The California supreme court has rejected the tyranny of the majority. You may call it "judicial activism" if you like. It is. This is the sort of activism that our judiciaries are supposed to exert--fueled by a determination for equal treatment under the law for us all.

"Even the most familiar and generally accepted of social policies and traditions often mask an unfairness and inequality that frequently is not recognized or appreciated by those not directly harmed," the chief justice wrote.
-- State Supreme Court says same-sex couples have right to marry
   San Francisco Examiner

I'm not sure if the implementation of this ruling will reverse the earlier Supreme Court finding that Mayor Newsome did not have the right to order issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Even if it does not, in a matter of a few weeks I expect that all of those couples that wish to will be able to stage a second pilgrimage to city hall in San Francisco--and now, the rest of the state, as well!

• 14:37 Off to the U/S. Will it be a boy or a girl? #
• 15:57 Girl! #

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Pam, Quinn and I just put in a complete marathon effort. The entire day was almost entirely dedicated to getting the Summer Coop and free range enclosure built. We:

• Met with our grading contractor to talk about getting some fixes done,
• Met with our neighbor and an equestrienne acquaintance who will be helping the neighbors sell their horse,
• Finished the hoops for the Summer coop,
• Clipped up the horse wire,
• Zip-tied on the post extensions,
• Stapled on the deer netting and chicken wire above the horse wire,
• Zip-tied on the chicken wire to the coop's hoops,
• Tied up the tarp over the hoops with baling twine,
• Dug post holes for the coop gate,
• Built gates out of mixed "1-by" pieces, with stapled on chicken wire,
• Hung the gates and installed latches ,
• Shoveled out the gate entrances for free swing, and finally
• Transferred 37 hens and 2 roosters to the production coop by flashlight.

Then the storm rolled in, as we hauled our tools back to the barn and scrambled up the hill for showers and baths

During this effort Quinn was a great help with fetch and carry, including running up to the house and fetching lemonade, snack bars, and yogurts when I started to fade.

We had a tremendously successful day accustoming the dogs to "these are MY birdiies, not yours," as they were on tie-out down with us between the old and new coop, and sat quietly through the entire transfer operation, including behaving themselves while eminently sniffable upside down chickens were carried right past them. Good dogs!

Must fit 13" wide x 13" deep x 18 (?)" 15 doz. egg box.

When set out to set up Tumble Rock, I decided that I needed to do proper accounting. When I ran Painless Computing, I used QuickBooks very successfully, so I decided to check out what the latest version looked like.

You could have knocked me down with a feather when I discovered that there was a free edition. I couldn't figure it out. As I dug deeper, I found that all of the add-on services were web-based services such as credit card processing, payroll, etc. The core application is now this free, basic book-keeping product. But...how could they give it away--and more importantly, why, considering that people would likely pay for that and nothing else.

So, I dug deeper and found under the Help->About page a button for "Third-Party Components."

To rob and mangle a phrase from 2001: "My God, it's full of [Open Source!]" NMatrick Schematron.net, lucene, and log4net, to name three that I could tell right away from the terms used one of the various open source license structures.

It's brilliant--leverage open source to build a cheaper, better base product which you can afford to give away, because you saved as much as your profit margins would have been in distributing it for sale--and then use that platform to hook people in to all of your value-added services [where the real, annuity money is].

This feels so right to me--but can any of you business-savvy folks out there tell me if this seeming bold move is really working out for Intuit?

• 13:41 Driving back from lunch @ Silver Diner after the doctor took a big wart out of Q's heel. #

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The answer appears to be: use the dishwasher. The water doesn't get recirculated in such a way that you will contaminate the egg, the jets are strong enough to blast off the yuck, but not strong enough to break the eggs. Dried fifteen egs with paper towels after a rinse cycle and they looked as good as my best results with hand-washing--and a lot less mess, work, and frustration.

Apparently if you get into the thousands of eggs what you do is buy a machine that washes, dries, "candles," and in some cases grades the eggs...The super-expensive ones even pack and wrap the eggs in filler flats for you. Zoiks. I don't think we'll ever get in that neighborhood. A little trip through the rinse cycle works for me.

• 16:21 Production outage made me late for All Hands! Arrrrrgh! #

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Microwave scrambled eggs: 45 seconds on high Results in BAD...just...just...not good.

The alternative instructions: 90 seconds on 50% power seems to work without blowing up the microwave...however, the egg eaters in my household turned up their noses at the result.

• 13:55 Good news: no trip to ER, no emergency surgery. Antibiotics, fluids and rest seem to be working. #
• 17:15 Argh...Mis-calculated. I figured the rain would start again and the chickens would head for cover. No. They were stir-crazy, wandering! #

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