It’s the first hot day so far this year, and I’m diggin’ it big time. We’ll see how I feel when mild-hot turns to supernova-hot in a few weeks, but right now at around 80 degrees it’s bliss. I’m about to head up to Boston tomorrow so I’m trying to soak it up as much as possible.

Now that I’m finally in a warm climate and I have my own slice of green Earth I’ve got my heart set on growing stuff this year. What am I going to grow? I’m in Texas so growing hot peppers is of course inevitable. I’ve never done it on my own before (I once planted a Poblano in a friends garden) but I hear it’s pretty hard to screw up - either way I’m going to attempt to document it along the way and will probably be blathering about it non-stop, so stay tuned. I’ve been thinking about taking a picture of a single pepper plant from the same angle every day this summer and Flickr’in it up…we’ll see if time permits on that one.

I punched the radio on this morning and KERA had ceased it’s fundraising campaign! Finally…I never thought we’d get back to normal. This is the first time in two weeks I’ve been able to listen to All Things Considered uninterrupted. The things we take for granted. What a great program that is..

I also had the opportunity to listen to a KERA-produced program called Anything You Ever Wanted to Know, which is basically a Q&A session where listeners call in to participate either by throwing new questions out there or answering previous ones. The best part about the broadcast is you get the chance to hear what people in the community are thinking about. After about 15 minutes of listening an elderly gentleman called in to answer a prior question related to pest control in the summer. He swore up and down that the best way to keep scorpions, ants, etc. out of the house was to scrape the seeds of multiple jalapenos into a pan, cook it into a stew, and poor the peppers around the base of the foundation. He added that it didn’t have to be jalapenos either. “The hotter the better!”, he claimed. He also reminded the audience that the seeds are the hottest part of a pepper. You just don’t get this stuff on reality TV, folks!

It’s been a long week…welcome back KERA.

Last night was pretty rough. We lost power for a few hours which is normally not a big deal but when you have a two year old things get a little interesting. I don’t mind thunderstorms but the threat of tornados drives me nuts. Why did I move to Tejas again?

It doesn’t look like much but it definitely seemed like the roof was coming off around 10:30 last night. Can we just skip spring? I mean, except for that whole grass and leaf-growing thing.

UPDATE: OK, so the roof did actually come off. Well, at least some of it anyway. Walking in the back door today I happened to look up and noticed several shingles on the roof were missing, and some of the layers had been turned over but were still intact. I guess I need to fix the roof now. I’ll add that to the list of things that won’t get done for a while.

Since widgets have been the talk of the town for months if not years (which translates to decades and centuries web time) I guess it’s only fair I get my overdue commentary out of the way. I’m going to bring my side dish to the buffet even if everyone is already stuffed to the gills.

If you don’t know what a widget is, check the supreme wiki. It is most definitely not those random things you were adding up in Business Finance 1113.

There are many widget platforms out there to choose from. Most web users have probably heard of Yahoo! Widgets and Netvibes. While both of these platforms have their merits I think SpringWidgets is the most compelling offering to date. Yahoo! seems to rule the desktop realm and NetVibes is entrenched as one of the web leaders, but neither of the aforementioned work well as a web and desktop framework. SpringWidgets’ SpringBox platform attempts to bridge the gap between the two by leveraging Flash, a technology already installed on most computers. SpringWidgets allows developers to create Flash-based widgets that can operate within the SpringBox desktop environment or as an object embedded in a web page. The downside of SW is they currently don’t offer the desktop environment for OSX or Linux. Another drawback is no web environment is currently available for aggregating widgets. In any event, I don’t see any framework winning out altogether in the widget space, but the ones that support programs that can leap the gap from web to OS are going to have a leg up.

It would be interesting to see if OpenLaszlo could be utilized for the purpose of generating JavaScript-based widgets for the web and Flash widgets for the desktop. Using this approach one might be able to render the widgets in ways that suit the respective environments.

I never thought that I would admit this, but I think I’m fast becoming a morning person. I often find myself exhibiting completely irritating behavhior when others are still gathering their wits. It’s entertaining for me but less than amusing for the wife.

Mornings are great for the simple reason that everything has the potential for greatness. Nothing has come along yet to disturb my optimism. The radio is fresh, the paper is fresh, the coffee…you get the idea.

The latest scoop on me is my new job. Yesterday was my first official day of employment at a large print-media company by the name of Valassis. I can’t really talk about what I’m doing but regardless it’s exciting to be doing something different. I’ve had many great experiences (and some bad ones) at Xplana but after three years I think it’s time to move on and try something new. Xplana has a lot of potential, and I hope they attain the success they deserve.

Right before I changed jobs, I launched a site called XplanaQuiz. And when I say launched I mean I basically just threw it up on a public server without properly announcing it to the world. Consequently it isn’t being used by anyone which is a shame because I do think it’s worth a look. In the coming days I’m going to send it off to some of the prominent edubloggers out there in hopes it might see the light of day.

On an unrelated note I was sad to hear Yeltsin died. Even though he’s been out of power for some time his death seems to put a period on the shortlived appeal for Russion democracy. Maybe his passing will serve as a wake up call…then again maybe it will be more of the same. Time will tell.

I finally feel like I have something to say from time to time. I often feel like my thoughts are wasted on the dash of my worn Civic - not that my sentiments are necessarily noteworthy but neither are Howard Stern’s and look at the audience that guy has. Am I going to say completely original things? No. No one does that. If nothing else, I’ll sharpen up my writing skills and have a chance to reflect on some of the unintentionally humorous things coming from the stuff between my ears.

Here’s some stuff that has been on my mind lately:

I’m from North Texas and believe it or not we have an NPR-affiliate here. How that is possible deep in the red is beyond me, but the member station has apparently been around since the 70s or 80s. The station I am speaking of is of course 90.1 KERA (kera.org) and even more bizarre to me is it happens to have the 5th largest listener base in the country among NPR stations. KERA claims that on average 360,000 people tune in on a weekly basis.

Now for my point. Last Monday KERA launched their spring fund raising drive. They’ve been spamming up the airwaves, interrupting NPR programming, and forcing some of their best broadcasters to think of new ways to say the same thing - that’s “pony up, cheapskate!” - over and over. Their goal is to reach $350k, but after a week of endless appeals they’ve barely reached half that. If the user base can’t muster less than a dollar each, maybe this area doesn’t deserve public radio. Most people pay well over $500 dollars annually on cable TV alone. As much as I hate to say it I think public radio should go away if the public isn’t behind it. People of North Texas, prove me wrong and bring an end to this incessant panhandling.

And now let me pause because the Red Sox just smashed four home runs in a row. The worst thing is that I feel so sorry for the rookie pitcher that I can’t fully enjoy the moment. What an anomaly..

Don Imus. Can you say witch hunt? I think what he said was more immature and stupid than anything else. Of course what he said was mean-spirited and wrong but you can’t say it was inappropriate. Imus was doing what he always has done. Shame on NBC and CBS for caving to the would-be censors and sensationalists. NBC fired Imus mostly because of media hype and public outcry, but also partially because their staffers called for the broadcaster’s termination. I wonder what NBC employees think about the disgusting profit-driven airing of the Virginia Tech killer’s manifesto? Another reason to pay KERA!