Laser powered

The laser engraver/cutter is up and functional.  It hasn't had too many opportunities to burn stuff up, but I'm hoping to give it some more burn time.

Lauren Amelia

We welcomed the first addition to our family last week, Lauren Amelia.  She is good at sleeping, not sleeping, and smiling.  Her favorite places so far are the hospital and her new home.  We have been very blessed and hope that she grows up to be a wonderful woman.

Laser Cutter

I've been interested in creating a laser cutter for a while, and am excited to create a simple CNC setup with use of the Makerslide rails and an arduino.  I enjoyed a project that used an arduino before, and am excited to have some computer aided fabrication capabilities.

Baby On The Way

We are expecting a baby!  Very soon in fact.  We've been assembling the myriads of baby things that having a baby these days requires... car seat, playpen, stroller, etc.  Thanks to everyone who has helped us get ready for the baby!

Vineyard End Posts

My brother and I installed end posts for the trellis rows at the vineyard.  These allow for the trellis wires to be tightened.  The wires are now taunter than ever before.  This will help facilitate putting the drip lines in for irrigation.

6-2012 reading

A few months back, I read through Night Watch, Making Money, and Snuff.  All by Terry Pratchett.  Good reads, though I think i'm off my Pratchett kick for a while.

Dry Summer

Apparently this summer is even drier than the previous one.  According to the weatherman, this summer has been the driest since 1957.

Roasted Vines

The vineyard project has been roasted out.  The dry farming experiment is officially over.  While we may continue with the vineyard, it will require some sort of regular watering.   That infrastructure might arrive in a future project.

As it is, the vines have no growth this year, as it hasn't rained much in the last month.  As you can tell from the photo below, everything is a nice toasty brown, and this is just the beginning of July.

Hawaii 2012

Melissa and I went to Hawaii for a little over a week.  We had a wonderful time staying at Kialua bay, on Oahu.  We kayaked, snorkeled, swam in the ocean, walked on the beach, went to Pearl Harbor, visited Wikiki, and generally had a wonderful time.

With photos!

Discworld Reading

I've had a bunch of novels that i've read through in the past few months.  They've mostly been Terry Pratchett books.  Such good reads as Thud!, The Fifth Elephant, Jingo, and Going Postal.  I must say, I do enjoy Pratchett's writing style and humor.  I often find myself laughing at the hilarious situations and characters and wit in the books.

Spring Vines

We visited the vineyard last weekend.  The rain has been good and it looks like the vines are getting ready to bud out.  We added some dirt around a few vines, where the dirt had sunk.   Some of the wood posts that we have the grow tubes attached to, the ones that the vines will climb, were getting eaten by insects.  Hopefully the posts will last until next year.

Decorative Grapevine Trellis

Our grapevine trellis was looking a little sad.  The tension from the wires were pulling the post over, and making the wires sag.  I was thinking of putting a two by six spacer in between.  However, after looking at it a the trellis a bit closer, we decided to add some stylistic flair to our trellis...

Reading 3-8-2012

Well, I've been on a Terry Pratchett discworld kick, and I finished reading Wyrd Sisters and The Light Fantastic. Then I read (on the tablet through amazon's kindle service) the e-book Guards! Guards!  Very entertaining books, as Pratchett is a great humor writer that has crafted a perfectly hilarious fantasy world.

Computer Games of 2011

It's  been a while since I rambled about computer games.  That doesn't mean I haven't been busy, though.  Some of the games I've been enjoying in the last year:

• Minecraft
• Civ 4
• Civ 5
• Singularity
• Fallout New Vegas
• Terrari
• Borderlands
• Skyrim
• Portal 2
• Machinarium
• Left for Dead 2
• Diablo 3 (beta test)

And I have some new ones to play:

• Tribes Ascend
• Deux Ex
• Oblivion
• Skyward Sword (Wii)

Reading 1-31-2012

I recently finished the novel Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett.  Another fun book in the Discworld series.  I also picked up The Light Fantastic and Wyrd Sisters to read next.

Frankenshelves

The island vineyard project continues with a couple of small projects to close out the 2011 year.  We brought the motorbike across the river and toured around the island.  Which was fun, but the weeds were high enough in many places that it made motorbiking a bit difficult.