Patrick’s Rants

I think the worms are trying my patience. They haven’t reproduced very quickly that I can tell (but who can tell? I haven’t actually counted them) and they seem to be fairly slow eaters. I’ve read about the different ways that people prepare the worm food; kitchen scraps, etc. but I’m just not into cutting things up extremely small or running food scraps through the blender. These guys will just have to deal with portion size.

The first bucket that we started was just about ready to “harvest” meaning that there was not that much food left in it. I rotated the empty bucket up to the top of the stack and made sure that there was enough bedding to touch the bottom of the new top bucket. It’s been at least two weeks since I started with the new top bucket and the bottom - not as nearly finished as I thought - has most of the worms in it. There is still plenty of bedding - the ripped up newspaper - in the bottom bucket. They will have to keep chewing along until there is nothing left.

In news from the buckets at the communal garden, the first set was definitely ready to rotate. I’m hoping to harvest around 4 gallons of castings for fertilizer. Of course those guys have to crawl out of the bottom bucket too. J&A don’t dig in the buckets over there as much as I dig in mine, they feed sporadically and just maybe a little more sparsely than I do mine. The first bucket looks like it’s full of worms and castings - maybe I should leave mine alone more too? Nah, not gonna happen.

In other wormy news
Digging around on the internet looking for information on worm composting I found sites that suggested schools could save money by composting kitchen and cafeteria waste and forwarded lots of information to the elementary principal. Last week I found a news article titled Wiggler Power which talks about a worm composting experiment here in town at Flagstaff High School. I’m hoping to start a minor trend.

It’s been a little over a month since the square foot garden was started. I realized that I hadn’t properly checked the amount of sun the boxes get - it’s heavy afternoon shade. Since the tomatoes and peppers are full day sun it means I probably won’t get as much out of them as I should.

The plants haven’t grown too much and only a few seeds that I direct seeded are coming up. I did start with some really old seed but I was expecting a better turnout. Yesterday, to see if I could get any better results I seeded mung beans, celery and more mustard. Again all fairly old seed so I will see if I get anything from these.

South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford, has been all over the news lately after an affair with an Argentina woman is revealed. Apparently he thinks he let people down and compared himself to biblical figures - perhaps he thinks he is biblical? I’m just wondering if the reason for the apologies is that he just didn’t have a wide enough stance? When will this holier than though party stop hiding behind their hypocrisy and start being normal people?

All right. Sara Palin, queen of telling people what to do with their uteri is telling people that they can’t talk about her kids. Or photos of her kids - or maybe it’s the conservative right that is making a tempest in a teapot by claiming that a doctored photo was picking on her poor special needs child - ahem; grandchild.

CNN post that got me looking this up.

And the response to Palin, et al trying to raise themselves on the national stage.

Now, I haven’t read the entire “Celtic Diva” blog, but at first blush this is a woman who is merely trying to get some documents released under Freedom Of Information laws and is being told to raise money to pay for those documents (maybe Palin is using those funds to reimburse the state for the cost of her childrens’ illegal travel with the governor on state paid trips?) The image in question, according to Celtic Diva, was a one day post with a percent of completion in her fund raising effort to pay to obtain government documents - you know those items that are paid for by the people and already belong to the people? - that were being held for ransom by the Alaska Governor’s office.

This is not a phrase I particularly care for, but Celtic Diva, you go girl!

There is no Michael Jackson news here, move along. Or stick around if you are sick of the over coverage on the part of the Main Stream Media.

This one year old sysadmin site is good for a laugh or two and if you’re not careful, you just might learn something.

When the District moved buildings they added a server to the server closet. And they added my user name with only nominal user rights. I can’t upgrade software that I use every day. Nope, I have to get someone else in the department sit down at my workstation, log in as the “transportation administrator” and perform menial tasks.

This means that Windows might be updated in the background (let’s hope that it is) but also that software I use every day - Openoffice.org - will never be updated on that workstation. This is especially frustrating when you realize that I am the network administrator for a high volume tax office, I run this web and mail server and administer my home network. When I called to see about upgrading software on the computer - software purchased to run transportation services - I was told that I didn’t have those rights. I used to. Well you don’t now.

Huh. That kind of sucks.

Almost true… We are raising your rate

I’ve lived in my apartment for around eleven years. Just a few weeks ago, due to the work and preliminary success of our “communal garden” I decided to set up a garden box outside. It’s really a bunch of plywood pieces held together with screws and 2×4 pieces from old pallets. It’s small, just 24″ front to back and slightly over 10′ long. I then acquired some used banana boxes to act as “pots”. A trip to Home Depot yesterday for several bags of soil, a bag of composted steer manure a couple of tomato cages and plants was just what we needed to get started. My wife also grabbed one of those upside down tomato planters. I don’t know how well they work yet since we only just planted it yesterday, but considering that she has another on the way from Amazon.com I’m really hoping they work.

I filled the bottom of my boxes with top soil, added a few inches of steer manure and a small amount of worm castings that I gathered in the woods (mine aren’t producing much castings yet). Into the mix went tomatoes and bell peppers. This morning I direct seeded onions, mustard, lettuce, carrots, spinach and dill. I still have a couple more boxes to fill and plant, but for now I get to sit back for a few minutes before trying to get a few more pickle buckets and collecting some mulch from the free pile at the public works yard to top off the planters.

According to the commercial with push to talk Blackberry’s if a student was missing there would be an all out search for that student. In the search, they find a different kid that they apparently don’t know was missing. They eventually track him down and send him to detention.

Now, here’s the truth.

Schools don’t have the time to track students down. They aren’t “packages” don’t pretend that they are. There is no way to accurately “track” a human being. Give the kid a bar code that is scanned as they get on and off the bus? Some parents might think this is a good thing (and some days I agree with them) but the fact is the kids will lose whatever RFID encoded card they carry, purposefully leave it at home or school, parents will fight it and the ACLU would be drooling at the chance to strike down any “papers please” program.

The transportation people don’t want the school employees on their radio frequency. Really. School employees tend to act like what they want is the only thing that’s important while the transportation department has to juggle multiple field trips and the needy people from other schools. Really. Shut up and get off of my radio.

That and schools/teachers don’t care if the kid is missing from their class. I get an automated call from my kids’ school when they are marked absent. In the case of my high school kid it merely states, “your student was marked truant in one or more classes.” If the teacher follows a strict “ass in the seat when the bell rings” policy I have no way of knowing whether she was standing at the pencil sharpener at the wrong time in one class or hopped a Greyhound to Mexico and missed the entire day. Neither the school nor the teacher is going out of their way to find a missing kid when there is a classroom full of students who do want to learn.

So what if delivery people ran the world? They wouldn’t give a crap where the missing kid is either, that’s what.