Book Report

Coincidences, Chaos, and All that Math Jazz: Making light of weighty matters
Edward Burger & Michael Starbird.

This is a book about math. Before you pick it up, make no mistake about it. Having said that, the authors are funny. (At least they appeal to my sense of humor, I don't know what that says to you...) When they say they make light of it, they really do.

The authors start simple. They have a very clear way of expressing their points. Did I meantion they are funny? They spent a full chapter discussing statistics and how troublesome they can be. (A hot point for me any time I listen to the news or read the newspaper.)

There are a lot of illustrations the authors use to show their points, it leads to the concepts that may be a little difficult to understand to stay focused on ending up moving right along, until they move to the next topic.

If you want a good math book, that sort of just breezes through different Math topics, this is the book for you. If you start reading it, and eventually your head starts to hurt, that may be a good time to put the book down. (And your head may start to hurt unless you have taken more than a normal person's amount of math classes, the concepts get more and more complex as the book goes on...) I just labeled myself abnormal. Is there anyone to refute this?

Having said all of that, I would recommend this book to anyone. They may end up cursing me out and sleeping it off for three days, but I would still recommend the book. Also, if you have every wondered if you had a rope (of length) that tied your feet together, and you wondered how you would get your pants on inside out without untying or otherwise severing the rope, this book's for you.

Writing letters

I don't like to write letters. Just ask anyone who ever got a letter from me, or expected to get a letter from me, they will let you know.

The Stake President keeps asking me to write letters for him to people in the stake. (thanks for serving, thanks for speaking, can you do this or that, etc.) I told him if he keeps asking me to do that, he can be sure I will never be completely comfortable in the calling. (Not being competely comfortable is a good thing, right?) I told him the last time he always needs to give me a deadline for any letters he wants me to write so that I will make myself write them.

He keeps asking me to write letters. I really don't know sometimes what to say in them, I just stick stuff in them and figure he'll add or remove anything necessary. So far that's worked for him, I think. Anyway, I sent him the current ones, I think he'll have more editing to do than last time.

New iPod accessory

I bought a car adaptor for the iPod off Amazon. It was a $99 thing, but was half off. It is a unit that plugs into the car charger, has a cradle for the iPod, and has an FM transmitter. It looks like it's one of the better working transmitters, we passed on 2 others.

On road trips in the past, Tara has taken a large number of CD's with us to play in the car. This is ok, but it drives me crazy when we get to the end of a kid's CD, and everyone in the car is asleep but me, so I pop the CD out, but I'm driving the car, so I can't get to the CD's to switch them. Our CD Player has a 'feature' where if you eject the CD, but do not take it out, it sucks it back in and starts playing again. I would just switch to the radio, but in the middle of nowhere, it's a little hard to find anything but country stations. This will no longer happen! No CD's wasting space in the car. No struggling to find the right thing or stop the current music. It's just a matter of using the iPod, and letting it go until you stop for the night.

Back room defrag

I rearranged the back room tonight. Every few months (or less) something in the house gets changed around. Why you ask? I figure people visit occasionally, they might want a change of scenery. It's so seldom that we have blind people in the house, although we have our suspicions any time we ask Kate to go find something for us.

Tara wanted to take the plastic off the back door so that she could start sending the girls outside to play. The back door has a negative energy efficiency rating. We need to replace it. We had set a couch barricade the last time we rearranged the room so that Tara's sewing stuff would be blocked off, and no little fingers could get to it, but a side effect included not being able to get to the back door. Now you can. All of Tara's sewing stuff is now together in a row also.

No pictures. If you want to see it, you need to come over and have yourself a look, but come sometime soon, things are bound to change.

2006 Goal Update - 26 Feb

1: Move up on ITRC forums. I am currently at 3517 points. (No new points this week. I wqas very busy at work, and will be for a couple of more weeks.)

2: Mission Journal - Nothing new done this week.

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Spring 2006

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - Spring 2006

5: Weight - 214 right now. One more pound gone.

6: Gazelle - Not used this week. Tara has been using this for the last 3 weeks. Her new thing is to put Emma or Ruth on her back and use the machine so she gets a better workout...

7: Vacation - AoE III - The first thing Drew said when he showed up was: "I cut my finger this morning, and almost had stiches. If I don't play very good, that's the reason." Next vacation - Baltimore in April.

Wasting time update - 349 badges at MSN games. (No new badges this week. I was at the Stake Center 5 nights this week...)

For those of you who only visit once a week or less...

I changed the number of posts you see from 21 to 28. Last Sunday's goal update post almost wasn't on the main page anymore.

Enjoy

Game Time

Settlers of Catan

Me - 1
Tara - 0

I almost bought tickets.

I almost bought plane tickets today. There was a flight to Baltimore on April for $250, but it was not Delta or United, the 2 airlines that actually will let me fly without hassling me about being on the terror watch list. (For a while, I suspected Rob, Jonathan, Russ, Scott, or Paul of putting my name there, but I don't think it works that way...) Anyway, any time I flew, I could guarentee delays while they called around. One time, I almost didn't make it home because they moved the 2nd leg of the flight to a different airline.

United and Delta 'pre-clear' me on the watch list if I have my frequent flyer number on the tickets. That's one very good way to get me to fly with them...

I could fly for $250 retruning on July 4th, I'm not sure that I want to try to get out of here that morning...

Dinner

Me: "What do you want for dinner, Emma?"
Emma: "Pizza."
Me: Why don't you pick something we have here at home?"
Emma: "Breadsticks and sauce."
As I was walking away she offered this: "I like Macaroni and Cheese sometimes, but we had that for lunch. I like pepperoni."

Who can argue with a 2 year old's logic sometines? The girls had pizza, breadsticks, and sauce. Tara and I had KFC snackers.

Still playing Hardball

The window people called me this week, they wanted to send the marketing director to "Make me an offer that I would be very pleased with". This guy wasted less of my time, I'll give him credit for that. He started talking, I told him I wanted a quote for only the 6 bedroom windows. (Omitting the 2 really big windows and the 3 other windows.) The quote ended up being roughly half the amount we were quoted last week. (I expected it to be better than it was...)

The guy wrote a number down, then took 10% off. Then he took 7.5% off. Then he took 8% off. (I was doing the math in my head by then...) Then he took 9% off. I my head I figured it was about 30%. (not 35.5% as you might expect by adding the percentages. It was really ((total)x(.9)x(.925)x(.92)x(.91)) Maybe I should have said up front that I was a math major in college. The guy last week told us we were getting a 30% discount. I told the guy no, he asked if he could go call him manager to see if there was a better deal. (How long do those sales classes say to sit out in your car twiddling your thumbs? I didn't waste my time, I ate a sandwich.) He came back in, (without knocking) and made an offer that was another 10% off that total. (7% off the origonal total.) I still didn't think it was an offer I couldn't refuse, and didn't really want to finance it, so we shouwed him on his way. (Him: "Really? What about 90 days same as cash?" Me: "That would still be financing it." Him: "But you wouldn't have to pay anything for 6 weeks." Me (In my head) sometimes 6 weeks feels like 90 days, is he just giving the wrong interval, or is there a trick to the financing? (Not in head): "No thanks."

Anyway, we might get some other companies to just give us a bid...

Miss Happy Go Lucky

Need I say more?

The three hooligans

Need I say more?

New niece

My sister had a baby Tuesday night. She had previously posted a note offering up the naming rights for $1000. I sent her a check and told her I wanted the name to be "the square root of 2." This must have been vetoed, the babies name is Madilynn. (Or something like that. I took me 2 months to remember her boy's name was Evan, and it took me 4 months to figure out that Darren wasn't the very loud guy she used to date...

If you cash the check, I will call forever call that kid 'square root of 2.'

More iPod fun

I already talked about the alarm on the iPod I got fixed. I couldn't get anyone at work to fess up to it.

Yesterday afternoon I got it out of my pocket and the menu was in Japanese. (Or some kind of Kangi anyway.) I went and found someone who had an iPod, we got it back to English.

There are one of three things going on here. 1: Someone is fooling with me. (I wouldn't doubt this. Today I lowered the armrest on one guy in the office's chair. Tuesday I littered another guys cubicle with old CD's right after he cleaned his desk up...) 2: Emma is fiddling with it. 3: The buttons are being pressed as it sits in my pocket, causing things to happen.

I took Emma with me to the Stake center today. We had to sit there while the President did an interview. Emma listened to the Kids CD's I ripped to it last week. She seemed very, very adept at using the interface. I wouldn't put it past her to be the one fiddling with the iPod when I am not looking.

Book Report

1776 by David McCullough

Or more aptly named: "Late 1775-Very Early 1777"

This book follows the adventures of one General George Washington, of the soon-to-be United States of America, leader of the Contenental Army. Fitting that I was able to finish the book today, not only because it's due at the library tomorrow, but also because it's George Washington's birthday today. (You know, the guy on the one dollar bill?)

I picked this book up because it was sitting there at the library. Also because the author came to campus this year for a forum. Also because I do read.

The book goes through the seige of Boston, the attempted defense of Brooklyn and New York, and retreats through there and all of New Jersey. The end of the book includes the 'crossing of the Delaware', and the successful recaptures of Trenton and Princton New Jersey. (This all happened in 1776, even if the begining of the seige of Boston started in 1775.)

The book focuses on George Washington as the 'central figure' of the book, he really was the leader of the army, so I guess it should. The book isn't the sort of "This is what happened all over the world this year" type of thing, but focused on the armies struggles against the British.

Reading the book, I am amazed again on how the Colonies ever won this war. They were so overpowered, Britian could easily have won many times over. Only the hand of the Lord got them through it, nothing else could have. (Well modern day weaponery could have, but that's the stuff of science fiction. This was a history book. Non-fiction.)

The begining of the book felt a little slow for me. If you pick it up, give it a little time, the story really picks up. A very interesting read.

Wednesday's are long, but worth it.

Wednesday's are normally long for me. I end up always staying up late on Tuesdays, it takes a little while to be ready for bed after being at the Stake Center for interviews on Tuesdays. Then morning always come at the same time, no matter when you go to bed. I went to bed last night at something like 1:30 or 2. (I had some work to get done.)

I ended up walking to work today. I have my training class Wednesdays at 11:00 am, and I am the one usually teaching them, so less generally gets done if I am not there. This means on weeks when Kate needs to be picked up (we trade off with someone), I need to walk so Tara will have the car. My ankle hurt really badly this morning. I didn't want to walk, and I couldn't find my ankle brace, so I put on my boots, sucked it up, and left.

I wasn't too excited by the training topic this week (firewalls), I pick them generally, but this one had to be done. Add that to the 3 hours of scheduled work, and 4 hours of unscheduled work, and I was busy all day. I also needed to do Presidency and Welfare meeting agendas. I got those done, and started walking home. (Tara usually goes to her Sister and Mom's houses on Wednesday's, gets home after I am already in meetings.) President Christiansen called, President Hales was out of town, Mark was out of town (which means I had to take minutes tonight, by the way.), and we really didn't have a lot to get done without them. We moved the meeting to 7pm, just long enough to prepare for Welfare Council.

This was nice. I had a book with 150 pages left, it's due at the library tomorrow. I spend the extra hour reading it. (Look here for the Book Report...)

Welfare meeting went 2 1/2 hours. This was 2 1/2 hours of furious typing, trying to keep up. I don't know how Mark does it.

Presidency Meeting and other Stake meetings are really nice to be involved in, most of the time. Generally it involves quite a bit of listening to council and training that I wouldn't always get. (Unless I had one of those other callings that have all that responsibility. I get the best of both worlds here...)

Now it's 11pm, I'm home, and a little tired, but not really ready to go to bed. Tara is past out on the couch. I missed a very high scoring basketball game tonight. I have popped in Scooby Doo 2, and I think I will read the rest of my book while it plays.

I already have 6 hours of scheduled work for tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

More fun with the Postal Service

We had a Netflix movie ship on Thursday. It arrived today. We had a Netflix movie ship last night. It arrived today. I am not sure why they both arrived on the same day, or why one took 5 days and one took 1 day.

I got a card in the mail today for a product testing opportunity from the HandyMan Club of America. This is the kind of thing where you test the thing out, give feedback, and mail it back. The card came in postcard size, with a couple of sections connected together. The mail 'header' was mailed, the other pieces were torn off before delivery. I figure it's mail fraud, but I'm not sure I care anymore.

Our mail comes in at varying rates of speed. I our goes out at different rates of speed. Some days, the mail is not delivered when it should be. (usually it's a Saturday.)

Just today, I have had someone tell me a story of the time they tried to fight the poor service they got from the post office, and got a masty call from their 'postal' person, who seemed to be going postal. Tara tells me I am never taking my mailbox to the post office to 'return' it. (Really? Never?) She also reminds me of the story from President Monson where the postman killed himself after everyone complained about him.

Now I don't want to be the reason why someone kills themself or goes postal. I don't even what to become some mail pariah, where I am banned from every getting mail again. What I do want, is that if I have to keep using their service, and they continue to raise the price of that service, they had better make it work in a timely and expected fashion. (Meaning get my mail to me, stop watching my DVD's before you bring them to me, stop reading my mail, stop stealing all the good stuff. I'm not paranoid, I'm just getting a little worked up.)

If you are thinking of writing me a letter, please put down the paper and pen, go to the computer, and send an email. Or post a comment here on the blog.

P.S. I would really, really like to build myself a new mailbox, and 'return' the old one.

Game Time

Round 1 - Me vs. Drew

Winner: ME

Round 2 - Tom vs. Drew

Winner: DREW

Round 3 - Tom vs. Drew vs. Me vs. Computer

Winner: TOM

Total time: 9 hours.

Drew didn't seem to want any of the chicken wings we made. (There are leftovers...)

I figured out what the nearly midnight alarm was

For the past 2 weeks or so, If I'm anywhere near consious, I hear an electronic alarm go off just around midnight. A few nights, it sounded like it was in our bedroom. A few nights, it sounded like it was somewhere else in the house. The rest of the nights, I was out cold.

Anyhow, I figured out what the alarm was coming from. It was my iPod. Someone set the alarm for just before midnight.

Now, this could very well have happened while the thing was sitting in my coat pocket, but somehow, I doubt it. One of the girls could have done it, but somehow, I doubt it. Where this was most likely to have happened was one of the times the iPod was sitting at my desk at work, and I was not.

I'm likely to not find out who did it, I guess I'll just chalk it up to experience. Someone was likely trying to teach me not to leave my iPod out. (I don't blame them. Anyone who uses Windows in the office, and leaves their machine logged in when they leave, comes back to find that all their sounds have been enabled, and all the sounds are beaker. Beaker Sound or Other Beaker Sound We have a term for it - being Beakerized.) Someone was just getting paybacks...

Does anyone care about Barry Bonds?

If you do, please read my post, then click the comment button, and let me have it.

ESPN.com - Bonds calls this his last season -- HR record or not



Does anyone care? The only thing out of this guy's for a very long time is insults. He insults fans, he insults the media, he insults the game. There is no question in my mind he would not be where he is in baseball (including all the injuries he currently struggles with) without steroids. I hope he doesn't break hank Aaron's record. Is he off steroids? If not, he's just as dumb as Rafiel Palmiero, but I bet he's off now, this season we will see him a lot smaller, he won't have nearly as much power (and blame his knees), and won't get anything near the number of Home Runs he needs.



If he's really not happy, maybe he should quit now. Do something he likes, maybe open a restaurant or whatever, just stop saying things in public. I think he's bad for baseball. (less than 6 weeks until Opening day, by the way.)

Instead of reading articles like these, I should go back to bed... Sorry for the (short) rant.

I was asleep...

I woke up an hour ago with some pretty severe upper lung pain. I think what happened was I had an asthma attack with the machine on, and it made it worse, but I don't know. It's pretty much ok now. That's never happened before with the machine, and it definitely woke me up, so hopefully it was isolated and won't ever happen again. (I was sleeping on my side, which I normally don't do, and I was really hot, so maybe that was it.)

Emma woke up 10 minutes later and sounded terrible. I gave her the inhalers, she got better quick and went to bed. (That's why I figure I had an asthma attack. Maybe something in the house or outside changed to trigger both of us.)

President Christiansen wanted me to see how to take the video tapes of the Worldwide Leadership broadcast and make some DVD's of them to get to the wards for all the people who missed it. I really haven't figured out how to do that yet. While I was up tonight, I downloaded the audio and burned a CD with it. They still don't have the video of the thing on the web, but say it will be there by the end of February. I can make a DVD then if he wants...

Anyway, if you missed it, it was very good. The theme was the proclimation on the family. Here is the link to the audio and text. (And I assume the video, when it's ready.): Worldwide Leadership Broadcast - Feb 2006

Game Time

Chess

Me - 1
Kate and Mary - 0

We'll ignore the fact that they are 6 and 4, respectively, and also the fact that they had never really played before...

Stake Sweethearts Ball

We went to the Stake Sweetheart's Ball last night. (Tara and I) The Stake President and his wife were there, (they were supposed to be out of town, but that's a completely different story) she was telling us how this was the first time he ever danced with her since they have been married. I thought she was joking, but it turns out they were serious. He seems to have enjoyed it.

Anyway, in Australia or South Africa, or anything like that, do people generally dance counter-clockwise? Just something I was wondering about last night.

2006 Goal update - 19 Feb

1: Move up on ITRC forums. I am currently at 3517 points. (27 points this week) This brings me to 149 on the list, but I'm not likely to stay there by doing nothing, there are a couple of people hot on my tail who get something like 100 points a week. (This was expected when I started, not something to worry about, really. I am still ahead of the pace I have set for myself.)

2: Mission Journal - I wrote some more in it this week. I had intended to write a little each day, that only lastest the first 2 days.

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Spring 2006

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - Spring 2006

5: Weight - 215 right now. Only another 1/2 pound. I guess my 'do-absolutely-nothing-different' diet will only take you so far...

6: Gazelle - 1.11 miles this week. Read it and weep.

7: Vacation - "President's Day" - Age of Empires III round 2. Festivites start at 8am. We have Chicken wingds ready to cook up and eat, Anson is also spending the day with us. Drew has been trash talking, tune in here to see what happens.

Wasting time update - 349 badges at MSN games. (10 more this week)

Superman Season 2

We started watching Superman the Animated Series season 2. By far, the favored edisode was "Mxyzpixilated". We watched it 4 times: Once with Emma and Mary, Once I watched it with the series creators commentary, Emma made Tara put it on so Kate could watch it, and once after Tom came over.

The girls keep talking about the episode with the little guy who made superman say his name backwards. Emma thought it was hilarious.

Replacement Windows

We just heard someone pitch us new windows in the house. The windows sound nice enough, and seem to be nice quality. They manufacture the windows themselves, so you wouldn't have to do any new framing, siding, etc.

One of the deals here is that they are looking to do some work, then have a sign out front of the house for something like 3 months. They manufacture all the windows, then bring them in and get all the work done the same day.

The guy was nice enough, we went through measuring the windows. He eventually came up with a bid for $8800 for the double moving sliders, and $8100 for the single moving sliders. (They also have double and single hung widows, but he didn't give us a bid for that.) They offer financing (of course), and even 'could work out' a year same as cash.

After his pitch was done, he asked us what we thought. (My answer was that we would call him on Tuesday with an answer.) He interrupted, and said "I know what you will say: 'We have to pray about it', 'I have to sleep on it', or whatever, but it all means no." I told him I may call him on Tuesday (and was going to say that Tara and I would not commit to it without talking to each other with him not in the room, but he interrupted again.) He said we could take it or leave it, if we called the company direct, they would give a 10% discount, but the discount would not be the same. Then he said that the discount would not be in effect by Tuesday, he only had 4 people he could give the deal to in the area, if we didn't do it tonight, it would be too late, so we could agree or he would be on his way. I thanked him for coming and showed him the door.

At this point he was ticking me off a little. For one, see the previous post about not being prepared to deal with people today. For another, at night, the testosterone was wearing off, I get a little irritable at night. (A least quicker to it. I believe the term is 'roid rage'.) I was still very polite and let him out nicely.

I figure if we wanted, I could call him Tuesday or Wednesday, tell him we might still be interested, but we wanted single hung windows, and wanted a good deal on it, and he would still fall all over himself to get back here and get our business. In our area, there are a lot of non-resident landlords, and a lot of people would couldn't/wouldn't replace their windows. Our neighborhood is likely an area they would like to get some business in. Any way around it, if I call him back on Tuesday, we then deal with them on our terms, not on their terms. (Do people really do on-the-spot purchases like that?)

Short work day

I didn't get a good night's sleep last night. This was mainly caused by the fact that I failed to use my sleep apnea machine. By the time I was awake, and ready to go to work, it was about 10am. (It would have been even later if Emma wasn't such a loud person.) I took Mary to work with me.

When I got to work, I was not prepared to interact with other people. Especially other people who bug me. This might be true other days, but it was more so today. About the time 1.5 hours in to the workday) Mary showed me the picture of the Baby who is always yelling (I figure this was Ruth last night) and the Daddy who was always yelling.

I took this as a sign, and packed up and went home. We'll try again on Tuesday.

I accidentally fixed something today.

At work we have a tape backup jukebox that is 8 years old. It is currently only being used to back up 2 machines, which are a little older than the jukebox. The whole thing (jukebox and servers, along with a whole bunch of other stuff from the 1990's) will be gone in 2 or 3 months.

The drives in the jukebox stopped working completely yesterday. Only the lady who does the backup report was concerned about it. None of us really wanted to fix it. We called it "Good news and bad news."

We looked at alternate methods of backing up the 2 remaining servers it was servicing. One of the guys in my office was concerned that we would not be able to do restores if the machine crashed tomorrow. I conceeded to go down and hook up one or two tape drives to the backup server so we could do manual restores if we needed to.

When we got down there, I powered off the jukebox. (This was to take some drives out.) I got curious, and powered it on to see what happened. (I had someone do this for me yesterday, the thing never powered up properly.) When I turned it on, the thing came all the way up. An hour later, I had it resynced with the backup software, and they are running backups for 2 servers through it again. It's kind of disappointing in a way. I guess the jukebox just needed to have someone power it on where the threat of cursing it out properly existed. (The guy who power cycled it for me yesterday is just too nice...) Everyone else figures it just needed the magic touch.

If I hadn't fixed it, no one would have really cared, and I would have had another lab machine to play with. Now I have to wait 3 more months to get my hands on it again.

Gone with the wind

Tara just finished watching Gone with the Wind. There's only one reason why I would sit through 4 hours of this movie, it's to hear the following line: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." As a followup shortly after, which I think is super funny, is "Tara, Tara, It's all about Tara, Tara."

I didn't sit through the current 4 hour viewing, I just walked in the door at the right time.

Fooling with the iPod

I run Linux on my laptop. I have a windows installation under VMware. My iPod had a music collection from my old Windows installation on the laptop, which is long gone. I had copied all the music to the VMware Windows installation, but 'it's not supported' to connect an iPod to Windows via Linux. A while back, I did some things that allowed the iPod to talk to VMware to the point that the Windows installation knew the iPod was there and opened iTunes. (I thought this was pretty good, but the key phrases here are 'did some things' and 'it's not supported'.) Anyhow, at that time, the iPod would never actually talk to iTunes properly to update the thing.

About 6 weeks ago, I meddled some more in the 'did some things' category, and anytime I plugged the iPod into the laptop, and the VMWare windows detected it, Windows would crash. (Blue Screen of Death. Every time. The windows guys around that time started to say that people rarely saw the blue screen any more. I laughed and crashed my installation.) Anyhow, more things were meddled with, and now, in the Windows installation, I can crash it in any of the following ways: Plugging in the iPod, opening anything that plays video, and opening anything that plays audio. I use it for cheap parlor tricks. I would reinstall, but SOMEDAY I will get a new laptop. The moral of that story is: don't let the Operating System Engineers fiddle with their laptops if that's their primary machine. They could get bored and 'do some things' to it. Or: Keep those Linux/UNIX guys off of Windows. It's just bad for everyone all the way around.

I plugged the iPod into the Windows installation at home, and convinced it that I really did want to copy all my music onto that machine. This actually worked. I copied 7GB of stuff onto the machine last night. I don't know if this is a common thing people do, but I was impressed, at least.

Today I started ripping the Chronicles of Narnia CD's we got the girls for Christmas onto the iPod. Once that's done, I need to get the Wilford Woodruff manual and the January Ensign onto it.

Game Time

Cities and Knights of Catan

John - 1
Tara - 0

Delivery people are ticking me off

I took our latest Netflix DVD's to the Post Office Saturday night. I dropped them off at 6:10, last pickup on Saturday is 6:30pm. I expected to see something from Netflix yesterday. As of right now, there still is nothing. (Even if the Post Office had not sent it until yesterday, I should have seen something from them today, but no.) I'm chalking that up to our friendly neighborhood postal 'service'.

Amazon.com shipped our $163 worth of DVD's (Superman: The Animated Series season 2, Jane Austin Collection, The Cronicles of Narnia, Barbie in the Nutcracker, Barbie and the magic of Pegasus, Wonder Woman - The Complete third season) on Feb 7. They estimated the shipment would arrive between Feb 10 and Feb 13. (Still waiting. I know it was just an estimate, and there was a snowstorm back East, but this is the first time I have had Amazon ship something when it didn't get here on the first day of the estimate...)

I ordered Tara flowers (nice ones) from ftd.com last week, and put today as the delivery date. 'Today' is not over, but there are no flowers. Tara had to settle for a printout of what the flowers would have looked like.

Right now, I am assuming our mailman intercepted the flowers, they are sitting on the counter at his new DVD rental store.

My First Amendment Rights

This post not approved by the censors.

Restaurant Review

P.F. Changs

We went here for lunch today. (Valentine's lunch. We prefer to actually get to eat, rather than sit around for 2 hours waiting to eat. At least that was the theory.)

Our waiter was kind of off for some reason. (Not the 'guy dressed in drag covered in tattoes' kind of off.) He asked us what we wanted to drink (water) and if we wanted appetizers (Hot and Sour soup and lettuce wraps), after we told him, he just walked off. No 'I'll be right out with those waters', no 'your appetizers will be right here', no 'hot and sour soup and a lettuce wrap', he just walked off. Eventually he came back to see if we were ready to order. We gave him our order (Orange Chicken and Chang's Chicken), he just walked off. Again no confirmation that he heard us, got it right, or anything.

Our order eventually came, but not before a number of people who came after us got their food. (From different waiters.) He did come back a couple of times to refill the water. Towards the end, he asked if we needed a box for the rest of Tara's orange chicken, which we did. Tara and I were discussing dessert and the 'Great Wall of Chocolate', when he came back with the box. He put the food in the box, gave us the box, and gave us the check and disappeared. No 'could I interest you in dessert', or 'will there be anything else', or 'thank you for eating at Chang's'. We decided that we must not have wanted any dessert.

The food was good, but if you go, avoid the waiter with the haircut that looks like he combed it with a plunger.

Lunch conversation:

Tara: "Is this a francise?"
Me: "Yes. They call it Chang's Chains."

2006 Goal Update - 12 Feb

1: Move up on ITRC forums. I am currently at 3490 points. (12 points this week) The forums were down quite a bit this week, and I was busy, it seemed like every time I wanted to get on there, the page was down.

2: Mission Journal - 1 page written this week. (1 page! I've started writing again...)

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Spring 2006

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - Spring 2006

5: Weight - 215.5 right now. (Down 1/2 a pound from last week. Could anyone tell?)

6: Gazelle - 1 Mile on Thursday. I had stopped taking Ibuprophen at the beginning of the week, I only wanted to do a little to see how the ankle did. I spent all day Friday with leg cramps. Not sure if the Gazelle was implicated or not.

7: Vacation - "President's Day" - Age of Empires III round 2. 8 days until I teach Drew and Tom a lesson.

Wasting time update - 339 badges at MSN games. Only one more than last week. I guess I was busy this week...

Very early planting

I planted Brussels Sprouts, Spinach, and Radishes today. They are inside, I'm starting it from seed (like always). These are cold hearty, I'm going to see how long they can stay inside, maybe we'll make it far enough to plant outside, and I'll get a head start. I'm planting peas at the begining of March, unless it gets really cold out there again.

Game Time

Settlers of Catan

John - 2 games won
Tara - 1 game won

Restaurant Review

Taco Bell (by my house)

The first thing I have to say is that on Saturday night, snails could have prepared my order faster. It took about a half hour. I missed the last 4 minutes of the Basketball game, and all of halftime.

About 6 months ago, we bought the girls burritos instead of tacos. (The Taco Bell in question that time was all out of ground meat. How does that happen at a Taco Bell? They were also out of steak. I ordered something with chicken, the guy who came up behind me was informed that they were out of chicken. Why not just close if you are all out of meat?) Before that time we had always gotten them tacos from Taco Bell. The girls loved the bean burritos, that's all we get for them now, the days of tacos are gone.

I ordered 2 crunchwraps and 3 bean burritos. (That's all we really need.) I had gone to the store to get stuff for nachos (Taco Bell nachos are not worth it. You read it here first.) and decided that the Taco Bell by the store was too busy, so I went to the one by my house. It looked like they had a number of people in the drive through, I went inside. Big mistake. I think they did 10 car orders before I got my food. (And I could have listened to the end of the first half of the game...)

Our area was part of the 'limited time' test of the CrunchWrap Supreme. If you have not tried this yet, I highly recommend it, provided you do not starve waiting for your order to be filled. I was disappointed when the thing went away, I almost walked out fo the store at that time. There was a comercial for it last week saying it was back, and so was I. My old favorite item from Taco Bell was the Double Decker taco. (All the benefits of a taco, but the soft shell outer layer to keep it all in one piece while you eat it.) The CrunchWrap has replaced the double decker as the go to item from Taco Bell.

While I was waiting, one fo the other guys waiting was chatting me up. I'm not one to participate in idle conversion with strangers, but he persisted. He was complaining that they were so slow, I told him I had been waiting for 3 hours. (At this point all the employees turned and looked at me, I said it loud enough for them to all hear me. I got my food in only a few minutes after that. I did watch to make sure they didn't spit in it.) This guy was telling me how much he loved the CrunchWrap, I told him about how I was mad they got rid of it before. He said that it replaced the chalupa as his favorite, he was never going back to it. Then he said, 'Oh, you had the crunchwrap before? I just tried it for lunch, but it's great!' For him, it was the second meal in a row. (I fully expect to see him in a month, but weighing 200 pounds more...)

Is February 11 too early to start the garden for the year?

I turned over the garden today. I had tilled in a whole bunch of leaves and grass at the end of the growing season last year, it's almost all decomposed now, I turned over the garden to get the remaining layer under dirt. Hopefully that will help come April and May. (Not that we really had any trouble growing things out there before.)

I also trimmed all the bushes in the backyard. Our 'Old World' rose bush (is that what they are called) is starting to spread out some. Every year for about 2 weeks, it's as colorful as our forsithia bush. Tara seems to miss it every other year. 2 years ago, she was in Buffalo. Hopefully it blossems this year before we leave.

Book Report

Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time - Michael Downing

I saw this book at the library this afternoon and had to get it. More on why after the report.

The book is basically about the history of Daylight Saving Time in America. The thing was added and repealed twice before being added for the third and final time. I used to think it was for the farmers. (It wasn't for the farmers) The farmers over the years have always been opposed to it. The reason we have daylight saving time today, is that the last time it was repealed, New York City decided to stay on it. It turns out the extra hour helped them trade stock and commoditites with London, and without that hour, the markets were not open at the same time.

The author makes sure to point out that all along this grand clock changing experiment, proponents say one of the benefits of the time change is that it will save in fuel costs, but no one has really gotten good hard data that shows this. (It still gets just a cold in the Winter, it's not like a shift in the day makes the house warmer...)

This is a quick read, and is a very interesting look at what got us where we are today. It details some of the crazy things that happened along the way. (Once, a 25 mile trip from Ohio to West Virginia crossed 7 different times.) People seem to think moving the clock gives them more time. I'm still not sure how that works, although a 25 hour day might be nice...

Now for comments by me:

A couple of years ago, I decided not to go onto Daylight Saving Time at home. I did not change the clocks ahead. It stayed that way for a couple of weeks until Tara said it had been driving her crazy, and she really wanted me to fix the clocks. I figured it was just an artifical thing anyway, why move the clock just because everyone else was?

Now Congress for 2007 makes Daylight saving an extra month longer. (3 weeks into March, 1 week into November) I live directly West of a mountain. In the winter, the sun comes up over that ridge very late into the day. (much, much later than places that do not have a mountain directly East of them.) What will this mean for walking the girls to school and then going to work? Will we be walking in the dark, just so daylight can last a little longer at night? Will we have to continue to bundle up in the Springtime nice and warm, then have to carry our coats home, just because Daylight Savings has it colder in the morning longer into the year? What's the point?

If I had it to do it my way, I would make one universal time. (It's not like it's not already there...) I wouldn't even make people calculate it from Jan 1, 1970, but provide that for them. :) There would be no timezones, no Daylight Saving mess, just one time. The clock would go in a 24 hour format. 11:00 in New York City is 11:00 in London, Is 11:00 in Tokyo, etc. The only difference would be that 11:00 in London may be a hour before the sun is directly overhead, but 11:00 in New York City would be 3 hours until sunrise. It would be nighttime in Tokyo. People would base their schedules around when they wanted or needed to. Normal Business Hours in NYC may be 15:00-01:00. What would the big deal be? If the NYSE wanted to be open for an hour while the London market was open, make the Lodon hours be 08:00-16:00 and the New York market be open 15:00-01:00. I would never have to ask what time it is in France, the time is the same. (I just have to remember when people are awake over there.)

What would be the harm in that? I have always thought Daylight Saving Time was silly. (It's not like you save anytime.) End of rant.

Tara's Valentine's Day present is:

Tara reads this thing. Do you really think I would let the cat out of the bag? (It's not a cat or a bag.)

Tara went up on Monday and got me 2 nice new white shirts for valentine's day. They are really nice, I looked halfway decent in PEC meeting last night. (Still no suit. I reserve the wearing of the suit for baby blessings, baptisms, priesthood ordinations, the Sunday session of Stake Conference, etc. All my clothes in my closet are hung with the suit as a marker. Everything to the left of the suit has been worn since I last wore the suit. Everything to the right of it has not been worn since I last wore the suit. I don't know why I do that, I just do.)

I have been castigated in the past for some of the presents that Tara gets. (Never from her, mind you, always from others...) Once for Valentine's I got her a pillow. (She really needed a new one.) I was belittled for a while until it came out that she also got flowers, a book, a nice dinner, etc. That seemed to be acceptable. (Just just fun to say I got her a pillow.) For the past couple of years, we have made a trip to Florida for Valentine's. Last year we were in Fort Meyers Beach. The year before we were in Clearwater beach. The year before that we were in Orlando. We thought about going this year, but 4 kids seemed like a lot to send off to someone to watch for us in the middle of Winter while we were in Florida enjoying ourselves, and Kate is in Kindergarten now, and would have needed to stay near here. This limited things quite a bit. So the trip to Florida is out. This means I'm back to finding presents for Valentine's.

I went to Distribution Services to get her new garments today. (No need to comment, I hear them coming, it's not ALL she's getting...) While there, I called her to check on sizing to make sure it was right. There was a lady counting items in bins to restock, I couldn't help but ask Tara how many she wanted. While she anwsered, I said "FORTY?". The lady restocking gave me a dirty look, pretty much the reaction I was looking for, but there was a lady next her who was shopping. Her eyes got really wide as if to say "40? did he just say 40?" I had to tell her I was just kidding so she would stop staring at me. She said "Oh good. I thought I would have to hurry any grab mine before you took them all." It was pretty funny.

Anyhow, this year for Valentine's she's not getting any of these previous presents:

A pillow
A clock
A card written completely in Spanish
Money
A vacation away from the girls
Balloons
A book
I'm blocking out the rest.
A single Anonymous rose. (2 times - premarriage/dating)

Anyone have any ideas?

Performance and Development Plan

Today I signed my 2006 PDP. What a joke. The PDP is this form that you have to get filled out that shows what your 'major accomplishments' for the year were, what you want to do in the coming year, and a little eval your boss fills out that includes a check box for 'meets expectations' or 'needs improvement'. (No there is no box for 'needs better social skills'.)

In past years, I have been told to fill out the 'major accomplishments' section, and the 'what I want to do in the coming year' section. In past years, I have gotten ahold of one from the year before, changed the dates on it, and turned it back in with the exact same wording and everything. No one ever complained. One year, the department HR lady even said it was the best batch of PDP's she had seen. (everyone in the room did the old cut-and-paste thing.)

This year I figured there was no point. I don't figure anyone reads these things. The only people who really care, is my chief engineer and the director. They both know exactly what I do, what my value is, and what I will be working on this year. No one else cares, especially when the servers are up and everything is running like it should.

When Dave emailed asking us to list our major accomplishments, I replied that I learned to juggle monkeys. I now have a 2006 PDP signed by me him and the director that says I learned how to juggle monkeys and this year I wanted to learn how to juggle elephants.

If it were up to me, that would have been the one submitted. There is no way that someone in HR reads through the thousands and thousands of PDP's they get every year. We figure the real reason is so that there is a paper trail if someone needs to be fired.

Anyhow, Dave made the process VERY painless for me this year, he wrote a paragraph about my accomplishments, what I wanted to do, and had me sign it. If future PDP's are this easy, I may even stop bagging on them.

I'm off to work out. Those elephants are heavy...

What I look like at work the next day after having worked all night

How did you expect me to keep my head upright?

"They said there was a demon in the air. They said that whoever challenged him would die."

Still writing my paper. Tara stayed up for a while, and watched Fantastic Four. (A pretty good movie...) She gave up at about 1:45. After she went to bed, I popped in The Right Stuff. A few weeks ago at the store, they were selling 5 stick packs of Beemans chewing gum for a nickel each. I bought 30 packs. If you don't know what Beemans chewing gum has to do with the movie The Right Stuff, I suggest you go watch the movie.

I'm getting tired, I thought I would tell everyone about my new stick.

Ledge brought new sticks to work today. The stick is made of oak and it about a foot long, maybe a half inch wide, and a quarter inch thick. (Estimated size, really.) My old stick was about the same size, Ledge says this one is an 1/8 of an inch thicker. (As if that will stop me...)

I got my old one from him years ago. I used to pick it up if something was bothering me. (Or someone.) I would tap it against the back of my head, walk down the hall hitting the old lockers with it, hold it under the table and flex it a little, stuff like that. I don't know who many times it kept me from not saying the things I was thinking, especially on the phone. For a while, the old stick started bending just slightly in one direction, I made sure to start flexing it the other way.
It was a pretty effective stick. Especially for the money I paid for it. One day about a year ago, I was talking to someone on the phone who was really ticking me off. The conversation ended on a really bad note, I broke my stick in half. Not over my knee or anything, just in half. I think I scared the guy who used to sit next to me. (Maybe that's why he switched back into the DBA team...) Evereyone got really quiet for a while after I broke my stick and tossed it in the garbage. (And after some said 'What was that?' 'My stick' 'Oh.') I think everyone else's sticks kind of disappeared after that...

Anyhow, I don't know what an extra 1/8 of an inch will do for me, I haven't been that mad too many times since then. It will be nice to have a stick to play with again.

Ledge brought everyone sticks. When i got in this morning, they all had their names written on the sides of their sticks. I just wrote PAIN on the ends of mine. Should be an effective pointing tool.

Tomorrow, if you are in my building, and you hear the sound of something banging on the lockers, that's me with my new stick...

Name that movie:
"... What's your prediction for the fight?"
"My prediction?"
"Yeah."
"PAIN!"

I gotta get back to work.

No more TV.

The cable guy came this morning to disconnect the cable. The only thing I was worried about was that he might screw up the Internet service. That did not happen, which is why I am able to creat this post.

Tara has already had 'buyer's remorse', she realized that the Winter Olympics start this week, we won't be watching. (Although from what I hear, Torino is nice. Isn't that where you spent something like a year of your mission in Rob?)

I missed a 1pm meeting yesterday, I was asleep. In my own defense, the meeting was not called until I was already asleep, I didn't hear about it until after it was over. They decided on 9am meetings today, tomorrow, and Thursday. I missed this morning's meeting, I was asleep. From what I hear, I whould have been there. As a result, I have a large paper to write tonight to prepare for tomorrow morning's meeting, and if I am not there by 8:45, my boss will call me to find out where I am.

I should be typing this thing right now, but I took a short break. I only got an outline in during the day today, now it's crunch time. I will likely have to stay up into the wee small hours of the morning. What a time to not have some mindless TV to turn on so that I have something going on in the background to help me work. I will have to turn on some music or a DVD. (Or both, really.)

I will end up having put in a lot of hours this week, and that includes several nights. I don't think I will get to leave all that early on Friday, maybe I will have to make up for it next week. (Or not, but I do need to get the car a tuneup, and get it reregistered this month.)

The long and the short of it is, I gotta go.

Christmas Tie

I got a Chili Peppers wearing Santa hats tie for Christmas this past year. I only got to wear it once, I put it on tonight for Stake interviews just to see if anyone would notice and comment on it. only the 2 high councilors said anything about it maybe no one else was looking. The former Stake PResident came, and kept looking at me funny, maybe he was trying to figure out why I was wearing a Christmas tie in February. (Or maybe that's the way people look at me, and I just don't notice it at all.) I was hoping for a better reaction than that, maybe I will have to wear the Buffalo Bills tie and see what happens.

Late night last night

I worked 11 hours last night. It should have been less, but we had problems with our Databases at the end of our upgrades. Luckily I don't have oversight over the DB's, I just cracked the whip to get the DBA's to get things fixed. I went to sleep at something like 9:30, and have just woken up 5 hours later. I think that's pretty good for the fact that all the girls are here, and Tara is not. (She went to buy me some new white shirts, I think.)

I woke up and realized that I forgot to start some of the servers. (Mainly the backup servers.) I looks like someone eventually noticed and got them started up.

11 hours is a good way to start the week, because I pass 40 early and tend to leave a little earlier at the end of the week, but this week I think I have a lot to do and may end up with a lot.. I have a meeting with the architect's council on Friday, maybe I will leave after that.

The Planets - Holst

The book I just got finished reading got me thinking about The Planets by Holst. (That's classical music, if you didn't know.) Since I am up late tonight working, I thought I'd listen. It's over now, but now it has me thinking about the movie The Right Stuff, which I haven't watched in something like a year and a half. (Shoutout to Ben Galbraith, who bought me the DVD) I think I'll start watching it this week. I'm sure Tara will be SO excited. It may take me a whole week to watch it, it's kind of long, and I'm kind of busy.

Sunday Night Fish Fry

AKA: Anyone need a fish tank?
or Ding, Dong, the Fish is dead
or No toilet flush for you, here's the disposal
or Maybe we should have fed that one...

We found one of the Betas dead tonight. We had 2 of them, we got them at a wedding in Florida nearly 2 years ago. At first, we tried to ditch them in Buffalo, but that didn't work, they ended up coming home with us.

For a year, this fish lived in it's little plastic cup. It seemed happy there, for a while. I used to clean the cup out with an eye dropper, sucking out all the junk. About a year ago, we decided to get this fish it's own bowl.

I don't think the fish every really liked the bowl. Or maybe it didn't like the way Kate once knocked the shelf it was on over and nearly knocked the fish out of it's bowl. Or it didn't like the way it used to be in the kitchen, then we moved it to the back room. Or it didn't like the way we kept forgetting to feed it. (The other fish doesn't seem to mind.) Or it didn't like the way we never changed out the water. (The other fish doesn't seem to mind.) Whatever it was, the fish is now gone.

There was no grand funeral. I don't even think the girls will notice for a while. The fish was just scooped out, and tossed in the garbage. (You didn't really think I fried it up, did you?)

I didn't think that either fish would last nearly this long. Anyone need a fishbowl?

2006 Goal Update - 5 Feb

1: Move up on ITRC forums. I am currently at 3478 points. (81 points this week) This vaults me three spaces to position 152 on the list. Since the beginning of the year, I have accumilated 256 total points, most from posts that got 10 points. (The highest a post can get.) Hopefully that means I have been able to help people out. Funny enough, most of those posts have also been at night, not during the day when I am at work. I just get kind of busy during the day and don't always take the time to answer questions.

2: Mission Journal - No progress made. It won't happen today, either. I have to go home teaching after church, then finish writing all the thank you letters for the Stake President from Stake Conference. (Not really looking forward to it, and I don't remember what 2 of the people talked about.) I have to work at 10pm tonight, all night, and I also hope to get some sleep in before that.

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Spring 2006

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - Spring 2006

5: Weight - 216 right now. (Down 3 from last week. Could anyone tell?) The Doughnuts and Soda team is not doing so hot, one of the guys gained some weight last weekend.

6: Gazelle - Not used this week. In an interesting development, I moved it into our bedroom where Ruth's crib used to be. We'll see if that helps any.

7: Vacation - "President's Day" - Age of Empires III round 2. Bring it on, Drew and Tom. (Rob had wanted to get in on it from NYC, and I figured a way to get him onto my local LAN, but it turns out he doesn't actually have a copy of AoE3.)

Wasting time update - 310 badges at MSN games. Only one more than last week. I guess I was busy this week...

Book Report

The Planets - Dava Sobel

This is a relavitely short book, where the author just lines the planets (And the sun, and our moon) up and talks a little bit about them, one by one. It's interesting, many of the stories she tells I had already heard before, but the book is well written, and the story just flows. It's a good book to just brush up on the history of the planets and their natures.

Separation success!

We moved Mary out of the girl's room last night. It took 3 hours where we were all cleaning to get their room 'almost' clean. All the girls went to bed last night, there was no fighting, we thought we were in a different house. It was nice.

This morning, I moved Ruth in with Mary in the 'new' room. Hopefully that will work out well.

Basketball game

We had a couple of late cancellations for the basketball game, we ended up using only 17 of the 20 tickets. It's ok, they were only a dollar each.

First thing the girls wanted when we got there was popcorn and nachos. (Of course...) I went down to get the stuff, and the bill was $9. I gave the guy my signature card, he kept swiping it. I asked him what he was doing, he said something was wrong, it was charging the wrong price. (Why would you keep swiping it if it was charging you the wrong price?) It was charging 5.85 each time. He thought he charged me twice, gave me $12, and took 9 of it. It turns out he charged me the $5.85 3 times, not 2. I will have to call the signature card office Monday to try to get it fixed.

Later, everyone wanted Hot Dogs. (Well, I thought they did, Emma didn't actually eat one.) I walked half way around the stadium to get to a different stand that didn't have a long line. They got the charge right, it just took them 10 minutes. I think I wil have to start bringing cash to the games.

The right team won, that was good.

Towards the end of the game, I went down and got a drink. They had posters out for people to take, I grabbed a handful and passed them out. After the game, I still had 10 of them, I ended up giving them to people walking by. (One guy asked where I got them, I gave him a couple, then a lady came up and asked for some, so I gave some to her. Then the first guy came back and asked if I was passing them out and worked there. I was passing them out, yes, but I didn't work there...)

Everyone had fun, we wore Emma out, she's out cold.

Aida

We went to see Aida tonight. It was pretty good, except near the begining, there was a "West Side Story" type 'gang dance'. The actors were all in the same costume, they all had the same glasses. 2 of the guys looked exactly alike in this scene, and it reminded me of Agent Smith in the Matrix, and I started laughing. Tara thought I was mocking the choreography in my head. (I'm sure that she had some sort of comment from me in there...) I guess I really was mocking it, it just seemed funny to me, I just couldn't help it.

We were in the front row, dead center. I had to try to stop laughing at them, I didn't really want to be rude... Anyway, the Agent Smiths came out a couple of other times. I kept laughing at them.

Oh yeah, other than that, it was a pretty good show.

Current contents of my coat pockets

MY coat keeps knocking over the coat rack in my office. Not really my coat, but whenever someone walks by it, the coat rack falls in the direction my coat is hanging. Everyone else has coats on the coat rack, if I take mine off, it doesn't fall. So that leads me to wonder what in the world is in those pockets. Here's the list:

iPod w/ earplugs
inhaler
Rite Aid recipt from Jan 2
RC Willey reciept from Dec 20 (New Oven)
A pen
2 AA batteries
A blank piece of paper
Blistex
Charger for my Cell phone (I've been looking all over for that!)
2 gloves - matching

That doesn't seem like a whole lot of stuff, really. Maybe the coat rack was just unbalanced.

Goodbye Cable!

We cancelled our cable TV service today. Emma has startede to get like Kate used to be before we cancelled it a couple of years ago. She would want to watch PBS kids starting as soon as she woke up, and pitched a fit whenever the TV was turned off.

We have a lot of DVD's, and we are letting them pick a new one each this week, I think we could start watching DVD's now, and finish the ones we have around June.

We signed up for Netflix. It sounds very interesting, and they have a LARGE selection. Stay tuned here to find out how Netflix goes...