May 2007 Archives

Do you ever feel like you can't catch a break? Two days after spending a day building a garden box, filling it with soil and planting tomatoes in the ground, I come across this news item:

Tomato-killing virus detected in Calif.

SACRAMENTO - An insect-borne virus that has killed tomato plants across Central America, Florida and Georgia has been detected in California for the first time.

The virus, known as tomato yellow leaf curl, devastated crops in the Dominican Republican and in Mexico, forcing those countries to curtail the growing season to contain the spread of the disease.

Full story

No signs of the virus yet, but I'm not holding my breath.

It's not easy to catch a dog in an action pose, but I got lucky today. Ally (almost 9) moves in on a baseball.

Built a 8x4 foot box garden today. Sides are redwood (not cheap). Added 30 cubic feet of soil (not cheap). Planted 6 varieties of tomatoes, sweet basil, zuchinni, yellow bell peppers and some anaheim chillis (from seeds). Wanted more variety, but garden centers like to sell a pack 6 seedlings instead of just one.

Yahoo is well known in the industry as a startup incubator. Scores of people have left Yahoo over the years for smaller, greener pastures. The latest startup, formed by my dearly departed friends this time (lunch just isn't the same), is FlipFrame. Login, choose a frame, then add some pictures. Add your frame to MySpace or your website and you're all set.

My fellow Yahoo Cody has more details.

Sign up now to reserve a short login name...

Well, this is rather ominous news. Microsoft buying Yahoo. I've read the rumor before, but never seen Yahoo stock jump $5.00 because of it. Yikes.

When Symantec bought Veritas, they wanted to make sure both companies had the same benefits. Our free soda machines went to $0.25 to align ourselves with Veritas. Shouldn't it have been the other way around?

At Yahoo, not only do we have free sodas :-), but a free professionally run cappuccino bar. They can take over when they pry the coffee from my cold, dead hands. Give me free caffeine or give me death! Actually I'm off the coffee now, but still, it's the thought that counts.

Interesting times.

Will this mean my stock vests? Woo-hoo! Or is that Yah-hoo!

What about my laptop? Half the engineers have Mac PowerBooks. Though you can argue that they do run Microsoft Office.

Wait and see. Wait and see.