The journey continues...

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…

Brian Bilbrey March 25, 2012

Good news, bad news

The good news is twofold. First, my penultimate deliverable for the Software Engineering class is in the hopper - two sections (about 11 pages) of an SDMP document. One more week of reading and writing puts that class to bed. Second, it looks like my effort to finally purchase materials and get the cold frame built (see yesterday's post) is going to pay off: we're likely to see frosts Monday and Tuesday nights. With luck what I built protects what I'm growing. Third (yes, third, this is a bonus good thing, for some definition of good), I've got a week-long…

Brian Bilbrey March 24, 2012

Another Spring, Another Garden

The snow peas are coming in fine ... ... although that might be a bit of a misnomer. It was nearly 80 yesterday. Fortunately the humidity didn't match. We could still get a late cold snap, and even snow. But I really want to get more things started. Potatoes should do okay regardless: That looks boring now, but soon, soon. As the potatoes come up, I'll sweep the earth in from the sides and mound over the potatoes, which should increase yield. And there at the bottom left, you can see my snow/frost preventer. In years past, I've started from…