Category: General Website

Made the Cover and Some Fun Stuff to Maybe Try

Posted on by Markman

A very rare collector’s edition with a print run of only….one issue? Just being silly. Anyways, onto today’s stuff. Also, I’ve been playing around with the fonts on the site, have you noticed? They may be changing again so just a head’s up.

I learned of some new places today that I might want to check out over the next few months. A bunch of them are over at Earth-1 in that Bow Market place, which unfortunately I find it very hard to park anywhere around there, but there’s a roast beef place and some pinball place there that I’d like to check out someday. Also over in Ball Square is some new Neapolitan pizza joint that looks pretty cool. Speaking of pizza there’s also a pizza cupcake place over at Legacy Place which I’ve been meaning to check out, to see what weirdness that is all about.

I’ve done baby goat yoga, alpaca yoga, piglet yoga, and now I heard there’s puppy yoga where the puppies are shelter pups which you could also adopt later. Might need to explore that one. I’ve also been meaning to do the free yoga class outside down at Assembly on Saturday mornings but never get around to it. Not that I’m really into yoga, just something to check out. Some other things that I’d like to do is check out the Elephant Migration statues down in Newport, RI, maybe some axe throwing over in Foxborough, Minigolf in Dedham with some pals. I looked into taking a glass blowing class here at Earth-2 which I thought would be fun to do with others as they show you have to make your own blown glass ornament, but it is a bit on the pricey side. There’s also an old style arcade in the area which might be fun to check out.

New Server and Video Particle Effects

Posted on by Markman

Under the hood here the website has been moved over to a new server so things should be a little peppier, you might not notice anything different but as long as it works is pretty much all I care about.

I finally got around to planting the tubers that we stored over the winter. Every year I dig them out in late fall and replant them in the springtime so hopefully they’ll start sprouting soon as always in time for the summer blooms. I placed them in one of the raised beds which I tilled and got ready for planting last week. I also need to plant some seeds of sunflowers and asters that we got gifted to us a few months back. Might end up just putting the asters in a pot at least for now. Think I’ll put the sunflowers in one of the raised beds. One thing we’ve decided to do is not go too crazy this year with the pots on the deck. This year we are thinking in being a bit more minimal. Went a bit overboard last year.

Walking around the neighborhood this afternoon I was struck by how pretty this tree looked so I snapped a quick pic:

There’s Spring in My Steps

Posted on by Markman

Saw all the birds outside this morning. Besides the usual robins and mourning doves, I also saw grackles for the first time this year. Mostly because I heard a crash at the front door. After looking out it appeared to be that one of them might have smashed into the door, but appeared to be alright and took off.

Had a good day today making the rounds, Today was a great day to be outside. Even got to talk with our Big Boss who happened to be out and about! He asked me how things were going, etc. Good dude. He said all the business owners were very pleased with our progress and to be honest, even I can see a big change since when we started. And so far it’s only been five weeks! Oh, and I also found a five dollar bill on the ground, so how often do you get a score like that?

In other news. I reconnected my Google Analytics to the site, so my counts and what not will be starting over – seeing what pages are the most popular, engagement, stuff like that – not that there’s a ton of it. I’ve been meaning to do it for months but I finally got around do it now. So there’s that.

Oh, and in today’s injury report which seems to a be a daily occurrence lately, I seem to have somewhat hyperextended my thumb. Like, wtf?

Currently reading: Have I Told You This Already? by Lauren Graham. Ah yes, one of my celeb crushes. It’s true.

Monday and Old Memories of a Past Long Ago

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I updated the iPad to iPad OS 16.4, I must say I’m rather pleased how this site looks on an iPad tablet, it’s probably the best look of the bunch – my photos especially come out quite nice. Better than mobile and computer, although on the computer you can see the column of stuff over on the right, whereas on mobile it places it at the bottom of the page (unless you run in desktop mode).

Headed over to Earth-1 today and got a lot of stuff done in the limited amount of time I had there. Although I haven’t yet met them, I also saw that the niece of LD’s friend and her boyfriend have finally moved in next door. What are the odds that they would move right next door to the family home? I mean, how likely is that? It’s a small world but is it really that small!? I guess it may be.

Looks like a bunch of contractors are also starting to demolish the old industrial laundry building around the corner and that abuts the back of our property. Memories. That was the place where I had my first job, a jack of all trades. I would load up the trucks, help deliver in the summer, chat up the girls running the dry cleaning counter across the street and even clean the machines at night. That was the most intense because the irons were hot from running all day and they all needed to be vacuumed to get rid of all the lint buildup to cut down on the chance of a fire. They had a couple of close calls there over the years that I can remember. There was a time there toward the end where I would work the entire day, from 5 am to around 7 or 8 at night. Five nights a week and a half day on Saturday. The job did teach me about hard work though so it was a good experience. It made me appreciate the better things to come later.

Put the Flower to the Power

Posted on by Markman
Flower Power

Just updated the website software to the latest version. Hopefully it should all be good. I’ll be playing around with the new features in posts over the next couple of days.

I like how this picture of a bouquet of flowers I took came out. What do you think? The daffodils outside are starting to bloom, which is nice to see. It will soon be time to visit the gardening supply store and pick up our customary complimentary specimens to adorn the areas. One thing I definitely want to pick up are more Bacopas. They bloomed all last spring, summer, and fall last year so I want to keep that going. I was very impressed with that flower’s output. We had a beautiful blue-based variety that was very attractive. Would love to get that again.

I had some time today to finally get my hair cut. I love going for the high and tight.

Boston Love

Posted on by Markman
Acorn Street (check it! so many comments, likes and shares!)

Looks like the utility guys are out front again this week, digging up the middle of the street and replacing the pipes. Pretty annoying to get around but I suppose it’s a necessary evil. Looks like they might done with it all by the end of the week so all in all, not too bad.

I’ve updated the site to the latest version of PHP and everything appears to working as it should, so that’s good. I always get a little bit anxious when there’s a big underlying thing going on under the hood of the site but I’m not doing anything too crazy and keep all the subroutines up to date, so it’s all good.

I’ve had some love for this Boston photo I took and have been getting quite the likes and purchase interest in my work, so that’s always good to see. I’ve made a couple of sales so far this week, which is great.

Spent some time at Earth-1 yesterday, One of the cats had to get his nails cut and then we needed to get some business done over at City Hall. You know, what’s wild, is that a couple has purchased or will be purchasing a top floor unit on the condo right next door to my mom’s house, but the crazy part is that it’s actually the niece of one of LD’s most trusted and long lasting friends. I mean, what are the odds!? That’s pretty whack, actually. I’m waiting to run into them and introduce myself. So far, only my sister has seen them. Other than that, and all the walking of the beat I did on Tuesday (perhaps I was a bit overzealous but I feel I did a damn good job), it’s been a pretty low key week so far.

There’s a great article in the latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine that talks about how this little island off the coast of Iceland is trying to save baby puffins, which as any readers to this blog must know, is my favorite bird. Worth the read if you can find it and have the time.

Another book came through from my library app, so currently reading: The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology.

Words of Wisdom

Posted on by Markman
Winter on the beach (I think this is one of my best shots ever)
Be present and enjoy the small things, seize every opportunity, and live completely unapologetically authentic to who you are. Life is so short, and we aren't promised tomorrow, so don't wait, but choose to live every single day!

Well, today was my training day, and next week is my start date! I anticipate it will be one of those things that becomes simpler the more I do it. I have to read through a lot of documents and get familiar with basic procedures, but it’s not too terrible. I have my login information and am ready to start. Also, I get to have a portable radio that I may use to call the station if necessary (hopefully it never would be). For communication, such as when one of us has a question or is having an issue, our team has set up a group text for communication. I realize I’m being a little vague here about all this but as of now it’s just an eight week trial. If it’s successful (which it should be) it would continue indefinitely. I just need to figure out how I’m going to go about my shift. Our bosses gave us leeway to pretty much design it however we want to work it, I’m just afraid I might miss something but I don’t think they’re going to be too hard-core about it.

Next week sometime I’m going to upgrade this site to be using PHP v8.1. I hope and do not anticipate any problems but just giving you guys a heads up if something does go wrong and the page disappears. But like I said, it should be ok.

Playing Around Again

Posted on by Markman
Stay warm this weekend, Boston!

Have you noticed that I have made a few changes here? I might go back to the earlier design, but for the time being I thought I’d try this look and see what people liked.

We intend to make more soup this weekend, and I was able to pick up a lot of the materials I needed today. Due to the cold, it appears that the rest of this week will be spent staying home, eating comfort food, catching up on work, and watching television. However, by Sunday, everything will be back to normal, so everything will be fine. Just need to get through this little period of cold weather. -30 degree wind chills is enough to make me hibernate for the day.

Punxsutawney Phil predicts six more weeks of winter, while Ms. G (Mass.’ official groundhog) says spring will come early. Honestly, if the winter this year stays as it has been, the extra time wouldn’t be all that bad.

Happy Birthday to This Domain!

Posted on by Markman

Happy Birthday to this little old weblog of mine!

On this day, 21 years ago in 2001 that I went ahead and registered the domain name of this website, Hatchetation!

 It’s all grown up now.

You can catch up some older versions of the site through snapshots in time at the Wayback Machine. Of course not many of the links work anymore including much of the graphics that I created at the time. I tended to be much more link focused back then, things I found interesting on the web and shared them. Here’s a link to one of the pages at the time. I remember being so proud of the design, basically a three column table. I do like the colors, Anyways this was done back when I hand coded everything in HTML, and I’d have to upload the updates manually every time using FTP. I still have this massive book on how to write HTML from back in the day. It was quite the resource for me. I wish I could find the even earlier versions of the site back from GeoCities but I think it’s on some zip disk that I can no longer read. Those very first pages of mine were just static and very simplistic. Before 2001 my site was called Markman’s Home on the Web. So I probably really got interested in websites probably back around 1998 or so.

The original site logo (cringe!)

Back then at first I was hand coded everything but eventually I found some software called Greymatter that some dude wrote in his spare time to automate a lot of the tasks like automatically creating the archives for you and helping with uploads and such and even a little of the design. It was pretty cool and I ran it for a long time but it ended up just not being supported anymore and I eventually I had to move on. I probably used it for way longer than I should have been since it pretty much died out by 2005.

Seems so cringe to me to read some of those posts now. It’s just where I was and my mindset at the time. Like, just take a look at this except from 1999:

“You lie down in your bed. You ponder the same things that I do. And yet we have trouble communicating it to eachother, almost afraid of what the other would do or say or take us a way we wouldn’t want them to envision. Still the thought lingers on your brain. It lingers on mine too, like a moth caught in a flame, can’t escape it, the flame licking at your thoughts, exciting, irritating, dangerous? Is it normal to feel this way or just childish foolishness? Can one read too much into something so little? Can something so little mean so very much? Haven’t you ever wanted to see your idols? Or just a new smiling face? Don’t you want to do it? Don’t you want to see things? Wouldn’t it be interesting to see things you see through someone elses eyes and get meaning, no matter how little, from it? Don’t you want to be shy or nervous? Don’t you want to see people as they are? Don’t you want to see what they can be like? Don’t you want to see me, imperfect as I am? Are you any more perfect than I? Don’t you want to feel alive? I do. I’d like to see you, but sometimes I think I’m scared. Afraid to expose myself. What if I’m not all you envisioned. I was safe in my anonymity but it was empty. Would it really matter what you thought? Can’t we just spend some time doing nothing? Maybe we have more in common than we ever thought. Maybe we’ll like what we see, or have a funner time together than we ever thought we would. Or maybe it would be the worst waste of time ever, but it isn’t it worth taking that chance? Wouldn’t it be nice to see the person behind the persona? To watch their body language, to see their voice speak in time with thier mouth? To actually be humans interacting. Real. To look into thier eyes and see yourself. Have I seen you before, passerbys without knowing? Do you know me? The real me? Would you care? Universes expanding and colliding in the space of a few minutes. And when its over, assuming it ever really happened wouldn’t it be grand to maybe want to see eachother again? Why do I get scared when I think that maybe those moments will never come? Wishful thinking, you close your eyes and go back to sleep. Will we really ever know eachother at all?“

Pretty cringe, right? Ah, youth.

Anyways, I’ve mentioned before how I came up with the name of this site. Markman’s Home on the Web was getting tiring and I wanted a “real” domain name. At the time I had just happened to be reading a biography of Carrie Nation at the time and couldn’t think of any other name. Although I did like the thought of the “cyclone of hatchetation.” Plus the thought of a bible-thumping, 6 foot tall old lady all dressed in black coming in with a hatchet smashing things must have been quite a sight. So even though this site has nothing to do with her or her beliefs and such, the name stuck. I had to come up with something and it just so happened at the same time I was reading that book about her. So that’s what I chose. Nothing earth shattering. What is earth shattering is that that happened over 20 years ago! Where did the time go? Holey Moley! In the time since I’ve think I’ve grown and advanced in many areas but there’s still some parts of me that will just never change. I suppose we are like that somewhat.

Maybe I am still pretty cringe.

A Serious Blast From the Past

Posted on by Markman

I happened to be able to spend the afternoon over at Earth-1 today. While I was there I was tasked by my mom if I wouldn’t mind bringing in the trash barrels after the truck comes by to empty them, which of course I said no problem. As I got out there and was getting ready to bring the receptacles back in to their storage spot, there was a woman at the front door I guess trying to ring the bell? I asked if I could help her and she asked if I lived in this house. At first I figured it might one of those political things. I replied that I had lived in the house and then she wanted to know if my mom still lived her and if she was alive? (She mentioned my mom by her maiden name). Kind of a weird question to ask, right? She then introduced herself as Irene. Apparently she used to live next door, back when there was a house there. We’re talking quite a while ago, they sold that house back in the early 80s. Anyways, I was able to get my mom out there and she knew her from way back and I do remember playing with her son back when I was like 5 years old through the gate in the back yard. Long story short it sounds like the developer who build the condo that’s there now (for like 30 years prior it was part of a laundromat that bought the property in the said 80s) wants to rent the land that it’s on because apparently this lady’s family still owns the land? They would prefer to just be paid outright. Something in all this seems a little whack to me though. I highly doubt the laundry was paying these people rent to use the land all those years. She mentioned something about a cloud being on the deed, which they cannot find. Sounds kind of weird, but anyway, we got to see a neighbor we haven’t seen in close to 50 years! My mon and Irene exchanged contacts and just might stay in touch moving forward.

I actually don’t remember Irene, but I do remember her son, as I mentioned. I seem to also remember that he had an older sister named Maria if my memory serves, But like I said, I was like 5 years old and they ended up moving pretty soon after. After they sold, the laundry rented the house out for a while. I do remember a band that used to practice there because I can still hear this song they used to practice all the time with the words “Katrina! Katrina!” but sung out like “KatreeeeeeeNA! Ka-treeeeeee-NA!” I found it quite annoying. Anyways after about a year of that the laundry ended up knocking the house down. I remember I wanted to stay home from school that day and watch it (they did have a wrecking ball!) but I had no such luck and was sent to school. When I came home it was already down. The laundry ended up building an extension on the land there where their trucks could unload the linens from the various hospitals that it supported. I know this because I worked there for a time, it was one of my first jobs.

Eventually the laundry merged with some other company and moved their HQ to somewhere outside Union Square and this property slowly became abandoned, They must have sold the building to a developer that knocked down the extension and build the aforementioned 4unit condo there that apparently tis woman still owns the land to. I’ll be interested to see if this story goes anywhere.

I think I need to get my hands on these lighthouse bottles. I don’t care about the booze, I just want the containers! Actually I could live without the current three but if they decide to put one out of Nubble or Pemaquid then I’m definitely going to have to take a trip to Maine to get them.

One last note, I’ve been playing around with some fonts on the site. I still haven’t settled on a favorite yet so the letters may look different here and there over time. I’m never satisfied!

Summer Saturday and a New Look

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First really warm day in a while here. It was a rather low-key day. I experimented with the website’s design a little bit, but I’m not sure how much I like it. I may go back, it depends. What do you folks think? This afternoon, I actually watched the 21 Jump Street movie on TV. It was awful. That’s how Hanson and Penhall to end up?! Only the original premise is similar to the television show, but like I noted, it was awful. It was an uneventful day, as I previously stated. I did eventually watch some WNBA basketball because one of the players on the team playing is the kid of LD’s swim trainer. It was quite cool to see! Moreover, I found the game to be really entertaining. I was impressed with these young women.

Tomorrow afternoon the Boston Pops is going to be in town down on the local common here putting on a show. Not sure how crowd control is going to work on that on. Needless to say, I plan on pretty much staying away from the area.

Dudley and Other Updates Finally!

Posted on by Markman
Dudley is seven!

Yesterday we went to celebrate a cow’s birthday, of all things! Dudley is one heck of a beautiful cow though, there’s no denying that. It was hosted at a sanctuary in Sherborn and we also got to see a bunch of other animals, and some vegan vendors. The highlights were Dudley, of course, and a llama that kissed LD and I!

Some other quick news, as you can no doubt tell, I’m finally doing an update, and that’s because I set up my new laptop today. I decided to go with an Asus Vivobook. Not the top of the line but it’ll get done what I need to. I decided to not go with Acer again. Some of the plusses are that this machine is way faster since it’s newer. I’ve been slowly getting all my stuff back up. So far it’s going pretty well.

Finally some other small updates over the last week or so. I had my CPR training so I’m certified in that for another year. I’ve adjusted to my new glasses pretty well. We cleaned out the basement pretty much entirely and got rid of a lot of things. The great part is that a lot of the items were taken by some folks that they could use them, instead of them ending up in the trash. There were some items that needed to get scrapped and for those we had these two teenagers who are trying to run their own company come and get the stuff. They were wonderful to work with. We picked out the vinyl flooring and that will hopefully be getting installed soon. Speaking of installing, we finally got the new blinds up all over the rest of the house, the ones that can open from the top or bottom. They look great! With all that stuff gone I was able to rearrange and get all the shelving in to where it needed to be. Things are getting done! Still need to figure out what to tell the mason about the front steps but that’ll be coming forthwith as well.

Back in business!

Site Software and Other Updates

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Bearded Iris makes an appearance.

The site was updated this morning with the latest version of the software that I use. At first I was a little nervous because the update actually failed but when I reran it, it went fine. Although I don’t anticipate any problems as with anything new, you never know. Most of the changes are under the hood so you guys shouldn’t notice anything different. Still, if something looks really whack, I’d appreciate a note letting me know so I can take a look at it.

I got to work on the lawns after my early morning shift, mowing them and, yep, cutting down the buttercups. I wanted to rescue them, but it didn’t look nice in the yard, so they went. I then started edging the various places, including our ‘prairie,’ which sounded like a nice ecological idea at the time, but in actuality just brought around too many bugs, according to LD, so it was cut down. I also cleaned up the patio area, as well as the tables and chairs, because the pollen was everywhere. Yes, I know it’s ‘No Mow May‘ but I decided to not bag the clippings and and it needed to be done. So there. Heb the baby bunny and some robins even came out after to check out the new scenery.

Mowing away
Clematis climbing up the wall
Potted flowers doing well too!

After that was mostly done I finally made it down to the propane business and filled up one of our propane tanks.. That had been on my to-do list for a while so it was good to get that out of the way. Interestingly there was a bit of a line when I got there. I guess people are getting everything ready for Memorial Day weekend. That maintained my physical parts in shape, and as for my brain parts, well, I’ve maddeningly gotten to level 8 in Nyctoban. Is anyone else interested in this? The challenges are what keep me going. The way my brain is lately these days, I need these sorts of stimulants to keep it fresh. At least, I hope it’s keeping it fresh. Sometimes I misplace things I had in my hand literally seconds ago, or can’t remember certain things that I should. Scary to me at times.

As for school shootings, I said after Sandy Hook, that if that didn’t get them to do anything then nothing would. Sadly, I’ve been right again and again. This really needs to stop and be addressed now. It’s a travesty that things like this are still happening in this country.

Testing Out a Lightbox

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Incorporating a new feature into the website whenever I have multiple images in a post. Moving forward I’ll be implementing what is called a lightbox. When you click on any of the images above it’ll open up in a new window and from that window you can close or move through the gallery with your keyboard.

Looks like the bike ride is on for Saturday. The forecast says the temperature is supposed to get around 92 degrees which makes me a little hesitant to go but as of now, I think I’m going to go for it. Just have to make sure I have plenty of hydration on hand. I’ll check out which bike I want to use tomorrow, maybe give it a little test run beforehand since it’s been quite a while. Also, I’m still wracking my brain on that Nyctoban game I linked to the other day. I’ve progressed to level 4 so far.

First Day of May

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Love (not a recent picture though).

May. more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel most alive.

Fennel hudson

Another somewhat productive day I’d say. I finally took to task of getting the storm door glass panes out and putting in the screens for summer. My fingertips are hurting because these particular panes are somewhat difficult to get in out and there’s no real room to get your fingers underneath the mechanism in order to remove them. But with some brute strength and some sore fingertips I was finally able to get them out and get the screens in. Needless to say, Carson would appear to be quite pleased with this latest development as now he can see and smell the air to his heart’s content. And that’s really why I did anyway in the first place.

In between getting the two screens out I also mowed the lawn in front of the house as it was starting to look like it really needed it. This also marks the first mow of the season for me. After that I went ahead and manually pulled out all the dandelions that I could see. It’s a never ending battle but it’s done for now, until they rear their little yellow heads again, of which I am sure they will.

In the afternoon we took a quick jaunt over to Volante farms and got a few more plants. I still need to buy some hanging plants for our various hanger setups but it’s still just a tad too early. I assume by next weekend they’ll be good to go and be outside without danger of being too cold in the evenings. We spent a bunch of time landscaping another area, removing a bunch of ground ivy and putting in hostas, a really cool looking two-toned phlox that I’d never seen before, some other red flowering things, and then mulched it all. It looks five thousand times better if you ask me. LD’s had some great ideas this spring and they are really starting to show. We also redid part of the rock garden in the back, which is surrounded by the blue Adirondack chairs because I moved them from the patio to there. Gardening is not easy work, no one ever really tells you that part. Our backs are sore, my knee is what it is, my neck is crinkly. What the heck is happening to us?

I spent some time playing around with some different logos for the site. Not sure if I’ll ever use any of them but it helped pass some time. What do you think of any of these choices? I think I’m becoming partial to the second one, but like I said, might not use any of them.

A possible logo I’ve been playing around with.
A better option? Personal favorite so far.
A bold choice?

Playing with Overlapping Columns

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A Description of Me:

“In every real man, a child is hidden who wants to play.”

I think that quote describes me pretty well. Also I’ve been playing around with some CSS code to produce that column overlapping effect where the text box crosses over into the other column that contains the photo. Pretty cool. On mobile it just kind of stacks them but in tablet and the computer it produces the effect I desire. Let me know if you agree that this is a cool effect! Also let me know if you think this is a good picture of me!

Spring Tasks, Glass Like Effect and Ankle Twisting

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This is a photo I took a little while back inside the Boston Public Gardens during springtime. I’m also learning some CSS code in order to make this text look with a frosted glass-like effect of a background. What do you think?

We awoke to the city preparing to install temporary water plumbing in front of all of the houses so that they could work on repairing the water main around the corner. It’s very aggravating. Pipes on the roadway abound, and you have to drive over them to get into the driveways; granted, there are rubber ramps on either side of the pipe, but it’s still inconvenient. I had to go to Whole Foods in Dedham for a pickup, so I’ve already driven over it a few times.

I was able to get the dolly from Earth-1 and use it to move a filing cabinet into the basement. I’ll return the dolly when I head back there tomorrow as I have to assist in getting my mom’s cat to the vet over there. Yearly exam, shots and all.

Later we planted some canna lilies that we got from a friend and planted them in honor of today being 4/20. Get it? Canna? Unfortunely while I was putting some soil in the shed and had started to clean off the patio for a deep clean we’re doing on Friday I fell and twisted my ankle. Hopefully it’s nothing major. Of course it’s on the leg where I have the foot and knee problems. Oy! I think I got lucky with this one though. So while I was resting my ankle I decided to try to learn and play around with some CSS for the site. I spent about a half hour playing around with trying to make a frosted glass-like effect behind text on my photos. Might still need to play around with it but I have the gist of it created. What do you think? Is it cool? It’s not part of the picture, it’s literally text that hovers above it, which I can change easily.

I also spent about an hour before lunch catching some of the Johnny Depp trial live. I find it somewhat fascinating to watch for some reason, I’m not a particular fan of JD but it sounds like it was pretty crazy town.

Beating the Boot Up Blues

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My PC gave me a scare yesterday when it wouldn’t boot up. After repairing several faulty hard disk sectors, it eventually booted. Fortunately, most of my data is backed up. It would just be remembering all of my passwords and logins to all of the many websites I visit and having to re-set everything up again. Blah blah blah. Actually, it seems to be running a little better now? Fingers crossed!

What Better Things to Do?

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On a day like today, really nasty, icy sleety freeing rain what’s a better thing to do than come up with another website redesign for the ol’ Hatchetation? We’ll see how long I stay with this one. If you have any particular thoughts on this deign please feel free to share them with me. I would be interested in your input. I also went ahead and purchased my resident parking sticker online. Unbelievable that they charge 40 bucks for that nowadays. I can remember when it was a dollar, then it went to 5 (it was at that cost for a while), then 10, then 20, and now 40. I can also remember when you could get them over at a building in Powderhouse Park, but those days are long gone now. I’ve also been starting to get all my tax documents together little by little. Planning to go over that probably by the end of the month. I don’t like to wait too long on things like that, just one part of a somewhat rigid personality trait that I possess. I was feeling pretty accomplished last night as I made this amazing chicken and gnocchi parmesan which actually came out really stellar. It even looked amazing but sadly I neglected to photograph it. Just the way the mozzarella cheese was bubbling was browned ever so slightly on top. Mmmhmmm.

Some Quick Updates

Posted on by Markman

Couple of quick updates. Speaking of updates, I just updated this site to the latest version of the software and everything seems to be going without a hitch, so that’s good. Also my phone is ready for the Android 12/UI 4.0 update so I’m off to do that.

In honor of Meatloaf we obtained one of his hit singles for the jukebox and I’m in the process of making the label and placing it into the machine. It will occupy space #119/219. Try to guess what song you think it might be in the comments section, if you’d be so inclined to try.

Been starting to make some minor preparations for the snowstorm we are expected to get on Saturday. Still a bit early to see how impactful it will end up being, but it looks like we are bound to get something significant, so there’s that.

Sore But(t) All is Good

Posted on by Markman
Happy days are here again!

Things are starting to get back to normal around here which is really good and provides me with a sigh of relief. LD is finally back and doing well. I did take a tumble down the stairs this morning but thankfully it was my left buttcheek that took the brunt. Thankfully not on my tailbone because that would have been really problematic. I’m alright, maybe just a teeny bit sore in the affected area. The stupid railing finally gave, I had a feeling it would sooner or later and I guess today was the day. Going to have to get new brackets and reinstall since that’s the part that snapped, they’ve been there since forever. None the worse for wear though so no worries. I’m a pretty tough cookie.

On a positive note, the hydroponic garden we’ve started is performing nicely. Real soon I’ll be able to remove the little domes on the sprouts and they can grow freely. I also checked on the pine tree out back that showed signs of distress this summer but I’m pleased to see that it has mostly recovered on it’s own. It even has two pinecones on it now.

I disabled comments on posts that are greater than two weeks old moving forward. Seems spammers just would add stupid comments. It’s really a waste of their time since every comment has to be registered and approved which theirs never would be but I got sick of seeing the notifications about it, so that ought to curb that.

Thanks for the Repost!

Posted on by Markman

You may notice that I’ve moved this site over to a https URL instead of the less secure http that I’ve been using. So you may need to update your bookmarks but probably not. I’m not collecting any information from visitors, not doing e-commerce or anything like that, it’s just a prudent thing to do.

I just heard my New Years Eve skating photo from a few days ago was featured on NECN. Pretty cool. For some reason they don’t seem to be notifying anymore, just showing on tv. I wouldn’t have known about it but a woman I used to work with back in my AutoCAD drafting days saw it and commented the news to me.

I just picked up and finished reading Fauci: Expect the Unexpected. Easy read. That’s my first book on 2022. Hopefully I’ll be able to do more reading this year. I was horrified to learn that according to my Goodreads I had only read 5 books in 2021. Is that right? My average is around 25-30 books a year.

Weeding It All Out

Posted on by Markman

Yes, I’ve gone back to the previous design. Maybe I’ll change it again if the mood strikes but I really like to show off my photos and this design I think does that pretty well. So for the moment, we’re back to this view.

I spent a little part of the afternoon weeding out the raised boxes. I’m a bit ashamed to say that I pretty much let that go this year, but in my defense the weather we’ve had all summer was not that conductive to our plantings. Still, I have been a bit remiss with the gardening. Getting ready for fall cleanup soon anyhow.

In the early evening we went and got some Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza and watched the last four episodes of Chicago PD which had been sitting on the DVR since the early summer.