What's Growing in Paulie Pecan's Yard

Sunday cartoons!

2011-05-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

I'm all caught up on Fox's Sunday night lineup. Didn't care for the Cleveland Show, but American Dad and Family Guy were pretty good.

I fought the laws of nature and the law won

2011-05-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

Nothing new growing today. I just thought of the title and didn't want to let it go to waste.

Just enjoying the adirondack chairs and drinking beers. Also starting prep work on a weekend BBQ. I'm smoking 2 pork shoulders and a turkey for my brother-in-law's going-away party. Should be a good time filled with drunken debauchery.

Back in the saddle again

2011-05-09T06:41:00.000-07:00

He's back at it again. He ate another corn stalk and dug again in the vegetable garden. Oh, and I'm pretty sure he tried to eat a cherry tree that I gave to a friend for his birthday. Someone isn't going to be allowed in the yard by himself for a while. Jerk.

Aside from that, I put together some adirondack chairs for the patio. Nothing is as comfortable for sitting outside as an adirondack chair. Once the temp went down yesterday, I spent 2 hours just sitting out there with a sweet tea enjoying it. It was great.

I've also finished atlas shrugged. I wasn't quite expecting the action-movie ending, but it brought everything to a nice close. Except for Eddie Willers. He's completely boned. Aside from that, the ending was fine. I didn't like the 70-ish page monologue which read like a philosophy book. If I wanted to read up on objectivism, I'd go out and buy a book on it. It doesn't matter that I agree with it, it was like the bar scene from Inglourious Basterds in that it killed the story dead.

Baseball Stars

2011-05-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Still playing baseball stars. I still think the game deserved to become a series, but I suppose without MLB licensing, no one would buy it outside of Japan.

The dog managed to make it through yesterday without destroying anything else.

Brrr! It's cold in here! There must be a cold front in the atmosphere!

2011-05-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

The blackberry stems have little buds on them. It's pretty cool outside for this time of the year. I think we went from a record high a few days ago to a record low today. Or something like that.

My next big challenge (which was accepted) was to smoke two pork shoulders and a turkey in my drum smoker for my brother-in-law's going away party before he joins the navy and is surrounded by seamen. That joke works better when spoken, unless you deliberately misspell seamen. In any case, I think it can be done and will end up being delicious.

Oh and the stupid dog ate more corn plants, dug up another section of them and chewed on the picnic table. I should change the title of the blog to "Things my dog has destroyed."

Broke out

2011-05-03T07:52:00.000-07:00

I've managed to jailbreak my iPhone 3G and install an NES emulator. It started out running reaaaaaaaaaaaaaally slowly, but after shutting down just about everything I could think of, it seems to be running at a reasonable frame rate. I'm going to call it a success.

Nothing new out in the gardens. The blackberry plant is at the back of the property and quite a walk away, so I haven't checked it lately. I'll check it later today. There's a front moving through so the temp dropped like a rock and I'm expecting a little rain today.

watering watering watering watering

2011-05-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

The plants are watered and I've added some miracle gro to kick start more growth. So um...yeah. A friend of mine's Royal Lee cherry tree is growing gangbusters. If it lives through the summer, I'd think about getting one for myself.

I fired up the ol' NES over the weekend and played some Baseball Stars. Now there's a game that needed to become a series. Just simple fun good-time baseball.

Kicking ass and cutting grass. But mostly cutting grass.

2011-04-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

I need to get out there an mow the lawn before heading to work. The grass in the front yard is looking shaggy. The dog got into the corn and tore up one of them. Damn dog.

Still working on jailbreaking the old iPhone. Two problems I've run into:

1. When using redsn0w, it gets stuck uploading ramdisk.

2. I get a message on the homescreen saying that I need to insert a simcard. I need to find a workaround for that.

Still there

2011-04-28T07:49:00.000-07:00

The blackberry cuttings may just make it. There's a few buds on the larger one that has leaves on it, so I'm hoping it's happy and taking root.

I also got rid of my iPhone yesterday. Now it's just a plain old iPod. I'm thinking about jailbreaking it so I can play NES/SNES games on it.

Send forth the rains

2011-04-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

It rained pretty hard last night, so I don't believe I'll need to water the plants for a while. The damn dog dug up some snow peas yesterday. Aside from that, things are as quiet as they always are around the ol' garden.

Still slogging through Atlas Shrugged. Not really slogging, but making my way through it. I wish I could read as fast as I can think. Still a fine book though.

I'm trying to work my way through this list of 100 best novels. So far, I've only knocked out 14. I'd say The Stand was my favorite so far, followed by A Prayer for Owen Meany. Least favorite was Brothers Karamazov, then The Hobbit. Karamazov was just tedious reading and unrelated sidetracking. With a good editing to slice some of the fat out, Hobbit would have been worst because of boring characters that I wish would have been eaten by the dragon. Come to think of it, most of the characters were cannon fodder.

Blackberries

2011-04-25T07:04:00.000-07:00

Today I planted a blackberry cutting that a friend had given to me. Hopefully it makes it. So, um, yup.

I've gone back and started a new run-through of super mario wii. I like the game a lot, and 4 players is a challenge by itself, but I don't think 2d mario games really evolved that much after mario world. i didn't care for yoshi's island. It wasn't the graphics, it was that it was both a different type of game than smw, and that the game was incredibly linear from start to finish.

More WC3, not so much gardening today

2011-04-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

It's too hot to do much gardening, aside from watering the trees and veggies, so I've been honing my still-dull warcraft 3 game.

Played a 4-player game against the computer as humans against 2 orcs and a nightelf and ended up winning. I was able to get an expo up, running and protected. The elves gave me a scare because they did the same and the priestess had about 2 levels on my heroes, but I was able to pull out a decisive battle after walking in at the end of a fight between elves and one of the orcs. I've had pretty good luck with timing my battles and not getting into three-way fights or getting creepjacked.

Everything's coming up roses

2011-04-21T07:38:00.000-07:00

So. Um. Yup. Everything is still growing. That's what's growing in my garden.

I got back in the saddle again with WCIII and played as humans against elves on Turtle Rock. Really quick game. I got creepjacked about 10 minutes in and despite having only my archmage (lvl 2), mountain king (1) and 2 footmen, I manage to fend off the priestess (3) and a couple of archers and huntresses.

After that I just hung around the entrance of their base, killed a couple of dryads and a mountain giant while the rest of my forces built up and finished the job there.

I'm still just past the 1/3 mark of Atlas Shrugged. Still liking the book, though I don't entirely agree with the author's social views, aside from socialism not working.

...And boom goes the dynamite

2011-04-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

The last of the trees I planted this spring is about to get its leaves. Hooray. 11 trees planted, 11 are still alive. Sort of. Yay Gurneys! Boo dog for trying to eat the plum trees. They're still kind of alive. The tough part will coaxing them through summer.

I just finished watching the most recent Family Guy. Didn't laugh once. I'm not sure how close to giving up on it I am, but we'll see. I gave up on Simpsons about 3 years ago and haven't missed a beat. I stuck with it for way too long. Good thing American Dad is still funny. Cleveland Show is just kind of a throw-in with Family Guy. Neither is terribly good, but it's alright occasionally for a laugh.

Little tomaters

2011-04-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

The fruit and vegetable garden my wife started with seeds we saved from tomatoes, peppers and okra is beginning to produce. The pepper has 2-3 little peppers growing on it and the tomato plants have itty-bitty tomatoes on them. Huzzah.

I fired up warcraft 3 for the first time in a few years over the weekend, and I'm as bad at it as I remember. I've never been good at RTS games. Don't know why. They are fun as all hell when you can get a game going with friends, but given the game is almost 10 years old and everyone has moved on to starcraft 2, the only people left online are the obsessive-compulsive players. Oh well, maybe I'll keep trying and play a few rounds against the computer.

The rattlesnake beans are coming up nicely

2011-04-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

All along the back of the barn are the rattlesnake beans, they'll creep up the back and grow deliciousness that goes well when cooked slowly with bacon. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Also, the goddamn dog ate some of the plum tree sapling I planted earlier this year while I was at work. If I catch him in the act, he's going to find himself with a doggie concussion.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through Atlas Shrugged. A pretty good read so far. It's no Brothers Karmazov, which is probably the worst "great book" I've read. The most interesting character got killed about halfway through, and I don't give a shit about Father Zossima. He's just not that interesting. Also, as a second-tier character, there's no reason why the story needed to sidetrack and spend chapters on his boring-ass life. The book would have been better if a decent editor had gotten ahold of it. Maybe it's just a Russian literature thing, to get sidetracked from the more interesting part of the story. It happened in The Gulag Archipelago. Sort of interesting book, it just wanders around the point instead of getting to it.

Fucking dog ate the blueberries

2011-04-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

My goddamn dog got into the blueberries and at some of them before they could get ripe. Asshole. I slapped him and then he went right back in. Jerk. So I slapped him again.

I suppose I'll review the last video game I played. GTA IV. I bought it when it first came out and played it off and on. I've been a fan of the series since GTAIII and thought San Andreas was the peak of the series. IV is a good game, it just never quite made the leap that the previous ones did. Most of the improvements between it and SA are graphics and car physics. Everything other improvement is mediocre at best. The city looks the same no matter which island you're on and the missions are all pretty much the same: kill a bunch of guys and/or drive all the way across the map. I'm not quite sure what I expected out of IV, but I don't think the "improvements" are that great once you get past the graphics. Online multiplayer was a great addition though, even if the lobbies needed refinement.

No more oranges

2011-04-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

The orange trees have been returned and I got my money back, except they didn't have the same kind of orange trees so I couldn't replace them. How sad.

I've now bored myself by writing about gardening. Screw it, I'll start reviewing stuff too. Like um...I dunno.

Ok, I got it. I read Catcher in the Rye over the weekend. I get how teens read it and say "man, that's me. I totally get that." That said, Holden Caulfield is a jerk. He spends the entire calling everyone else and everything phonies while showing very little depth of character himself. Caulfield calls himself a wild man repeatedly. What, just because on a whim you want to take some girl on vacation to New England? Very unpredictable and wild. I gotta say the best parts of the book were where his roommate punches him in the face and when he gets beaten up by the pimp/elevator operator. Totally overrated book.

Growing concerns

2011-04-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome! I'm a guy that enjoys gardening out in my yard, specifically fruit and nut trees. Today I had to pull out two orange trees that got frostbit and died over the winter. There was some root growth, but it didn't look like orange trees, so they had to go. It makes me sad that they never turned out. Note to self: use christmas tree lights next winter to keep the citrus trees slightly above freezing so they don't die.

They're dead now. I'm going to take them back to the store and get my money back tomorrow.