The vacation we took a month ago to the Outer Banks of North Carolina was absolutely great.  The weather cooperated and although it threatened rain every day, we still managed to be outside at the beach every time we wanted to.  The place (Avon, NV) was great too: just enough city to have a grocery store, but not enough people to keep us from having essentially a private beach.  Another thing that made it great was the kids: they have finally reached the age where they are cool and fun to be around all the time.  That got me to thinking on the (long) drive back home: what sort of vacations can we do now?  We’ll always go to the beach with the family, but what else is out there that we haven’t done?  More importantly what should we do before its too late (i.e. Kendall is off to college after 7 more summers…shiver)?

Two thoughts immediately popped to mind: I need to take the family to Europe and I need to take the family around the US.  After a little discussion, we have agreed to do Europe first and are looking at late May / early June of 2011, right after they get off for summer break.  Passport applications are in, pictures are being take, luggage is being selected.  Now all we have to do is figure out where to go?  This is where I need your help: we will be going for about 2 weeks.  We will see a maximum of 4 cities / areas in that time.  Each of us gets to pick one place to go see.  I have ordered a Lonely Planet Europe book to let the kids skip through before making up their minds.  But I also want to get the most intelligent audience in the blogosphere (that being you) involved as well: where do you think we should go?  DeAnna has been a few times already and has seen Paris, London, Milan and Venice.  The kids have never been, although they already want to see Spain, Greece and Egypt (yes, I told them that Egypt is not in Europe).  So fire up the comments section and let me know what should be on the short list.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

How simple is that?  Justice Thomas went on to say that when the 14th amendment was adopted the common person thought that what they were agreeing to was that all of the ‘privileges and immunities’ granted in the Constitution and the previous 13 amendments could not be abridged by any state (and yes, that extends to cities, counties, etc) so that’s how it needs to be read now.  I don’t think he even had to go that far into the originalist waters.  The interpretation of that simple statement today by a common man would be exactly the same: states can’t take away rights given by God and enumerated by the Constitution.  What about that can’t Daley understand?

So, score one for the good guys.  And let this be a reminder that the Kagan hearings are important.  Although she won’t change the make-up of the court, the fact that this was a 5-4 decision means that we were just one justice away from shredding the Constitution.

Step 2 – bring home 13 lbs of strawberries (picked by you, your lovely wife and children).  10 lbs for jam and 3 lbs because you couldn’t figure out how much 10 lbs was when you were picking and you can’t put them back on the plant after you’ve picked them

Step 3 – cut-up said strawberries on a make-shift outdoor kitchen (so your lovely wife doesn’t kill you for making a mess and making the house hot when you get to step 4)

Step 4 – cook the strawberries on a camp stove (see reason in step 3).  Add in pectin and sugar.

Step 5 (optional) – through strawberry tops to your chickens.

Step 6 – put cooked strawberry mixture in ball jars, seal with fresh lids, cover in boiling water (at least an inch over the top) and boil for 1 hour (not optional if you want to live after eating results)

Step 7 – let them cool. Wait a few weeks and enjoy.

Step 8 – since you have the outdoor kitchen all setup, might as well brew some beer while you are at it too .

That was my memorial day. Hope you did something great!

So it hit me on the way to school this morning: this summer I am going to read the constitution, with my kids. I think I can make it fun too: they’ll get a silver eagle for each right outlined in the Constitution and the Amendments that they can demonstrate to me exercising (First will be easy, 2nd only with supervision, wonder what they will come up with for the 10th?).

I don’t think the school is intentionally skipping the Constitution, but rather this is just one of those things that a parent has to take responsibility for in their child’s education. I am also not going all crazy constitutionalist either – I just think its important to understand the result of the reason that so many fought and died to found and protect this country.

So, anyone know where I can get a few kid friendly copies of that great document?

Kendall’s Claymation on Youtube

What a week.  I set out last Sunday from Cincinnati to Nuremberg via Detroit and Frankfurt.  I had several days of meetings scheduled with my team and various internal customers.  It was in every way a normal trip to Germany: get up in the morning, breakfast in the hotel, taxi to the office, meeting after meeting, back to the hotel, dinner, drinks, bed.  The week was over pretty quickly and on Thursday John and I found ourselves on the ICE train from Nuremberg to Frankfort (standing – no reserved seats on the 17:00 train).

While on the train, a few emails started to come in from concerned colleagues about the ash cloud from the volcano affecting travel in the UK.  “No Problem” we thought since our flight was leaving the next morning and surely it couldn’t come that far that fast.  So the next morning have some breakfast, check out and take a leisurely walk over to the airport.  The first signs of trouble where that pretty much all of the domestic flights were delayed.

We went over to the international terminal anyway and found our flight was delayed 4:30 hours.  We waited around a few more hours, which was just long enough for it to be canceled (the inbound ended up re-routing to Milan…what a surprise that must have been for the passengers on that plane!) 100 hours, 1300 kms in a car, 4 different hotels, and a few nice meals later we were home.

If you want the blow, by blow account of what happened check out my twitter stream here and here (first using the #volcano hashtag and then switching to the predominant and witty #ashtag) .  What I will attempt to do here (for myself if nothing else) is distill the learning from this ‘adventure’:

1. Decide what you want to do – get home ASAP or ride it out: this is an important first step as it pretty much makes a lot of the decisions you will need to make quickly rather easy.  Do you stay put and wait for flights to clear, or take a sure thing at another airport that will require some effort to get to?  A lot of this of course depends on where you happen to be stuck and your financial situation.  For us, we were stuck in Frankfurt (not bad, but not great) and were on the company dime (within all normal limits).  The deciding factor for us was that the situation was so fluid and no one was sure when or how things would open again.  Added to that was the fact that some airports would open for a few hours and then close again for a day or so.  We decided we wanted to get home ASAP since there wasn’t much we wanted to do in Frankfurt, it would in the long term save the company some money and if there was a window to get home we wanted to take it since it may close quickly.

2. Don’t depend on anyone to get you what you want – let me say this: our travel agency was complete shit.  They went home at 5:00 ET on Friday like every other week and weren’t available except on their ‘special emergency number’ (read: $50 just for them to answer the phone).  The first email update I got from them came to my iPhone after we landed in JFK…the second came a few hours later when we arrived in Cincinnati and was just a list of airport phone numbers and website addresses for airlines.  No one was blocking us in getting what we wanted (except maybe Odin), but no one was helping us either.  From Friday on, we were on our own.  The airlines, the airports, the hotels were all nice enough, but none of them knew any more than we did.  And were just trying to survive themselves.  While it can be a little isolating, the sooner you realize that you are on your own then quicker you will get to whatever result you want (a good time riding it out, or getting home ASAP).

3. Stay with the team – now while I just got done saying you are on your own, if you are traveling with someone or with a group (i.e. are in the same place when things go to hell and are trying to get to the same place) then do all you can to stick with them.  It does in the end make everything easier.  If you are not traveling with anyone to start, be open to the idea of teaming up with fellow stranded travelers to form a group.  There is power in numbers: one person can stand in line, another can get some foo (not loosing place in line) and third can get updates from the screens, another can be online checking options.  The path we ended up taking (driving 1300 KM in one day) would not have been possible if John and I hadn’t been traveling together.

4. Never count on bureaucrats to come up with a speedy solution – as the situation evolved it became pretty clear that half of the reason there was so little info about when things might clear up was that the main body involved in making the decision to open European airspace was a weird combination of EU bureaucrats from all different countries.  The last few days we were there it seemed they were more worried about who would get to make the decision than what the decision was.  If you are waiting on some ‘organization’ to clear up the disaster for you, you have already lost.

5. Know your geography – as we started to decide what we wanted to do and take in as much information as we could get (more on this later) it became clear to us that Germany was going to be closed for a while.  Or at least anything that was going to close anywhere else we might go (the UK excepted) would also close Germany.  So we decided we should move to a location less likely to be affected by the ash cloud sooner.  The question was where to?  After looking at the ash cloud maps from the UK weather service, the Eurocontrol service and the University of Cologne, the answer was pretty obvious: Spain or Italy.  They were both about the same distance according to google maps, but there is a pretty big mountain range between Germany and Italy and a slightly smaller one between Germany and Spain.  Spain had the added advantage of being further west, so with the prevailing winds, it was in a little less likely spot to be impacted by the cloud (a bet that turned out to be true later on).  You have to know where things are and how to get there to know what options you have.  It wouldn’t have done us much good to know that flights were fine out of Turkey in 12 hours since there is no way we could have gotten there that fast.

6. Lines are for losers – We stood in exactly five lines the whole trip: one to get on the plane in Cincinnati, one to get on the plane in Detroit, one to get on the plane in Frankfurt (that was canceled), one to get on the plan in Barcelona and one to get on the plane in New York.  Four out of the five lines we stood in got us somewhere.  Nobody’s prefect and I saw a lot of people that did much worse.  There was a 7 hour line to get train tickets, there was a 9 hour line to get information about re-booking, there was a 2 hour line to get hotels.  Get online and get on the phone.  If nothing else, get away from the center of everything to another spot where you can get someone to help you.  If you have to be in a line then be in at least two at once: dial the number for the airline / airport/ hotel / rental agency / embassy while you are in line and double your odds.

7. Social networks keep you ahead of the game – the only way I could get reliable / real time information on what was going on was from Twitter.  I started tweeting when we got to the airport on Friday morning and amassed a nice collection of status updates, random musings, retweeting interesting info.  But in addition to sharing what we were doing, I got most of the information we used to decide what we were going to do from twitter.  There were real and instant reports on the ground from airports across Europe on what was closed and what was open.  There was info on available modes of ground transport.  There were rooms for rent (and some for free – amazing that people opened up their homes to stranded travelers around the world).  There were pointers to projections of where the ashcloud would go next from the various agencies and institutes.  When I was online, I was on twitter 80% of the time – airline, hotel and airport sites the other 20%.  If you’ve ever wondered about getting familiar with twitter and a good client application and you travel a lot, this should serve as final notice. Build a good network to follow now.  Get some people to follow you.  Learn how to use search and setup saved searches for tags.  Know how to read the posts and pickup on what the leading tag for the ‘event’ will be.  It WILL serve you well.

8. Stay ahead of the crowd – I had a marketing professor when I was getting my MBA that always used to say that by the time ‘news’ made it to the Wall Street Journal all the trades that could be made on that news to make money had already been made.  Its the same with airport information screens and announcements.  By the time ‘the crowd’ knows its too late to do anything about it.  Do everything you can to build an asymmetry of information in your favor (point 7 above is key to that) and be ready to make decisions with incomplete information but more than everyone else has.

No planes in Frankfurt on Saturday Apr 17

So even if it was open it would be a day or so before something left

9. Pack light, but with a little extra – I always pack a few more of the essentials (read socks and underwear) when I travel and these came in really handy.  I didn’t so much mind wearing the same shirt, pants or shorts a few times (I didn’t ask those around me for their opinion) but it would have been a real bugger to have to wear the same pair of socks for 3 days.  Those things are small and light so the cost of carrying them vs. the benefit of having them works in your favor.  I didn’t ever feel the need to have a second sweater, which would have taken up a lot more room.  This goes for the most important thing you should have with you as well: cash.  We had plenty of cash for our the planned portion of our trip, but when we realized we would be there for at least another few days and needed cabs, we went to ATMs to get more.  The first two we found were already out.  So whatever cash you think you need, add 50% and you should be fine.

10. Enjoy the ride – not to take away from the beliefs of any Mayans, this was not the end of the world.  Inconvenient, yes. Painful, yes.  Stress inducing, for sure.  However, we always knew we would eventually get home, we just didn’t know when.  Take some time in between to laugh and see the sites.  I may never go to the french rest stop that have 15 kinds of honey and was hand carving Ham for the patrons again.  So I enjoyed it while I was there.  Make sure to always spend a little time looking up and what’s around you.

For all of you that are still ‘stranded’ abroad, safe travels home and I hope you get what you are after.  For those of you that already made it home, what were your secrets?

The best birthday present anyone could have given me

Put in 30 cubic yards of mulch…

Planted 3 peach trees, 3 pear trees, 3 (more) blueberry bushes, 1 (more) apple tree and a fig tree…

Planted 6 hop rhizomes and installed a pole and lines for them to climb:

Built and painted 4 bee hive supers and 40 frames to go inside

Built 4 new raised beds (2 as experiments in square foot gardening) and 3 potato boxes.  Filled with compost, peet moss and vermiculite.  Planted beans and potatoes (more to be planted later)

Put down 2,000 lbs of pelletized lime in the back pasture

Acquired 1000 empty 308 brass, 1000 147 grain FMJ bullets, 8 lbs of surplus powder and 10,000 primers (not all pictured…some too heavy )

Shot a 230 on my AQT at appleseed, qualifying as Rifleman!

Now I need to go back to work (heading for Germany right now) to rest!

The part about buying more vases: I have already spent an infinitely greater amount on apps than I ever did with my iPhone. I have lots of apps on my iPhone (5 screens worth – which is a lot to me since I only have an 8 GB model), but not one of them was a pay for app. All of them are either free or the trial versions of pay for apps (games mostly in that category). I have already purchased the Elements app for iPad (completely agree with the comments that this is what ebooks were supposed to be!) and am looking at a few others:

• Drawing pad – looks perfect to keep the kids busy
• iMockups - this looks to be killer for those quick conversations about what a web page should look like.  Imagine whipping out your iPad, throwing a few elements around on screen while you are talking with the client and finalizing a prototype then and there.
• Omnigraffle – on the fence about this one because I really want to see when / if Mind Jet comes out with a mind manager app for iPad.  But if they don’t soon this one will be in my shopping cart on the app store.
• iWorks for iPad – yep, even though I don’t have iWorks on my MBP I am considering it for the iPad.  Only reason I haven’t bought it yet because again, I want to wait a bit to see how Microsoft will handle the iPad – distraction or platform?

That being said, I also have a ton of free apps that I realy am enjoying:

• Netflix – my daughter streamed a movie in the car on the way home from the VB tournament yesterday over my sprint mifi.  I felt like I was in the Jetsons.
• NPR – if you can handle the biased reporting, the app is really cool – the way news ought to be presented.
• WSJ / NYT – put these together because they are basically the same app, one with reporting from the right and one from the left.  Again, this is how newspapers will be.
• Evernote – been playing around with evernote on my MBP and iPhone, but with an iPad optimized version on day 1 they have really won me over.  Once I get the keyboard attachment, I may never take notes on my PC again.
• Twitterific – great 1st day implementation that makes incredible use of the screen real estate.  They didn;t just stretch this app out – they rethought it.  Job well done!
• Marvel comics – got this one on there for the boy (ok, me too!).  Really well done.  not sure if it will lead me to purchase comics or not, but can’t say its out of the realm of possibility.

Don’t get me wrong the device is cool and I know without a cool device non of the software apps would be possible.  But I think the real revolution that Apple unleashed yesterday will be the market for apps that sell for real money.  The iPhone paved the way for the app store, but the iPad may be the way that developers can finally cash in.

DeAnna and I got the horses out for the first ride of the new year on Friday.  I only almost got killed twice, her just once.  Will be a few more rides before they get the hang of it again.

Kendall played in her third club VB tournament.  This one was a little different format: there was a pool of 4 teams and then they put the winners of the 3 pools into a gold bracket and the losers into a silver bracket.  Ended up that she played in 5 games that day and her team emerged as the winners of the silver bracket.  Overall she played great and the team did well, considering they were only one of 3 U11 teams in the tournament – the rest were all U12′s.

Mason spent some more time burning up the yard and driveway in his go-kart.  He has really moved along from driving like a grandma when he first got it (no offense to any grandma’s out there) to driving like a miniature Mario Andretti now.  A full review of the go-kart will be forthcoming.

The down side of spending all say Saturday at the VB tournament was that I didn’t get to spend any time outside in the great weather we had.  Fortunately the rain held off enough on Sunday that I was able to spend a few hours in the garden on Sunday after church and volleyball practice.  I was able to finally get the peas, spinach, mesculun mix, lettuce mix, arugula, and carrots into the ground.  I got the last row covered as the first rain drops started to fall, so I didn’t have to water anything in.  It looks like we will be in a good pattern the next week or so with 2 days of sun and 1 day of rain, so I am hopeful everything in the ground will get off to a great start.

Looking ahead to this weekend, the last volleyball game for Kendall’s school team that I coach is on Friday.  We are 5-2 and in second place after loosing to a pretty bad team last Friday in the second game of our double header.  Completely my fault since I told them they were playing a bad team and they definitely took their foot off the gas and played down to the level of their competition.  If we can pull off a win this Friday, it will be a respectable, if not great, season.  On Saturday there is no club volleyball, but Kendall has her slumber party. Hopefully the girls will actually sleep, unlike a few of the boys at Mason’s party. Then on Sunday, Kendall and DeAnna are headed off to see Kendall’s birthday gift – front row tickets to Taylor Swift (I would take her, but any 30-something guy in the front row of a Taylor Swift concert is just asking to get his head kicked in by security).

After that, it’s one more week at work and then off for spring break.  Lot’s of projects planned for that week: mulching all the flower beds, building some more raised beds for the veggie garden, paint the pasture fence, fertilize and lime the pastures, plant some fruit trees…sounds like I will need two weeks off!

Layout of our 2010 garden

First the things that won’t be back this year: I am finally giving up on corn.  I can’t grow it better than I can buy it from the farmers market, so why bother.  I am also not going to try to start tomatos and peppers from seed this year.  It was a good experiment last year and I did get plants, but I suspect they were a little less hardy than they would have been if I had gotten them from the nursery.  I am also going to pare back to only a few cucumber plants.  Just enough for salads since I put up enough pickles and relish last year to last a few years.

Now for the old favorites that will be back this year: I am really looking forward the asparagus and strawberry beds coming in this year.  They are both in raised beds and really came in through the fall, so I expect to have good yields from both.  The Kale and Collards have both weathered the winter well and I expect the same plants to come in this year.  I’ll be doing bush beans, peas, several types of squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, blue and gold potatoes (this year I am trying to tire method) and eggplant.

Lastly the newbies this year: I grew beets last fall but this will be the first time I am trying them in the spring.  I also had really good luck with the Mesclun mixes and this year am expanding to include spinach and aruglua.  I am also adding a rhubarb bed in one of the raised beds I nitrified last year with some beans, so I expect it to come in well.  Lastly I am trying to tomatillos as there are just too many good recipes that include them.

I will be getting some seeds started in doors this week and will have them in the cold frame in a few weeks.  First tings go in the ground March 15th – that’s less than a month a way!  I feel warmer already.