Star Trek Communicator USB Drive

I had a Star Trek Communicator. Long ago it was put away with the batteries still inserted, and corroded pretty severely. I also had a spare USB drive, after losing one, getting a new one, finding the first, and writing a little script on my laptop to backup the data.

I decided it would be really cool to build a Star Trek Communicator USB drive. I took both units apart. The innards of the USB drive fit perfectly inside the communicator (emptied out). The lights used to light up on the communicator, and there was a little LED on the USB unit, and I found some little plastic sticks that light would travel through, and I planned to use those to light up the LEDs on the communicator from the USB drive.
I decided that solder would be a good way to reattach the LEDs to the communicator casing. The LEDs had been attached to the innards of the unit origonally. It turns out that this wasn't such a good idea, the heat from the soldering iron melted the plastic of the communicator.
It looks like I foiled my own plans. I'm not sure that solder was the best adhesive, maybe I should have found some super glue. (But then the spelling on the typing here might not be so good after I had super glued my fingers together...) Anyway, it looks like the "Star Trek Communicator USB Drive" was not meant to be.

I wonder what else we have laying around here I could use...

Restaurant Review

Kaylynn came and got the girls this afternoon for a couple of hours, so I took Tara to Kmart to get a new robe. After that, we looked for a place to eat, ending up evenutally at Sizzler.

I ordered a Steak, medium. What I got was a steak, dry and charred on one side, raw and red on the other. (Not pink. The way I see it, if it's just pink enough that I can't tell, but it's still juicy, that's medium. If I know it's red, that's raw.) I sent the steak back for further attention.

One of the managers brought the thing back, his comment was that he didn't see the piece of meat the first time, but he had never seen a steak looking exactly the way this one did, so he wanted to see what I thought. I thought they ended up further charring the already dry side, and didn't really resolve the rare side fully, the manager took the piece of meat back and had them do a new one.

When he came back, he asked me to take a look and see what I thought. I cut the steak open, and it was very rare on the inside again. I nearly laughed, but kept the poker face and said something to the effect of "This doesn't look quite look right." The manager agreed and immediately started talking about comping the meal, getting the steak done right, that sort of thing. While he was saying this, the only thing I could think was "I'm getting this reaction out of him, and I haven't even gotten worked up about it yet. Who warned him about me?"

The 4th time it came back to me, the steak looked perfect. (And tasted very good.) The manager ended up giving us $15 in Sizzler gift certificates, 2 coupons for free salad bar add ons, and 2 coupons for 1/2 rack of ribs with an entree. Not bad for my not even having to get upset with someone.

It was very nice of Kaylynn to give us 3 hours peace. Thanks.

New visitors

I know some of you reading this are new visitors here, welcome. (30% new this week alone, and most of the new ones are coming from towns of people we sent Christmas cards to. At this point, I'm assuming we know who you are, and it's not your mailman viewing my blog. Also, I am assuming that means that some of you got the Christmas cards...)

Anyway, feel free to poke around. I tend to have a lot to say sometimes, but it's not like I say anything important, really. Feel free to post a comment on anything, and maybe just post a comment on this one so we know you were here.

It's been a while since I have said anything that provokes strong reactions from people. (I think, anyway, the reactions usually come from Tara and my Mom, I rarely say things to drive readers away, although I occasionally say something to try to get a reaction out of Rob...) Maybe I'll try harder, just know it's me, and take the good with whatever else you get.

Welcome.

Hookey from work

I was planning on getting in about 2 days worth of work from home this week, and taking the other 2 as sick or vacation. (I am sort of taking care of Tara and the girls...) I only got about 1 day work in up to last night, Kaylyn offered to watch the girls this afternoon, and I am feeling generally lazy, so I decided to not work today. I have quite a bit of work to get done before Jan 8, but at this point, it can wait until next week... That means for this baby, I stayed home for 2 weeks. (mostly)

Luckily, Kate starts back up at school next week, which should help calm things down here for Tara a little.

Sloppy Joes

Emma says the sandwich Kate is eating isn't a Sloppy Joe. Sloppy Joe is a person. He's a happy cat person.

Just nod your head and agree, like I did.

Broken DVDs

Twice in the last week, we have gotten broken DVDs from Netflix. (And another looked like it was starting to crack from the middle just a little, but played okay.)

The first clearly looked like it was smashed up by the postal service. The disk took 8 days to get here (40 miles), and the cover was shredded nearly to pieces. The disk was all cracked up. Today, we got one that was broken in half, although there was no way to tell from the outside.

I wonder if it is something about this time of year. Does the Post Office have their machinery running at a faster speed than normal to get through all the mail from this time of year? Are they less careful with the disks? Hard to say, it could just be some sort of freak thing that we got 2 broken ones...

Game Time

Ticket 2 Ride (Online)

Me - 2
Drew - 1

Then we went to (try) to beat other people. I ended up smoking them, but Drew seems to have accidently missed on a couple of his cards.

String Theory

We have been watching a Nova set of episodes called "The Elegant Universe". It's about String Theory. (Physics) I pulled it out of Netflix.

It's pretty interesting, they talk a lot about quantum mechanics and general relativity. They also talk a lot about the math that brought string theory about. I keep thinking that's it's all math anyway, and if they could go and figure out how to unify the different types of mathematics, they could answer a lot of questions in physics. Anyway, it's a very interesting set of shows. I might have to get the book and read it.

We got the girls to sit down and watch a good portion of the show today. Maybe tomorrow Emma will turn in a paper proving some of the questions asked in the documentary. (and don't worry too much, the other disk currently out from my queue is cartoons.)

Swing (continued)

She's not asleep, but she's also not screaming. Looks like we have a winner...

Babysitting

Kaylyn must have heard me typing, because she just called and offered to babysit the other 4 girls tomorrow. Maybe I should go edit out the part about them not listening to us so that she doesn't change her mind...

Baby Swing

We didn't end up buying a baby swing 6 weeks ago, we were talked out of it right here on this very blog. Lily has been having a hard time staying asleep, especially when Tara is not holding her. She has been good at falling asleep in the car, but last night it took 25 minutes to get her to do that.

I borrowed a swing from Drew last night to try it out with her, and this morning we had her in it fir about an hour. She mostly slept in the thing, only the occasional whimper when Ruth came up and stopped the swing. (And it took me 10 minutes to figure out that the word on the red button was "off", not "on".)

Anyway, an hour without holding her is worth 2 in the bushel (or something like that), so I went out in search of a Fisher Price Aquarium Take Along Swing. This is the newer model of the swing Amy had this past summer that we could keep Ruth out of.

6 weeks ago, it was marked down to $42 on amazon.com, with free shipping. When we went back to it yesterday, it was back up to it's normal price of $64 dollars. This seemed like a lot for a little swing, but on the other hand, it's a little hard to get anything done with a little baby attached to you at all times. Burlington Coat factory the unit for $54 on thesdir website, I went to go see if they had the same deal at the store. Stopped at Walmart on my way there, they had 1 unit left, it was on clearance for $47, so I bought it.

Lily is in it right now, I'm not sure if she appreciates the lights and music just yet, and I don't think she's all that happy to be left there, but hopefully it will rock her to sleep in a few minutes and Tara can actually get something else done.

In other news, our other 4 girls seem to be completely unable to listen to us anymore. I'm thinking about boarding school...

Town Crier

We have a Grandfather clock. Every hour from 7am to 9pm, it rings out at the hour.

Mary has taken to count the number of tones and calling out the hour. It will ring, then from somewhere in the house you hear "Ten O'clock" or whatever time it is. We have not yet taught her to say "And all is well" after, but I have been thinking about it.

Occasionally, Emma, not to be outdone, will call out a different time after Mary has called out the time. You will hear "Ten O'clock" followed by "No, Three O'clock"...

Game Time

(From Christmas night)

Ticket to Ride

Tom won (Me vs. Him)
Tom won (Tom, Tara, and Me)
I won (Me vs Tara)

• That last game may not have been too fair for Tara, I wanted to be sure that I didn't lose 3 games in a row on the new game I just got for Christmas, so I played kind of agressively...
  

Network outage

I was called in this morning because of a network outage. Not that I have anything to do with the network, or had anything to do with getting it back up, but I was called in. While the router was down, every piece of clustering we had failed. All clusters decided that the other pieces of it's cluster were gone and it should be in charge. Directories got out of sync, our VMWare blades decided they were not licensed, a bunch of machines turned off, stuff like that. Fun.

Missing medication

I forgot to take my thyroid medicine for the 2nd time in 3 days today. I can skip one day and be tired, but today I crashed at about 5pm. Out like a light. The only reason I am awake now is that I had Lily laying on me and the other girls were out of their bedrooms being crazy.

Troll 2006

What would a Christmas be without the troll doll?

This year, he got married. I hear that my dad made the tux, and my Mom made the wedding dress. Amy made the little wedding book with the pictures. These people appear to need serious help.

Hats

Other Christmas present pictures

We took 99 pictures, (really Tom took most of them for us) but that seems like a lot to post here. Here's a sampling. Ruth was very happy to open presents. Every time she got another, she nearly hyperventilated getting it back to her spot.

Sweaters from Grandma

The Girls liked their sweaters from their Grandma.

Tom's Christmas Presents

Tom appears to have enjoyed the scarf and card. It doesn't look like he left the gift certificates here for us...

Drew gave Tom his old Batman Utility Belt. I don't have a picture of it, sorry.

Sudoku

In just 10 hours from now, I will be trying to show a 3 year old how to do sudoku. I really am not exactly sure why this is the only thing she wants for Christmas, except for the fact that the kid's version has stickers. We will see how it goes.

Server Error

I an oncall right now. Christmas is the very best time of the year to be oncall here, because absolutely nothing happens. Oncall only lasts 3.5 days, and I don't expect to talk to anyone until midday Tuesday at the very earliest, if at all. No one on campus = no one breaking things.

I have a server that appears to be working it's way towards a hardware problem of some sort. I got an email from the hardware diagnostics this afternoon that said there was a "serious" level error, because it couldn't log a chassis code. Not sure if the error it was trying to log was a serious error or the fact that it didn't log was a serious error. The rest of the email just complains about the communications failure, not actually about the error that caused the write event in the first place. I have looked at the machine, everything looks okay right now, I'm not sure what it's complaining about. Maybe it was just lonely.

Why not just reboot the machine you say? I don't play that game. I have a machine with 638 days uptime, it would have been double that right now if it hadn't been for a complete power outage in the data center 2 years ago... (Now of course by saying that, the rest of my night will be filled with calls of machines going down, fire in the data center, cats and dogs falling from the sky, etc.)

Update on Lily

I hear the impression was that Lily was back in the hospital the other day getting the jaundice baked out of her. This was misleading. Tara and Lily came home on Thursday, on Friday night they brought over a portable Billi lamp unit. Lily has been at home since Thursday.

We took her off the lights last night, her levels continue to drop, everything appears to be okay, except for the slightly orage raccoon eyes she has from wearing the eye protectors.

Alien Christmas Talk

Tom was a little disappointed that I didn't mention the Alien Christmas Talk during my talk in church today.

10 years ago, I was home for the holidays. The Bishop of my parents ward was fairly new, and he asked Michael Bass to speak. This is not something I would even attempt. The talk started fairly benign enough, but quickly steamrolled into something else.

Core to the talk was the fact that Jesus and Heavenly Father could do the things they could do, travel across space, etc because of the alien technology they possessed. They flew around in space ships, that kind of thing. It was fairly bizarre as things go, especially from the pulpit, but the Bishop just let him keep going. (He may have been too shocked to move.) I am not even doing the thing justice here, maybe someone else can chime in.

The funniest thing about the whole talk was that a BYU religion professor was visiting. The look on his face got funnier and funnier as Brother Bass kept going on and was sounding crazier and crazier. After the meeting, I was talking to this professor, and he really didn't know what to say about the whole thing. Words could not express what was going through his mind. I talked to him about a month later about it, he was still speechless. He told me he had never heard anything like that from the pulpit before.

Now, if the Bishop was in the ward today, or the Stake President had been in attendance, I might have tried to pull something, and I will have to tell them the story if my talk today comes up in the future, but I figured I might as well stick to the doctrine.

Christmas Talk

I was asked to speak in church tomorrow during Sacrament meeting. Sacrament meeting is the only meeting we will have, and I'm the show, with a couple of musical numbers. I finally finished the talk, if you are interested, here it is.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Site feed

I have changed the site feed here to include post comments. (At least I think that's what I did.) Let me know if things break.


In other news, blogger beta here is no longer beta. They released it, and will start trying to get everyone to migrate. I guess it's not quite like Gmail Beta after all...

Baking a pumpkin

Lily has jaundice. We are trying to bake it out of her right now. Ruth had jaundice as a baby, but she didn't need the lights. Lily is trying her hardest to sound pitiful enough for Tara to pick her up, but so far, Tara is resisting. Lily is also trying to trash around to get out, take the eye patch off, and has already once managed to get the diaper off herself. Hopefully we can get it down enough by Sunday that we don't have to do it all during Christmas. Hopefully she gets used to it and just goes to sleep.

Flowers

My parents sent Tara flowers. (Why you ask? Because I didn't...)

Here they are.

Christmas Cards are out

I mailed the Christmas cards this afternoon. We ended up doing 185 cards. We sent out to 20 different states. Each card contains a short message from us, and a picture. Attached is a copy of the picture before we Photo Shopped all the girls in. If you are here and don't get a card, I didn't have your address...

You decide!

Which girl does Lily most look like. Vote now!

Christmas Present

The nurses wrapped a Christmas present for Tara...

I wish I had the camera

I gave the girls a bath this morning, took Ruth out first. The girls are all out now and dressed, except Ruth has gotten back in. She's still fully dressed, but she's having a good time. No picture, the camera is at the hospital...

Take5

When Ruth was born, we gave visitors and people at work Baby Ruth candy bars. This time, we are give out Take 5 candy bars, and saying "Take 5, Please". Now I thought this was pretty funny, but I told Mary a week or so ago, and Tara tells me that Mary's been repeating it over and over to herself throughout the day, and busts up laughing. ("Take 5, Please?" Ha Ha Ha Ha HA) Good to know I have cornered the market on the 5 year old humor scale.

Several (Mostly) Modest Pictures

Lily Anna Payne was born today at 11:44pm.

She was 8 pounds 5 ounces. (Proof is in the picture.)
She was a standard baby length. (21 inches)
So far, I haven't seen her throw any gang signs, and she covered her privates for the pictures, so I think we might be ok.

If you plan to visit Tara and Lily in the hospital, call me, there are new security measures in place. (New since the last time I was there, anyway.)

Driving on ice

At Kate's school, they have a driveway with a very steep ramp. (More like a little hill, really.) It turns out that clearing this drive off in the winter is optional for some reason.

Once, there was ice in the drainage ditch at the top. I got stuck there. (Front wheel drive) Today, some lady had stopped short of the top of the hill and got stuck. I assume it was bad tires. There was a line of about 8 cars waiting for her to go. (All of us people whose children were late for school.

I was 6 cars back, and 3 guys were trying to push her up the rest of the way. I eventually unbuckled, just as they got some traction and she took off. Then the next lady was stuck.

Our van has a Traction Control System and Anti Lock Brakes. Our old van didn't have TCS. It's nice, we have gotten plenty of use out of it the past 2 days...

Funny Bedtime Tapes

Tara occasionally will let Emma listen to a tape a night. Odds go up if it's late and Emma comes out of her room.

Tonight, Tara let her pick out a tape to listen to. Emma chose "Using the Missionary Guide". Tara told her she didn't think Emma would like it, Emma's response was that the tape was really funny, it had a guy that talked about popcorn and stuff.

I'm not sure I remember popcorn as a topic on the tape. I don't remember the tape being funny. That girl has a warped sense of humor. I wonder who did it to her.

Error Messages in the web server logs

I know someone that hosts his own website. His wife just had a baby. I sent him a message in his webserver error logs. (Typed in invalid urls)

I'm thinking he's just the kind of guy that would find them.

Tara thinks it's funny, which worries me that she's been hanging around me too long.

We Believe...

This year in the primary, they had a challenge for the kids to learn their Articles of Faith. Tara had been working with Kate and Mary on theirs, and As they started passing them off, Emma decided that she wanted to do it too. (She was the only one from the nursery who has been doing it.)

All 3 girls finished today. We think Ruth knows a number of them, too, but she doesn't talk clear enough for anyone to understand when she tries. (You have to pay attention and concentrate some of the time to understand Ruth.)

There are only 3 people from the younger classes that have finished, or even come close, and they are all here at this house. To celebrate, they are currently eating cookies and candy. Soon we will add Tator Tots to the celebration.

New Checks

I have just discovered that we are down to our last 30 checks. It's taken nearly 2 years to go through 120 of them, and most of those were from the first 6 months.

As of a couple of months ago, all I had left we were using checks for was tithing, preschool, and the scholastic book club stuff the girls and Tara keep ordering. We have just gotten the preschool to accept electronic payment. If I could get tithing somehow paid electronically, we would be nearly set.

As it stands, I suppose I should still order new checks. I have 29 left, which should last a year or more, but you never know.

Snow Day

It snowed last night. There wasn't any on the ground when it got dark last night, and all of this was on the ground in the morning. We would have gone out and made a snowman, but the girls were working on getting their bedrooms cleaned. Maybe if the snow is still around on Monday, we will see what happens...

Gingerbread house

Kate finally cleaned her room, so we are finally letting the girls do fun Christmas stuff. (We have been waiting for a month for them to get their room clean.) This evening, we did a gingerbread house.


We got a Wonka brand house, it came with everything you needed to make the house. We added some of the candy we had around the house to the thing to make it even better.


After we got done, a little tiny Hansel and Gretel walked up to it and started eating off of it...

Christmas cards

I have finished addressing all the Christmas cards for people I have addresses for. There are some people out there that I have yet to locate. (You may be one of them...) If I don't find them soon, they will not get cards...

As it stands, we have 125 to send out. All we lack is a family picture.

Missing Commercials

With Netflix, the commericals are very short. Short as in non-existant. It took a little getting used to at first. I would jump out of my chair at the commerical break to go do something, and the commericals didn't come on, the show would keep going.

Kaylynn has been taping Smallville for Tara. This includes the commericals. I've got to say, at this point, I don't miss the commericals. They are mostly annoying.

Oh yeah, DVDs are lots better than tapes. Lots.

Restaurant Review

Lantern Buffet

We have a new buffet in town, it was called Eastern Buffet. I called them to ask what type of food the Eastern Buffet serves, their response was "Chinese, American, and Japanese sushi." (I was hoping for Greek, Indian, Persian, or something in that range.) I wondered why she ordered it that way, and not Chinese, Japanese, and American. Also, I don't consider American as Eastern, unless it's something like Philly Cheese Steaks, Chicken wings, or something like that. (Which they might have had.)

Having said all that, we didn't go there. The Lantern Buffet was $1 for Ruth, $2 for Emma, $3 for Mary, and $4 for Kate. There was something oddly appealing about the prices.

They have a Jalapeno Chicken there that is very, very good. I had 3 helpings of it. Ruth was more interested in playing with her glass of water than she was in eating, but to her credit, she didn't dump her water all in her lap.

All in all, it's not a bad little place to go it.

Laundry Basket

There's nothing Ruth likes better than to find an empty laundry basket, push it into an open area, climb in, and sit. I'm not sure why.

The US Postal Service

So, in the past, there have been unkind words on this blog in relation to the Postal Service. I won't even put the links here in this entry, because this it's that kind of entry. I have something positive to say for once.

I went to the post office to mail a couple of items. I got a box and waited in line. When I got up to the counter, they told me that shipping would be $9 plus the $2 for the box, and suggested a "Flat Rate Box". The Flat Rate box is a priority mail box that costs $8.10. That's it. The box and shipping - $8.10. 39 pounds? - $8.10. I think this is a pretty good deal. They say that the box just has to retain it's shape. I took the flat rate box option. They also have a flat rate envelope. I figure, if something fits in the future, that's the way to go.

Driving home, I was trying to figure out why. I figure it's 2 reasons. #1 - it would be really hard to get 40 pounds worth of stuff in it, things are likely to be light enough for any postal worker to handle. #2 - With a standard size and shape of a box, it must make it much easier to stack the things when they ship them. All the odd sized boxes must make it hard to optimize space in a truck when things get mailed, and the 'building block' shape must really help.

Also, online, you can order packs of these boxes for free. They just deliver them to you. What a deal.

Haircut

I went and got a haircut this morning. (The barber didn't quit, just had a couple of days off.) I walked in, he said hello, and asked if I wanted the usual, then immediately proceeded to cut my hair. Just the way I like.

I needed the haircut, I was starting to get helmet hair. Not just motorcycle helmet hair, or anything simple like that, but astronaut hemlet, double shell post-concussion football helmet, or Evil Knievil helmet hair. It was getting big. 80's hair big. I was starting to overheat indoors because of it.

He took off at least 2 inches, I think I lost 5 pounds at the place.

Eating Pie

I have taken it upon myself to rid our house of all the pie that has been sitting around. I feel this is my duty, seeing as how it's mainly my fault so much pie was here for Thanksgiving. Not that I am complaining.

We stuck all the pies in the freezer after Thanksgiving, and have been pulling one out at a time. (We started with the better part of something like 7 pies...) The last one we have is a blueberry pie. It's not bad at all.

To review, the pies we had left over were:

• Apple - tasted great
• blackberry - teasted great
• Apple #2 - tasted great
• cherry - tasted great
• pumpkin - tasted great
• blueberry - tasted great
• chocolate banana - it was ok.

Good thing Christmas is coming so we can stock up on pies in our freezer again...

Christmas Card update

I have addressed 130 Christmas cards in the past couple of days. The rest have to wait until tomorrow, I'm done writing for the day.

As an early preview, the cards will contain:

• 1 business card - for this blog (selected cards only, if you are reading this, don't expect a business card...)
• A family picture. (After the baby is born. This is the major holdup in mailing the cards.)
• A small note saying what we've been up to. (Nothing earth shattering there, you can get most of it here...)
• A Christmas card of varying shape, size, and design.

I still need to get the addresses of about 17 people on our list. (Including Tom and Grandma, by the way...) In all, we will have about 185 Christmas cards to send out. I plan to do an entry listing all the different states we are sending to. (I am expecting at least 1/3 of total US states sent to.)

Book review

I shouldn't Even Be doing This! and Other things that strike me as funny
Bob Newhart

This book was a midly amusing little book that Bob Newhart decided to write. I went back and read it a second time, this time making sure I read a stammer into the sentances, and suddenly, the book was hilarious! (Tara didn't think this statement is as funny as I do...)

Bob Newhart basically just tells little funny stories all through his book about his life. It's more like his personal history project or something like that than anything else, but it's interesting. It's also a quick read, if you leave out all the stammering.

Suddenly I have the urge to add The Bob Newhart Show to my Netflix lineup.

I give up

Nearly every day I get a hit from Centerville, UT.

I give up. I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out who I know from Centerville that visits this blog. I just can't get it for some reason. I'm sure whoever it is, I will say OH. I didn't know you were up there.

Mystery Centerville Visitor - Show yourself!

Okay, that didn't work, how about leaving a comment with some sort of clue? I promise not to divulge your name here if you don't want me too... (And you don't really have to worry, I only have 8 people who visit here....)

Another place I am curious about: Clarksville, TN

2 places I was curious about until I started doing Christmas cards today, suddenly it dawned on me: Chandler, AZ and Austin, TX.

"Memories of Our First Christmastime"

Normally, sometime at the begining of the Christmas season, I call my old roommate Dan, and share a track from a CD I was given on my mission. This year, I find that he appears to have moved, and may not have a home phone anymore. I have emailed the track to him, I know he'll enjoy it.

For your listening pleasure, I leave the link here for you...

From the "Babe of Peace" CD - Track 6 - The Christmas Winters Eve

This blog entry dedicated to the memory of Kilani Brown.

Christmas Shopping

I went looking for a Christmas present for Tara today. Things were crowded. There were people everywhere.

The following stores had completely full parking lots:

• Kmart
• Shopko
• Best Buy
• Circuit City
• Walmart
• Target
• Kmart #2

I now remember why I do not like Christmas shopping. None of the stores really had what I was looking for, anyway.

The reason I was trying to find it in the store was that there is a very high probiblity that if I purchase something online, and ship it here, Tara will open it and ruin the surprise. If figured that if I found it in the store, I could pick it up easier. Now, after 5 hours of shopping, I come back to the online item, and it's out of stock. It was just there 2 days ago. Tara will just have to settle for a pack of gum.

New Blog format

I converted to the new blogger site tonight. Things appear to still be up here, so that's good.

They have a number of controls here on the new site, it's kind of nice. I have updated the template, and you can modify it past what you have already done. Each post can have 1 or more labels, I have added some already to previous posts, I will try to get some more labels done another time.

I picked this template because you can expand the page horizontally, and it will expand the posts horizontally as well.

I also really like the new archive format...

Those were not cheap envelopes...

I had 200 Christmas cards to seal, stamp, and mail today. (They were from the Stake) Tara volunteered to help, but then she asked if they were cheap envelopes and if they were poisoned. I tryed to reassure her that they were not, but she left, and I ended up doing it all myself. It took a 32 ounce powerade to get through them all, and I still needed to eat a full bag of popcorn to get the taste out of my mouth after.

I'm still here 4 hours later, so the envelopes must have been ok.

As for Christmas cards from us, you need to look for them sometime after the countdown is over. Tara wants to take a family picture to sent with them. I plan to have all the cards ready before then, just waiting for the picture to be inserted, so it shouldn't be too long after Christmas that people get them.

If I don't have your address, email it to me.

Hair Cuts

I have been going to the campus barbershop for haircuts for something like 13 1/2 years. A year or 2 ago, they renamed the place the "Barbershop and Salon". They had hired a couple of stylists, and they convined them that money could be made catering to women. It looks like soon, they might try renaming the place the campus "salon", and stop any pretenses of keeping the barbers around. Today I stopped in to see what things looked like (as in "How long is the line?"), and it was all woman cutting hair.

Now, I don't have a problem, per se, with a woman cutting my hair, but I don't like the following:

• Having to explain that I really want it short on the sides, and just barely long enough to comb over on top. (because I want to go more than 4 weeks between cuts.)
• Having to play 20 questions before they bother taking the first cut. I just want it short, and I have already sat around waiting for the haircut!
• Dealing with the little simple chit chat on subjects I don't particularly care for.
  
• Having my hair "styled" or anything like that.

For a couple of years, I only let one guy cut my hair. He never messed it up. He knew what I did for work, church, etc, and he remembered from one visit to the next. Then he quit and moved away. I spent several (bad) haircuts trying to settle on someone new in there. One of the guys asked me questions for several minutes about how I liked my hair cut, until I got mad and said "I just want it short!" He got the hint then.

The guy I have been getting my hair cut from I have been going to for about 2 years now. He knows what I do for work, the fact that I have 4 girls, likes to talk about sports, etc. He wasn't there today, I hope he didn't quit, but I wasn't in the mood to go in and ask them about it.

If you cut my hair, remember these simple rules:

1. I want it short on the sides, just long enough that it combs down on top.
2. My head is full of hair, I get hot when it's really long, there's nothing wrong with using those thinning scissors
3. I don't want to hear you talking to the person next to you about the 43 things you did over the past weekend. You are supposed to paying attention to what you are doing.
4. I don't want gel, I don't want hairspray, I don't want any fancy(pants) style or trendy cut, I'm not that kind of person.

Hopefully the guy I've been going to just had a day off today. If he quit, I will stop going there, they cost a little more, and if I'm going to have to deal with all that other crap, I might as well save $5 and get lunch money out of it also.

I'm also considering cutting my own hair...

hand cramp

Last night I had to take the minutes of a Stake Disiplinary Council. Normally, (in case you don't know) this is the pervue of the Stake Cerk, not the Executive Secretary, but the Clerk had something else going.

I went along typing feverishly, when I looked up and it was 10:30. We started at 7:30. We went all the way to 12:30 for the entire thing and I ended up typing 17 pages. Now, I don't think 17 pages in 5 hours is all that bad of a thing, but my hands were pretty sore at the end of it, and this morning, they were still sore.

Right now, my left hand is ok, but my right hand is stil a little sore. I think I hurt myself. I seriously concidered calling in sick today. I probably shouldn't even be typing now, but that's just how it goes sometimes....

Fast as Flash

It's Emma's goal to one day be as fast as Flash.

I was thinking about this last night as I was walking home from work. It would be nice to be as fast as flash in some ways, especially if access to the Speed Force was involved. In that case, I could get fully healed of all the stupid stuff that has reduced me to my current plodding gait. (OK, so I didn't have anything else to do while walking home...)

When I was nearly home, I figured my shins felt like they were made of concrete. It kind of felt like walking through oatmeal, only it wasn't warm. My legs feel kind of better today...

Shopping (for food)

There is a store here that I don't shop unless I have to. It's usually Tara saying something specific is on sale there. I don't trust the store. (Ok, it's Smith's.) Their sales always seem to have some sort of catch with it. (maybe it's yougurt on sale, but the yougurts a really small, or something silly like that.) Anyway, the only things I buy from the place are the specific items I planned, nothing more.

Today it was cereal and milk. The cereal was 8 for $8. The deal was you could buy 8, no more, no less, to get the deal. Picking up the cereal, there were some girls loading up their cart with cereal. They had 16 of them in there, I was thinking "They are in for a suprise when they get to the register..."

Anyway, when I checked out, the cereal rang up as $2, not $1. You had to click the 'check out' button to get the other $8 off. It's silly.

If I go to Smith's, it's "Don't trust, and verify" anytime I buy anything.

Just thought I'd share.

That's one way to clear out a room

One of the other guys at work brought his daughter into work today. She wasn't feeling well, and had a doctor's appointment early in the afternoon.

Tara came down for lunch, and after I got back, I found that his daughter got sick and trew up all over my space. There appears to have been a high splatter factor.

The cleaning lady had come down, but didn't bother with the splatter, we called her back down to help some more. My desk was unusable due to the smell.

The lady came down, sprayed disinfectant everywhere, rubbed the stuff intot he carpet, and brought in a carpet fan. This made things worse, the smell was unbearable, and we all left to go home.

I figure it will still smell bad tomorrow, (it's not like they are getting the carpet cleaners in right now...) and I will have to go looking for a new desk in the morning.

Like her sisters before her

Notice the perfectly good bed at the top of the picture.

Notice that said bed has had all it's blankets pulled off.

Notice the child, sleeping on the floor, not the perfectly good and comfortable bed.

They got to Ruth before I could. It's a Payne girl tradition to plant your face in the carpet and sleep. So starts another round of picking up the girl off the floor at night and putting her in her bed.