Blarg

I have lots of stuff I would like to write, but work demands that I be brief. Things are going well, if a bit hectic. I leave for Asia on Saturday morning, and I’m back 8 days after that. Should be a fun, exhausting trip. Hopefully I can drum up tons of business, make friends, teach a couple of people “Clustering 101”, and see a tiny, tiny bit of three countries that I haven’t seen before (and one continent!!!. Don’t get to add those to my collection very often.)

Garden news: All my seedlings were severely rootbound because of the stupid “peat pellets” that I used to start them. These were little dehydrated pods which swelled up when placed in water. They came with a divot on top, into which the seed was placed. When the pod expanded, the seed was auto-planted. Turns out that my seedling roots were unable to pierce to peat / non-peat barrier, and were stunted by it. When I finally went to transplant my sickly, nearly bonsai tomatoes, I discovered the problem, and performed the full “rootbound” treatment, which involves gently knocking the dirt off the roots, and then spreading the roots loosely into new soil. I have about a 20% fatality rate so far, but the other plants are already growing much faster than they were before. Dammit.

Radishes, beets, peas, onions, and cilantro are up in in the garden. Peas are almost to the first rung on their terrace.

BFMs are in the ground, and the cat and squirrel count in the neighborhood is already decreasing. God, I love those things.

I’ve been dividing my time between writing presentation materials for asia and preparing Automator actions and Dashboard widgets to connect Apple’s new OS to my software. As my colleague put it “We haven’t had the time to develop the full blown implementation, spending our time delivering something flashy and disposable instead.”