Posts

Google World Cup Easter Egg

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Pop the term "World Cup" in your friendly search engine and scroll down.  Pretty cute image awaits you at the bottom. As pointed out by  others ,  these  both  are pretty good, too. World Cup in 1 day.  Let's go USA!

Greatest Show Ever*

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with an asterisk.  (and an abrupt end!)

The Backyard Pavilion Goes Up

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The guys got started erecting the pavilion in our backyard yesterday.  It is turning out a bit taller than I expected. There's some debate over whether we should attach this structure to the garage to gain some rigidity.   If the rain holds out this morning, we'll get even more done and have a sense for whether the pavilion was the right choice.  I'm skeptical as I write this on morning two.

2010 Father's Day Gift Guide: Sourdough Culture

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Previous Gift Guide Posts Star Wars Cookie Cutters If you're still looking for a Father's Day gift for your husband/dad and he's a crafty-kind-of-guy, you've come to the right place.  For $16.00, you can get him a gift that keeps on giving:  a sourdough culture . The Italian one will make the pizza-maker happy. For those of you know are unfamiliar with a culture, it is the starter batch that you add water and flour to in order to get the necessary yeast-like properties you need to bake.  If you continue to feed it flour and water - just about weekly - you'll have the starter batch to last you a lifetime.  That one above is courtesy of Wikipedia.   Here's their page on sourdough cultures . Often times, these cultures are living for years and years and take on unique characteristics that the local environment provides. A sourdough culture is sure to be a fun experiment for the baker husband/father in your life. I can't vouch for a culture, but I ha

The Pavers Arrive

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This morning, Menards showed up with 8 skids of pavers.  675 square feet of them.  I still have to go get the rectangular pavers that will form the soldier course, but these will give us a good start. We're putting in a 100 foot plus walkway along with a patio underneath the pavilion, so it is a pretty sizeable job.  Excavation starts early next week.  Guess what I know what I'm doing with all that free time I have from school ending, eh?

Fence Installation - Day 1

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The fence guys (Paramount Fence) showed up early Friday morning and got busy taking down our old fence and getting our new one up.  They moved fast, but unfortunately didn't finish.  The sunk all the posts in the concrete, but didn't attach the pickets. Here's the crew digging the holes with an auger. Leaves behind a perfect set of holes. These guys know what they're doing - as they mix their own concrete.  Portland cement+gravel+sand+water=concrete.  They mix it on site in wheel barrows and set the posts wet. The day ran long and they didn't get it all done.  Here's how it ended: posts in, rest of the materials scattered in their locations. That's our neighbor's fence on the right side of the photo.  We're putting up a 4 foot fence next to it.

The Roots of the Gas City Cow

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If you grew up in Frankfort, you know the Gas City cow.  It has been down on south LaGrange Road for as long as I can remember.  It always seemed out of place, but was of great fascination to me (and I'm guessing just about everybody who grew up in town).  It was the scene of at least one high school movie where the utters were milked on camera to hilarious results (at least we thought - at the time - it was rip-roaringly funny). A few days ago, I came across this piece in Crain's Chicago Business about how Gas City has been hit with a foreclosure suit  which mentions the roots of the cow. Longtime Southwest Siders may remember a cow statue that Mr. McEnery placed on the roof of his original station at 55th Street and Pulaski Road in the early 1970s. It was an attempt to advertise milk, a somewhat unusual product to be sold at a gas station at the time. In 1976, the roof gave way, and the cow was eventually moved to the company’s Frankfort offices, according to the Gas City

Third Official Google Blog Post - Searching for the Stanley Cup

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Yesterday, on the Official Google Blog, a post on the Stanley Cup Finals went live .  This was my third post published on the OGB (although 2 of them are "posted" by someone else). I had the idea for the post late Sunday during the Hawks game, pitched the blog team internally and got the draft ready early Tuesday.  Jim - the Googler who's name is on the post - is a HUGE Hawks fan and I'm thrilled he agreed to put his name behind it. The most interesting trend that I spotted was the surge in queries for [ Chelsea Dagger ] - the song the Hawks play after each goal. Really pretty fun to get the posts in front of such a huge audience - there's 523K feed readers alone, let alone those that come from Twitter and other links. For those keeping track at home here are the other 2 posts that I wrote (signed the GOP one) At the Republican National Convention: Politics in the Cloud and on the Ground  (9/9/08) Searching for the Next Olympic Host City  (10/1/09)

100 Grand Bar

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In my mailbox at Kellogg yesterday, the administration left this candy bar as a congratulatory item on my final day in school. I'm thinking that someone in the PTMBA office has a sense of humor.

Outdoor Television Cabinet

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Lots of construction news.  The building of our pavilion starts this week.   Here's the inspiration for that project.   Our fence is getting installed on Friday (weather permitting) and we'll start on our pavers early next week. I've also been thinking about another project of my own:  an outdoor television cabinet.  Something very similar to this . We have an old tv that I'm not that concerned about, so I always figured that will be our "outdoor" tv, but with this type of cabinet, maybe we're talking about a bigger/nicer tv?   I'm going to start shopping tongue-and-groove cedar boards and hinges and see what we come up with!