Know What You Mow - Hill Country Grasses

The last couple of years I've been learning my hill country grasses. As I've been selectively taking out my cedars, I've curiously seen several bunch grasses sneaking up in these clearings. I resisted the temptation last year to mow these down. Believe me it was not easy. I spent most my life in suburbia and learned to mow, trim, and edge the front and back yards neatly and squarely like my suburbanite peer pressuring neighbors.


After a while these fresh grasses coming up got pretty tall and a bit weedy looking to my culturally derived suburban tastes. I let them grow anyway - to the slight dismay of my wife. During these summer months I had been learning about the four great prairie grasses. You know - the ones that the pioneers said covered the buffalo prairies as far as the eye could see? The grasses that stood as tall as the covered wagons such as Little Bluestem, Big Bluestem, Switchgrass, and Canadian Rye? I imagined these beautiful swaying waves of grain someday being a part of my own little five acre hill country spread. This was when I went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center native plant sale and bought a several pots of Little Bluestem.


I planted these grasses throughout my property and nourished and watered them hoping they'd take hold. While these potted grasses were being babied these other natural grasses that I was watching grow were getting taller and taller in lots of places throughout where I had cleared the cedar. I never learned what kind of grasses they were till late fall when it dawned on me that these were all Little Bluestems! The same grasses I had planted. I was over-joyed as I walked about touching and admiring these native gifts of nature that had been laying dormant in seed for years waiting for me to give them the opportunity to grow. I also found some Big Bluestem that came up that by the end of the year stood over six feet tall!


The Hays County Master's Naturalist class of 2008 did a site evalutation on my property this week and pointed out to me several other grasses I didn't know were growing on my property, including beautiful Switchgrass, Eastern Gama, and Silver Bluestem.


Today as I drove my borrowed John Deere riding lawn mower over my bottom land property I had to stop and start and go in reverse a bunch and sway and drive this way and that to avoid all these interesting clumps of grasses - that I now what to give a chance to grow so I can see what they turn out to be. Riding mowers don't seem adept to dart and dodge individual clusters of grasses. They're meant to go straight and cut - everything! It was harder than if I had been cutting in squared right-angles. But I realized nature just isn't very straight nor square. It is complex and varied like a crystal or a river or a spider web. By the time I was done, my wife thought I had forgotten how to mow. I said, with a sheepish smug look, "No, I did it that way on purpose."


Now that I know what it is that I am mowing, I am more more particular about what I slice with my mechanical toy wonder. I've come to enjoy the mix and match of grasses that are now growing everywhere on my property. It takes work, but I'm developing a taste for these prairie grasses that give me just a little hint of those great tall prairies that my forefathers experienced. I think even my wife is enjoying them too.

Manage the Noise

Team:

In response to the boss's request for tips to help us communicate thru email better, I Googled and searched the Net but couldn’t find anything beyond the common sense “1.) Be Concise 2.) Don’t Spam 3.) Spell correctly” kind of article. So I wrote my own and would enjoy hearing any tips that you all might have.

Manage the Noise: Conciseness in emails


When writing emails:

· Do not “cc” someone without taking the time to summarize and say WHY they are “cc” ‘d. (If you can’t at least do that, how can you expect them to take the time to read it?)

· Never say everything that comes to mind

· First ask, "What is the bottom line that I want this person to hear from me?" (If you can't phrase the bottom-line concisely (1 sentence), then the thought is not clear in your own mind. Make it clear to yourself first.)

· Then ask "What do I expect him/her to do with it?" (If this question leads to the answer "nothing" then you shouldn't really be talking.)

· If you need to brainstorm and flesh out ideas to get clarification, then call that out so other person knows that this is "bouncing back and forth" time.

· When you are trying to get clarity for yourself, you are consuming someone else's time and brain power. Do your homework first and then ask for help.

· Prioritize your thoughts for the person you are talking to. (Don't make small things sound big, and big things sound small.)



When reading emails:

· Help your speaker get to the essence of the idea and the decision that has to be made.

· Never fear missing some minutiae. We live in an age of over-information. If it’s important, it will come back to you.

· Accept your responsibility to control your own time.

· It is not rude to politely say, "I'm sorry, I don't have time for this right now." (Even in an email reply. It is rude to let the other person assume that you've heard them.)

Talking to myself - define the problem

Taking my own advise and talking to myself, I had a dialogue the other day and tried to hone in on step 1 of solving any problem - Definine the Problem. The subject was global corporate control of the onslaught of data and how to deal with it from an architectural standpoint. (I am a data architect by trade and nature.)

Thus:

(disclaimer: excuse me if it sounds like gibberish. it may be)

**** break snippet begins here ******


define the problem

all data is in a RDBMS - meaning its splayed out everywhere for efficiency and
speed of collection the tools for data manipulation is everywhere - the
knowledge, the Microsoft products (from Excel to SQL Server), open source, the
network itself, ubiquity of computers)people will never cease from digging,
turning, striving to understand data from unique perspectives

so what's the problem?

conflicting data numbers

is that so bad?

yes. numbers need to be definitive

even if there was an "official" set of numbers, anyone with "un-official" numbers can question it - causing churn, justification, backtracking, proving numbers, etc. And some people will be motivated by instinct to do just this.

a possible answer is the evolution of simplicity through complete
transparencythat means: instead of trying to hide complexity through middle-tier
software and access to raw data elimination, REVEAL the complexity (open source
code) and make it open and alterable and viewable by those that CAN and those
that CAN'T understand it.

What's this do?

It allows second-guessing to be done at the code level specifically
questioning
logic instead of the fruit of logic.

It eliminates churn driven second-guessing by those unable to understand
the complexity of the code itself.

but it doesn't dissolve the conflicting numbers issue... it only puts a handle on it at best.

another possible solution would be to allow the reporters of numbers to compete
and defend ala Capitalism or a Darwinian eco-system. the consumers of the data
will choose nourishing or diminishing the data providers into success or
extinction naturally - the best will survive and rise to the top.

that solution is naturally rejected because of the fear of the loss of control it produces.

this fear could possibly be mitigated by an "open-source" attitude management
(e.g., Wikipedia)

bottom line is that open information produces a certain amount of argument and
chaos (ala science itself)

Is it worth trying to eliminate this naturally propagated discussion with
Millions of $$ of new software, resources, and jobs?

..comes down again to a cost/benefit ratio.

That’s the final question.

Is it worth it? What do we get for what we pay for? (now the mystery of economy slips in and the circulation of the dollar itself.)

So again. What is the real problem? And What is the cost of that problem?

the problem is conflicting data.

the cost of that problem is churn and waste of money and time. but how much? can it be quantified?

difficult to do.

guesstimate twice the amount of people and time needed to do the job. (incidentally, the 2nd half of people that would be "cut" will not easily give up their purposes or jobs.)

What's the expense of fixing this assuming it can be fixed?

About 15 million $ for one middle-tier software package and 7 million $ for another middle-tier software package. Plus however many new people hired with invested time to implement, herald and rollout.

I'd guesstimate about the same about of people to implement, retrain, and hire
to do what jobs being eliminated. So in reality this is just a shift of skills
and jobs and peoples.

So if everything evens out, then the cost is
however much $ was sent out to software companies for product itself. (i.e. 15 +
7 = $22 million)

Will it solve the problem?

mostly not. because churn and questioning will still ensue due to the nature of
the people and the tools available and ubiquitous.

So cost/benefit ratio is $22M/$0

What about the benefit of the newer potentially robust views of software that will now be available that wasn't before, enabling better management.?

I'd have to say that the numbers were mostly already there before mid-tier
software and it will probably not be used more or less by management. ROI still
= $0.

So do we give up? (second question)

No.

What do we do?

Implement RAW DATA retrieval abilities across the board at a middle management
level through rollup into mart table pivots by an official group (Reporting
Services whether custom SQL, Business Objects, or Merced, etc.) so RAW data is
available back downwards to individual level generators (agents themselves,
their managers, and sites).

And use SAME RAW DATA rollups to report upwards to executive management
levels -

ALL WHILE KEEPING PULL CODE COMPLETELY ACCESSIBLE AND VIEWABLE.

Key points being that it must be RAW and TRANSPARENTLY GENERATED. (all 3 solutions tend to NOT be.)

Rocky Edge Site Visit

I'm studying for a Master's Naturalist certification and in the course of events we will be doing a site visit here on the "Rocky Edge".

The description in the site visit handout is as below. --hey, It's interesting to me. [shrug] :)

Description:

Mitch and his wife Adena live on a 5-acre tract on a sandy point of the Blanco River. The entrance to the property is the highest point on the land; the house sits mid-level and overlooks the sandy bottomland below. Although the bottomland has deep sandy soil, the soil at the top is sparse and rocks protrude.

Mitch's interest is in encouraging as diverse a habitat as possible for wildlife and future family generations. His concerns include river bank/erosion control, bottomland mowing decisions, and upland cedar and prairie grass management. The abundance of rock at the entrance provided all the material for the rock wall. There may be a cave under some of the large, hollow-sounding rocks.

He would also like to promote wildlife habitat and has noticed turkeys, porcupines, and rock squirrels on property. He has reported a number of bird species, including Painted Buntings, Nashville Warblers, Canyon/Rock/Carolina Wrens, and Green/Belted Kingfishers. Twenty-three native grasses and four oak species have been identified.

The Sanders’ property is a good example of what decisions need to be made ecologically to develop a smaller piece of land.

Happy Mother's Day

Wife was up puking all night. Our friend brought her dog over and my wife watched it chase down and murder our old cat that we've had for 19 years. I buried it. There was a lot of bawling, blaming, and squalling.

Another friend calls me yesterday saying they are staking out with the cops the home of a mutual friend of ours (J) who text messaged us all saying he's got a rifle in the other room - threatening to kill himself. I think he's off his meds again.

I got stood up for a movie date by my two friends. (They bought Adena flowers - that was really nice.) Add to this the memories of the death of our baby daughter this time of year (Mother's day - 24 years ago) and I call my mom and wish her a happy mother's day but end up being chided for not going to church that morning. (I was up most the night.)

I feel guilty, but I'm tired already so it doesn't matter much. Life is like that, huh?

Happy Mother's Day all!

Blanco Brethren have 1st Annual 3-day Camp-Shin-ding-Thing

Blanco Brethren (formerly known as the "Ancient Society of Sacred Assholes") has concluded their 1st Annual Camping celebration for men. Camp-Shin-ding-Thing seems destined to be a continual April 20th weekend event.

From most rumours up and down the valley volume was sufficient to keep away some of the werewolfs, all of the women, and other hounddogs and sane folks.

A common chant of "Chee! Chee!" perplexed most of the uninitiated and between some of the tears and beers and expressed fears and tobacco most of the brethren survived - somehow in tact.

They may not be the better off for it all, but they sure as hell ain't any the worse.