wiredfool

Got some of the end of march planting done — one bed of beets and one bed of mixed salad stuff: radish, salad blend, and two varieties of spinach. There’s still some more peas and some chard to plant before I’m done for now.

Interestingly, the soil temperatures in the earlier pea beds are below where they were when I planted almost a month ago. (High 40’s then, 46-48. They’re now 43-46) The peas are just starting to show, but the favas in the main garden aren’t doing anything yet. The favas off in Nevada (well, that’s the shape of the bet) are starting to sprout now, so I guess that gets a bit more light and heat. It’s been a cold March, last year we has more stuff up by now, and the salad bits were planted two weeks earlier. Then of course, last year it Snowed in mid April, so maybe we’re not that behind.

It’s running leopard, and it’s new, fast and all that. Which is all different from what I’ve had before.

– It’s fast. It’s amazing what going from 2.5 yr old laptop tech to current desktop tech will do, even if I didn’t get a quad core in it. And 2×24″ monitors is nice for programming.

– The screen is not as good as my Dell 2407WFPHC, even when calibrated. There’s a distinct shift to the color cast of the backlight from side to side, and the backlight intensity varies as well. It may be a subtle angle thing, I’m not sure I can tell. I’m also not getting it to be anywhere near as warm as the calibrated Dell, even when I’m using the same target profile for both monitors.

– Waking the external display from sleep goes to static. It’s the first time I’ve seen a machine snowcrash.Even if it does just mean that I have to powercycle the display.

– Fast user switching and terminal and multiple monitors don’t play well together. All the terminal windows end up on the main display when switching back. Maybe I should just use xterms, since they don’t have the same problem.

– iTunes stops playing when I swap users using fast user switching. PITA when I just want to check my mail. Also, I can’t keep a phone call on gizmo through switching users. What I’d really like to do is dedicate one ‘space’ to each user, and just switch without login issues and such. Not sure that’s possible though.

– I can’t control the headphones and the speakers separately. I’d love to do something complicated to the sound routing like: Alerts-> speakers. Incoming Phone call rings -> both. Music -> switchable. But most importantly, incoming phone rings always to the speakers, no matter what, so that I can hear it if I’m not at my desk. And it’s not like it’s exactly easy to find the headphone jack, since it’s behind the computer.

One row of potatoes are in, and Guinness was drunk to celebrate the occasion.

The past weekend, 2 rows of strawberry plants, and before that, peas, favas, blueberry bushes and grape vines. And spring is really here, despite the snowball sized snowflakes that fell on Sunday.