More Mundane Meanderings.

It's still a bit early to get excited about spring blooms, but I was just looking around on my web server and found an old site I started to put together about my garden. I called it Garden Notes and it was going to be an attempt at providing semi-interesting articles about the various plants that were growing in my landscape. I didn't get very far before I was sidetracked by work, but I have two articles up there. One's about my Monkey Puzzle Tree and the other's about the Hyacinths that were blooming last year. Hopefully I can find some time to add some more when things start growing again.

Update (8/6/05): I've moved Garden Notes to garden-notes.lot42.com and am now running it as a blog using Movable Type. That should make updating a bit easier and may improve its performance in search engines, should I ever get inclined to write some more articles for it.

Posted by Mike at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

World of Warcraft

I am a recovering Everquest addict. I played for about 2 years as a Wood Elf Rogue before I hung up my digital dagger and chain mail. I've been clean for almost 2 years now. I know what kind of a hold that kind of game can have on me. Why, then, would I try out Blizzard's World of Warcraft? Good question. I was visiting my in-laws over the holidays and my brother-in-law had a World of Warcraft account and his friend was able to hook me up with a guest account that came with the Collector's Edition he had purchased. It gave me 10 days worth of free playtime, so I installed it on my PowerBook.

Continue reading "WoW! The Great Hunt" »

Posted by Mike at 07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tully's Coffee

Every morning, I take a train into town to go to work. The train arrives at about 7:15, but the shuttle van that takes me to the office leaves at 7:30. The distance between the two is about a block, so that leaves me with about 10 minutes to either stand around outside or to stop and get some coffee on the way. Luckily for me, within that short distance is both a Starbucks and a Tully's Coffee (not really a surprise for Seattle, eh?). So, which one should I choose? Or should I just wait for the free coffee at work?

Continue reading "Tully's vs. Starbucks" »

Posted by Mike at 08:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Harry Potter #6

People look at me incredulously when they mention Harry Potter and I tell them that I've never read any of the books. "You haven't? Oh, you must! You'd love them," they say. And, the thing is, I'm sure I would really enjoy them. Why, then, haven't I read them? I hadn't given it much thought until I recently saw that the new book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the #1 Top Seller on Amazon.com, more than six months before its release.

Continue reading "Who's Harry Potter?" »

Posted by Mike at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Teach Yourself Swedish

I'm a computer programmer and therefore spend a good deal of my time working with pretty technical stuff. To put my brain in a slightly different gear, I decided to try and learn a new language. I took four years of Spanish in middle and high school, so, though I am by no means fluent in that, I decided to go in a little different direction and see how I'd do with Swedish. While it may not be the most useful language to learn, my great-grandparents were from Sweden and my grandfather can speak it a bit; it seemed like a good way to get in touch with my roots.

Continue reading "Teach Yourself Swedish" »

Posted by Mike at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Macally iceKey

My favorite Christmas present this year is the Macally iceKey keyboard. It's a full-size 108 key USB keyboard that has laptop-style scissor key switches rather than the standard type of keys normally used with desktop computers. Some people prefer the loud clickety-clack of standard keyboards, but as someone who's used a PowerBook almost exclusively for the past year, moving to such a keyboard was not something I relished when I recently took a new job. Luckily, I stumbled upon a webpage extolling the virtues of Macally's iceKey. I added it to my Amazon Wish List and a magical wish-granting elf wrapped it up and put it under the Christmas tree.

Continue reading "Macally iceKey USB Slim Keyboard" »

Posted by Mike at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)