I mentioned on my last blog that while doing some pruning in my back yard, I accidentally cut down a branch containing a bushtit nest (picture on right). When I realized what I had done, I check the nest to find there were eggs inside. So I used some wire to string the branch containing the nest back into the tree. It seemed like the bushtit parents had gone back to the nest, but as I’ve been monitoring it over the past week, I have not seen any signs of them. I’m now afraid they abandoned the nest all together. It’s possible that they’re around and I just have not seen them, so I’ll leave things as they are for a while. Hopefully they really are incubating the eggs which will hopefully hatch soon.

I still have a problem with squirrels in my attic. There are at least three of them living there. From what I can tell, I think it is a mother and some babies, probably from a litter earlier this year. I’ve been trying to get rid of them, but I haven’t been sure what to do. I don’t really want to harm them, but I can’t have them living in the attic either. I can hear them chewing on the beams, and I’m pretty sure they have already chewed through a wire for a ceiling fan (which was thankfully turned off at the time). They appear to be gaining access to the attic through a junction of two different sections of roof (picture right). I was going to try to trap them, but I’m not sure what I would do with them. For now I have decided to try to block the opening with a one way door from Tomahawk Live Trap. I ordered the One Way Door Excluder with Rear Sliding Door, Model E40D (picture left). Once I get it I’ll need to cover up the access point with mesh hardware cloth leaving a small opening where I will install the E40D. If all goes well, they will leave through the one way door during the day and not be able to get back in. If they continue to be problematic, I can also use the rear sliding door of the E40D to trap them, though I don’t know what I would do with them. There are more pictures of the squirrels on my Gallery.

Earlier today I was at the gym with Mary. On the way in we noticed a baby bird sitting on the sidewalk. It didn’t look very safe there. When we left the gym, it was still in nearly the same spot, though it had managed to find a tiny bit of shade. We saw a mama bird come by to feed it, but it was really close to the main aisle of the parking lot. Mary ended up picking up the bird and moving it to some bushes where is should be safer and cooler. We stayed for a while to make sure the mama bird found the baby in its new location. It did, and we saw some feeding, so hopefully the little bird will be ok.

On my last day in Florida, I went to a couple parks with my brother Mike. I’ll talk about them in my Green Valhalla blog. I did see a pretty cool Osprey at Markham Park (picture left). My flight back to California was rather uneventful, although I did get to meet up with my niece, Maggie, during my layover in DC. We met up at a Starbuck’s in the Dulles airport. She’s leaving for Australia in July for a sort of student exchange program. She’ll be there for some 4 months. It sure would be nice to visit her there.

While I was gone, Mary had seen the infamous squirrel around the house a few times. She even noticed that it seemed to be entering the attic at a junction between two roof elevations at the rear of the house. After I got home, I also noticed a squirrel sitting on the window sill of the upstairs den, seemingly watching me work on my computer. I went out back to see what it was up to, and to my surprise, saw not one, but 3 squirrels scamper through that opening! It seems like the problem is worse than I thought.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve met with Ron a couple times to work on the dishAdish website. We’re pretty much finished with the basic functionality, but we want to add a few more advanced features such as images and mapping. At some point we probably need to start trying to get more people to use the site.

Friday and Saturday I went to an entrepreneur conference called TiEcon. The conference is run by The Indus Entrepreneurs, named for it’s original South Asian roots. Now it is a multi-cultural, world wide organization. The conference brings together entrepreneurs from various industries including venture capital. There are sessions by investors and executives of start-ups and public companies on topics from how to start a company to the ins and outs of Life Sciences. There were some big name speakers, such as: Vinod Khosla (VC and founder of Sun - picture left), Nobuyuki Idei (former Chairman and CEO of Sony), Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media), Meg Whitman (CEO of eBay), and Bob Ingram (Vice Chairman at GlaxoSmithKline). My primary motivation was to attend the sessions on Green or Clean Technologies. The sessions were informative, but networking was difficult due to the sheer number of attendees (nearly 4000). I would probably be better off going to some of the TiE Silicon Valley local events. There was some pretty good food at the lunches an breaks, especially the 4′ tall chocolate fountain (picture right).

I left the conference a little early on Saturday, so Mary and I went for a late lunch in downtown Sunnyvale. We went to My Burger Place on Santa Clara. After lunch we went to the 4th Street garage across from the library. From there we watched the falcons on San Jose City Hall. I had my laptop, but could not get a good connection to watch the webcam (picture from the webcam on left), but we did enjoy seeing Jose and Clara flying around the city. Of course I forgot to bring my camera.

On Sunday Mary and I did some more yard work. One of the things we did was prune some branches which overhang our yard from a tree in the back neighbors yard. After we pruned the tree, we noticed there was a bird nest in one of the branches we cut down (picture right). It turns out to be a bushtit nest, and there are eggs in it. We felt terrible. I ended up tying the branch with the nest back in the tree with some green wire. Eventually, it seemed like the adult birds found their way back to the nest. I only hope the eggs are still intact. I guess we’ll have to watch and see. In the afternoon, we went by Don Edwards and found some burrowing owls nearby. Later we went back down town to watch Jose and Clara. Maybe I’ll blog about that on my Green Valhalla blog as well.

One more day until I head back to California. It’s still pretty smoky here in Florida due to all the fires around that state. It has rained a bit the last couple days which has helped clear the air a bit. On Friday Mike and I kayaked out to the second reef off of Pompano Beach. We snorkeled there for a bit. It was a bit murky but still pretty nice. It was more clear if you swam down a bit. In the evening we took Nick to baseball practice (picture right). He’s playing in a coach pitch league this year. His team was preparing for a game the following morning.

On Saturday morning Nick went to his game but I stayed behind to catch up on sleep. At noon we all went for Nick’s First Communion at St. Colman’s. It was a nice service celebrated by Father Foudy. It was a pretty big communion containing all of the second grade class of St. Coleman’s school. After communion we went for lunch at the Olive Garden. There’s more pictures of the first communion in my gallery. I went over to my nephew Joe’s for dinner with my sister and brother-in-law. Sunday was mother’s day. We had a nice brunch for Kathy and her mother. Later in the day I rode with Mike to drop Ashley up at UCF. Molly was in Central Florida for the week with some schoolmates, and we met up with her for dinner at the Orlando Ale House. After chatting for a while, Mike and I headed back to Ft. Lauderdale and Molly and her friends headed for Tampa.

Today Mike, Kathy and I went to visit a couple parks in the area. First we went to Tradewinds Park, but the boardwalk was closed for repairs. Next we went to Fern Forest, but it started raining. We didn’t get very far, so we just went for lunch. For lunch we went to Primanti Brothers. This restaurant originated in Pittsburgh, PA. It’s something of a late night institution there, so it brought back some memories. I did a review on dishAdish. They are “almost famous” for putting cole slaw and fries right in the sandwich. I had a pastrami and cheese (see right).

We pretty much just vegged the rest of the afternoon. Then after dinner we made some olive penguins (picture left). They’re really cute, but I don’t think they’re all that tasty. Amber says “we have no life.” We’ll probably just take it easy for the rest of the evening. I head out tomorrow at 1. After a layover in Washington, DC I’ll be back in San Jose. It’s been a great visit with the family.

Sadly, the Sharks are out of the playoffs. They didn’t play very well the last two games of the series. I guess I’m not real interested in following the rest of the playoffs, but maybe I’ll watch the Stanley Cup Finals.

I’m in Florida now. I flew here on Tuesday. It was a pretty long day. I flew from San Jose to Washington Dulles on United. The video system wasn’t working, so I read and slept. I had a 1.5 hour layover in DC. I had some lunch at a deli there. Then I flew to Ft. Lauderdale on Ted (United’s low cost airline). My brother Mike picked me up at the airport.

Wednesday was pretty quiet. I mostly hung around the house, but I did get out to the Pompano Beach (picture at top). I went with my nephew Joe and a few of his friends. It was a bit hazy from all the fires around the state. Eventually the horse flies were getting to us so we left.

Today Mike and I went to the Gumbo Limbo Environmental Complex. I wrote more about this place on my Green Blog and posted pictures in my Gallery. After the park visit, we stopped for a drink at Panera Bread. After dinner we went to Maggie Moo’s, which is an ice cream parlor. I got the Peanut Butter Galaxy, which I highly recommend if you like peanut butter.

On a final note, I wanted to show some before and after pictures for last week’s weeding project. There’s still work to be done on the yard, but it’s a start:

Above: A view across the deck to the back-right
Below: The back-left corner

The past few days have been pretty full. On Friday I worked with Ron the dishAdish site. We’ve made a few structural changes. We separated ratings, reviews and tags, and move the review text to more of a forum style threads. We’re hoping this new format will encourage more user discussion.

Friday evening Mary and I went to dinner at Chili’s with Ashish and Jeff. I had the Cajun Chicken Sandwich. After dinner we went to Ashish’s place to watch a movie and eat a pie from Marie Callender’s. The movie we watched was UltraViolet (picture right). The movie stars Milla Jovovich as a vampire in a futuristic world. The vampires are at war with the humans, and UltraViolet steals the ultimate weapon that has been developed by the humans, only to find out it is a young boy. The acting is not that great, but there are some pretty cool fight sequences with both guns and swords. The move reminds me a bit of Æon Flux. The pie was a Cream Cheese pie, which I would rate much higher than the movie.

On Saturday morning we hiked Mission Peak followed by lunch at Shalimar in Fremont. The lunch was sort of a going away event for Ricardo, one of the guys that hikes with this Mission Peak group. He’s moving to Boston. Lunch was at the same time as the Sharks - Red Wings game, so I didn’t get to watch it. Apparently I didn’t miss anything good since the Red Wings won the game 4-1. Now they lead the series 3-2. Go Sharks!

In the afternoon we went to see the Division I College Rugby Finals at Stanford. We met up with Bernard, Ashish and Jeff. We missed the women’s game, but saw the men’s. In the womens final, Penn State held off a late comeback from Stanford to win 22-21. In the men’s finals it was Cal versus BYU. Cal pretty much dominated the match as they do most years. They easily won the final 37-7. After the match we went to Sunnyvale for dinner. We ate at a new Mexican place called Valle Sol. We had a few Corona’s in honor of Cinco de Mayo.

Sunday started with more yard work for Mary and I. I think we have pretty much removed all the big weeds but there’s still a lot of little stuff to get rid of. In the evening we went to San Francisco to meet some friends for dinner and a play. We had dinner a Osha Thai. We had a big group so we had many different dishes. The play, Tings Dey Happen was at a small theater called The Marsh. It’s a one man show by Dan Hoyle (picture left). It is based on a year he spent in Nigeria on a Fullbright Scholarship studying the political issues involved with the oil industry there. In the play he portrays a number if different characters including war lords, ambassadors, freedom fighters, oil workers, etc. It’s pretty interesting watching a young white many portraying the Nigerian characters in pretty convincing pidgin English.

My sinuses have been bugging me all day. I’m sure the weeding didn’t help at all. I took some Claritin, but I’m not sure it did anything more than dry my throat. I should probably get some sleep and hopefully I’ll feel better. I’ve got a lot of little things to do tomorrow to prepare for my trip to Florida. I fly out on Tuesday morning.