Matt Melbert’s blog

It is a sad day as I sit here writing this blog entry enjoying the last fire of this year.  I have finally used almost all of the wood that I had bought earlier this year and will have it all used by the end of the night.  Why is this sad?  Well I love the winter, the cold temps, the snow, the enjoying sitting beside a nice warm fire.  So it is nice to get enjoy the fire one last time and sad knowing it is last time for this year.

For a while I have been looking for site that would do a gift registry that was not limited to a specific site.  For instance, Amazon, has very nice gift registry...but it is limited to Amazon and Amazon stores.  So I went looking today and found boxedup.  This is a very nice site that allows you to add products from any online store to your wish list.  You can add product pictures, tags, and even tell who is allowed to view your lists.  If you want to find out what is on my list you can visit my wish list directly and if you want to send me something....you wont hear me complain.

I had been fighting a time consuming war against my weather station uploading bad weather data.  Whenever my weather station loses connectivity to the outside unit it was uploading data to my Weather Underground page with data that is really out of range, like wind speeds in the 114mph range and temps near 144F.  So I have to go in and manually remove every errant entry and when the communications have been down for several hours there are a LOT of entries to remove.  I started looking for a different solution.  I found a perl script, wu-upload.pl, that was written by Kenneth Brown and uses the WS23xx perl module from Ed Santiago.  I like this solutions for a few reasons, mainly since I can easily modify the perl script to look for the errant data and prevent it from being uploaded.  This has really improved the amount of bad data that is being uploaded and cut down on the amount of time that I need to spend making sure that  everything looks good.

This past Christmas I was the proud recipient of a new La Crosse WS-2316U.  For those of you who do not know what that is, it is a mini weather station that has indoor/outdoor temperature and humidity, a self emptying rain gauge, and wind speed with direction.  It also can hook up to a computer so it can upload the weather data to many different sites.  I choose to upload my weather data to Weather Underground.  More specifically my station ID is KPAIMPER4, and you can also see the current conditions by going to my weather page at http://www.melbert.net/weather.

I use MEPIS Linux instead of Windows so it made it a little bit more of a challenge to get everything working.  But it still was not very hard.  I am using Open2300 to talk to my WS2316U.  Since Debian does not have a precompiled package, I grabbed the version from subversion which is 1.11 so I could compile it myself.  All you have to do is run a make and make install and it works perfectly.  I put the wu2300 application script in my crontab to upload my weather data to Weather Underground every 5 minutes. The hardest part of the whole thing was getting the open2300.conf file configured...but that too was relatively easy.

For now I am just going to rely on Weather Underground for my weather data.  I looked at the default website that comes with Open2300 but was not really impressed by what I saw.  I need to see if there is any other web software that works with Open2300.  If there isn't I may use the feature that allows uploading the data to a mysql database and then writing a php front end for it.  But that is not high on the priority list.  Keep checking http://www.melbert.net/weather for any updates.

After the huge rush of comments that I received from my last blog post I thought I may as  well strike with another post while the iron is hot. 

Erin and I have been busy lately with doing work around the house.  This coming weekend we are going to be hosting a Steelers Party for Erin's family so all of her Aunts and Uncles will get a chance to see the place.  So this past weekend we started getting the house ready.  We finished the retaining wall project by planting and mulching the bed that was there.  We also cleaned up some of the other beds that we have by edging them, removing some unsightly plants, and mulching them as well.  There is still a lot of work to be done but it is a thousand times better then what it used to be. 

In the new bed we planted some grasses to cover up a vent pipe that was pretty unsightly.  We also got three dwarf nandina plants.  We had a full sized nandina at our last house and loved it.  So Erin and I are excited to have the three new nandinas.  The focal point of the bed is a Fernleaf Buckthorn.  They can get fairly large, especially for the size area it is planted in, but they respond very well to pruning so we should be able to keep it looking nice.  I love how the bed turned out.  We have to thank Tony from Ianetti's Garden Center for helping us find some unique things to plant.  We would have never picked out the Fernleaf Buckthorn on our own but we love it.  I hope to get some pictures on my flickr page soon so you can see the finished bed.

We also got a Red Sunset Maple from Ianetti's and planted it in the back yard.  The tree was delivered on September 22 and Ken was over to help me dig the hole to pant it.  I returned the favor by fixing his computer for him.  Our tree doesn't look nearly as nice as the one in the picture but I hope that it will in a few years.  None of the trees this fall look good.  Since it has been so warm and fairly dry the leaves on all of the trees are going straight from green to brown and I think it will be a very disappointing fall. 

One last thing to say about our outdoor upgrades.  We had the pleasure of experiencing what it takes to try and get rid of a yucca plant.  We had a yucca plant in one of our beds and I dug it out about 6 weeks ago when we started on the whole retaining wall project.  Luckily this yucca plant was not in the bed with the retaining wall.  Anyway. Before we mulched the beds we noticed that some yucca was coming back up through the dirt.  I started to dig this darn thing up determined to get all of the root this time.  When it was all said and done Erin and I must dug a hole about 2.5 to 3 foot deep and about 4 feet in diameter.  This was ridiculous!  We found a shoot coming up through the ground from a piece of root that was about the size of my thumbnail.  I hope we got all of the roots this time so it doesn't start coming back up.  We have serveral more places where yucca was planted and one of those places is right where our electric, phone, and cable utilities come into the house.  I dont know what we are going to do there to get rid of it.  If you have not yet figured this out by my rant, let me spell it out for you.  Do not ever, ever, ever consider planting yucca anywhere ever.  Period.  This plant is such a pain in the ass it is not funny. 

Not that I am down with my ranting about the outside of the house let me talk about the progress on the inside.

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Yes, those are crickets you are still hearing while I have my window fully open and the ceiling fan going full blast.  Anyway Erin and I have not gotten anywhere close to where we want to be with the inside of the house.  We were hoping to go through the final boxes and get things put away before her family comes over this weekend.  We will really need to work hard the next few days to get it all done.  I am looking at  the office right now and it is an absolute disaster area.  I think we will start tackling this tomorrow in hopes that we make some progress before Sunday.

That is all for the moment.  Now that I know that I have an audience I may start writing more....but don't hold your breath.

After getting badgered in one of my comments, thanks Mark, I feel that I need to start posting again.  Maybe someone out there is actually reading this...or maybe it is just Mark!  Anway I promise to update this in the near future.  I have a lot of things to actually post.  I have uploaded a lot of pictures to my Flickr account so you can take a look at them.  I may actually write what some of those pictures are about.  Check back soon and see if I actually do write!

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Weddings, if nothing else, are a good excuse for flying.  Erin and I went to North Carolina for the weekend  of 07/27 - 07/29.  We flew out of Pittsburgh International on Friday.  When we got  to the airport it was just pouring and of course having to park in extended parking you are nowhere near the terminal.  So at first we tried to hurry to get to the terminal but after the first 30 seconds we realized it was futile and just accepted our watery fate.  Ok...so it wasn't going to kill us but it did soak us.  I was literally dripping wet when we got inside the terminal. Erin and I didn't dry out until we got off the plane in Raleigh. I love the feel of wet Birkenstocks.

Once in Raleigh things started looking up.  Our luggage made it with no trouble.  There was a minor problem with getting the rental car but it got all straightened out.  It was sunny and hot and humid.  Boy was it HOT.  I am glad I live in Pittsburgh and don't have to deal with high 90's heat often with near 100 % humidity.  We got checked into our hotel and relaxed a few minutes before getting ready for the rehearsal.   Of course I brought a pair of Khaki long pants.  Brilliant right?  But it is a rehearsal so you have to dress nice.  At least that is what I thought until just about all of the groomsmen showed up in shorts!  The rehearsal dinner happened to be a BBQ.  At least it was inside in the A.C..

The day of the wedding I drove Erin to drop her off to get her hair done.  I then had the rest of the day all to myself.  So what did I do?  I bummed around the hotel room surfing the web and watching TV.  I did go out and got a great lunch at Bojangles.  Other then that...I had a nice day to sit and do nothing.   I know....I know.  I could have blogged.  But I was having too much fun doing nothing.  I got to the church about 15 minutes before the wedding started and just beat the rain in.  People coming in just a few minutes after me were coming in soaked.  So I guess I got my soaking on Friday and got spared on Saturday.  The ceremony was very nice and everything went off without a hitch.  After word I was able to take some pictures of the wedding party before taking Erin and her friend Elizabeth to the reception.  The reception was also great.  Good food, good drinks, and good music...well mostly good music.  You can't please everyone all of the time.  I guess what I didn't like others may have.   Erin and I closed up the reception and headed back to our hotel room. 

We had a early flight on Sunday morning so we got up around 6:30am so we could go grab some breakfast before having to catch our flight.  On our way to the airport we stopped at a Waffle House.  Our flight home was one of the smoothest flights I had ever taken.  It was beautiful and I got some nice shots out of the window.  The walk back to the car was much drier then the walk from it.  We drove down to Washington, PA to pick up Kadyn since Erin's mom was watching her for the weekend.  She met us half-way which was great.  We missed Kadyn and I think she missed us.  Over all it was a good trip and even though I am not a fan of weddings I will take any excuse to get a chance to go flying.

I almost forgot.  You can see the pictures from the trip by going to my Flickr Account.

Obviously I have not yet made blogging a habit.  But there is still hope yet.  I am blogging today...right?  So maybe my wanting to blog every day is a bit overzealous and very impractical.   I guess I will do at least one blog a week and maybe if more if you are (un)lucky.  You pick. 

Along with my blogging, I am going to attempt to post some pictures.  I have created a Flickr Account to more easily share my photos.  I use digiKam to organize my photos and it has a very nice utility to upload them directly to a Flickr account.  So instead of doing something that takes a lot of manual effort, and I wont do nearly as often, I decided to take the easy way with digiKam and Flickr. 

I am going to write a few more blog postings to try and bring everyone back up to speed with what is going on.  There is a lot that happened in the past week and a half!

Maybe forcing myself to write every day will make blogging a habit.  Who knows.  I think blogging and diets have a lot in common.  At first they are easy to keep up with.  Things are going along great then you decide to skip a day.  Maybe you were busy and just didn't have time.  I mean, no one will notice right?  Then it just gets easier and easier to not do it anymore and before you know it you have fallen off the bandwagon.  This weekend is a good excuse to start falling off the bandwagon.  Erin and I are going to Raleigh, North Carolina for a wedding.  I am taking my laptop with me and the hotel has free wifi but will I post another blog?  I hope to.  It is only going to be 3 days into this blogging thing...I can't fall off the bandwagon that fast can I?

By the way.  Remember tomorrow is SysAdmin Day.  Make sure to thank your sysadmin.  I was lucky and the people at work celebrated today since I am taking the day off tomorrow.  It was nice to feel appreciated.  It was only for a day but that is better then nothing!  Besides I got free ice cream cake to eat.