Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Ivan the Terrible came through last week, with much the expected result in my neck of the woods- lots of rain and wind. Which meant lots of trees down across the road and power outages, but surprisingly few accidents. Which also meant that I spent a lot of time in the rain directing traffic, fun fun.

On the home front, I’ve almost entirely de-crabgrassed the yard. I never thought I would live somewhere where I gave two shits about the state of my grass; usually it’s “Oh, the weeds in the front yard are at knee height; better mow”. For some reason, having decent sod has short-circuited some part of my brain and I’m now obsessive about getting the yard perfect. TruGreen ChemLawn (and you thought bizarre all-caps-ing names was an Internet fetish) comes by every month and a half and sprays chemical glick and every weekend I get down on all fours (!!!) and pull up crabgrass. I’ve worked my way around the front and side of the house and am now on the back. It’s not quite putting green quality, but it’s getting there. Ahh, the vanities of the first-time home owner.

Side note: Anyone know how to use visual basic to change the formatting of one Excel spreadsheet cell based on the value in a different cell? I’ve found several macros that will change a cell based on the value in that cell; and Excel’s bulit-in conditional formatting will change a cell based on the value of another cell- but only for three conditions. I need a macro to do it for 6 conditions. Leave helpful comments below. Or hateful, whatever.

Oh, almost forgot: Clocked a yellow and black rice rocket at 144 mph in a 65 zone. Yes, I gave chase. No, I didn’t catch it; as he was lane-splitting through heavy traffic at around 80 to 100. I’m confident that he lives nearby and that I’ll get another crack at him… in the meantime, I had to take a picture of the radar unit. Not likely to see that speed in the display again anytime soon!