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Month: October 2006

The Locust Tree

The locust treeA guy who does tree trimming and removal stopped by a few days ago and asked me if I had considered getting the old locust tree to the right of the shed in the picture cut down. The tree has seen its better days and I have indeed thought of getting it removed.

So I said maybe, depending on what the price was. Well he looked at it for a while, mumbled about it being close to the power lines and and finally said $2,200. I was taken aback at the price and asked if that was the best he could do. He mumbled some more and said $1,800 was the rock bottom price he could do it for.

Now here’s the catch. This same guy took down two maple trees for me last year for about $950. Granted they were both smaller than the locust tree but the two combined probably involved just as much work as taking down the locust tree would.

So, how much would it cost for someone to do a job like this where you live?

The State Bat?

Virgina, like other states in the U.S., has an official State Bird, State Flower, State Tree, etc. I wonder how many other states also have an official “State Bat?”

va_state_bat.jpgThe Virginia big-eared bat is a medium-sized bat, about 3.5 – 4 inches long. It’s characteristic features are the large ears (more than one inch long) and the presence of two large lumps (glands) on the muzzle. Their color ranges from pale to dark brown on the back and light brown underneath and found exclusively in limestone caves of Highland, Bland and Tazewell counties. With a lifespan of about 16 years, the Virginia big-eared bats are designated as state and federally endangered mainly due to their small population and limited habitat and distribution.

Google Helper

VA hrpr.com platesWhen I received the renewal notice from the DMV for registration of my pickup truck, it noted that my current license plates were “10 or more years old” and that I should consider getting new plates. Since my old plates were starting to show their age, it seemed like a good idea to do so.

I then had to make a decision on just what kind of plates I wanted. Virgina is big on vanity plates and personalized messages Their web site has dozens of designs to choose from. After looking though the choices on their web site, I decided I woud just go with the standard issue plates and save myself $20.00 a year ($10.00 for a vanity plate and 10.00 for a personalized message). I was just about ready to click on the submit button to order the plates when I thought “well maybe I’ll compromise and spend $10.00 for a personalized message.” Continue reading “Google Helper”

Local Girl Makes Good..and Gives Back to Community

My, brother, who lives near Charleroi, PA, sent me the following via email. So I thought I’d pass it on. Make sure you link to and read the articles in the order they are shown below:

Heres’ a little background on this. Charleroi is located along the Monongahela river in southwestern Pennsylvania in an area known as the “Mon Valley.” The Mon Valley used to be a center of heavy industry such as steel and glass making, and coal mining. Since the demise of these industries in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the Mon Valley has become a depressed area in many respects. The small towns along the river that used to be quite vibrant and commercially successful have fallen on hard times.

I live in the Washington, DC area and, to the best of my knowledge, this has not gotten any coverage in our local newspapers or on TV.

Ray Noorda

Ray Noorda, the founder and first CEO of Novell passed away on 9 October 2006. His management acumen and leadership, along with the technical brilliance of Drew Major, Dale Niebaur, Kyle Powell, and Mark Hurst resulted in Novell Netware. Netware was a “Killer App” that had a profound effect on the rest of the IT industry. Netware dominated the LAN space in the late 1980’s and 1990’s.

Unfortunately, Novell was late to the game in realizing that TCP/IP was the wave of the future. They stayed too long with their IPX/SPX protocol, which is quite inefficient in environments other than high-speed LANs. As a result, the various Unix vendors, Microsoft and now Linux eventually overtook them as the major players in the network operatng system space.

But, in its time, Netware was the standard of excellence and a tribute to the “out of the box” thinking of Noorda, Major and others who developed a new technlogy that changed the way we work and think.

Johnny Can’t Write

I an read article in today’s newspaper (yes I’m one of those throwbacks who still get a real newspaper every day) about the demise of cursive handwriting. According to the article, on the 2006 SAT Exams only about 15% of the students wrote their essays using cursive handwriting. The rest printed thier essays in block letters.

The artlcle goes on to say that U.S primary schoools only spend 10 minutes or less a day teaching cursive handwriting. And, as a result, more and more students not only have poor cursive handwriiting skills, but also have problems reading handwritten cursive text.

Read more about the causes and effects of the loss of cursive writing skills here.