One of my favorite types of trees is the Paper Birch. I love the white bark and the way the park peels like paper. I’ve always thought these were cool looking trees. The remind me of being in the north woods of Minnesota or Wisconsin. When we bought our current house, I was excited to see that there was a Paper Birch tree in the front yard. It was quite a tall tree, as well — I’d say 25 feet tall and a good 10 inches in diameter at the base of the trunk.

Last summer I noticed that after every storm, our tree was shedding branches. I didn’t think much of it. These were pretty good storms with lots of wind. For some reason it didn’t strike me as being odd that this tree had never done that in the past and that no other trees in the yard were having this problem. As the summer came to a close, the tree started looking less and less healthy. The smaller Paper Birch in my neighbor’s yard looked equally unhealthy.

My neighbor called the local nursery and chatted with them about it and learned about a pest called the Golden Birch Beetle. They told him what to look for and he went out and checked. Sure enough — his tree was infested with them. He walked over to my yard and looked at my tree and found my tree had them too. After confirming the infestation, we looked up what to do about it. Unfortunately, there is almost nothing you can do. Once infested, the larva of the beetle eat the tree’s phloem, which ultimately wrecks the ability of the tree to move nutrients up the trunk to the branches. The damage will almost always kill the tree — it is just a matter of how long it will hang on.

Our’s didn’t hang on for very long. This spring as all the trees greened up in the neighborhood, the birch tree stayed dead looking. I didn’t want to cut it down, but I finally gave in last weekend and called a neighbor to help me cut it down. It only took a couple of hours to take down the tree and pull the stump out with his truck and the tree is now just a memory and a stack of firewood.

The next question is — what kind of tree do I replace it with? I certainly won’t put up another Paper Birch. I could plant a species of River Birch, which are similar looking, but resistant to the beetle. I could also go with a completely different kind of tree and go with something like a Crimson Maple or Silver Maple, both of which are beautiful trees and grow relatively rapidly. What do you think? What is your favorite type of tree for the front yard?

–Pete

I recently ran across a really cool application called Narrator by the good folks at Dejal. This is a REALLY cool application for anyone who has ever written a story or play and wants to hear what it sounds like read aloud. You could, of course, enlist your group of friends to read it aloud for you, but that would involve coordinating schedules which is always a pain. Enter Narrator.

The idea here is that you can have the speech synthesis engine built into Mac OS X read the story aloud for you. You assign each character in your story or play a voice and color. You the go through your story and highlight the text for each character in the appropriate color. When you are all done, you have Narrator read the story aloud. It switches from voice to voice as it reads — picking the the voice that matches the color you assigned to the text. It also highlights the text as it is being read, which is great for students that are practicing their reading. If you couple this with any of the amazing voices from Cepstral, the quality is astounding. In addition, if you couple it with something like Audio Hijack Pro, would allow you to record the output to an audio file so you could listen to it later.

While this one isn’t free, it is cheap. Individual license is $14.95 and a site license is only $100.

Check it out!

–Pete

I have a vague feeling I’ve written about this before. I don’t feel like checking through the archives, so if I’ve written about this before, oh well!

When you listen to songs, do you listen to the music or to the words first? What do you like the best — the words or the music? Being an amateur musician, I’d have to say that I’m drawn to both the words and the music. If a song has well crafted lyrics, or if the lyrics tell an interesting story, I’m especially intrigued by them. That is part of what drives my love for musicians like Billy Joel, Mark Schultz, Ben Folds, the Barenaked Ladies, etc. All of these individuals/groups are gifted at telling interesting or touching stories with their music and lyrics. If you’ll pardon the pun, that really strikes a chord with me.

I was driving this afternoon and listening to a new album I downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. It is called “Barenaked Ladies – iTunes Originals“. This is the second iTunes Originals album I’ve bought. The first one was by Ben Folds. One thing I enjoy about these two albums is that they include the artists talking about what was going through their minds when they wrote a particular song or a particular piece of a song. In fact, Ben Folds even says in one of the tracks on his iTunes album this statement: “There is nothing that is against the rules. If I feel that I want to write in first person and completely make it up, then I’m gonna do it. And I realize that it is a powerful….the I in song writing is powerful because people tap into the celebrity of it.” He then goes on to talk about his hit song “Brick”, and explains that what he is singing about in that song is dealing with getting his girlfriend pregnant when they were 17 years old and then selling his Christmas gifts so he could pay for her to get an abortion. Wow.

The Barenaked Ladies, on the other hand, tend to do songs a bit more light-hearted. Many of their songs are not quite that first-person, but I love the craftsmanship behind the lyrics. For example, their hit “One Week“. If you’ve listened to that song (and I’m sure you have), I’m sure you were amazed at just how FAST the lyrics go by when they sing that song. If you take the time to read them you’ll realize just how clever they really are. The underlying story behind that song is that it is about the stages of an argument between two people. Again — I’m hooked. I wish there were more opportunities to hear artists talk about what was going through their heads when they wrote a particular song and what they think the song is about.

Got any songs you want to talk about? Any songs you think I should hear?

–Pete

Recently I ran across a great article called “Getting Started with Quartz Composer” over at MacDevCenter.com. I had toyed with Quartz Composer briefly, but this article gave a really nice, short tutorial on it. I’m sure there are several of you scratching your head and wondering what the heck Quartz Composer is. First off — it is a Mac thing. Secondly, it is part of the Developer’s tools for Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”. Thirdly, it is a tool used for creating amazing animations that can be used as screen savers, iTunes visualizers, or clips in iMovie. If you haven’t played with, I highly recommend it. All you need to do is download Apple’s free Developer tools and read through this short article. You’ll be glad you did.

–Pete

I had a rough week. I managed to contract a stellar case of Influenza-A. This is not the “stomach flu” that everyone thinks of when they hear somone has the flu. This is the real deal. Influenza. A nasty, upper-respiratory illness caused by the Influenza virus. The symptoms include high fever (100-103 degrees), body ache, chills, headaches, sore throat, extreme fatigue, along with the upper respiratory symptoms that you’d see with a typical cold.

So here’s the story. A week ago Friday I knew I was sick, but I had a presentation I needed to do for work. I put on my game face and toughed it out. By the time I got home, I was wiped out and felt horrible, so I beached myself on the couch and slept for two hours. When I awoke, I didn’t feel better. I felt worse. My wife checked my temperature. Yup. 102 degree fever. I went to bed. The next day (Saturday), I planted myself on the couch all day and felt miserable. The 102 degree fever stuck with me most of the day. By late evening, it had crept up to 103 and I felt even worse. After much cajoling by my wife and mother (via the phone), I was convinced that I really needed to see a doctor to rule out strep throat. So, we made the trip to the ER at the local hospital. My fears were confirmed. It wasn’t going to be that easy. It wasn’t strep. It was something else and the doctor need to confirm whether or not I had Influenza.

A nurse marched in and jammed what looked like a pipe cleaner up my nose for a sample. Although she probably only had to shove it in an inch or so, I’d swear she shoved it a good six inches up my nasal passage. After doing that to both nostrils, she sent it off for analysis. About 40 minutes later the doctor came back and said it was Influenza-A. There was nothing they could do to treat the symptoms since it had been more than 36 hours since the symptoms appeared. If I had come in sooner, they would have given me something like Tamiflu, which is an anit-viral medication that takes the edge off the symptoms and gets you better a little bit sooner. Too late for that. I went home.

Sunday I still felt bad. I still had a really high fever — 103 again. I don’t remember much of Sunday. This continued on throught last week. I finally started feeling better on Wednesday. By Thursday, the fever was gone and I was actually able to put in a full day of work, although I still had a terrible sore throat. By Friday, the sore throat had finally eased as well and I felt mostly human again.

The worst part of all this? I gave it to my wife too. She was sick all week with me. Fun, huh?

–Pete

After only two years of ownership, I’ve decided to sell my 2001 Honda Civic. With my current job, I get a company car. Originally, I thought I’d keep it around and drive it on the weekends and stuff, but after doing that for a year, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t drive it enough to justify keeping it around. If you know anyone in the market for a sporty looking car that gets AMAZING mileage (38 mpg on the highway), point them to my ad on CarSoup.

–Pete

I’ve just finished uploading two new episdoes of the MN Geek Animal Stories podcast. Both episodes are about Emmet, our loveable and laughable Black Lab. I hope you enjoy them.

I also wanted to mention that I’m hoping you’ll hear a change in my upcoming episodes. A couple of listeners mentioned that the volume level of my voice was pretty low. To do my recordings I’ve been using an M-Audio Fast Track USB interface box and an Audio Technica dynamic microphone. The difficulty I’ve had is that the Fast Track and combined with this particular microphone are not giving me very much in terms of levels to play with and I keep coming up short. I know if I switched to a condenser type microphone I’d have better luck, but I just don’t want to spend the money on a microphone.

So I’ve decided to take a different route. The computer I’m recording with has an audio line-in, so I went out and got myself a Yamaha MG10/2 four channel mixer. I got it from a place here in the Twin Cities called AABACA and the price was INCREDIBLE. $129 for the mixer, a boom microphone stand and an inexpensive dynamic microphone. If you don’t want the boom stand and the mic, then it is $100. If you don’t live here in the Twin Cities, you can be order from them and they’ll ship it to you. This mixer has four XLR inputs as well as six additional inputs of various types. It also has record-outs, which are at line-level, so I can plug straight into my computer and record away. Sweet! I believe it is Episode 7 or 8 that I start using the new mixer. Let me know what you think, but I think you’ll be impressed.

–Pete

Quite a while ago I was posting about cool Mac OS X apps I have run across. Now — there is a great blog about just that. It is called Cool OSX Apps and you can find it at http://coolosxapps.net.

It was quite active when it started up, and then it was quiet for several months. Just in the last month or so it has perked up again since they have added another blogger to their list.

As long as we’re talking about cool apps, I’m going to throw in one of the more useful ones I’ve seen in quite some time. It is called MailTags and it is a plugin for Apple’s Mail.app. It allows you to add additional metadata to your mail messages that can be used by Spotlight for searching and for the Smart Folders feature. In addition, you can add due dates to messages and send those directly to iCal. This is all very cool and very useful for anyone who gets TONS of email — like me. It is donationware. You can download MailTags here.

Another cool application that I’ve just started playing around with is called Chax. This app adds some modifications to iChat to make it do some additional things. My favorites — automatic switch to an away message when your machine switches to screen saver, tabbed chatting (just like tabbed browsing), and the listing of changes of chat status when a user changes their status while you are chatting with them. This is also donationware and you can get it here.

–Pete

The other day I was listening to the January 13, 2006 podcasted episode of National Public Radio’s Science Friday and heard a segment about Ben Franklin’s 300th birthday. Professor H. W. Brands, from the University of Texas at Austin said, “One of the things I tell my students is that if they want to become immortal, all they have to do is to keep a diary — and I tell them to keep a written dairy and keep it relatively faithfully but just make sure when they die, they turn it over to the local historical society. Because if they do, then they will be immortal in the sense that historians 100 years from now — 200 years from now who are wanting to write the history of daily life of our times will turn to those sorts of sources because they are gonna be so rare.”

What an interesting statement. Have you ever kept a diary? I have. From the time I was a sophomore in college, I have a kept a diary. I haven’t been faithful with it. I’ll write it in every day for months, and then miss an entire year. I love doing it, the issue for me has always been the time to do it. Speaking of diaries, I think it is high time I go back and read some of those diaries. They should make for some pretty interesting reading right about now.

–Pete

I’ve decided to jump into the world of podcasting. Why? Because I wanted to. I like audio, I like audio recording, and this is a good excuse to do some recording and to buy some equipment. I decided to podcast about my animals. I have loads of stories to tell about them, so this seemed like a good topic. We’ll see how it goes.

My pal Brian listened to my first two episodes and paid me a great compliment. He said it reminded him of Garrison Keillor. I don’t know about that….but I love Garrison Keillor, so I guess I’ll accept his compliment.

I’ve posted three episodes so far and I’ve got three more already recorded. Sorry that the audio level is a little low on these first six episodes. I’m still figuring out my equipment and I’m having trouble with the setup I’ve got getting the audio level up where I’d like it to be.

Interested in subscribing to my podcast? Click here for my podcast feed.

–Pete

I mentioned in a previous post about my research on the USCGC Cowslip and the lack of information. As I was digging for more information, I discovered that it is possible to submit requests for information to the US Coast Guard’s Historian’s Office. So I submitted a request for more information about the Cowslip. What I got back was a bit of a surprise.

The first thing I got back was an email stating, “I’ll make a copy of the file on Cowslip and mail it to you as soon as I can.” Very cool! A few days later I got a package in the mail from the Coast Guard. In it, was about 15 sheets of paper about the Cowslip. The majority of the sheets of paper were various press releases that the Coast Guard had published during her years of service. In addition, he included a couple of 5 X 7 black & white photos of the Cowslip when she was still in service. While this information was great, and I was grateful to get it, I was still surprised that the Coast Guard seemed to keep so little information on file about this vessel. Quite honestly, I was expecting a copy of the bill of sale when she was first sold. I was also expecting a copy of the program from the decommissioning ceremonies she participated in. I wonder if these documents still exist anywhere?

If anyone who reads this has any more documents about USCGC Cowslip or any of her 38 sister ships please get in touch with me. I’d love to have copies of whatever you have as I write more articles for Wikipedia.

–Pete

This weekend my wife had to get up early on Saturday morning to volunteer for a fundraising event. I wasn’t involved in the event, so I chose to sleep in a little. I love to sleep in. It is a luxury I don’t often get to indulge in, so when I get the chance, I quickly take it.

When I woke, I was surprised to find that our three dogs were enjoying lounging in bed as much as I was. In fact, they were lounging in bed with me! Libby was laying in my wife’s usual spot with her head on the pillows. Belle was laying on my feet. Emmet was curled up at the foot of the bed. Since it was one of the coldest mornings of the winter, having a little extra body heat from three softly snoring dogs was a welcome addition.

So — what did I do when I realized that all three dogs were in bed with me? Simple. I snuggled up to Libby and went back to sleep. Isn’t that what you’d do?

–Pete

I’ve posted before about Wikipedia and I’ve posted before about my interest in Coast Guard buoy tenders — especially the old “180s”, the 180-foot cutters that were built in Duluth, MN for the Coast Guard during World War II. My favorite of these, obviously, is the USCGC Sundew, the cutter that was home ported in Duluth while I lived there. I’ve even written about the Sundew on Wikipedia.

This week I noticed that of the 39 “180s”, only a handful have been written about on Wikipedia. I found this a little frustrating, so I decided to get busy writing. Over the last week I’ve added entries about the USCGC Cactus, USCGC Balsam, USCGC Blackthorn, and USCGC Cowslip. I’ll write about more of the 180s in the future.

I’ve learned a couple of interesting things as I’ve been trying to research the history of these vessels from online information. The first thing I’ve learned is just how little information there is about the majority of these ships in online sources. There appears to be quite a bit of info in printed materials, but most of them have not been made accessible in a digital format yet. Frustrating!

The other really interesting thing I learned about is in reference to an unusual circumstance with USCGC Cowslip. I discovered that she was officially retired from the Coast Guard in 2002. The surprise was that this was actually the second time Cowslip was retired. She was apparently retired in 1973 as well. The Coast Guard even went as far as selling her in 1977. Then in 1980, her sister ship, the USCGC Blackthorn, was destroyed in an accident. Surprisingly, the Coast Guard decided the best course of action was to actually buy the Cowslip back and put her back in service. She served for another two decades!

I wonder what other interesting information I’ll discover as I write the rest of these articles.

–Pete

For Christmas, my brother’s family gave me the DVD set of Tom Hanks’ mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon”, which chronicles the story of the Apollo moon landings. I’ve always been fascinated by the moon landings, despite the fact that they started when before I was even born with the final landing happening before I was two years old.

When you ask most people about the Apollo moon landings they can tell you the story of Apollo 11 — the first landing with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. There is no doubt that this landing is an incredible story. What I’ve learned from watching the DVDs of this mini-series (and subsequently reading the book they they are based on — Andrew Chaiken’s “A Man on the Moon“) is that all the missions were filled with incredible stories.

The story of Apollo 14 and Alan Sheppard’s fight with Mineare’s disease, which caused crippling vertigo and nausea until it was resolved with some experimental surgery. The story of Apollo 12 and the second landing on the moon. The story of Apollo 1 and the fire that killed three astronauts and almost killed the moon landings. There are many others. If you are at all interested in science or the space program, I highly recommend watching it.

My favorite episode — hard to say. I loved the all for different reasons.

A little side note: A few years ago I had a chance to meet one of my boyhood heros: Colonel Frank Borman, the commander of Apollo 8 mission which was the first mission to circle the moon. He also flew in the Gemini 7 mission. Colonel Borman loves high performance aircraft and a few years ago visited the Planes of Fame East Air Museum where I volunteered. He was there to get qualified on flying the Bell P-63 Kingcobra. He had recently purchased one and was having one restored to flight status. As a volunteer, I got drive him to the airport. He was very gracious and very nice — and he totally lived up to my expectations. It was truly and honor to meet him.

–Pete

I got my copy of Garageband 3 now and have a chance to dig in and play around with the new Podcast Studio that Steve Jobs demonstrated at his MacWorld Keynote. All I can say is “Wow!” What a huge improvement over the previous versions of Garageband when it comes to creating podcasts. If you are doing a podcast or even thinking about doing a podcast you should definitely check it out. Very cool. Very slick. Very easy. Very fun. I love the jingles and the sound effects. I could easily get carried away with those.

My friend Brian and I are planning to put together a podcast sometime in the not-too-distant future and we’ll be using Garageband 3 to record it. As soon as it is done, I’ll be sure to post a link to the feed.

–Pete

Tonight I attended the annual banquet for Whips and Wheels Carriage Club, a horse and carriage club that my wife and I belong to. At the end of the banquet they had a woman teach the group how to do some simple square dancing.

So here’s the scary secret from past that I’m going to now reveal: *begin foreboding music* I already know how to square dance. *end foreboding music*

When I was in elementary school my parents belonged to a square dance club…..and so did I. I would go square dancing with them several times a month. I actually enjoyed it. There was a group of kids that came with their parents to the square dance club dances and practices. The kids would dance together and sometimes we’d mix in with the adults too. Yes — I wore goofy square dancing outfits when I went to the dances. I know. You want pictures. I’ll see what I can dig up. It is all part of the healing process, right?

I’m not really sure why I quit square dancing. It might be that I no longer had time since I was getting involved with all of the band stuff, drama stuff, etc. It might be that my parents lost interest in it. I really don’t remember.

Tonight as we square danced I remembered that it actually is pretty fun to do. Scary. I can’t believe I just said that.

–Pete

I was in Duluth this past week on a business trip. I love going back to Duluth. I remember during my childhood my family going to Duluth several times for our annual family vacation. So much has changed in Duluth since then. At that time, Canal Park was mostly industrial except for the area right by the Aerial Lift Bridge. Now that area has all been rebuilt and turned into hotels, restaurants, and shopping. I really think the city has done a marvelous job of making it a nice place to be.

The other reason that Duluth is so appealing to me is that I actually went to college there. I attended the University of Minnesota – Duluth (UMD) for five years and managed to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree and a double major. A lot has changed in Duluth even since then.

While I was there I drove by the last place I lived in Duluth. My first wife and I rented an apartment on East 1st Street and 14th Ave. It was an old building. As I recall it was built in the 1890s. It was three stories tall and we lived on the third floor. When we found this place one of the things that drew us to it was the fact that it was a third floor apartment with a tremendous view. The other part we liked is that the place had been recently remodeled, so it looked pretty nice — especially in comparison to some of the trash heaps we saw. I can’t tell you the number of places we looked at that just flat out were not fit to live in — but that’s a different story.

At any rate — when I drove by it, the memories of that time of my life flooded back. It was a good time. I was newly married. I was finishing college and doing my student teaching. It was busy. It was exciting. It was the first time in my life I really felt like I was “grown up”.

So much has changed in my life since then. My life has taken so many turns that I hadn’t planned on or even expected. Where I am now I would have never guessed I’d be. It is still busy though. Still exciting. And yes, I still feel grown-up. Sometimes too much so!

–Pete

It is the end of January and today’s high was in the 40s. Last night it rained. Most of the snow is gone. What gives? I thought I lived in Minnesota! I wonder what the rest of the winter will be like.

–Pete

A friend of mine turned 40 last weekend. At his birthday party we got to talking about how much has changed in our lifetimes — particularly when it comes to technology. It didn’t take long for us to realize that the world we live in is much different that we grew up in. Here are some examples:

*The VCR was invented — became popular — and slowly became less relevant
*The CD was invented — became popular — and slowly became less relevant
*The invention of the microwave oven revolutionized how we prepare food
*The invention of the iPod changed the way Americans buy/listen to music and video
*The personal computer was invented
*The Internet was invented
*The World Web Web was invented
*Digital cameras were invented and began to replace the film camera
*The laptop computer was invented
*Cable TV was invented and became popular

What are some of the other things you can remember?

–Pete

Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica resumed last week. Tonight was a new episode as well. All I can say is…Holy Schnikes! This show continues to astound me with the twists and turns of the plot. The writing is excellent. The acting is excellent. The stories are gripping. The show is one of the best on TV right now. If you aren’t watching it, you should be. Not available on Friday nights? Don’t get Sci Fi? No problem! Download all of the episodes directly from the iTunes Music Store. Here’s a link to last week’s episode.

-Pete