs was “the race”. “The race” is between me, the birds, and the bugs.  We all seem to know just when the figs are [...]

There is a small airfield on the Eastern Shore known as Campbell Field located in Weirwood. The have a regular even called “Soup on Sunday” and in the sumer it can be quite busy. This weekend was especially so. There were a number of Grummans, Cessnas, and Bonanzas as well a pair of Piper Cubs [...]

“Scratch” and “Dent” are not a comic duo from some comic series, although it would make for a funny ad campaign. In my case, the budget for the farmhouse construction project is already in the red - at least according to my projective spreadsheet - so I am looking for every angle to save [...]

This year has been tough for fig harvest and storage. For, the weather has been cool and relatively wet. This is causing the figs to ripen more slowly and as I’ve noted before, figs swell up and burst their skin when they have excess water. Thus, they are slow to reach the picking stage. Since [...]

OK, I can take the ants and the beetles, and the butterflies all taking a shot at the figs on the tree. I can manage to get to enough rips ones without disturbing those creatures. BUT, the latest villains to descend on the fig tree are a bit out of my league. I did [...]

I have not had much to blog about as of late. I hope there will be visible progress on the farmhouse. In the mean time, I’ve been going back and rereading some old pieces.  Many years ago I was reading a group of short stories and came across the following, titled “solo ’space’ travel” ..
I [...]

As a kid, I loved hearing John Banner(Sergeant Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes)’s exclamation, “Flat … as a pancake!” It was the first thought that popped into my head as I scaled the dirt pile at my construction site and looked out across my farmhouse …
Yes, the piles that stretch far and wide represent [...]

This post is really just a test of sorts for "blog by mail" with a different email client. the subject line is a reference that having fun outdoors with your pets during summer heat needs to bve something you do with a good deal of attention.
Today Zen and I went down to the farmhouse [...]

We use IBM Lotus Notes for email and a number of useful applications where I work. There has been a significant shift with Notes since the introduction of it’s Eclipse framework - or more correctly the addition of Expeditor. This made a big difference for me when I was using Ubuntu as primary work environment. [...]