March 28th, 2008

Just two short weeks ago, I decried my defeat at the insidious tentacles of CSS-xHTML, and "threw it under the bus", as some are wont to say. But, after a "small Epiphany" on a sleepless Saturday evening, I'm now back-on-board with CSS-xHTML, will continue the Journal in that format, and will work on the corporate site's conversion over the next 6-10mos, with a Spring 2009 launch date (or earlier). Whoop-dee-doo, you say? It is for me. I had a couple of "small successes" with fixing errors on my own, changing templates, learning the difference between "internal CSS" and "external CSS", and I think I'm starting to "get it". By Jove! I'm now starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, and at least it's not a train coming the other way, as I'd felt since early January/February's coding failures. Thank God I don't have to do that stuff for a living, or I'd have turned to a real life of crime and evil: politics. (Just kidding.) I realized that there's no way I should have pushed myself to absorb and 100% learn those two disciplines, in just a few weeks. Sure, there are some who have, and I envy the living crap out of their ability to do it — D•••• is one of those lucky people — and have some real fun with CSS-xHTML, but I'm not one of them. I'm having to really struggle to learn it. Ol' Simple, Reliable, Quirky, Basic HTML was a breeze to learn and use, as compared with what I'm now playing with in the "Den Of Coding Hell". No matter; I'll get through it and have some fun doing it. I have some friends who use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editors, and I feel for them, for not having the tribulations, tears, torment, torture and tumult of REAL HTML/CSS-XHTML, to brighten their cold, lonely nights. I'll gladly loan them some of mine. In fact, they can have all of mine; I don't need them anymore. Why this "mea culpa", so soon after "kicking it to the curb"? After all I've done and what I've been through, I vowed that I wasn't going to let something as trivial as that, beat me, as long as I had any strength and willpower left to best it. I also vowed that I wasn't going to get obsessive about it, either, as I have several "full plates" sitting on my table, right now. There are real priorities, and the CSS Project is a spare time effort. No matter; I'll get it done and the results will be more and more obvious as the months go by. The one nice thing about "being wrong", is that you can "fix it" and go on with the effort. I'm doing just that.

Spring quietly arrived last Thursday, and I'm still chuckling at all the people who truly think Winter's over and it's okay to ignore the traditional "Last Frost Date", of May 1st. In the previous 18yrs I've been in business, there have been 4-5 so-called Springs when Mother Nature revisited a nasty blizzard, or possibly an ice storm or bone-chilling, bitter cold upon her flora and fauna (people included) in The Mid Atlantic Region, and played havoc. Actually, I hate to see people make mistakes — hell, I make enough for everyone — and I try to help them avoid it, and have a positive gardening experience. My demeanor might not be all that "sympathetic" to their premature pleas for horticultural adventures, but I mean well. And if they listen to me, their experience will be a good one. Most do. I just wish I had someone to warn me, 18yrs ago, when I started. I can remember off-loading close to 100 Japanese Maples (in 'early leaf' from trucks coming-in from Oregon, and losing almost 30% to a brutally-heavy frost and ice storm that night, which wasn't predicted. Needless to say, I lost all faith in the local weather-predicting folks, and honed my own instincts, based upon the time of year. A safe Last Frost Date here, is May 1st, though I've seen a freak heavy 18" snow on May 6th, back in NJ in the mid-80s. Here, nothing quite that destructive, so far.

Hmmmmmm, floods and snow in the Midwest, and more snow predicted for this Easter weekend, here. Several employees were in working a half-day or so — it was Good Friday and Easter Weekend, after all — everyone reports on Monday, for real. We have 3 weeks to get the GC&N Complex ready for the Open House on Sat, April 12th. A writer/reporter for the horticulture industry trade publication, Country Folks Grower Magazine, interviewed me about our drip irrigation systems and policy. I have a new Drip Irrigation link coming-up on the corporate site, as well as removing 8-9 existing links, to reduce the l/s nav-bar clutter.

I was up early Saturday morning, enjoying the snow squalls moving through, while having breakfast and coffee. The cats were watered and fed, and had gone back to sleep for the day. (I want to come back as a cat: eat, shit & sleep!) We've only had 6-7" of "Global Warming" (snow) all Winter, so every time I see it, I enjoy the effect. A few callers, one walk-in and it was a quiet Saturday. I worked on revising www.gdnctr.com's pages and modified the Employment Page, to eliminate the retail sales/checkout jobs, and added to the skilled LSCP job listings. The economy is too uncertain right now to add employees, other than LSCP Crew, who generate revenue from large jobs. I have enough existing GC&N Key Staff to use as retail sales help, myself included, until things improve, nationwide.

On Saturday, I had some bank deposits to make over in Shrews bury, pick-up some more of those padded mailing bags and 7 more $15 Faded Glory shirts. LSCP customers came in, both looking around, and making deposits on upcoming hardscape jobs. People were shopping the 3 Retail GHs, for Easter gifts. Calls were coming in for more site visits, and I've already scheduled myself out to April 16th, to handle the smaller ones, letting James, my LSCP Designer, concentrate on the medium and large jobs. My calendar filleth up! Pizzas at the local pizzerias have gone-up 10-15%, in the past week, so I stopped for Pit Beef and Pit Ham, in nearby Stewartstown on Saturday, as one of the local high schools was having a fundraiser. I got 1 ham and 2 pit beef sandwiches for Dad & me. Normally, we don't see that bill o' fare until early May, or so; mmmmmmmm, good eating. I stayed at the Office until 5pm. After dinner, I spent 2½hrs on the phone with D•••• — The CSS Wizardess — and then spent another 3+hrs (yikes; it's 1:15am!) looking at CSS-xHTML page source code. By this time, my eyes were squirting blood, and it was time to sleep. It was Easter Sunday already, and I had a long list of things to do and places to go. I spent a couple hours at the Office, doing some paperwork. Easter Dinner at Mom & Dad's was great, and I took some ham home for the two cats. I also spent some time with D••••, doing "CSS-by-phone".

With the full compliment of employees coming-in at 8am, on Monday morning, I was up at 4 ("0-Dark-Thirty"), watered and fed the cats, had breakfast and coffee, and was on the road by 5:45. It was eerily empty on the 22-mile ride. I had the Complex opened-up and lit-up by 6:20, and then realized that they weren't coming in until 8am. (Still dark at 7am, these days.) I also remembered that I have 1-2 tractor trailer loads of nursery stock from the Left Coast arriving today, and will need to have a check ready for "freight/fuel surcharge costs". Diesel is around $4.45/gal on the interstates, they tell me. I have a small, fenced-in garden plot behind the Main Bldgs, where I usually grow 5-6 tomato plants, and I think I'll add some other vegs this year, growing only 1 tomato variety/ 2 plants. One tractor trailer arrived; the other broke down in Gary (IN), and came in Tuesday morning. The plant material was well-grown and excellent quality; natch. Otherwise, I would have refused it. A massive clean-up of the 20ac Complex is underway, with new areas (Trough Gardens, Alpine Conifers & Perennials etc) being added, and existing areas being renovated (StoneWorks, Retail Display etc). Several thousands of pieces of nursery stock and perennials/grasses need to be dealt with. I left at 5pm, and by 6:15, I was listening to The Savage Nation, and was dead tired from a long day. A couple mugs of steaming, hot green tea readily fixed that, and I spent several hours on HTML/CSS/xHTML projects, both for the Journal and www.gdnctr.com's coming changes.

I was in the Office by 6:15am on Tuesday, and had the Complex opened-up and running within 20mins. (I still miss meeting Pickle every morning, feeding him and playing with him until the staff and crews arrive.) The tractor trailer, which broke down yesterday, arrived and we unloaded it. Nice stuff. We're bringing thousands of pieces of nursery stock out of the 6 GHs, where it was stored over the Winter months. The Main GH is rapidly filling-up with shade perennials, also stored in dormancy. We're spreading crushed bluestone gravel over the Retail Sales Areas, to freshen-up the look and fill low spots. Then, SnapShot Pre-Emergent Herbicide is applied to all surfaces to kill weeds for the next 3-4mos. The #3 well pump, motor and wiring were replaced after 10yrs. I'm off to the radio station on Wednesday, to record :15sec spots for the upcoming 18th Open House promotion on two wide-reach, local FM stations, WARM 103-FM and WSOX 96.1 FM. My Hardscape Foreman, Seth, is working on some new additions to the StoneWorks Yard. My LSCP Foreman, Alan, Horticulturalist/Greenhouse/Nursery Mgr, Jennifer, Ass't Greenhouse/Nursery Mgr, Bob, and two LSCP Crew, Matt and Lee, are working on unloading the 6 GHs, off-loading the incoming tractor trailers, and getting the 20ac Complex back to top shape, for the upcoming season. And James, my LSCP Designer, is busy on medium and large-dollar projects, while I handle the piddly stuff, so he doesn't have to. The front counter's been cleaned-up and reorganized. Two of my four replica "Antique Phones" have been installed and are working. No, I don't do that work anymore, with my back and shoulder problems.

Aw jeeeez; not again! One of my cats threw-up into one of my clogs, and I stepped in it at 6am, on Wednesday. *&#@%$*&#!!! Well, at least this time it was just a wet furball, and not full-fledged "cat food puke", like last week. I also ran myself down to 3 Marlboros at 10pm, Tuesday night, before going to sleep, so I had to skip coffee and breakfast, clean-out my clog, get to a nearby Rutter's convenience store to get more, before I got cranky. (It could have gotten real ugly if I hadn't; I'd have skinned that cat and made earmuffs.) Anyway, I got coffee on the way into work, made breakfast at work in the Office's kitchenette, and all was right with the world, in short order. I made it to the radio station by 11am, and recorded the four :15sec spots in one flawless take, and got back to work by 12:15pm. A partial truck load of Bare Root nursery stock arrived, two LSCP customers stopped by to review their plans and plant material, and get on my "Work List™". We're already booked into June, unless we add another 3-man crew. Past experience tells me that we're going to lose some jobs if only one 4-man LSCP crew and 1-man Hardscape crew are available, and doing the many jobs we have on the books. My LSCP Foreman tells me that we have the manpower we need, but I'm beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be better to go into the season's workload, fully-loaded. I do know that if a really good candidate walks through the front door, I'll hire him on-the-spot.

A cold front passed through the area on Thursday, with some rain, and temps once again felt Winter-like; thankfully, no snow this far south. I had two LSCP app'ts in nearby towns, and took care of them, quickly. Maybe Mother Nature is going to give us a break after all, this year? I had a couple of LSCP/Water Garden Maintenance app'ts in the Shrewsbury-New Freedom areas, and then made it to Walt's Old Fashioned Barber Shop in Red Lion, for a long-overdue trim. Another wholesale grower's delivery truck was delayed for today's delivery, and will be in tomorrow, just in time for some more cold, heavy rain. Better that than 5-7' of snow.

Many Journal entries are best viewed in the Charrington Roughened and the Orlando typefaces. You already probably have Century Gothic on your Windows-XP machine, and that's occasionally used for the body copy. They're free from my website. Save them to your HD, and install to C:/Windows/Fonts folder, thru your WIN XP Start > Control Panel > Fonts > File > Install New Font. Simple, isn't it?

Here are a few others, in which my Journal will be written, in the coming weeks: Papyrus and Acoustic Bass . Get and install them, and see how much nicer these pages are to view and read. Plus, they add to your repertoire of available fonts in MS-Word, as WIN-XP System Fonts, so you can use them for your documents etc.

Here's one reason why "Globalism" doesn't work as advertised: higher food prices. When producing countries have bad weather cycles, the entire world suffers. Each country should produce its own foods, and import only what's needed to supplement that, from other countries. This quote from the article, says it all: "All countries are tied enough to the world food markets that this is a global crisis." The US didn't have this Globalism-imposed problem, until recent years; we were self-sufficient and not a turd-world shithole dependent economy, but we are almost there, now. Thanks to the Bushes and Klintoons.

Sure, pizzas, bread and a hundred-fifty other products are getting more expensive, but they're also getting smaller and more expensive. Toilet paper, soap, paper towels, candy and other products are shrinking. "Companies defended their practice and cited the higher cost of raw materials as the reason for shrinking products." Total bullshit. Much more expensive food — thanks to bullshit biofuels, which don't work, and $100+/bbl oil (drill ANWR and offshore!) — are here to stay. Food fight, anyone?

Here's why unions are socialist dogshit, and should be outlawed.

Yes, Canada's Human Rights Commission are a festering, fetid collection of liberal misfits, sodomites, morons, subhuman filth, trash, illiterates, pole-puffers, crap, shit, junk, scumbags, deviants, punks, degenerates, perverts, foreign garbage and they're after Real Canadians, for simple Freedom of Speech, which we take for granted as our First Amendment. Filth and lowlife shit, like Richard "dick breath" Warman, need summary trial and execution, IMO.

The subhuman scum, filth, trash, shit and garbage — Indians (muslim pigshit-scumbags) — who've given the world such stinking, disease-filled shithole places as Calcutta, Lahore and Bangladesh, are now going to own two of the world's most legendary car brands: Jaguar and Land Rover. The idiotic assholes at Ford — who paid $5.2 BILLION for them a few years ago, and who don't know how to run a motor car company — sold (for $1.7 BILLION) them to Tata, a 12th rate shitbox "car company", who will further ruin them and eventually fold them, for the good of the marques.

Freedom never cries. What kind of world do you want?

Have you seen this video: "BBC: The Great Global Warming Swindle"? It was outright-banned from leftist, hate-filled, dirtbag lowlife scumbags, Google.com's and YouTube.com's websites, by the mentally-ill, left-wing, global warming idiot wackos, but I've preserved it, for posterity, aka you, me and *ours*. Watch, be informed and download it for others to see. It's on my corporate server, and will stay there, BTW.

Here's everything you need to know about Global Warming, and why it's a good thing.

The "Greenhouse Effect" is a natural and valuable phenomenon, without which, the planet would be uninhabitable. Global Warming, at least in recent times, is real. CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas; 95% of the contribution is due to Water Vapor. Man's contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant. We didn't cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it. Solar Activity appears to be the principal driver for Climate Change. CO2 is a useful trace gas in the atmosphere, and the planet would actually benefit by having more, not less of it, because it is not a driver for Global Warming and would enrich our vegetation, yielding better crops to feed the expanding population. CO2 is not causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging temperature change in all reliable datasets. The cart is not pulling the donkey. Wake-up, folks.

Here's a listing of The Best Global Warming Videos on the Internet.

Remember the election in 2006? A little over one year ago, consumer confidence stood at a 2 ½ year high; regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon; the unemployment rate was 4.5%. Since voting in a treasonous, hate-America, socialist, terrorist-supporting, liberal-demokkkRAT Congress in 2006 we have seen, consumer confidence plummet; the cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon; unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase); American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses); Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars; 1% of American homes are in foreclosure. America sure voted for "change" in 2006, didn't they?

Yes, I support Rod Parsley's view that Christianity needs to wipe the pigshit-called-islam off the face of the earth.

Hey, Barry Hussein Obama-Osama-Lama-Ding-Dong: this racist piece-of-shit is your Nigga!

Hey, Barry Hussein Obama-Osama-Lama-Ding-Dong: is this racist bigot, James "Porch Monkey" Meeks (SAMBO-IL), an Illinois state senator and pastor of one of the largest churches in the state, also your Nigga?

And this racist, sambo, porch-monkey sambo, dumbassed punk, Otis Moss III is the Nigga who took over for Jerry "Pigfucker" Wright, also your buddy, Barry Hussein Obama-Osama-Lama-Ding-Dong shithead? Boy, you sure have a lot of lowlifes for "friends", asshole.

Rush's "Operation Chaos" is working quite nicely. Shit-for-brains liberal-demokkkRATs bought right into it. Dumbasses.

I said that NY State's incoming lowlife, affirmative action, blind-ass-MF dirtbag, Lt Gov Davey "I Hate Whitey Muthafucka" Paterson (RACIST-NY), was a loser, and now he might be going away, too. Tsk tsk, another Nigga® acting badly, IMO. Now, he's a cokehead and a pothead too. Nice going, asshole!

Hmmmmm, did I say "another Nigga®

acting badly"? Detroit's lowlife, racist, lying dirtbag porch-monkey, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (Nigga®-MI) and his former top aide whore, Christine Beatty, an ugly, sweaty, fat, bloated skank scumbag Nigga

bitch, are charged with 12 counts in the text-messaging scandal, including perjury, conspiracy to obstruct justice and willful misconduct in office; specifically conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice, misconduct in office, perjury in a court proceeding and two counts of perjury other than in a court proceeding.

It's probably about time that I cleared-up any confusion about this section, so aptly named as it is. I do not imply that "we" are the final judge of an evil person's evil soul, but rather that God is, and all we're here to do is "hasten the meeting" between them. Plus, getting such subhuman filth out of society, where they can do no more damage to innocents, is also paramount in my mind.

The filthy, subhuman, murderous 70s bitch-skank-slut — Sara Jane Olson — needs killing! No more prison and wasting US Taxpayers' hard-earned dollars to maintain that piece-of-shit. KILL HER!

I'd like just 5mins alone in a locked room, with the subhuman, murderous, cowardly piece-of-shit, lowlife, Gary Hilton, and he'd be begging me to kill him, which I'd gladly do, after I gruesomely tortured him. KILL THAT FILTH!

I call for the immediate charging, trial, sentencing and execution of liberal-demokkkRAT US Reps Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California, for treason, sedition and sabotage.

Good job, USSC; now kill the murderous spic, Jose Ernesto Medellin, Texas.

t's a universal human experience: Your pal picks up a camera, and you obligingly assume a posing-for-the-picture stance. How long do you hold the frozen grin, though, before suspicion creeps into your mind? How long before you wonder: Hey, what's going on here? Shutterbug and comedian Katie Dippold reveals the hilarity that ensues when people start thinking that way. Katie has hoodwinked friends and pranked family. Now she invites you in on the hoax. "Tell your loved ones you would like to take their photo," she coaxes, and "then secretly videotape them." The clips she presents made me chortle with laughter, and begged more questions than they answered: • How many times will a husband say "cheese"? • How long will a friend pose holding a football? • And when will a man begin to say demandingly: "Do you really know what you're doing?"