Corkerns.com » around the house

Walgreens in 2011

bruce — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:06:48 +0000

I downloaded the Walgreens App for iPhone, booted that sucker up, held it steady for a minute while focused on the barcode of the latest iteration of my ol’ man pills (BP, cholesterol….what were you thinking?). In about 3 seconds, the app said my refill would be ready at 10am the following morning.

The Walgreens App…good for what ails you.

Au Revoir, Old Water Garden

bruce — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 23:19:50 +0000

Many, many years ago when we were young and stoopid, we thought a water garden under the oak trees (note that detail…it’s part of the plot line) would be a fine thing indeed. I blogged about it way back then, here, here, and here.

In 2005, the water garden was producing lilies so beautiful that Beth thought they looked fake, but they were definitely real. This is one of my favorite photos ever, and it was taken in my backyard water garden.

During the water garden’s early life, we were careful to clean the oak tree leaves out of the garden in the fall, scooping regularly and even using mesh to catch the leaves. We were less enthusiastic by the second fall. By the third fall, entropy set in, crushing our will to scoop leaves with the same force that I imagine a swimming pool owner experiences. The oak trees produced 14 contractor-size bags of oak leaves…every day. Rhonda and Abby spent every weekend cleaning out leaves and frogs and snakes.

The killer blow was yet to come. After we spent a little time with a superior water feature in the backyard, the fate of the water garden was sealed.

Perdido 2009 from Bruce Corkern on Vimeo.

We brought in four yards of dirt and put Abby to work spreading it. Next, Rhonda recycled the rocks and added more rounded rocks, along with a nice, bright red vase. It was exhausting watching Rhonda moving two tons of rocks over the last couple of weekends, but in the end, it was worth it.

Abby is happy and we are free to go to the beach.

Abby’s Fountain from Bruce Corkern on Vimeo.

Abby

bruce — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:27:25 +0000

There’s a new dawg in town….

No Swimming Allowed

bruce — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:35:25 +0000

Rhonda and Brad tracked this snake across the pond and finally killed it. Dr. Mason performed surgery to remove the head, so this pic is post-op. What do you think….4 feet long??

Stormy Weather

bruce — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:01:05 +0000

Stormy Sunday

An Update

bruce — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:03:54 +0000

Below are some pics for those not on Facebook. Brad’s senior prom was last week, so here are a few pictures from before the prom:

More pics are on our Flickr account.

TV for the Bedroom

bruce — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:28:55 +0000

Seemed simple when I started working on it…

system.pdf

Don’t Judge a Turkey by Its Cover

bruce — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:09:30 +0000

As an experiment, RC smoked a turkey on our Holland grill. The fallback position was ol’ Smokies in the crockpot, so the pressure was on. One mistake she made was rubbing olive oil on the outside…..

Imagine the ashes that covered Pompeii that fateful day or the horror of the fires burning uncontrollably in the western United States.

Now picture a phoenix (or turkey) rising from the ashes, perfectly tender and with hints of mesquite.

Thanks to her soaking the skin in brine the night before, Thanksgiving was saved.

Mulching Mower

bruce — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:28:04 +0000

People are always asking me, “Bruce, do you have any pictures of your yard before and after you apply your eXmark mulching mower to your 50 million oak leaves?”. Turns out that I do have two of each:

Before

After

Why I Love the Mac (a series) – Streaming Music

bruce — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:08:02 +0000

Before my first Mac, I was considering Sonus as a way to stream music throughout the house and onto the deck. The cost to stream music to 3 locations (at the time…haven’t checked lately) was about $3,000. Instead, I installed an Airport Express in each location where I wanted music and streamed my iTunes to each device…problem solved. It streams in a synchronized stream so there is no weird effect as you walk from keeping room to the back deck. Total cost – don’t care, as the ease of use was worth it. But I think each Airport Express was around $179, so I’m way ahead of Sonos.

I started the system using a Linksys WRT54G like 90% of the world. I’ve since retired the Linksys and substituted an Apple Time Capsule with a 500 gig hard drive to get 802.11n wireless speeds and for Time Machine backups. It works well, and I’m actually (mis?)using it as a file server. AS it turned out, I’m not crazy about using Apple’s Time Machine backup program to back up every durn thang I do as I use my brain instead to figure out what to back up. I also like my backups to be off-site, so I ended up with a spare 1/2 terabyte in the Apple Time Capsule to use to store files.

We currently have music streamed to living room, back porch (sorry, neighbors, and yes, I realize music carries over water), master bedroom, master bathroom, and upstairs to the Apple TV. To stream music from iTunes, I just choose from the menu:

Next in the series….what music do we stream? Hint-XM radio on the web, iTunes (with special playlists), Pandora….more to come…