Picket Fence

You may recall that we put up an arbor at the beginning of the brick pathway:
We decided to put up a picket fence on both sides. I installed the posts 8 feet apart, digging a 24 inch hole and adding cement. This was no picnic, as the ground turns into rock after about 6 inches. You will also see the trench that I dug around the garden to install the rabbit fence underground.
More trench.
Trench on the south side.
The back side:
And the north side.
Melanie and I put up the picket fence one morning, it took around 3 hours.


Over the "river" leading to Lake Hansen.

While Mel planted the garden, I put up the rabbit fence and filled in the trenches.




Then we painted the fence to match the arbor.
The finished product...

Cleveland Rocks, apparently

Mel and I have both been very apathetic about our blog lately. Maybe it's because our life is so exciting. Maybe it's because we're lazy. Maybe it's because our Mac died.

(Warning: Entering Blasting Zone. For those of you who have heard my "Mac tirade", you can skip down to where it says "End of tirade")

I have had mucho experience with 2 Macs now, and I am less than impressed. My first Mac I bought in 2003, the iMac. I had heard from a trusted buddy that Macs were faster, better, and in all ways superior to PCs. Well, they'd better be, judging from the price tag. I fell for it, and I bought one. I remember opening up Safari for the first time. It wasn't faster than IE at all. Then some of my programs, like iMovie, GarageBand, and ProTools, froze constantly. I frequently lost hours of work because of this. Is it my fault for not saving often enough? Maybe, but you can't blame me when saving takes like 3 minutes, which is CENTURIES in computer time.

Mel bought a MacBook a couple of years ago. We've been using it mostly for photo storage, Internet browsing, and so forth. It plugged along pretty well, and Mel was always diligent about downloading the most recent updates that Mac throws out pretty much on the hour. However, iPhoto has never really worked well. It always froze up the computer and required a hard reset. We've been using Kodak PhotoShare instead, and that's been a pretty good application for photos.

A few months ago, it started crashing when we were using Firefox. Okay, let's use Safari. Same result. You couldn't use the computer for more than 30 minutes before it would crash. We backed up all our pictures in case it died. Finally, in July, it died. It would try to boot up but it would fail every time and I couldn't even get to the desktop. I was about to take it to the Apple Store to see if the "geniuses" could help me, but I decided to look up the problem. The solution was to reinstall the OS. So I did that, and it worked. It's up and running again. We'll see how long that lasts.

Now this whole spiel wasn't to say that PCs are BETTER than Macs. We all know that PCs have their share of problems. In fact, computers, Mac or PC, will ALWAYS have problems and bugs because there are simply too many things that can go wrong with these complex operating systems. That's why those Mac commercials bug me so bad. "Oh, we've never EVER had a problem!" they pretty much say.

What I'm saying is that PCs are a better buy. You get more for your money. Both PCs and Macs will diminish in performance (in my experience, the Macs diminished faster, but maybe I'm just not cool enough) as time goes by, so you might as well spend less money. Spend some good money on a ridiculously capacious external hard drive so you can back up your precious files and move them over to your new computer you'll have to buy every few years.

That said, I'm still considering a Mac for my next purchase. Why? Because I have a ton of files in a Mac-only format and I will always have a PC for work. I would rather spend a few hundred dollars than hours upon hours converting those files into universally accepted files. Of course, if I wouldn't have ever bought the Mac, I wouldn't have this problem. But also, did PCs have the capability and software to run ProTools and such back in 2003? I'm not too sure, but I don't think so. PCs have come a long way in the last few years to be able to compete with Macs. Competition is a good thing, because without the PC/Mac battle, computers wouldn't improve at such a high rate.

End of Tirade

Okay, so that's why I haven't blogged in a while. You'll start to see many more picture-laden posts in the near future, and maybe some Terrence episodes if my ego gets stroked enough. This first one is my trip to Cleveland with Baldwin.

Baldwin is a huge Cincinatti Reds fan, in every meaning of the phrase. I have never seen anybody so faithful to a crappy team, it's quite impressive, and I hope that I am still a loyal Cards fan when they are 0-162. He was desperate to get away for a few days to watch his beloved Reds play. So he called me and asked me if I wanted to go. Since our last baseball trek was to Arizona to watch the D-Backs play the Reds, I suggested that I didn't really want to go to a Reds series unless the Cardinals, and more specifically Albert Pujols, were involved. As many of you know, I have a tremendous man-crush on Albert.

Anyway, none of the Reds-Cards series were at convenient times, so Baldwin gave in and we decided to go to a Indians-Cards series in Cleveland. This was also influenced by my quest to see all 30 of the MLB franchises at their home field. Below I have ranked the stadiums based on my personal preferences (ticket prices, parking, comfort, fan demeanor, ease of sneaking down, stadium aesthetics). Obviously, I am biased, and I think that old stadiums are overrated. They are like old houses: Cool to look at, uncomfortable to live in, and way too small.

1. St. Louis (4 games, 2 Albert homers)
2. Florida (3 games, 1 Albert homer)
3. Toronto (1 game, 1 Albert homer)
4. LA (1 game)
5. Cleveland (2 games, 3 Albert homers)
6. Texas (1 game)
7. Warshington (1 game)
8. Milwaukee (1 game)
9. San Diego (4 games, 1 Albert homer)
10. Arizona (3 games)
11. Anaheim (1 game)
12. Atlanta (1 game)
13. San Francisco (1 game)
14. Mets (1 game)
15. Philly (1 game, 2 Albert homers)
16. Red Sox (3 games)
17. Yankees (1 game vs the Red Sox no less. And the Yankees lost!! Good times.)
18. Cubs (5 games, no Albert homers! He was 1-13 in a 4-game series)

Notable chokes:
1. Baltimore: All the Hansen boys went all the way to Camden but it was sold out. (Hey Dad, haven't you ever heard of scalped tickets?)
2. Oakland: A bunch of cousins went to a game during the family reunion in the Sierras, but I was too interested in swimming
3. Houston: I was there for one night a month ago, but I had woken up at 4:30 AM two mornings in a row and wouldn't have been able to stay awake, but I certainly had the chance.

Anyway, we went to Cleveland. Here are some pics:


We went golfing not once, not thrice, but twice. Considering I hadn't gone in over 2 years, I did pretty well. Baldwin's a lot better than me, though, and walloped me good.

Baldwin putting. We shared a foursome with 2 oldies who schooled us both. Well, the old dude did, not so much his wife who couldn't hit it more than 50 yards. Don't worry, I talked plenty of smack in her direction.

Maybe it's because I grew up near Geneva Steel, maybe it's because I served in the "Triangle of Death" industrial region of Poland for over a year, maybe it's because I live in an old shoe-factory town, but I love old industrial centers and other pictures like this.

It was Shin-soo Choo bobblehead day on Saturday, that's what I'm holding there. Also, Lebron James plays basketball in Cleveland, I think.

No, my hairline's not receding, why do you ask?

We were treated to a fireworks show after the first game. All for no extra charge!
This is Baldwin, who may look retarded in this picture because he IS retarded. I met him at the Special Olympics and he's been my project ever since.

In summary, White Cheddar Cheez-its are the BEST CRACKERS OF ALL TIME.

Borrow vs. Buy

When we first moved into our house, we didn't have very much, especially in the way of tools. As anybody moving into their first house knows, the list of schtuff you have to buy is longer than a General Conference talk. You've moved into this new place with more space than you've ever had and you need to buy furniture, appliances, tools, etc. Naturally, you get pretty sick of going to Lowe's and Target, getting your credit card out and wondering if it will ever stop. Of course, you start to borrow things from your neighbors so you don't have to keep spending.

This worked out nicely for a while, but then once my neighbor (Burly Steve) started teasing me about borrowing his lawn mower. For those of you who borrow frequently, there's nothing worse than thinking that it's completely okay with the lender, and then you find out it's been bugging them this whole time. That's just something you don't even joke about. So I went out and bought a lawn mower the next week.

Not only that, but it affected my attitude towards borrowing anything from Burly. Originally, I was planning on borrowing his miter saw and framing nailer, both very expensive tools, but instead I'm buying them both (I already bought the saw, I'll buy the nailer in the next couple of weeks).

But you can't, and shouldn't, buy EVERYTHING you'll ever need, especially those tools that you only need once or twice. One of those tools was a Ramset, a powder charged nailgun, which is used mostly to nail 2x4s to concrete. I needed it to lay out the walls of my basement, so I borrowed Burly's old Ramset. Unfortunately, after the first nail, the thing busted. Now I have to buy Burly a new Ramset! I know it's not just me because the new one I bought (which I'm using to finish the job before I give it to Burly) is working splendidly and I'm not doing anything different.

This isn't the first time this has happened. I also borrowed my other neighbor's sledgehammer, which had been sitting unused in his shed for about 200 years, and the head snapped off after like the 3rd swing, so I had to buy him a new one. So now I have to shift my borrowing algorithm:

1. If you're going to use the tool often or for extended periods of time, you should buy.
2. If the tool you're borrowing from your neighbor is old, you should probably buy, because it might break and then you have to pay for a new tool AND you don't even get to keep it.
3. So you should only borrow little tools (which usually are cheap and easy to buy) that have little chance of breaking and you only use once every 4 years, like a sharpener for garden tools, that costs $8.96 at Lowe's.

I'm preparing myself mentally to buy a ridiculous amount of tools.