The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey April 14, 2012

Third day and done

I decided not to add a new category: Pain. It belongs here, but it'd (hopefully) be so bloody rare as to be much like a broken pencil. You saw one before-ish (more middle-ish, really) picture from the front yard, day before yesterday. Here's one more deeply before picture: the right-hand bed off the front porch: You might need to click on the image to get the full extent of the pain this bed caused me yesterday. Bracketing the bed are a pair of golden euonymous bushes (pre-trimming. In the center is our wonderful batch of tiger lilies. They're being owned,…

Brian Bilbrey April 13, 2012

Spring: Sprung

For the second morning in a row, early temperatures in the mid-30's Fahrenheit put a bit of a damper on morning yard work. I've taken a couple of days off to get the front yard in order. I'm peeling out all the old mulch, weeding everything, edging around the trees, and re-seating border bricks around the beds. What I didn't count on yesterday was finding that a couple of the beds needed a deep turning. When I uncovered the bed you see above, the soil seemed a bit lifeless and compacted, in keeping with the tepid growth of the few…

Brian Bilbrey April 8, 2012

School and Lexi

First, Lexi ... She's a dog who epitomizes dogness, especially in the napping department. But when it comes to bed neatness, well, it's not her long suit. This bed had been made, before Lexi decided to climb back in for a late afternoon nap: You say, no, that's not Lexi ... You're the slob, Brian. Not so. See: But she's not very good at looking guilty, is she? * * * When all was said and done with the PeopleSoft upgrade of MyUMUC, many things were broken. THANKS, UMUC! For one thing, my instructor from the Software Engineering course has…

Brian Bilbrey April 1, 2012

Spring Semester Fini!

Yay! I wrote and submitted my last 11 pages of work for the Principles of Software Engineering class yesterday, so I'm done and waiting on the 'A'. Today, to celebrate a few weeks of freedom from school, I shopped, cleaned the coffee roaster, did yard work, roasted coffee, cooked, and cooked some more. Sore and tired now, but still happy. And of course, we won something on Friday. Nothing close to a half billion dollars, though. * * * Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors: Capt. Aaron D. Istre, 37, of Vinton, Louisiana, died…

Brian Bilbrey March 30, 2012

Training Week

A week of intense training, VMware vSphere 5 Fast Track presented by Global Knowledge, is now done. I had the benefit of a great instructor: Scott South. But my brain is bursting with information about this latest update to the VMware product line. Also, Spring session at UMUC is almost done for me. I've got one paper-ish thing to write this weekend, and then wait for the 'A'. Yeah, but I'm not just being smug: I've got 86 points going into this last week, and 12.5 points still to be graded, so it's a reasonably certain 'A'. Much more statistically…