Remembering Y2K

Hard to believe Y2K was 10 years ago. Back then, I was one of the computer room shift supervisors. Amy had done some work with Herb and Gordon getting us ready for the thing. The director, Ferrell, was a little off by then, I think. A couple of days before the 31st, he brought in some really long extension cords and some tarps for us to have on hand. He seemed to think we could just run the cords over to the next building and plug the servers in if we had to. I asked him what the tarp was for, he thought it would be useful if water started coming in from the ceiling. I still don't know what he thought would happen to the structural integrity of the roof... At around 10pm, one of the campus police officers came over, Ferrell had him over just in case we needed him. (We didn't, but I think he enjoyed sitting there all night eating snacks just as much as we did.)

Anyhow, at the time, I was still an hourly employee. I hit 40 hours before the 31st, and worked about 14 hours or something that day. We were incredibly bored the entire day, watching New Year's celebrations on TV from around the world, and watching the reports of nothing else happening.

No worldwide computer meltdown, no alien invasion, no natural disaster. Just a very big paycheck from all the overtime...

Happy new year everyone.

The Gadgets of 2009

I've gotten a few new gadgets this year:

• New laptop - Dell Latitude E6500 - My old one was a Dell Precision M90. The laptops are about the same size. This one is a bit smaller and lighter, I didn't realize it was so heavy until I started carrying the new one around. MY backpack feels so much lighter these days...
• New monitor at work - I went from a 20 inch monitor to a 24 inch monitor. This was a 'pecking order' acquisition... The 24 inch monitor is pretty nice. Lots of room, and plenty bright.
• Logitech VX Nano wireless mouse - This thing is really nice, it's very sensitive, seems to move much faster than any other mouse. You can really tell the difference when you go back to another mouse. It's got a scroll wheel, with fly wheel mode that will let you scroll through pages super fast. I use it all the time when I am on the DNS modification page for work, scrolling through subnets. The mouse is definitely a winner. The usb interface for the mouse is a short little thing that only sticks a quarter inch out of the laptop. I haven't removed it since I got the laptop.
  
• Droid - so far I like it. I'm not posting to this blog for it yet, it sounds like the two primary apps for blog posts from the droid need at least one more release to be ready. That's ok, I'm not looking to release my laptop with the thing. Turn by turn navigation, google sky, and all the other integrated google apps is very nice... If I find any phone number on the web browser, I can select it, then call it. This is very nice for someone that calls lots and lots of people in the Stake.
• Roku Netflix player - Tara got this for Christmas, not what she was expecting. Mailing it to Drew's house did the trick. So far, it seems really nice. It streams a little better than a laptop streams, and goes through the TV. On Saturday, I asked Tara what she wanted to watch, she said "anything". I played an episode of "The Incredible Hulk", I'm not sure that was what Tara was expecting, but we watched it anyway...
  

I think 2010 will involve less new gadgets than 2009. I have plenty to deal with right now.

Something interesting...

It will go well with the "Tiki of Happiness" at my desk at work.

Christmas pictures

All the girls seemed pretty happy with the stuff they got for their Grandma. Any non-smiling pictures are a result of poor timing with the camera, not an indication of what they are currently thinking about the gifts, except for maybe Adam...

Adam was not incredibly interested in opening his presents yesterday, for some reason. One of them is still on the back of the couch waiting for him. Not sure what the problem was, he seems to really like the toys he got.

I made the truck we got him fairly easy to get into.

Eggplant Parmigiana

It may not fix all your family's problems, but it sure is tasty...

Game time - Where I lose mostly everything I play...

Last week we had a work Christmas party at a cabin up Springville canyon. We took a Wii up there. I lost at MarioKart, Bowling, and some other thing, but beat Karl at fencing. Tara and I played horse at the basketball court up there, Tara beat me by several letters.

Two days ago the Garretts invited us over to play Cash Flow. That was an interesting game. It ended up that four of the five of us were in a position at the end to win. Jared won, and seemed pretty happy about it in the end.

Today Tara and I played "Star Trek Scene It?", which she got for Christmas. I won, but only by a little. It was answers to questions about the Star Trek movies that did Tara in. (Tara is watching the first episode of the original series right now to start getting caught up so we can play again. Good thing she's got the Roku box now.)

We also played Ticket to Ride, the 1910 expansion, which I got today. The bigger cards are easier to use, that's for sure. Tara won the game by 12 points, she was able to get more trains down than I was...

Maybe I'll race the girls in MarioKart tomorrow, just to prop up my ego a bit.

Some thoughts a Christmas rapidly approaches

• Emma was asking if Santa would bring "Santa Stew" ingredients. Looks like she won't be disappointed.
• The problem with finishing Christmas shopping a while ago is forgetting needing that one thing for Tara's present. 10:30pm is not the right time to be looking for this particular thing. It turns out Walmart closed at 8pm. I know this because I went over there tonight. So did lots of other people. There's quite a revolving door of people going on over there, with people driving up checking the close time, and leaving. I wonder if Walmart checks their recordings to see how many people drive up from 8pm to 1am on Christmas Eve. They might end up being opened next year.
• The only places in town that are opened at 10:45pm on Christmas Eve around here are McDonald's, In-N-Out, Rite Aid, and Walgreens. (The thing I need is a little about the level of what's available at any of those four places.)
• Rite Aid and Walgreens is currently doing a very brisk business. A very, very brisk business. The Walgreens parking lot was full. One guy had all kinds of gifts, and was trying to get someone to open the perfume case. (Seems like I was once like that, anyone remember stories?)
• We used to let the kids put out cookies and milk for Santa. When did we start to go wrong? There were no cookies and milk out for Santa.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Gingerbread house

We bought a gingerbread house kit from Costco this year, it was cheaper than any of the others we saw around, and tons nicer.

Emma fashioned herself a little spearmint snowman/animal/something...

The house in process. Ruth was busy overloading the front path with icing and round candies. She likes that it's a very sturdy walkway.

The crew hard at work...

To Droid, or not to Droid

A couple of the guys at work turned in their ENv's for Droids last week. They seem pretty happy. Feature happy. Jess let me look at his twice in the last two days. Yesterday we turned bluetooth on, I started playing with it, and the thing hung. Today he was showing me the SSH interface, and after I tried connecting to one of the machines, the app crashed. I think Jess' phone hates me.

Anyway, my phone is an old Sansung flip phone, I was due to get a new phone in Aug 2008. I guess it's time. I've logged 440 hours on this phone Other phones I've had in the past have started losing charge way before now, or dropping calls all the time, or wearing out in some other way. This one seems to be holding up ok.

I want to stay with Verizon, I've never had a problem with Verizon's coverage, pretty much anywhere but downtown New Orleans, and then only in my hotel room. Nothing in the current advertising campaign AT&T is running would really lead me to believe their service is all that great. I've heard people complain, and the Stake President doesn't get service in his office unless he leans forward in his chair. (That might be an exaggeration...) I don't spend tons of time in our Data Center anymore, but they get Verizon only down there. These reasons pretty much kept me not jumping on the iPhone until they got themselves on the Verizon network...

Back to the Droid. Lots of interesting features. The most important thing for me for a phone is how nice the 'conversation experience' is, meaning talking to people on the phone. I asked Steve E at work about this today, who has had his Droid for a while, and he said it was the best phone he has ever had in that respect. He had glowing reviews for talking to people on it, and even better things to say about the speaker phone.

Turns out those might have been the Droids I was looking for after all. I ordered one this afternoon. I should have it Monday, maybe Tuesday. I expect my productivity to go down by quite a bit for a while that day after it shows up...

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

The one in the middle is mine...
It didn't get as big a reaction from the girls as I thought it would.

Two pictures of Adam

Lily's birthday

Yesterday was Lily's birthday, she's now officially three. Lily wasn't feeling very well yesterday, and woke up at something like 2am. Tara and I tried to take her to lunch, but it didn't work out all that well, Lily just wanted to get back in the truck and go to sleep.

We opened presents for her today:

I would use it ALL THE TIME...

If I had a personal teleporter, and other people really didn't have one, I would be doing the following all the time...

I would sit in a meeting, and while talking in the meeting or something, teleport out, change clothes, and maybe put on a wig or something, then teleport back in. Then I would say "Space/Time Continuity problems. I'm up to speed."

I would do that all the time. Maybe it only seems funny to me.

Like an Indonesian sneaker factory

The girls need to color a bunch of Christmas cards tomorrow. Tara might line them up, have them work all day long, and not give them any pay... It's getting late in the month, but Christmas cards will be on the way soon, assuming we have your address.

Just thought I'd mention it, while I'm thinking about sweatshops.

Communication Breakdown

Saturday evening I got a call from the guy on my team that was oncall. Something silly was happening at work. I was in the kitchen with Adam at the time, feeding him junk food. I brought my laptop in the kitchen and was poking around at things. A short time later, I knocked a cup of Diet Dr. Pepper into the laptop. The thing powered itself down.

I drained the laptop the best I could, the thing would not power on. I left it overnight. No power on. This morning, I went into work, put it on my docking station, and the thing powered up. Tara mentioned the laptop in our morning prayers, that must have been what did it. I'm just telling people it had a caffeine overdose.

This morning I built myself a Linux install on my backup drive at work. That way if the laptop fries later in the week, I will have something I can plug into some other computer and get work done.

Tara bought a Dr. Pepper t-shirt at the store the other day. I toyed with wearing it today, but figured that was a little too close to home at the time. Maybe tomorrow.

The worst part about dumping the drink into the laptop? That was the last of the Dr. Pepper in the house.

C is for Cookie

C is also for Christmas. Put them together - Christmas Cookies!

This week's cookies:

• Chocolate chip cookies
  
• Root Beer cookies
• Banana bread
• Pumpkin chocolate chip bread
• Sugar cookies - chocolate filled
• Sugar cookies - jelly topped
• Macaroons
• Chocolate dipped almond butter cookies
• Truffles
• Candy Canes
• piroulene sticks

Deliveries this week (It was an epic week...)

• Snow
• Campbell
• Harris
• Stookey
• Duffin
• Blackham
• Bird
• Heftel
• Keele
• Werner
• Turner
• MacDonald
• Shields
• McWhorter
• MacKay
• Huddleston
• Olsen
• Lott
• Anderson
• Rencher
• Bussio
• Kovacs
• Bell
• Weinheiner
• Champagne
• Pope
• Rose
• Rose
• Daniel
• Daniels
• Harper
• Fromm

More to come...

When the Levee Breaks

It's still cold. Definitely cold. Single digits still at nearly 11am. Last Thursday night when I went out to plug vents, I got three of them closed up. I had no gloves on, after the third one was closed, my hands were getting a little too cold, I went inside. The next morning the back bath sink was working, but the truck had a flat tire and the front bath tub backed up.

If fixed the truck, went to the store for some Liquid Plumber, and poured it down the tub. A few hours later, the thing drained. Hair and some sort of sticky paper came up from the drain before the clog unbound.

Yesterday the tub backed up again. Back to the store for Liquid Plumber. I dumped it down last night, this morning there was no difference. I dumped another bottle down to see if it would bring anything up. The stuff was foaming up, but not bringing anything with it.

I went and did a load of laundry, a load of dishes, and took out all the trash. Finally the inspiration came - Maybe there was a fourth vent over by where the bathtub was. I went out there, and sure enough, an uncovered vent, right behind one of the bushes. I plugged the vent with insulation, and went back inside. The water in the tub was ice cold.

I scooped most of the cold water out of the tub, and loaded it up with hot water. This made it end up as sort of warm water. An hour or so later, and the tub has drained. Now I can take a shower. Getting inspiration is so nice...

2010 Christmas cookie project - Week 1

People in our ward, and surrounding environs, knows by now we are coming around in December with a plate or cookies. (Or they should, at least.) In school recently, Kate's class was telling each other their favorite Christmas traditions. Delivering cookies was the one Kate picked.

Anyway, this week's cookie lineup had some or all of the following:

• Oatmeal raisin
• Small sugar cookies with sprinkles
• larger shaped sugar cookies - chocolate dipped
• peanut butter cookies - chocolate dipped
• chocolate raspberry chocolate chip
• root beer
• candy canes
• microwave popcorn
• truffles
• piroulene sticks

This week's recipients?

• Johnson
• Niccoli
• Salazar
• Sawyer
• Brimhall
• Chambers
• Christensen
• Corless
• Egbert
• Garrett
• Garvin
• Howell

The girls were busy coloring Christmas cards tonight. We have to order prints of a picture before we send them out, stay tuned...

Rob, I've got your request. Stay tuned, you never know...

Cookies - Tara stops 'Evil John' - And more

I'm making cookies right now, for our traditional Christmas cookie plates that we give out this time of year, mostly to people from church. So far I have only come up with sugar cookies and peanut butter cookies, nothing fancy yet today.

I do have some extracts I might try to find something to make from, I have raspberry, cherry, almond, and mint extracts. I wanted to get the imitation run extract, just to make a batch of cookies from it and see who from church comes up and says "those were the best tasting cookies I have ever had!" Tara stopped me.

Any suggestions this year?

Also, Drew just gave me three bottles of wing sauce. I think it might be time to go to town on some homemade beef on weck and wings...

Mary's Baptism

Mary got baptized yesterday. She was very excited that so many family members could be there. She asked me for 10 minutes if I saw Missy, who was sitting next to my Dad with a different hairstyle...

I don't know what else to say about it, there were 11 total kids getting baptized, so it was kind of crazy at the church. I spent some time thinking about what I would say in the confirmation, but nothing I really thought about ended up in the blessing. I hope it was ok.

After the baptism and confirmation, we all went to Chuck-A-Rama for lunch. We ended up beating a majority of the 'Saturday morning baptism crowd' there. (My Mom and Dad paid for us, thanks by the way.) We didn't get a big giant table all together, I ended up sitting next to 3 of the kids, Drew ended up getting Lily and Ruth with Anson. Maybe I should have thought that all the way through better, but I think they behaved themselves...

Conversation from the summer

Chad: I am leaving openings in the siding for your basement vents. It will help keep the crawlspace from being damp

Me: (In my head: I don't ever remember the crawlspace down there being damp) OK



What's wrong with this conversation? It's very cold out there tonight. One of the vents is right next to the tubing that feeds the washer and back bathroom sink. There is definitely frozen water in that tubing.

I went out and plugged up the vents with insulation for tonight. In the morning I will have to check the sink, if it's running by then, I will have to go back down and make sure the tubing didn't crack and start leaking. If it has, we will have some dampness in the crawlspace...