Bruce was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, Berks Chapter. He entered with Donyell Marshall, Rick Bausher, Katie Kauffman, Keith Bricker, Stacie Jack, Joe Reedy, Jay Weitzel, Willie Pegram and Doug Dahms (my wrestling coach!).

Congratulations to Bruce.

Bruce was also there to present the Robert Harbach Award. That is his father. Very sports-involved family.

Do not touch the 15,000 volt line driving your arcade monitor while it is in operation. It will:

• Make a hole in your finger by turning your flesh into smoke
• Cause Auxiliary burns on your finger
• Numb your finger
• Increase your heart rate
• Kick your adrenal gland, hard
• Make you yelp
• Prompt you to take a photo and show everyone how stupid your were last night!

The monitor will not skip a beat, drop a frame, lose vertical hold or show any remorse at having vaporized a small piece of you.

By the way that numbness will wear off and you will feel pain later.

Tags: Oops!

I installed some garden boxes in the yard in Year One here at 6. That garden has received many compliments from my family and friends. Mostly asking, “Did you build that?” That question gets asked with a combination of surprise that I could build such a project and the expectation that, if it is in my yard, I did build it.

Truth is it was a rather simple kit. The difficult part was leveling the ground under it and hauling the yard of dirt into it. The design and build was done for me.

The compliments came from friends and family, except my wife. While she does enjoy having a garden that provide fresh herbs, this was not the ultimate vision. She wanted more space, more height and a style to be named later.

Napa Valley Trip

In addition to cooking with the fresh garden herbs, she like wine. After years of reminding me, we finally took a trip to California Wine Country. She had millions of hotel, airline and rental car points. I thought, “Great!” this will be an almost free trip! I was very, very wrong.

She shipped cases of wine home. Cross country airfare suddenly became a pittance by comparison. I was, officially, duped.

I got over it and assembled a kit wine rack to hold her new library of rotten grape juice. I racked them up in her newly designed indexing scheme. I thought I was done.

Oakville Inspired

We stopped several times at the Oakville Grocery for lunches, water, fruit and other bits. Next to the Grocery is a showplace garden. It is a pea gravel covered lot with raised gardens in wooden boxes. She had acquired a vision.

She planned and plotted in Visio and Excel and handed me plans for her own showplace garden. We had some scraps left over from the famous Fence Saga. I designed and built some boxes. I am still destined to clear some of the yard, place the boxes, fill them with yards of fortified top soil and then drop the pea gravel between the boxes.

Photos: Garden Box Build

Tags: Fix It, 6

These two were parked across from me at the grocery store. They moved to the front seat while the humans were in the store. I bet they are thinking, “I hope they remember the milk bones!”

Tags: NJ

My keyboard stopped working in the middle of a document today. E and R were the worst, but the entire QWERTY row was flaky. Tried it on other machines, same result. That mean this one hits the chopping block.

After the fir whack the keycaps flew all over the place. It was explosive! The “board” part took the hit quite well, though. I flipped it over to try the second whack, but the Dell technology survived this swing as well. I see why Lizzie Borden felt 40 whacks was necessary. Two was enough fun for me.

All hail the harbinger of Spring! The first Crocus popped today. Forget your calendar, Vernal Equinox, or Groundhog. The Crocus has spoken! Emperors, planets, stars and small mammals are defied!

I sold 3 games and a parts order this month. It is still a hobby, not a business.