Two weekends ago the temperature was in the mid 70′s. This weekend the temp hit the 80′s.

However last week I woke up to my lawn and car encased in ice. So the weather around here is fairly fickle. Regardless, I broke out the tiller and began the preparation for our vegetable garden.

Only about 10ftx20ft

So that is the small garden which we’ll most likely only see sunflowers. They look great growing and we can put out the dried sunflower heads to feed the birds all winter long.

Most of my Saturday was taken up with the real deal. The place where we plant all the vegetables you can think of.

30ft x 75ft

So when I’m not learning and coding inside during the summer, I’ll be outside working on keeping this monstrosity under control. The picture just doesn’t put its enourmity into perspective (well enourmous for your casual veggie garden). Boy will it all taste good once mid-summer hits! 2,250 square feet of veggie goodness (bigger than my house, sadly).

Recently there has been a push to reinstate the Office of Technology Assessment. This body advised Congress on science and technology, taking complex ideas or situations and making  them understandable by the layperson. It was defunded (and effectively dissolved) by the Republican-led Congress in 1995.

For almost 15 years the people that create laws and pass legislation that affect your life have been  flying blind. Couple that with the decrease in the general public’s understanding and appreciation (and in some cases  an increase in outright hostility) of science and you have  stunted progress and security in this country.

Think about how much technology and science makes your life easier on a day to day basis. Reflect on how your leisure time is involved with technology. We’re all getting older, ponder how science has already extended your life span and could make your elder years a pleasure rather than a burden.

The OTA stands to be a powerful force in properly influencing that body of politics that is supposed to serve you is making and legislating good policy.

Want to know more or how you can help? Go here.

Somewhere out there is a machine.

This machine’s purpose is to churn out fully formed programmers with three to five years experience.

I have deduced this based on the abundance of want-ads that look for nothing less than programmers with three to five years of experience.

Really, it seems to work like this:

Step 1: Graduate with IT degree.

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Three to five years experience – finally employable.