My wife loves to feed the birds in our yard. This year, she bought some feeders that stick to the windows on the back of the house. Now we can sit and eat a meal in the kitchen and watch the little birds eat a meal as well. I have to admit, I like this better than I had anticipated I would. We’ve had a nice variety of birds too. As I’m writing this, there is a male American Gold Finch male sitting on one feeder and a pair of house finches on another. My only complaint is the mess the birds make around these feeders. They leave bird poop and bird seed husks EVERYWHERE. Guess who gets stuck with cleanup duty…..

–Pete

My wife and I are finally sick of the clutter. We have started a binge of cleaning around the house. Today she cleaned out the portion of the kitchen cupboard we call the “Appliance Garage”. She managed to elimnate three countertop appliances that we haven’t used in quite a while. I took my turn this evening in the garage sorting through crap out there. We manage to accumulate an AMAZING amount of stuff in a year’s time. We have lots more stuff to sort through before we can call it done. Wish us luck.

–Pete

These are my links for April 27th through May 7th:

• Building a digital SLR system: Looking at the Canon Digital Rebel XTi, Nikon D40, Nikon D80, and EOS 5D cameras –
• Macworld: Secrets: Inside QuickTime Pro’s bag of tricks – A great article about the benefits of Quicktime Pro
• Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor – A nice article that explains how to read the memory information provided by the Activity Monitor application.
• Zamzar – Free online file conversion – An interesting way to convert files from one type to another.
• AFP548 – Nested Templates in ARD –

Once in a while, my wife likes to surprise me with a “man” gift. What’s a “man” gift? A power tool of course! This time it was something a little surprisng. She gave me a chain saw. Not just any chain saw, but the McCulloch “Eager Beaver” with a 16″ bar. Sound dangerous? I agree! I fired it up today and managed to chainsaw a few dead tree limbs off of a downed tree out at the farm. It works pretty well. Now I suppose I should really read the rest of the manual before I accidentally saw off a body part I’ll need for later.

–Pete

It was an absolutely gorgeous weekend from a weather standpoint. Sunny. Highs in the mid to upper 70s. AWESOME!

Horse Expo
It was also a very busy weekend. Friday evening, my wife and I took in the sights at the Minnesota Horse Expo. Although my wife has been there many times, this was my first time, and I was quite surprised how big it was. It was held at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. A big section of the grounds, including the Colliseum, the horse barns, the cattle barns, and several other buildings were filled with horses, donkeys, mules, carriages, and horse related paraphenalia. We spent all evening there and we just scratched the surface. The biggest highlight for me was the baby donkeys. One of the exhibitors had a pair of donkeys that were literally just a few days old. They were unbelievably cute. I’m amazed we didn’t somehow end up with them joining the herd at the farm. I’m looking forward to having another chance to see that in the future.

Helping Paws Run & Romp
Saturday brought me to the Helping Paws Run & Romp, an annual fundraiser that is a Run/Walk event where we encourage you to bring your dog. We had a good turnout again this year and amazing weather. Last year it was pouring rain and very cold. The year before that it was sunny, but is was cold and windy. This year was an absolute gift. The only drawback from my perspective was that I was too stupid to put on some sunscreen, so I am now sporting a mild sunburn on my face, neck, and forearms.

I arrived early to help with the setup in the morning and my wife joined me later with Libby so we could actually participate. There were several choices for participating, but we chose to walk the course, and we also chose the 4K course. What a blast!

Emmet Gets a Swim
After getting home, we decided that Emmet needed to do something special, since Libby got to go to the walk. The special treat for him was an opportunity to go swimming in the pond in our backyard. You have to understand that Emmet would rather swim than do anything else — including eating — which is a bit unusual for a lab. Labs love water, but as a general rule, they love eating more. Not my Emmet. The bad part about that is that it is often very difficult to get him out of the water once he gets started with his swimming. His first swim this year proved to be no exception. My only saving grace here was that I had *planned* on him going swimming, so I blocked out a good hour of my time to supervise him and throw his retrieving dummy. He had a blast as usual. I love watching him swim. He really is quite a talented swimmer.

Yard Work
Today was a chance to do a little yard work. It started with me getting rid of the brush pile in the backyard and with me doing some more tree trimming in the trees lining the shoreline of our pond. I swear that those damn trees shed more branches than they have growing from them. What was going to be just an hour of work ended up taking almost three hourse worth of work — and there is still more to do. I also had a chance to do a little spot weed control on the dandelions in the backyard. I need to get the weed & feed fertilizer down as soon as possible before I’m growing nothing but weeds in the backyard.

Hope your weekend was as good as mine was.

–Pete

These are my links for April 13th through April 17th:

• How-to: Understanding Mac OS X Open Directory – A nice how-to article that explains Mac OS X Open Directory
• Bombich.com: Leveraging Active Directory on Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server – Mike Bombich’s excellent article about Active Directory and Mac OS X
• County of Stearns, Minnesota – Emergency Management Department – Website of Stearns County Skywarn
• Chuck Doswell’s Site – A website that details all of Severe Weather expert’s formal and informal papers on severe weather
• Macintosh Utilities and Scripts – A nice collection of scripts and documents for managing Mac OS X Tiger Servers and network home directories

I forgot to mention that I’ve now (finally!) posted the next episode of the Minnesota Geek Animal Stories Podcast. Episode #9 is part one of a three part series about my Chocolate Labrador named Gordy. I’ll be posting the rest in a few days.

If you aren’t subscribed to my podcast, you can listen to episode 9 by clicking here.

–Pete

I was visiting a customer site yesterday. We were looking at the back of her two post telco rack, examing the fiber optic cable patch panel, which was towards the bottom of the rack. After examining it, I stood up and hit my head on the corner of the large network switch that was at the top of the rack. Real smooth, huh?

The worst part is I thought I had just bumped my head, but it turns out I also CUT my scalp. This was evident as blood started to run down my forehead. I was *so* embarrassed. Nothing makes you look less cool in front of a customer than a bloody head. Well — actually one thing makes you look less cool. One of my co-workers told me about a time that she fainted in front of a customer and ended up landing face first on a tile floor. She had to be hauled away in a stretcher. I think her story wins.

Anyone else out there manage to do anything gross, stupid, or whatever while in front of your boss, co-workers, or customers? Anyone? Bueler??
–Pete

OK. I’ve got to know. Which of you likes having a dog or cat lick you toes and which you doesn’t like that?

Me? I’m a toe licker lover. I’m actually getting some amazing toe licks from Belle as I’m writing this. Wow.

–Pete

These are my links for April 12th:

• Photo, Video, Clip Art Catalogue – Photo and video archive
• Wall Cloud – Nice video of a wall cloud
• JetStream – An Online School for Weather: Thunderstorm Types – A nice web site illustrating thunderstom types
• JetStream – An Online School for Weather: Downbursts and Aircraft – A nice explanation and diagram of a thunderstorm downburst
• Skywarn Observer’s Guide from WeatherMichigan.com – skywarn

These are my links for March 29th through April 11th:

• NWS Norman, Oklahoma – Weather Glossary for Storm Spotters – A glossary of weather terms for Storm Spotters
• AFP548 – Tiger and NTLM Web Proxy Auth – An interesting article about support NTLM authentication for Safari, Quicktime, iTunes, tec.
• Macworld: Mac 911: Encoding for Apple TV – A nice article about how to encode video for the Apple TV
• TCO/WinMac – An interesting TCO Study
• Aperture to Final Cut Plugin (free) at DigMo! – A nice article about a cool plugin that connects Aperture and FCP
• Mac OS X Server: Understanding the “disconnect when idle” feature for AFP connections – A good article about how to disable the AFP session caching feature of Mac OS X Server

The production of Son of God Son of Man at my church was a success. The best news: Jackie the Donkey didn’t buck Dustin Kelm, the actor who played Jesus, off her back during the scene where Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a Donkey. What a relief!

Let me paint a picture of how this scene works. Dustin would run backstage and slowly lower himself onto Jackie’s back while my friend Ben held her lead rope at her head and me by Jackie’s back helping Dustin. When I say backstage, I mean we were standing in the wings of the stage in almost complete darkness, with about 30 people crowded around us waiting to go on for the same scene we were in. My job as Jackie walked on stage was to follow off to one side and make sure that she didn’t swing her back end into the group of dancers that were on the crowded stage or step on anyone’s feet. I was also there to help out in case Jackie were to get spooked for some reason. Once Dustin was on her back, we waited for the group of actors in front of us to go out onto stage. As they left to go on stage, they were all waving palm branches and singing, “Hosanna!”. Ben led Jackie about one third of the way across the front of the stage, where she would stop and stand while Dustin does a line in answer to another actor. Next, she is led by Ben across to the other side of the stage, where she is to stop again so Dustin can dismount, and then we lead her from the stage in the wings and total darkness again. Sounds complicated, right? It was! It also took about 2 minutes from the time Dustin climbed on her back until the time we were backstage again with the scene being complete.

Here’s how the performances played out:

Dress Rehearsal: Perfect. Jackie hit all of her cues and seemed relaxed.

Friday Evening Performance: Jackie started off well, but we could tell she was very excited. She stopped at her first stopping point, paused for about 10 seconds, and then started moving again. It took everything Ben had to get her to stop again, as she was ready to move on to her next cue! Ben got her stopped after just about five steps though, and it all worked out. Her second stop was right on cue.

Saturday Afternoon Performance: Jackie stopped when asked to for her first cue. She even looked out at the audience. The part that didn’t go quite as planned was the second stop. Ben could not get her to stop at the appointed spot. She got about 15 steps past the spot where she was supposed to stop so Dustin could dismount and she just kept right on going. Fortunately, Dustin is a professional unicyclist, so he just jumped right off of her and acted like that was just what was supposed to happen.

Saturday Evening Performance: Jackie was perfect. When she stopped for Dustin to say his line, she again looked out at the audience. When she stopped for Dustin to dismount, she stood perfectly still while Dustin climbed off. She even stood still long enough for Dustin to run his hand along her back, look at her with a big smile on his face, and then turn and do his next line. It was a tremendously exciting moment.

The scenes with the other animals also went well. The goats added quite a bit to the scenery of the marketplace scene, as did Sheba the donkey.

I’m glad that whole thing is now done. I got a lot out of it personally, but it was a tremendous amount of work and by Sunday afternoon, when we finally got things cleaned up, I was exhausted.

Will I do it again? Who knows. Maybe…..

–Pete

These are my links for March 26th through March 28th:

• Computing with Bifocals – A (Near)-Complete List of Mac Keyboard Shortcuts || The Mac Observer – A very complete list of keyboard shortcuts for the Mac
• MacFixIt – Tutorial: Getting into Login Items: Part 2 – Another follow-up article about Login Items and Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”
• MacFixIt – Tutorial: Getting into Login Items: Part 1 – A nice article explaing what a Login Item is and how it works for Mac OS X “Tiger”
• Setting up a Kerberos Cross Realm between Ope Directory and Active Directory – This is the step by step instructions about how to set up a Windows Active Directory in a trust with Mac OS X Server’s Open Directory.
• Working in the RAW > What Happens in Your Camera – A nice summary of what RAW files are and how they work with digital cameras and software
• AppleScript Tutorial for Beginners VIII – Getting the Drop on Droplets – A nice article about how to make droplets in AppleScript
• Apple Remote Desktop 2 or later: Configuring remotely via command line (kickstart) – An Apple Knowledge Base article that explains how to set the ARD client using the command line kickstart tool

My wife and I have been talked into helping out with the Easter play at our church this year. The play is called Son of God, Son of Man, and is a musical written by Pastor Ken Parker, one of the pastors at our church. It is the story of the life and death of Jesus Christ, and we’ve been asked to help out by providing a couple of animals for the production. We decided this would be a fun new challenge, so we agreed.

Jackie, our full-sized donkey, will be the donkey that Jesus rides into Jerusalem on during Palm Sunday. This is probably the most nerve-wracking scene for us. Jackie is a rescue animal (meaning that she was being neglected by her previous owner), and when she came to live at the farm, she was malnourished, very shy, didn’t like to be touched, and had hooves that had not been trimmed in well over a year. In short, she was a basket-case. You couldn’t touch her without her flinching and if you touched her feet, she went ballistic. Over the last year, she has really blossomed. She has filled out, so you can no longer see her ribs. She now seeks attention from you. She loves to have her head and ears rubbed and loves to be around people. We’ve been working with her over the last two months to get her ready for this play. We’ve had to practice with someone riding on her back (she has obviously had someone ride her at some point) and we’ve spent lots of time desensitizing her to the sights and sounds at church. She has been nothing short of amazing so far, given all the new experiences she’s had to learn about it. My only fear, is that she, after all, is an animal, and by definition, that means she’s at least a little unpredictable. If she gets scared and dumps Jesus off the stage, I think it will detract a little from the scene, don’t you? So far, that hasn’t happened and we’ve got a weeks worth of rehearsals before the first performance. I’ll be one of two handlers with her on stage during that scene. If all goes well, she’ll be on and off the stage in a minute or less.

The other animals that will be participating will be Sheba the mini-donkey and at least one of the two goats (Casey and G.G.)– and maybe both. They’ll all be in the market scene early in the play and my wife will be handling the animals during that scene along with some other cast members. I’ll be outside with Jackie getting her warmed up for her scene.

Pray for us and our animals as we prepare for and participate in this production. We want this to be a joy for everyone — humans and animals included!

You could, of course, also come and see us perform. The tickets are inexpensive and the show is excellent. You can pre-order tickets by going to here.

I hope we’ll see you there!

–Pete

These are my links for March 22nd:

• Apple Matters | The Beginner’s Guide to Command Line Magic: Part 2 – A nice short list of useful command line commands for a command line newbie on Mac OS X.

You hear a lot of tech people throw around the phrase “Web 2.0” these days. What does that mean? What is Web 2.0?

This little video that was put together by Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University, does a pretty good job of describing it in an entertaining way. It also raises some interesting ideas of what that means for the future, and what we need to rethink in a Web 2.0 world. Watch it all the way to the end — it is worth it.

–Pete

I’m a BNL fan. That’s no secret. One of the things that I enjoy about them is that they are always pushing the envelope in terms of how they interact with their fans by using the latest cool technology. The guys in BNL are Mac users, and recently Ed Robertson decided to use the iSight camera built in to his MacBook Pro to record himself singing and playing some of the cool songs that BNL does — in an “unplugged” sort of way. Where did he do it? In the bathroom of his house, hence the name “The Bathroom Sessions”. I know what you’re thinking….but he didn’t do that. I just think he liked the acoustics in there.

What I found the most amusing of this little escapade was his rendition of their classic tune Some Fantastic, which is really a duet with both Ed and Steven Page singing the lyrics. I was wondering how Ed was going to work in Steve’s part, since these were all being recorded by Ed. I think the solution was very funny and very clever.

–Pete

These are my links for March 19th:

• Applescript and Scripting Resources @ MacScripter – An amazingly rich website with examples and articles about how to script all things on the Mac
• Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes â�« Welcome – A great resource for how to use AppleScript to control iTunes

Paul Simon has done some really cool songs over the years. One of his more recent is a nice little tune called “Father and Daughter“. It talks about the relationship between a father and daughter. I can’t relate to the words directly, as I’m not a parent, but I if I were a dad, I would want my relationship with my daughter to be like this.

If you leap awake in the middle of a bad dream
And for a fraction of a second you can’t remember where you are
Just open your window and follow your memory upstream
To the meadow in the mountain where we counted every falling star
I believe the light that shines on you will shine on you forever
And though I can’t guarantee there’s nothing scary hiding under your bed
I’m gonna stand guard like a postcard of a golden retriever
And never leave til I leave you with a sweet dream in your head
I’m gonna watch you shine
Gonna watch you grow
Gonna paint a sign
So you’ll always know
As long as one and one is two
There could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I love you

There is only one thing I think would be different for me. It wouldn’t be a postcard of a golden retriever, it would be, of course, a Labrador Retriever.

–Pete

Scott Adams, the guy who writes the infamous Dilbert comic strip also has a very intriguing blog that I highly recommend. In fact, do you see it sitting over there in my blogroll? Yeah. I thought so.

The other day he wrote about technology that is “Too Frickin’ Cool”

Now for an exciting round of what I call “too frickin’ cool.” The way this is played is that you describe some technology that is so futuristic, so Star Trekish, you can hardly believe that you are using it. When you are done describing this technology, you must be so impressed with your own story that you pause and punctuate it be saying, “Too frickin’ cool.” Optionally, you can add a “dude” or a “seriously” to further elaborate your point.

At the end of his post, he challenged his readers to post about their Too Frickin’ Cool technology in his comments feed. I had to think about this for a few minutes before I could think of the answer for me.

How’s this: I’m 400 miles from my house. I’m sitting in a hotel, surfing the vast Interet over a wireless broadband connection on my trusty laptop, when I suddenly get the urge to see what the weather looks like at home. I type in my special URL and am instantly presented with a live video feed from a camera that is looking out of my home office window in real time. Without getting out of my bed, I can see that the neighbor has mowed his lawn and that it is currently raining, which is ruining the sealcoat that he just put on his driveway. Too frickin’ cool. Dude. Seriously!

What is too frickin’ cool to you?

–Pete