Squash sprouts

Some new leaves sprouted up in a few of the spots where I planted the butternut squash seeds a couple weeks ago.

They look like pictures of butternut squash seedlings that I see online, which seems like a good sign.

No sign of any sprouting activity where I planted the jalapeno seeds in the raised beds yet. Those might be duds.

The rest of the garden seems to be doing pretty well so far. The potatoes have grown quite a bit in the last couple of weeks.

The blueberry plants have had lots of blossoms and lots of berries on them right now. Maybe we’ll even get to some of them before the birds do.

No blossoms on the raspberry or black berry plants yet, but they’re starting to spread out in their beds now with a few new sprouts popping up.

The olive tree is still looking a little spindly, but seems to be doing ok, putting out a bunch of new leaves over the last few weeks.

Olive tree
Raised beds in the yard

Garden experiments

I suppose since it’s only the second year of the raised beds and us trying to grow anything, everything is an experiment.

This year, we decided no more eggplants. We just don’t like them enough to grow a bunch.

I had a few red potatoes from the grocery store that sat on the counter for a little too long, After a bit of reading and watching a few potato growing videos on YouTube, they went into one of the raised beds a couple weeks ago. Yesterday, they looked like this:

Four potato plants growing in a raised bed garden
Four potato plants planted in one of the raised beds

I was pretty surprised to see just how much green they grew in just a couple of weeks. I’m excited to see how things go with the tubers.

While I was out, I planted some jalapeno seeds harvested from last year’s jalapeno crop and some butternut squash seeds from a grocery store squash. No idea if they’ll grow, but I guess I’ll find out in a few weeks.

The rest of the plants seem to be doing well and seem to have survived the frosts we had during January and February.

Christmas Wonton Soup

For the last few years, having wonton soup has become a bit of a Christmas tradition for us. Not going out for wonton soup, but making it at home from the wontons themselves to the broth.

The first year I made a whole bunch of wontons and broth, and left it in the slow cooker while we were out for the midnight Christmas Mass. It ended up being way too much and turned into a big (but still tasty) mess in the slow cooker. In retrospect, I probably should have anticipated that.

Over the years, the wonton making and cooking process has been refined. This year we made fewer wontons and cooked them when we got back home from the 10AM Christmas Mass.

A tray of wontons

The filling mixture was made the day before. The Sunday before Christmas, we roasted a chicken and the bones were supposed to have been saved to make the wonton broth with, but I forgot this year. Fortunately there was some leftover broth from another batch in the freezer.

Christmas wontons turned out pretty good this year.

A bowl of wonton soup

Christmas Nativity 2023

Everybody piled into the Ark to make the journey to visit the new baby.

Stuffed animals in a woven basket making their way to see the Baby Jesus.

Meanwhile, Cmd Data was organizing the away team of Wise Men from the East. He’ll make sure the Wise Men get to where they need to go.

A Data Star Trek ornament leading an away team of ceramic wise men figurines.

Shepherds from the countryside have arrived with their sheep and cows to marvel at the new baby.

Christmas nativity scene with ceramic figurines.

The Ark has arrived, and it didn’t take long for everybody to disembark.

A new visitor this year is Smok the Dragon, from Krakow Poland.

A small figurine of the Wawel Dragon stopping by to see the new baby.

Update 2024-01-06: The wise men from the east made it thanks to Data’s skillfull navigation.

CPU cooler upgrade

A couple months ago, the CPU cooler (one of those closed loop liquid cooling systems) started making weird noises intermittently. Being one of the few original parts left in my computer, I figured that meant it was time for a replacement. There’s not much of a selection for LGA1366 sockets left out there, but I managed to find a NZXT Kraken 120 that worked.

Replacing the cooler was also a good opportunity to give the computer a long overdue cleaning, so out came the air compressor and out went the dust bunnies.

Inside my computer after blowing out the dust.  Visible is the power s upply at the bottom, video card, hard drives and the CPU cooler.
Inside my computer after blowing the dust out.

Undoing the four screws releases the retaining ring that clamps the cooler to the CPU, and out it comes. Pretty easy.

The removed CPU cooler and very dusty radiator
The removed CPU cooler and very dusty radiator
The uncovered CPU
The uncovered CPU

After removing the retaining ring, the old thermal paste got cleaned off and fresh thermal paste was applied. The cooling block went on and the radiator was attached.

New cooling block and radiator installed
New cooling block and radiator installed

(Yes, there are two fans on either side of the radiator in a push-pull configuration.)

Unlike the original cooler, the pump for the new one looks to be embedded in the radiator. The CPU cooling block has RGB lighting on it, but my motherboard doesn’t have any headers to plug it in to, so I just zip tied the wire to the hoses to keep them out of the way. Total installation time was about 30 minutes once I figured out which bits I needed to use.

The cooler works pretty well. Under load, the CPU temperatures are about 10°C cooler than they were with the old cooler. I’m quite pleased with the way the new cooler is working.