New High Councilor

We have called a new High Councilor in the Stake. (This seems to happen quite often here.) I called him this afternoon, left him a message to call me back. He called back about 45 minutes later, and started in on me. ("I don't want to hear about any meetings, I hope you don't have something for me to do...") I asked him to come in to see the Stake President. His response was something along the lines of "See, there you go. I told you meetings were out." He offered to not wear a suit. Then he offered to bring a pack of cigarettes with him. My response was that he didn't have to do that, but he could bring his wife with him. That really got him going...

Well, he's one of those fast talking jokester types. (Not sure how else to describe it.) After his interview, I told him he can not be afraid to answer his phone when I call from now on. Not sure what kind of consolation that was for him.

I have to admit, the "can you come in and meet with the Stake President? Can you bring your wife with you?" card is a pretty fun one to play...

The dude called back

I answered, then told him to hang up and dial the area code before the number. That seemed to be a fairly persuasive argument.

Stake Christmas cards

Last year, for the Stake Christmas card, President Hales designed a very nice trifold card. (He's a graphic designer.) They signed and addressed all the cards, and gave them to me to get mailed. There was only one problem with them, they were square (6"x6") cards with square envelopes.

I went to the post office, they told me the stamps would be 12 cents more. I said ok, do you have 49 cent stamps? They offered to give me a 37 cent, a 10 cent, and a 2 cent stamp. I had 200 cards, and really didn't want to stick on 600 stamps on envelopes. I asked if they would meter the cards. They told me if it was one or two of them, they would do it, but not 200.

Well, I figured I could had deliver most of them for the effort it would take to affix 600 stamps. I called around, places with metering machines generally charged to use the metering machine. Eventually I found a place that would meter the things for me for no extra charge.

Anyway, this year we have another trifold card, President Hales this morning emailed to say that the cards fold up to a standard card size, which I'm grateful for.

I don't even know why it costs more to mail square envelopes. One of the postal workers told me it was because the cards can not go through their machines and had to be hand processed. This seems odd to me. Why is it that a card that's 4x6 can go through just fine, and a card that's 6x8 can go through just fine, but a card that's 6x6 can't? It sounds like some sort of conspiracy to me. (Although I was careful to check a couple of the ones that got mailed with some people in the neighborhood to make sure that the card was hand stamped, and not machine stamped. They appeared to be hand stamped... Does the postal service need help designing a machine that can handle squares?

Mission Journal

So, I haven't made any progress my mission journal for quite some time. I take comfort in the fact that since the drive I had stored the latest, un-backed up copy was found after being missing for 6 weeks. I've even seen that drive tonight, it's nor re-lost, and I have since made a backup of the thing. For your reading pleasure, and in an effort to jump start the effort to finish the paper, I give you an exerpt from page 12:

"When I got into the MTC, they asked me if I had my medical papers and my picture. I did not have either of these things, so I got to go to a ‘special’ line after the welcome message from the MTC president. All missionaries took their luggage and left them in classrooms while they went through the orientation process. As we left one room, a lady was checking haircuts. If your haircut was not up to standards, you had to go get a haircut. The MTC barbershop was staffed by BYU barbers. If you passed the haircut inspection, she told you to make sure to get a haircut the day before you leave the MTC. We all got our sacks of materials and most missionaries were able to go to their dorms. I went to the special line and waited to get my picture taken. They charged us a dollar for the picture. I think the charge was more of a “This should teach you to read instructions better next time” sort of thing… While standing in line waiting for my picture, there was a missionary in front of me that decided to complain about just about everything. Mostly he complained about the 1 dollar he had to pay for the picture. After getting his picture taken, he mostly complained about how bad the picture was. I remember thinking, ‘I feel sorry for the guy that has to be his companion.’

After getting my picture taken, I had to stand in the line of people who forgot their medical history. Basically they gave you the form, and scheduled booster shots. They told me to call home and ask for the forms to be sent, or I would have to get the shots before I left the MTC. I called and asked my Mom to send the forms. They came in time for me to avoid the shots.

From here, I was finally able to go to my dorm room and meet my companion. I knew his name. It was Elder Sutton. When I got to my room and opened the door, the missionary that was sitting there was the complainer from the picture line. I couldn’t decide if I was going to be shocked or amused. Elder Sutton introduced himself as ‘William R. Sutton the third” and let me know he had already taken the bottom bunk. That was fine by me."

Is Kyle there?

From time to time recently, I have gotten calls for some dude named Kyle. The guy on the other end gets fairly insistant, claiming that he knows Kyle is "there", and he wants to talk to him. Then he calls back later. Then he has someone else call for him. They all think it's a joke that I won't let them talk to Kyle.

They've been silent for a couple of weeks, but called back tonight looking for Kyle. On the third call, I reminded the guy that Kyle wasn't here 3 weeks ago when he kept calling, either.

Several minutes later, I got a call from the same number as mine, but a different area code. (This number, however, was not the factor of 2 primes, but factors into 8 primes.) This call was from Kyle. He was calling to apologize for his friend, who often forgets that he needs to dial an area code when he calls certain people. He sounded fairly embarrassed for his friend.

At least now when the dude calls looking for Kyle now, I can remind him of what area code he needs to dial when calling Kyle...

HP Certified Shirt week

In honor of getting my new pens in the mail, I am declaring this "HP Certified shirt week" at work. (I did help get 2 of the other guys in the office HPUX certified, but I don't think they have the same number of shirts as I do, so this is likely to just be me wearing the shirts.)

I think people will enjoy this better than "Pants optional week".

The Stake President attended our ward this past Father's Day. The YW of the ward gave all the men little plants after the meeting. This is a picture of the cactus the Stake President got. He left it in his office for 2 months without water or really light. I have been "taking care of it" since then, which means that every once in a while, I remember to water the thing. It's pitiful little thing, isn't it?

It's at home right now, because I decided a couple of weeks ago that it needed a bigger pot. So far, it hasn't gotten that, or any more water, yet it still lives on.

Hats

I have been making hats. (Not Elmer Fudd hats yet...)

If you want a hat, you need to speak up. I think Kate wants the green and yellow one, and Emma put in a request for a pink hat earlier in the week. For the girls, I have a label on the inside that reads "My dad is too lazy to go shopping to get me a Christmas present, but he will sit there for 5 hours making me a hat."

I only have 12 different colors, and I have no idea if a few of them go together, so your results may vary. I think I'm safe so far.

Speak now, before my attention span runs out, and I swear them off in favor of Christmas cards. (I got my new pens in the mail yesterday, so I might soon be in some sort of mood to address the things, Tara wants to wait to mail them after we can insert a family picture, including the new baby. "T minus 3 weeks and counting.") I'm thinking about mentioning this blog in the cards. Is that bad/tacky/weird? Is there someone I should be sending a card to, but am bound to forget about?

Comment Moderation

I have enabled comment moderation on this blog tonight. I have been getting a fair amount of comment spam again the last couple of days. I didn't like the word verification in the comments from before, (I don't like that I have to do it myself to publish to the blog...) so we'll try this.

In a nutshell, this means that your comments will not be posted immediately to the blog. You have to wait for me to get online (gasp!), login, and approve the comments.

Fear not, there will not be censorship, except in the cases where you want to let me know that I can make $900 a week working for home, and maybe just occasionally when Rob posts a comment. {but only once in a while, Rob... :) } (Why is it that they think $900 a week would sway me to visit their stupid site? I can work from home any time I want...)

Well, don't let that diswade you from leaving a comment, they are encouraged, just not from some stupid bot in Jamacia that wants me to earn my fortune playing poker online. If you wish to leave a comment, feel free. If you are planning to say something completely off the wall, leave some sort of identifying marker there (name, rank, occupation, or whatever) so I know it was you and let it through.

A Christmas decorating haiku

Those Christmas tree lights

All tangled up, half strands work
How does this happen?

Happy Thanksgiving, Part 2

It's too bad that they can't get the licensing done to get this show on DVD...

Drewmer

Drew is going rabbit hunting in the morning. I tried making some Elmer Fudd references, but he really didn't bite on them. If we end up drawing names this year like we have been doing, (no one as mentioned it so far, and it's too late to call right now) and I get Drew, I know exactly what I want to get him. Otherwise, he might get 2 family presents...

Happy Thankgiving

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. For those out of towners here visiting, I hope you had a normal work day.

I ate too much pie, but it was good.

We had 2 turkeys, 16 pounds of mashed potatoes, and 4 pounds of corn. We also had 7 pies and a cake. I ate half of all of it.

Our back room could actually double as a banquet hall if we were to take everything out of it. I made little table settings, but Tara and Ruth were the only people that seemed to appreciate them.

Work monitor

I brought my monitor from work this afternoon. My primary motivation went like this: "The monitor is big. I might play games. I might do some work. I should take the monitor."

The monitor takes up so much less room than the old CRT we have here. And it's bigger. I hear the price on the 20" and 24" monitors have recently dropped. Maybe it's time to start looking at new systems...

Or maybe it's nearly time for Tara to have a baby and me to pay all the bills...

If I do get a machine, it will be (at least) a dual core machine. It's nice having the dual core laptop.

Thanksgiving isn't on Friday, but Emma still calls it Pieday.

Last Friday night, Emma wouldn't go to bed. (This happens every night, I'm not sure why Friday is necessarily note worthy in that respect.) At 10pm, I took her to Walmart with me to buy Age of Empires: The Warchiefs. (They were out, by the way...)

On the way back, I asked her if she was excited about Thanksgiving. (We hare having, Drew and Kaylyn, Tom, and Tara's family over.) She said she was, I asked her why she wanted to eat for Thanksgiving dinner. Her response:

"Apple pie, chips, blackberry pie, blueberry pie, banana pie, apple pie, I said it two times, and cherry pie."

I asked her a few minutes later what she wanted, she said: "Apple pie, apple pie, I said it twice..."

Emma seems to like pie, and really likes apple pie.
Luckily for her, I think dessert is a manditory part of the Thanksgiving meal. So far, we have a blackberry pie, a blueberry pie, and a cherry pie. I have 2 apple pies planned for the morning. I think she will be pleased.

Next time, I need to work on the latticing of the top. Now that I have done another one, I think I have figured out how to interleave the things. (You'd think I could just ask someone, but that's not my style...)

Is this thing on?

Ok, so I haven't been around in the past week. I've been kind of busy. It's a short work week without the short amount of work to do.

I'm back, never fear.

Nursery Appreciation Day

Today us Nursery Appreciation Day. This is the day your 18 month old goes to nursery for the first time. Even nicer this time, Emma has 6 weeks left in the nursery, and Ruth went in with her. Piece of cake.

The nursery leaders comment was that Ruth was a good girl, but they had to watch her because she kept wanting to climb on the chairs. Tell us about it.

Game Time

Age of Empires: The Warchiefs

Me - 0
Drew - 1

Ok, so I wasn't really trying all that hard, I was mostly spending time playing with the new game features. It didn't help that Drew was playing the same civ as me, (Iroquis) and he was used to it. Give me a couple of hours practice, and I'll be ready to call for a rematch.

Free Stuff

So this past week, I realized that I still had not gotten my certification from the certification I completed. This concerned me only in that I figured free stuff would come also. I ended the HP certified people, they acknowledged the oversight, and let me know it would be processed this week.

This morning I got an email that my paperwork was in staging to be mailed. They send a secondary email congratulating me and let me know they put a purchasing credit under my account on the certified store. Sweet, free stuff.

I went on, and for $2.71, I ordered the following: electrronic suduko, 5 of the nice pens I wanted, a key ring, and a little mini radio. It should be here around the first of December.

paybacks

The engineer that engaged in rampant whining yesterday made up for it big time this morning by bringing 2 dozen doughnuts. The Universe will find a balance. I think I ate 8 of them today. And it was pancake day at work. I like pancake day. Pancakes are made right about the time of the morning that I usually get hungry, which is nice.

If there are any questions, I refer you to the dilbert of 31 August 2006, which it appears that you can not see for free on the dilbert site anymore, but is referenced here.

Home phone

I just discovered something about my home phone number. With or without the Area code, the number is the product of 2 primes. Not to give the numbers away, but for one, one of the primes is 31, on the other, one for the primes is 397. (That should take a while to figure out, if you don't already know...)

Ok, I know that I'm the only person here who thinks that's cool, but now I am never ever giving up that number...

If it weren't for all the users, our systems would be stable.

I have been working on email issues for the better part of the last 2 days. It turns out a change was made on our gateway email servers that has impacted every single one of my servers. The change was made on Friday afternoon. People started noticing enough to ask about it late Monday morning.

Last night, I got a workaround for the problem figured out. I implmented it on the servers, I thought really needed it. I also emailed all the engineers letting them know the status up to that point. Today, I spent nearly the entire day trying to figure out the solution to the problem, and implementing the workaround on other machines.

Early this afternoon, one of the engineers replied back to the list saying to the effect of "Thanks for the fix, but why was there a change in the first place? Was it tested? Why didn't anyone notify us?" This was followed by a paragraph of whining. My initial response was to reply to the list, and let her have it. (It's not like I caused the problem, and it's not like she's the only person impacted by it. Her last statement "Where can I bill my time?", which was the one that got me the most.) I decided to squelch the inital response, and didn't mail back to the list. I considered emailing just her, but didn't. I figured anything I would say would first of all not be very productive, and second of all, the guy that actually broke the thing is sick, and I don't want everyone calling him driving him crazy and not letting him rest. I figured that I've been the bad guy before, I could do it again, no problem, really.

Anyway, her director emailed back this evening, saying he was only emailing the list because she did. His response was if she had questions about where to bill her time, she should ask himself or her chief engineer, but she should bill it to the products she supported. He noted that I was just trying to identify my involvement in the situation, I wasn't attempting to give a detailed analysis in the situation, and she shouldn't shoot the messenger. He pretty much told her to chill out.

Sometimes I don't actually need to bite people's head off, others can take care of it for me. In the meantime, I skipped a meeting for a project that's supposed to be cancelled, but the project manager has nothing better to do, so he is still pursuing it. They ended up calling me during the meeting to ask stupid questions, I snapped at them a few times, then basically ended the conversation. 2 minutes and 56 seconds. A new record, even for me.

Book Drive

The Bishop stopped in the Stake offices tonight, he told me they had just dropped something off at the house. I asked 'what kind of something?', knowing no one was home. It was a flyer for a Eagle Scout project, they were looking for used books. I told the Bishop "Have I got a deal for you!"

We got home, and it turns out they are looking for books, but they can not be about suicide, death, or cults. I guess they are just out of luck...

Mugging for the camera

Where did we find this girl? She's a funny one. It's going to be hilarious once she can talk so everyone can clearly understand her. Her and Emma should make quite an act. (I introduced Emma to Jerry Lewis yesterday, on the Martin and Lewis show or whatever they called it, by the way, she thought he was very funny. Tara says I need to keep Emma away from the Stooges...)

Mary's Birthday

Mary got to open presents over a 4 day stretch for her birthday. We had cake and ice cream for "The Family" on Friday. Word had gotten out at the preschool, and the report is that there was nearly a (midget) riot there from all the kids who wanted to come to Mary's party. (It seems that she is a popular girl over there.
Here's a picture of her with one of the hair things her Grandma sent her.

The seizure is over

Our garbage disposal broke about a week or so before our trip to Phoenix. I have spent a fair amount of time trying to convince it to work since then, I even took it apart (what else would I do what it?) in an effort to restore it to health. About 3 or so weeks ago, I declared it offically dead. We had gone from microscopic turning of the mechanism to nothing at all.

Yesterday afternoon, something possessed me to give it another try. I think it had something to do with the food that had been dumped in it and the dishwasher water backing up into the sink. I got down there and started manually turning the assembly again, but not with any of the finesse some of the previous tries had. (I was a little upset, and was taking it out on the disposal. I REALLY wanted the water to flow.) Anyway, right then, Tom came in from work, he was over for dinner and babysitting, and as he walked in, I flipped the switch, and the disposal started working. I was actually kind of suprised. And glad.

The assembly normally turned counter-clockwise. (Do disposals run clockwise in Australlia?) The counter-clockwise direction has always felt like it spun ok. The clockwise direction also spun, but maybe not as good. After jerking it back and forth numerous times yesterday, suddenly the clockwise direction was kind of stiff. I worked it out of it, then checked the counter-clockwise direction, and presto: It worked.

I had thought the motor had burned out or something. Not that I'm complaining. Since our theme for Sacrament meeting today was tithing, I'll chalk it up to that.

Payback for my having him give the prayer at the last Stake Bishopric's Training meeting...

The Bishop came up to me today to ask if I would be in town on Christmas Eve. I said yes, then tried figuring out what day Christmas Eve was. I said "Why, is that a Sunday?" His response was that it was, and he had a little glimmer of a smile on his face. I told him that one of the reasons I hadn't spoken in church for a while was that no one was exactly sure what I would say from the pulpit. It also helped for a while that I was the Ward Clerk, and anytime that they were talking about looking for speakers in Bishopric meeting, I would always be sure that I left them with a couple of names, not my own.

If he ends up asking me to speak, I wonder how many people will be there. There could be only 30 people there, 6 of them us... (Or 7 by then, but I didn't say anything to the Bishop about Tara being due to have a baby that week. No sense making it look like I'm trying to get out of it or anything, since it wouldn't influence his decision any....)

I'll keep you posted as developments occur....

More issues with the ISP

Towards the beginning of this week, I plugged my connection back into my linksys router. I figured the connection had been good for a while, and it was time to test it again. A couple of days later, the linksys was unplugged in a drawer of the desk.

Today, when I actually needed the connection to fix a problem (Actually, a big problem.), the connection was kind of flaky. Flaky in a "This is not good" sort of way. I am not ruling out the fact that there could be network problems at the border at work, especially since I just saw one of the network engineers log in, and IM keeps disconnecting, but it forced me to run into work.

The problem (at least mine) is fixed, I'm seriously considering leaving this laptop here at work so I don't have to lug it in tomorrow morning.

Is this thing on? (AKA "Hello World")

So, it turns out that no one actually visits my blog if I don't do posts on it. That isn't the case on Tara's blog... (I have from time to time suggested things she could blog about, but give her a break, she's waiting to have a baby...)

Anyway, just thought I'd stop by and say hello.

Speaking of that D...

Looking at my college transcripts, I ended up retaking 10 total classes all in all. I could have graduated 2 full years sooner. Little too late to figure that one out now...

The repeats make the semester GPA's change. They don't count towards that older semester's GPA once you repeat it. I have several rock bottom semesters that have risen more that a full point. I have a Dean's list semester now. (My grades in college were generally bi-polar...) Maybe I should go talk to the head of the Math department about that one, maybe I could get a posthumous mention.

Emma has a lot of rage and other (nonrelated) stuff

Tara was talking to Emma last week, Emma wanted to hit something. I can sympathize. Tara told her that we don't hit people, we don't hit things in the house. Emma wanted to go outside and hit a tree. Tara talked to her about how she could come see me about hitting things, and how I broke my hand once hitting something hard. Emma then wanted to go outside and hit the grass, because the grass is soft. All I can say is, if the children don't learn the lessons of the parents, they could be doomed to repeat them. And I have a lot of lessons to teach them...

Yesterday at the election, my assistant poll manager was the wife of one of the religion teachers on campus. We have had him at our Stake Education night a few times, and a few Stake firesides. Every time he sees me, he recognizes me, and remembers that I once took a class from him. He came by yesterday after classes, and I got the same reaction out of him. I talked a little to her later about the class, that kind of thing. (She brought it up, she was quite the talker....)

Russ, Rob and I all took this early AM class together, it was a marriage prep class. (I eventually got a B+ in it, then was married 6 months later, and wanted to go back and have him change the grade to an A, since I did get married...) Anyway, this class was early enough that I was tired every morning, Russ and Rob did a pretty good job dragging me out for it. (It was the same semester as my Elementary Mathematical Statistics class, which I hated every single second of, and got a D, but that's another story, and there was no one really to drag me out to that one...) Some of the mornings we would be pretty tired, depending on what happened the night before and how late we were out. (I beleive this was in the days when I found out that Russ had a VERY powerful flashlight in his car...) Some mornings we were a little sleepy in the class. Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting class, but so were some of the dreams I had in the class. One morning, when Russ and I were pretty much doozing off, (my head was definitely on the desk) we heard the professor get excited about something and start swearing. I think it was about husbands make their wives drive all the way across town to buy gas, just to save a buck or two. (Maybe Russ or Rob can comment on this, or maybe they have long forgotten...) It seemed like an interesting thing to get so excited about. I looked around (head off the desk now), and saw a number of the girls in the class with shocked expressions on their faces. This amused me at the time. (I was still framing houses at the time, I heard lots worse things every day.) I verified with Rob that he did indeed say what I thought he said, then started paying attention to what he was talking about, sleep done for the day. I have absolutely no recollection of what he talked about the rest of the class.

Anyway, what prompted this long sidebar was that I said something to this professor's wofe about taking a class from him 8 years ago, falling asleep once or twice in the process, and how he didn't seem to like it. Her response was that he really didn't like it when people slept through his classes, but he liked it less when people just didn't show up, missed exams and assignments, then came back later to try to take the test late or turn the assignment in late. Well, I dont think I did either of those to him...

Sometimes I want to knock heads together, Stooges Style.

In the words of Moe: "WHY YOU!" or "Why I oughta..."

I have been working for a week to get a machine to print to a printer up in Idaho. It has baffled me why it wasnt working, untit this morning, when the Idaho people let me know it was a print server I was trying to print to, not a printer. I will never get that week of my life back again. (Okay, so in total it was about a day's worth of wasted work, but I'm not getting that back either.)

I just needed to get that out.

"Remember folks, Gritto spelled sideways is ottri-guh-guh." - Moe

Election day

I went to work the election this morning. We were doing pretty good, we had 5 of 13 machines up and ready when the polls opened at 7am, and the other 8 were half way there. I called the County Clerk at 7am as we were opening, (as per there instructions) and we had 20 people ready to vote. As I was talking to them, the first guy came up, and his voting card did not work. (We were using electronic voting, with card readers. Turns out all the machines did the same thing.) The clerks office put me on hold for a few minutes, then came back and said "We are getting a lot of those calls, let me call you back." That was fine, but there were 20 people there wanting to vote, several of which had to leave soon and didn't have time to come back. After 20 minutes of waiting I called back, and was on hold. All in all, I was on hold for over an hour. In the meantime, someone was very irate about the problem, he left, came back still mad, and I used his anger to my own advantage. I sent him down to the County Clerk's office to talk to them. He came back 10 minutes later to let me know what the clerks office was telling people on the phone, 5 minutes later, we were voting. (About 8am.) By the time they answered the phone, we were just fine. (We had to use a voting machine to encode the cards, instead of the little encoder devices.) I think we only lost 6 total people to leaving and not coming back overall.

A news crew came over with cameras. I nearly kicked them out once, they were trying to film the screens as people voted. Then someone else came by looking for sound clips about the outage earlier. I'm not sure that he got what he was looking for, I of all people know how to water down the impact statement of an outage. (Or build it up, if it suits my purpose...)

Someone came in with a George Bush mask on. I told him he needed to take it off to vote, he wasn't voting, was just waiting for someone, so I told him he needed to wait around the corner in the lobby. (I figured it was just to annoy me anyway, so why keep him in my sight?) It turns out that he went to the lobby, and was trying to tell people how to vote, the principal told him that masks were not allowed in the school. Several hours later, I got a call from the County Clerk asking about what happened, the local paper got wind that someone was thrown out of the polling place for wearing a mask, they were looking for the real story to tell the paper to take a hike. I explained what happened, and let her know that we didn't throw him out, and we were fairly polite about it, the guy was likely just trying to get attention anyway. She asked if I had called the Authorities to have him escorted out, which most definitely did not happen. (Not to mention the fact that if I had him tossed out of the place, he would known he had been kicked out, no doubt about it. Everyone around the place would have known it to. I could have called the cops in that event, I could have played "Bad Cop" to Drew's "Good Cop.") It's silly.

We averaged over 1 person a minute for the overall day. I did not even crack open the book I brought. I didn't get to eat as much chips and salsa as I wanted to.

They had a rover assigned, we saw him at 8:30am, after we were already up and running, which he was happy about. He voted in our polling place, then we didn't see him again until 8:30pm. He said that all the other polling places around us had all kinds of problems, they were calling him all day, he was glad to have us run things smoothly.

I ended up getting 53 total emails today. That's too many, even if I'm at work. It appears that a number of people forgot I was working the election.

Hollywood ripoff artists

The other night, I watched Flight of the Phoenix. It was not very much like Flight of the Navigator. Anyway, the movie was somewhere between OK and So-So.

On Saturday night, we watched the Star Trek Voyager disk Tara got from Netflix. It had the episode "Rise" on it. Funny enough, there were a number of plot elements in "Rise" that Flight of the Phoenix ripped off. (7 years later. Can the Star Trek people still go after the Flight of the Phoenix people?)

Upon further review, it turns out that Flight of the Phoenix is a remake from a 1965 movie. What? Hollywood did a remake? So maybe the Star Trek people desperately needed a story and watched this movie one night. It looks like an interesting cast, maybe I should get the 1965 movie from Netflix... (Or can the original Flight of the Phoenix people go after the Star Trek people?)

***Spoiler Alert*** - don't read the rest of this post if you have not watched either the movie or the episode, and do not want to hear about it...

Anyway, not really knowing how the 1965 movie went, but assuming the plot was similar, here are the things I noticed:

Format is: Star Trek - Flight of the Phoenix
Shuttle crash after flying through turbulence - Plane crash after flying through storm
No way to contact Voyager - No way to contact anyone
Neelix decides he can fix a space tether - Little guy decides he can build a new plane
Neelix used to work on space tethers - Little guy is a plane designer
Now comes the big spoiler. I have done it in white font, highlight the next line to read
Neelix only used to work on models, not real tethers - Little guy only designed model airplanes

I was amused that Flight of the Phoenix ripped off plot elements from Star Trek to do their movie, which really wasn't all that good. (Was the older one better? Anyone know?) Now I'm amused that the Star Trek people ripped off plot elements from an old movie to do their episode, which really wasn't all that good. (Almost like they needed a filler episode. In later seasons, the filler episodes always involved the Borg, or Seven of Nine, or the Borg children...)

That's right folks, I have no real life.

Not too early McFly, I sleep in on Mondays

This morning I had to go downtown to pick up the election supplies. They ended up sending us 13 machines for this election. It's lucky that they didn't send 12, otherwise, I would be tempted to play Ten Little Indians with them throughout the day, eventually turning them all off.

I got to work at about 10:30AM. There was no one in the office. People's laptops were there, just no people. Then I went to the next room, same thing. I went into the secretaries office, and even stranger, they were all there. (At 10:30AM!) I was starting to wonder if I missed a memo. Turns out there was a meeting I had forgotten about...

It was steak sandwich day at one of the campus cafeterias. That's about all I thought of all morning, then I reflected back on it again all afternoon. That was one good lunch.

We got the voting machine's set up in the afternoon, the custodian was a little worried that I wanted to put the machines up on the opposite side of the hall than is normally done, I eventually convinced him it would be ok.

I have to get up at 5:30AM, and will be on my feet all day, hopefully I will get to read some of the book I am currently reading, Doing Nothing.

mmmm... pie!

I made a pie tonight.

The ingredients:

1 Can evaporated milk
1/4 cup butter
1 package (16oz) semi sweet chocolate chips

It tastes like pureed chocolate chips...

Game Time

Tonight, I played a couple of games with Rob, his brothers (not Matt, who either was not paying attention, or was bitter about us hiring someone else last time when we couldn't wait any longer for applications. To Matt I say, 'Are you still interested? Because we might have an opening soon...), a sister, and some other dude named Brett, whose relationship I never did discover.

We played Risk, I was 3rd to last out. It might have been different had Rob and I not decided to mutually annialate each other.

We played a game called trains, which I don't think they ever gave me all the rules, and requires non-colorblindness. I eventually finished last, but had I to do it over again, I might have done a little better...

Training

Yesterday, the Church broadcast training for Stake Presidencies on the new Handbook of Instructions. We watched it today. It was interesting, the Brethren really want leaders to start using the handbook, and bringing the church into uniformity where it should be. Basically they were really saying Book 1 is the uniformity part, Book 2 can be flexible where it's appropriate.

I guess I'll have to start spending parts of my Tuesday nights pouring over the new handbook. They wanted people to read it until they understand the principles, so that when there is something that comes up that's outside of what is listed in the Handbook, people will have the framework to be inspired to do the right thing. I get the feeling that the Office of the First Presidency is getting swamped by things that are already outlined in the Handbook.

In other news, during Sunday School, the instructor said something along the lines of "the earth is alive. It's happy to care for the righteous." He went down that road a little , and ended with: "The apple you eat, it's alive, and is happy to nouroch the righteous. It is happy when you eat it." My reaction was "okay.....next!"

It may be true that an apple has a purpose, but I don't think it's limited to the righteous, all people need food to live, and they need to live to the point that they repent, then go from there. I'm not sure the apple has any consideration in it, and I don't think it cares about me compared to the next person. What's next, my toothbrush being lonely when I fall asleep on the couch, and don't brush my teeth at night? It's a little too Toy Story for me.

Closet update

I started in on the closet again, replacing the old bowed wooden pole with 2 new steel poles. We now actually have enought space in there for our clothing to get hung up, what a concept, huh?

Now all I have to do is :

Install a light
Finish drywalling
Tear out the remaining old framing (just a couple of pieces left)
patch the carpeting
Install a new door
paint it all white in the closet, blue and yellow outside
Put in new trim
Hopefully I can get it done before the girls all move out of the house...

What once was lost is now found

I found my old USB drive tonight. I was moving things around in the house and found it. This is a very good thing.

Things on there I now have:

LOTS and LOTS of work documents - some of which the Assistant CIO wants to see, and asked for 2 weeks ago.

All Stake agendas for the past 14 months, including letters written, directories, and other stuff

The latest version of my still not yet finished Mission Journal - I should rededicate myself to finishing the thing now that I have found it again.

Some presentations from last year's HP Tech conference that I still haven't gotten around to reviewing

My nearly completed thesis entitled Pyramids on the Moon: Heat, Wind, and Desert fauna - how living in the Mohave Desert makes people stir crazy

I need to figure out a good way to do backups, either Disk to USB or USB to Disk, or even USB to USB, just in case I lose one of the 2 I now have, or if my hard drive fails.

Ways to wake up Dad.

Ruth has been practicing ways to wake me up the past few days. Sunday morning, she was having a hard go at it, with not much success. Then she climbed up on the bed, and sat on my head. That did it.

This morning, she talked to me nonstop until I turned my head to her. Then she pulled the mask for my bipap off my head and threw it on the ground. That did it. (It normally doesn't bother me when I take it off in my sleep, but there's something about being in mid inhale and having the air supply abruptly cut off that makes you wake up...)

We'll have to see what she has in store for me in just a few hours...

A: Because I can.

Q: Why are you still up?

I went back to the office after the last post to drop off tools. The lock on the outside door would not engage. I called University Police, they came over to lock it. The kid that came looked at it, and said "I've dealt with this door before." He opened the other door, held the non-locking door closed, and beat the tar out of the middle post for the door until the lock engaged. I was highly impressed. That's my kind of solution.

Getting home, I decided to work on our Print/Scan/Copier. It's been giving scanner errors for a while. I took the thing apart and cleaned the mirrors, and it has now scanned 1 document. We'll see how long it lasts.

(I figured I might as well continue to work on hardware, doing stuff I have never actually done, but am fully qualified to do, and fully confidant that I can do, even if it is 3:30 in the morning.)

We'll see how long the scanner continues to work.

And it only took 3 hours more than expected...

I went into work tonight to swap some CPU's in some servers. Our web server mix needed a little extra pick me up for tomorrow night, so I swapped the 800MHz processors out for 1GHz processors. (For those IA32 people out there saying "1GHz? That's it?", I say "it's PARISC chips, apples to oranges.) Anyway, I was in to swap processors. I got into the first machine and discovered that HP switched to Tamper-Proof Torx bits for their processors. This was a little frustrating, since we don't have any of these drivers in the Data Center. I have none at home. I went back into the ops center, and one of the guys from my office called in asking about the home page. I asked him if he had any of the Torx drivers with the little hole in the shaft. (I didn't know the real name of them then.) He said he thought he did, I asked if he would mind driving them in to me. 20 minutes later, he showed up with them. He had bought the things just 10 days ago, just before a conference he went to. Rod must be living right, he was inspired to impluse buy the right thing.

I got the first 2 machines down, and pulled the processors, but I couldn't get them back into the CPU socket. It was maddening. It turns out that HP has inplemented an ingenious little locking mechanism for their processors. You need a long 2.5mm allen wrench to engage it with the processor in place, but it slides the processor and socket assembly into place to allow you to secure the processors into the socket. It's really a neat little thing, but for about 45 minutes, it really ticked me off. Once I had the problem figured out, I didn't have a 2.5mm allen wrench long enough to engage the mechanism to fit the processor on. (And I had 2 machines taken apart...

I took a trip down to the office, and inside Uncle Ledge's Tool Bag, he has a 'heavy duty super long hex key' set. I had really forgotten he had that in there, and was just grasping at straws before I went to Walmart to buy the right tool.

Having the correct tools in my hands, swapping out the processors was a smooth and happy process. I was done in 40 minutes after that.

One of the reasons working here is great is that sometimes you get the 90% inspiration you need to avoid the 90% persipation. Without it tonight, a) I would never have gotten the processors off the origonal machines in the first place, and b) I would have never gotten them back on again. This would lead to c) my being very ticked off, and d) a call to HP. I often wonder if the same types and levels of inspiration would happen if I worked elsewhere.

Happy Halloween

So, today was Halloween. The 3 younger girls came to my office for lunch and desk or treating. After Kate got off school, we went downtown for Trick or Treating. The Downtown Business Alliance has started a new "Safe Halloween" thing they plan to do every year. Basically most of the businesses have candy for trick or treaters. We went for about an hour and a half. The jewelry store was giving out full sized candy bars, with coupons attached. One of the coupons was actually a certificate for a free 'rice pearl' necklace. Tara will have to go get that one of these days. (Or maybe I will, Christmas is coming...)

Anyway, the girls have candy to last about 11 months. Hopefully they do not eat it all tomorrow.

Tara's mom normally had the tootsie mix that includes the little boxes of Dots. Between confiscation from the girls and visiting Tara's parents, I normally get all the Dots I care to have. This year, Tara's mom bought candy bar type and normal tootsie rolls. No Dots. The girls did not get any Dots. Are Dots going out of style? I have not yet received my normal Halloween allotment of Dots, and I may have to go get my own to supplement them...

New DVD player

So I have talked to Samsung several times since my dead DVD player post. The second call was pretty much the same as the first, except that the hope of a shipping label was gone, I was going to have to ship it on my own dime. On Thursday, I faxed in the proof of purchase. Friday I called in, they didn't have it in their system. On Monday, I called in, they had it, but they said it would cost me $30 labor to get it fixed. They also said even though I was told there would be no charge, that was not marked in the call.

I was instructed to ship the unit to the repair center, they would fix it, then I could pay my $30 to get it back. I called again on Tuesday morning to verify the story again, same story, so I told them to go ahead and close the call, I wouldn't be sending in the unit, I would rather go and get a new unit from someone else. I took my $30, went to Walmart, and got the $30 Magnavox special.

I figure it's a wash either way, but it didn't make a lot of sense to fix it just to have it break again in 3 months, and I hope that last call was "recorded for quality assurance purposes."