tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16428902958330041062024-03-13T16:02:09.716-06:00Tom's BlogThe life and times of a married man who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doing vendor support in the information age...Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.comBlogger127125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-30825749768187432362024-02-17T20:39:00.000-07:002024-02-17T20:39:08.273-07:00Back to blogging - Cancer Act Two<p>Hello World! For a beginning programmer or someone who is learning a new programming language, their first program is a "Hello world!" program. It is usually a quick and easy win that shows you that yes, you can program!</p><p>My last blog post was November 2017 when I announced that I had cancer. It has been a hot minute. To be brief, with the help from God and some very good doctors and nurses, I beat the stage one non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that I had in the back of my neck. It was rough, but I made it through it.</p><p>Since that blog post, I now have four children married and seven grandchildren with six granddaughters. Very cool. </p><p>In September 2022 the Ward I live in was split. We had over 700 members in our Ward. They split us in two. I was called to be the Bishop of the new Ward that was created. A Bishop is like the pastor of the congregation. It is entirely voluntary with no monetary compensation whatsoever. You get to consecrate your (free??) time to leading, guiding, and directing the group of people that live within your Ward boundaries. Since I'm not independently wealthy, I still work for a living, so my Church responsibilities take up my free time in the evenings and on the weekends. I love the people that I serve. I wish I could do more for my little flock of Latter-day Saints.</p><p>A couple of months into being a Bishop I start having swallowing issues. I have a gastro doctor and I complain to him. He checks me out and doesn't find anything. He thinks it is a stomach bug. In December I end up in the hospital complaining about severe abdominal pain. They do a CT on my abdomen and I have a blockage in my small intestines. Long story short, after five years of being in remission, my non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is back. And it came back with a vengeance. It made my cancer battle in 2017 look like kindergarten.</p><p>After six rounds of "normal" chemo (three weeks apart), I ended up at Huntsman Cancer Institute so I could do a bone marrow transplant. It was a self-transplant, so they harvested a bunch of my stem cells, killed my bone marrow, and then they gave me back my own stem cells. I ended up taking 35 days of short-term disability so I could do my transplant. July 2023 I did a PET-CT scan and I'm back in remission. I have about a 60 to 70% chance of this never coming back. During this whole time I was still the Bishop of my Ward.</p><p>I will testify to the world that God is real. He is a God of miracles. I had many small, but significant miracles happen to me in the last year. I've been given more time on this earth to learn to be humble and to submit my will to His will and to do His work. I am mortal. I've had cancer. Twice. I wear out and I get tired. But I keep on trucking. I need to repay my Heavenly Father for all the tender mercies that he has extended to me since being called as Bishop of my Ward. I love Him and his son Jesus Christ. They are my friends. You might ask how I can be friends with God who "gave" me cancer. I was "given" cancer so I could learn. I was given cancer so that my congregation could learn to support a sick Bishop. My time on earth isn't finished. I still have work to do. And he has spared my life so that I can do His work. Even if the outcome wasn't as good as it has been, I'd still love and appreciate my Heavenly Father and His son and what they've done for me.</p><p>Cancer is bad. It is scary. But I think it is a lot more scary to go through cancer and life without having God be a part of your life. Let Him in. Accept Him. Talk to Him. He wants you to get to know Him and His mighty works. He loves you. He listens to you. He performs small, but mighty miracles in your life. Those "coincidences" that happen from time to time? Those happen when He performs a miracle in your life and he wants to be anonymous. When you start to see the little "coincidences" (I call them miracles) in your life, you will start to realize that He is there and He is watching out for you. Have faith. Ask that He show His mighty hand in your life and you will also get to see the miracles that happen.</p><p>Yeah, I'm back. I'm older than I was the last time I blogged. I'll ride this ride until the park closes and I'm called back home. I have more I've got to learn. I have more unborn grandchildren that I need to meet and influence. I have more pictures to take and more ATV trails to ride. I have more Ward members that I need to meet and help. It really isn't me who is helping. It is the Lord because this is His work. His Spirit guides me and I try to be in tune with Him and share His love for His children. Without His help, I am nothing. Without Him, I can't do His work.</p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-69421013496698229712017-11-07T00:05:00.003-07:002017-11-07T00:05:57.945-07:00Mr. Tom, you have cancerAugust 11, 2017 at about 4PM will forever be remembered as the date in which I received the dreaded, "You have cancer," phone call from my surgeon. Long story short, I had a small mass removed from the back of my neck. Pathology came back with a diagnosis - Diffuse large, B-Cell lymphoma (DLBCL), a form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Happy Friday! Welcome to the weekend!<br />
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The days and weeks that followed were full of many miracles. I will list a few:<br />
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<li>My insurance helped get me into a place that does a PET scan close to home, even though they are out of network and I got to pay in-network prices.</li>
<li>My cancer staged out at stage 1. Typical DLBCL cancer patients are at stage 3 or 4 when diagnosed. That is a HUGE miracle.</li>
<li>I only had to have three rounds of chemotherapy (all now completed)</li>
<li>I was able to continue to work while on chemo, although my brain was a little foggy as time went on</li>
<li>All my blood work came back nearly normal while on chemo</li>
<li>My prognosis is good. My oncologist said that I have about a 90% chance of my lymphoma going away and never coming back.</li>
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I feel very blessed. I am bumbled by His blessings. I acknowledge that God knows us individually and He is the one that blessed me. There are too many miracles for me to not acknowledge what He has done for me. </div>
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So, what is next? 20 days of radiation. Since the lymphoma was found on the back of my neck, the radiation doctor can use electrons (which dissipate in about 5cm of tissue) instead of photons (aka X-rays and which go through your tissue). This will minimize the side effects of radiation. This is yet another small, yet mighty miracle. It makes me want to yell at the top of my lungs that God is great and He is also good!</div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-65871391349771888772015-02-26T09:44:00.003-07:002015-02-26T09:44:33.595-07:00Parting ways with AMD based devicesI've been building my own computers since 2001. My very first computer was an Epson Equity II+ (an AMD 80286 based CPU running at 12Mhz). I've used AMD products in many computers, especially when the Athlons rocked the Pentium 4s in both speed and price. However, the last several years my willingness to use AMD has waned. Specifically, I had an old Intel Core2 Quad (Q9550) and I built a new, shiny (at the time) AMD FX8120 based computer. I did some benchmarking and I found that my new FX8120 based computer wasn't really any faster than my Core2 Quad! I was sorely disappointed. Power consumption for the AMD is greater than the Intel parts.<br />
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I recently picked up several Haswell based computers/motherboards/parts. I have a Chromebook that uses a Haswell based CPU. I can get about 8 to 10 hours on my Chromebook before recharging. Performance is surprisingly snappy for what it is. I have a Plex media server that runs an Intel Celeron J1900 processor. It is generally fast enough to transcode, yet it doesn't eat a lot of electricity. I picked up a G3258 and i7-4790k CPU and built one new computer and "upgraded" the other one. Same story. Lots of power processing power. Low power consumption. The i7 with an Nvidia based video card uses about half the power as my Q9550 part with an AMD 7770 video card. Amazing.<br />
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I pay a bit of a premium for the Intel parts, but the performance is superior. I've gone back to using Nvidia after many years of using ATI/AMD Radeon parts. Why? Because more software using the Nvidia CUDA cores than the AMD equivalent.<br />
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Sorry AMD... Maybe if you can build something that can knock the socks off my 4790k, then I'd come back. Until then, see you later!<br />
<br />Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-62933663960272203262014-11-05T19:51:00.003-07:002014-11-05T19:51:49.904-07:00CrashPlan Pro, or how a good idea from IT has gone bad...My work laptop has a program installed on it called CrashPlan Pro. This piece of software backs up files "the cloud". My company's IT department has it locked down so I really have no control over what is copies up to the Cloud. On a good day, it is a bandwidth pig. So here are some stories with my tangles with it.<br />
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Over the weekend my kids were complaining that our Internet was really slow. Web pages were slow to come up and the family was not happy. I ran some traceroutes to some IPs and yes, they were really, really bad. I was wondering what was going on, but I really didn't do much about it.<br />
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A few days later I was on a conference call. I have an Avaya IP phone at my house. While on the conference call people were complaining to me that I was breaking up really bad and they couldn't understand me. I hopped into my home router and looked at the bandwidth usage and my upload was pegged... "What is going on???? Has someone hacked into my network and stealing my data??" My kids were in the other room watching Studio C on the BYU TV channel and I went and abruptly unplugged the Roku from its power source. Oh, the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!! I checked my router. Nothing. Dang it! What was going on? What device was consuming all my bandwidth? I looked at the statistics from my router and the uploads had been going on all weekend long! What?!? I saw the CrashPlan icon in the system tray and I checked and it was in the process of updating. Hah! I found you, you little network wrecker! I selected to set it to "Sleep" and my network utilization went to zero! Whew! Problem solved. I've had a problem with this lovely little program previously, but this time it caught me off guard.<br />
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This app has burned me more than once and I was sick of it. Being that I know my way around a protocol analyzer, aka Wireshark, I fired it up on my laptop and I proceeded to figure out how this application behaves. It resolves DNS for three key hosts and then it tries to connect to each one of them. I have a DD-WRT based router and I added the following firewall rules:<br />
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<pre id="firewall" style="background-color: #f7f7f7; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: 11px; overflow: auto; padding: 1em; width: 533.875px;">iptables -I FORWARD -d 199.xxx.xxx.47 -j DROP
iptables -I FORWARD -d 50.xxx.xxx.246 -j DROP
iptables -I FORWARD -d 216.xxx.xxx.55 -j DROP</pre>
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I put those rules in and my WAN utilization when back to zero. So now I don't have to worry about putting CrashPlan to sleep while I'm working from home. Score!<br />
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Now, here is the funniest part of the story. This week I've been working in the office. I've noticed that the number of files to be backed up by CrashPlan is steadily growing. Hmmm... Why is that? Why isn't CrashPlan backing up files when I'm on the corporate network? I don't mind killing my work connection (they're the ones that installed this fine piece of software onto my laptop) because this is corporate and if they want to backup my laptop, then I'll let this piece of software kill my work's bandwidth. I fire up wireshark again and start sniffing the wire... I look for massive uploads and it isn't happening. Why? I found out that someone is killing CrashPlan on the local network! I guess all the backups are killing our Internet connection so someone in IT has blocked access to the same CrashPlan IPs that I'm blocking! Oh, the irony. So here is this piece of software that is supposed to be making a backup of my so very important data and I've killed it at home and my own local IT guy is killing it too. Which leads me to ask, why am I running this to begin with if IT is blocking it?<br />
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My local user is in the workstation's administrator's group so CrashPlan will be removed from my workstation in the next week. If IT asks me why I removed it, I will simply state the facts above. It is killing my home bandwidth. It is killing my local office's bandwidth and it is being blocked. Therefore, it will never do its job. If it isn't doing its job, then why run it? If there were some means to limit the amount of bandwidth that it uses, or if there was some sort of location awareness on the product, or if IT would give me some control over what data I can backup, then I wouldn't mind keeping the app. But I have no control and therefore it is useless.<br />
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Have a nice day!<br />
<br />Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-46572178110377159242014-08-27T13:57:00.002-06:002014-08-27T13:57:08.987-06:00Aereo - The death of a new ideaSince the United States of America turned off the analog TV signal and went digital, I lost my ability to view over-the-air content. The simple fact is this: I live in the shadow of a mountain, meaning the new digital TV signal is being blocked by a mountain. If you look at a signal map, my house is in the mountain's "shadow". Therefore, if I want to watch TV, I must get cable or satellite TV. Even for basic cable (local broadcast channels), the fee is between $15 and $20 per month. I don't like TV enough to pay for that.<div>
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Then along comes Aereo. They open in my market. Problem solved! I subscribe for a Netflix price of $8/month and I get my local content streamed to me over the Internet, plus a DVR in the cloud. Happy days! Long live Aereo!</div>
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Then on June 25, 2014 the Supreme Court of the United States of America issued a ruling that effectively killed Aereo. Aereo changed tactics and decided to become a cable operator, but on July 17th, they were again snubbed by the US Copyright Office and they weren't given a chance to operate even as a cable TV operator.</div>
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Here is what I believe the crux of the whole problem. People are paying a lot of money for content they don't watch. If you have cable TV, how many channels do you <i>regularly</i> watch? I could care less about MTV, VH1, all the various cooking and home shopping channels. They are fluff. People realize that they are paying $50 per month ($600 per year) for a lot of stuff that really doesn't matter to them. They want to get the content they are interested in at a reasonable price. They are even willing to go without. I am willing to pay a nominal fee to get some local channels and possibly some sports games, but I don't want more than that.</div>
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I think the broadcasters may have won the battle, but over time, the demographic will change on them. Broadcasters will need to think about how they will appeal to a new generation of people who are willing to go without because the service being offered to them isn't a significant value to the end user. My advice... Cut the cord. The more people who cut the cord, the more clearly the consumer voices will be heard. Broadcasters are in it to make money. So you have to reward or punish them with your money. Sooner or later they will figure it out and follow the money. Too bad it will now be later than sooner.</div>
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Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-36645395422446217972014-05-27T20:51:00.000-06:002014-05-27T20:51:04.881-06:00Fifth Water Hot Springs - Diamond Fork Canyon (Utah)Yesterday was Memorial Day. My wife is always looking for an excuse to get my fat gut off the sofa and out into the wilderness. So she decided to take us on a hike up to the <a href="http://www.everytrail.com/guide/fifth-water-hot-springs-in-diamond-fork-canyon">Fifth Water Hot Springs - Diamond Fork Canyon</a>. It is about two miles up to the hot springs and the hike is all up hill... You can ride a bicycle up the trail, but the trail is narrow in many places. Make sure if you do this hike, do it early in the morning and take plenty of water with you. We didn't take sufficient amount of water with us, but we were OK. Yesterday was nuts. There was an over abundance of people on the trail and at the hot sprints. Parking was non-existent. <br />
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The hike up took quite a while. I would venture a guess at 90 to 120 minutes. The springs are interesting. There is one water source where the water is very hot and then there is freezing cold water coming down from the mountain. There are some of these pools where the hot and cold water mix. What was interesting is the cold water was on the bottom and the warm/hot water was on the top. If you mixed them together, you had barely warm water. It is weird to feel cold water on you foot and on you knee you have 100 degree F water. Just an interesting phenomena. I wish I had some photos to share, but I chose not to pack the DSLR. We packed the "water" camera, but I'm too lazy to pull the photos off it.<br />
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If you are bored and you want a good hike, this is the place to go. It has lots of little waterfalls. I wouldn't mind going back and taking my camera and spending some time on the trail photographing the water. I like long exposure water photos. They are cool.<br />
<br />Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-79706670385684676532014-05-27T20:33:00.000-06:002014-05-27T20:33:16.070-06:00Talking to your daughterToday I worked from home. My oldest daughter is graduating from high school this year, in about two weeks. This last semester of high school, she only goes to school every other day. Today was her "home" day. During lunch, I talked to her about her future. This is a rare opportunity. My daughter is busy with school and work. We rarely have an opportunity to talk unless it is after 11PM. It was a good talk. We talked about getting married and the importance of marrying a good person with similar values. I also emphasized that you <b>cannot</b> change a person that you marry, nor should you think that you can change them after you marry them. The only thing you can do is love them and encourage them to do the right thing. I told her that you don't marry a project. I'm not into projects. I'm into having a wife and she should be into having a husband. Has my wife helped me change? Absolutely! But she didn't make me change. My wife and I have had honest discussions and based on those discussions I made changes in my life so that we can have increased harmony in our marriage. The change is made out of love, specifically my love towards my wife.<br />
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This is such an exciting and wonderful time in life. It is like the mother bird throwing the young ones out of the nest to help them learn how to fly. Kids when they reach that last year of high school are ready to be thrown out of the nest. You hope that you've trained them well enough to be self-sufficient. You know there will be bumps and bruises along the way. But you look forward to seeing them soar high in the sky.<br />
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In just a few short months, I will have 1/3 of my kids out of the house. The house is gradually getting bigger. In less than 10 years, we will be empty nesters. Wow! Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-12160919864652190202014-04-08T21:03:00.002-06:002014-04-08T21:03:29.538-06:00LDS General Conference - April 2014I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Twice a year, the first weekend in April and October, the LDS Church holds what is known as General Conference. The last weekend in March and September, there is a meeting specifically for the sisters in the Church. The first weekend in April and October there are five, two-hour sessions where member of the Church listen to their leaders. It is during these two hour sessions that the general church membership is instructed by the senior leadership in the LDS Church. I tried to watch as much of General Conference as I could this last weekend.<br />
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Overall, the messages are excellent. I always feel uplifted. I also feel chastened. I realize that I can do better as a husband and a parent. I have made some mental notes on things that I need to do in order to be a better person.<br />
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One of the talks that I remember the most was given by Elder Donald L. Hallstrom titled, "<a href="https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/04/what-manner-of-men?lang=eng">What Manner of Men?</a>". The story that stood out from that talk was about the man that said to Elder Hallstrom, "That's the way that I am." How many of us are stuck, drifting? How many of us are working to better ourselves and to become someone better? I personally have been drifting for some time, but I want to change. I want to do something different. I want to be a different person. That isn't to say that I'm a bad person (I think I'm generally a good person), but I firmly believe I can be an even better person. But in order to become that better person, I must be actively engaged. I must work at it. I must set goals and work towards becoming the person that I want to become. Without those goals, I will drift.<br />
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If you feel that you are drifting, take some time to do a self-evaluation. What do you spend your time on? Is that what you really want to be doing with your time? What interests you? What things can you work on to be a better person? Make goals. Work on becoming the person that you want to become. You are only limited by yourself. You will fail to become the person you want to become if you fail to plan to become that person. Wishing for something won't bring you any closer to your wish. Only acting upon your desires will bring you closer to what you want to become. Don't be discouraged if you occasionally fall short. That is called life. Nothing ever goes as planned. Just remember to take those shortcomings in stride. Learn from them. Then move on. Don't dwell on the past that you have no control over, but instead focus on the present and the future. Chin up! The future is bright and new! Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-70646346733219105032014-04-08T20:40:00.002-06:002014-04-08T20:40:29.610-06:00The end of an era - The sunset of Windows XPOn October 25, 2001, Windows XP was released to the general public. Today, Windows XP is no longer a supported operating system, joining the ranks of Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows NT 4, etc... Thirteen years is a long run. XP came out less than a year after my fourth child was born. My oldest child was almost eight years old. What an incredible run. I don't believe that even Microsoft understood the magnitude of XP's success on the computing world at that time.<br />
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Since then we have had Windows Vista (dud), Windows 7 (the <b>true</b> successor to Windows XP), and Windows 8.x (I hate that OS and I absolutely refuse to buy anything with 8 on it). In the last four months, I have upgraded my own mother's computer (Windows 7) and my mother-in-law's computer (also Windows 7). If you are still running Windows XP, it is time to move on. Buy a new computer and put a modern OS on it. Windows 7 OEM runs $139 at Newegg.com. If you're a bit of a nerd and you want free, you can go with a Linux distribution and then run LibreOffice as your office suite. My new favorite Linux distribution is Linux Mint. I have Linux Mint running on some low-end hardware as my Plex media server and it runs just fine. In fact, I'm writing this blog entry on that PC. In 2001 there were no viable Windows OS alternatives. Today, there are a few more viable options. The two major options are Mac OS X and Linux. If you don't care about a having a thick desktop, a Chromebook might be in your future. (I have been pleasantly surprised with my Chromebook.) Your mileage may vary with Linux as it will take some experimentation to find a distribution that suits your tastes. I digress.<br />
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As I stated above, XP has had quite a run. It is probably the most popular desktop OS of all time. Today is a significant day indeed for the millions of users that still use it daily. It is time to upgrade or install something different. It really doesn't matter what it is, you just need to move to something that is supported. My personal preference is 64-bit Windows 7. I have it running on computers that have anywhere from 8 to 32 GB of RAM with as few as two cores to as many as eight CPU cores. It is solid. It is familiar. It is fast.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-53944373897027443062014-01-10T07:31:00.001-07:002014-01-10T07:32:08.815-07:00The death of the PC (according to foxnews.com)I am a news junkie and I regularly read the news at the beginning of the day. I saw on foxnews.com the following story:<br />
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<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/10/personal-computer-shipments-fell-7-percent/?intcmp=features">http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/10/personal-computer-shipments-fell-7-percent/?intcmp=features</a><br />
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Now, let's analyze the forces here. The vast majority of PCs that are sold in the world run Microsoft Windows. I have played with Windows 8 and 8.1 on a virtual PC and it is a frustrating piece of software, so much so that I have absolutely refused to buy a PC of any kind with Windows 8 installed on it. My elderly mother needed a new computer because her PC runs Windows XP. Windows XP goes end-of-life (EOL) April 2014. (Note: If you run a Windows XP workstation has your main computer, you need to upgrade to something before XP goes EOL) My family pooled our money and bought my Mom a new computer. Since I'm the "computer guy" in the family, I get to support my mother. Guess what? That new PC that I bought for my Mom was a Windows 7 PC and not a Windows 8 PC. Yep. They are still there and still available, although they aren't as readily available as Windows 8 PCs. It has been hard transitioning my Mom to this new computers. I would hate to imagine what it would be like to try and teach my elderly mother Windows 8... (shudder...)<br />
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To the article's credit, I do believe that smart phones and tablets have come into play, but I also think that the two year decline in PC sales has a stronger correlation with Windows 8 than anything. The new Metro UI doesn't make sense on a PC that doesn't have a touch screen. Sorry Microsoft, but I'm not going to buy a touchscreen PC or laptop. I don't like fingerprints on my monitor. (As a note, I have an iPad 2, an iPad mini, and three iPod touches, and a Google Nexus 7.) I can tolerate fingerprints on the tablets I own, but not on my computer.<br />
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Also, when it comes time to doing work, such as school work, the kids work on the PC and not on the tablets owned by the household. There are things you can only do on a tablet. And I haven't seen a tablet that can do what my PC can do. My PC is old and needs to be upgraded, but if and when that happens, it will not be a Windows 8 PC.<br />
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You ask about Mac and why I haven't done that. Honestly, I would, but the cost/form factor are a major hindrance for me. Their laptops are $1,000+ and I am not a fan of the all-in-one form factor PC (iMac). The newer MacBook Air PCs are not upgrade-able. The Mac Pro is ridiculously expensive and there isn't much room to upgrade. The Mac mini is cute (I have one of these for work), but you are stuck and cannot upgrade. I am a tinker and I upgrade my stuff. Being able to do incremental upgrades or changes for me is an important feature.<br />
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So I am caught in a Windows 7 Pro world waiting for Microsoft to understand that they blew it on Windows 8 and to right the ship. If they refuse to make a significant change in their OS, then I will have to look at alternates (such as Linux...shudder). As an aside, Linux is just too geeky for me, but I will do it if my Windows options don't improve.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-65352917271085714522013-12-18T16:11:00.001-07:002013-12-18T16:11:16.414-07:00Merry Christmas!This is a short blog post. I haven't posted for awhile. Work and "life" have been happening and I just haven't had a chance to blog much. I started another site recently but I haven't had a chance to do much there other than, "It is alive!"<br />
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For those of you who happen upon my blog, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! May 2014 be better and brighter than 2013. For those of you on the Christmas card list, it will come. Probably arrive some time in January, like it usually does.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-68268284951958248312013-05-14T07:35:00.001-06:002013-05-14T07:35:30.390-06:00Turning 46Last year I turned 46. This has been the hardest birthday, at least mentally thus far. Why has it been so hard? I don't know. Maybe the death of a parent and sister in the last two years has something to do with it. Maybe the realization that I am not getting any younger. Maybe the fact that I am not as spry as I used to be. Why is it hard? I don't know. Any suggestions?Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-6414641433300251612013-04-16T00:02:00.000-06:002013-04-16T00:02:04.968-06:00Gun control in the United States of AmericaIf you ask me what gun control is, I'm going to tell you that it is how well you handle your firearm. Are you shooting on target? Or are you missing it altogether? Now, you might be thinking that I'm missing the mark on what gun control really is, but am I? Or are our legislators in Washington, DC missing the mark like you think I missed the mark? Think about that for a minute or two...<br />
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I understand the current outcry for more and stricter gun legislation. Guns are bad. They are evil. They kill people. They take loved ones prematurely. Assault weapons are the epitome of all the evil guns in the world. They are loud and they look mean and menacing. Just the very appearance of them brings fear and trembling into the hearts of the masses... Whatever.<br />
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First of all, guns are like any other dangerous tool or instrument. They must be treated with respect. I have a Husqvarna 371 chain saw (it is a 71cc, two stroke motor with a 24" bar on it that will run chainsaw chain at 10,000 RPM). The thing is a beast. I cut down and limbed a tree in my back yard in 15 minutes with this saw on Saturday. It took me longer to load the tree into my pickup truck to haul it off to the dump than it did for me to take it down and cut it up. That saw is a freaking awesome machine. If you are stupid, it will maim or kill you. If you don't have respect for it, it doesn't matter who you are. It will eat your flesh faster than you can say, "Ouch!". Yep. Its dangerous, but it doesn't mean it isn't a useful and helpful tool.<br />
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Guns are evil. No, they aren't. Guns are, well, guns. They are highly precise machines that shoot metallic projectiles from their barrels. There is nothing bad or evil about guns. There are evil people who do bad things with guns. There is the press and others that wish to villainize guns so that we can outlaw the guns so that we won't hurt ourselves. No, guns aren't bad. The people who use them maliciously are bad. The press and legislators that villainizes them are bad. But guns in and of themselves are not bad. When used properly, they are like my chainsaw, useful instruments.<br />
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Guns kill people. Nope, they don't. People kill people. If someone gets stabbed with a knife we say, "George killed Mary." We don't say, "The knife killed Mary." That's just stupid. The knife can't do anything on its own. Neither can the gun. Someone has to pull the trigger and the person pulling the trigger is the person responsible for the bullet that comes out the end of the barrel. The gun cannot think. It cannot act. It only does what someone else wants it to do.<br />
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Guns take loved ones prematurely. Nope, wrong again. It isn't the gun's fault it fired a bullet when <b>someone</b> pulled the trigger. It is doing what it is built to do and that is to fire a bullet and send a projectile down the barrel and out the end of it. The person who pulled the trigger is responsible for the premature death, not the gun.<br />
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Hopefully by now you are realizing that I'm not a real big fan of gun control. I look at the legislation that is in Congress right now and honestly, I'm not impressed with what I see. Let me explain why:<br />
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<b>Banning high capacity magazines:</b> Would a ban on high capacity magazine have prevented the tragedy that happened at Columbine High School, or Sandy Hook Elementary, or the shooting at the movie theater in Colorado? The answer is a resounding, "NO!" But why not? Because if you ban the sale of high capacity magazines, you still have millions of magazines in circulation that people can buy. The only thing the magazine ban will do is cause the price of high capacity magazines to go up because the supply will go down and demand will increase. Those that don't have will want and they will be willing to pay good money to have what they cannot have. The only way a high capacity ban will actually work is if the United States government actually bans the sale, manufacture, and ownership of those magazines and then goes door to door to confiscate those magazines from its citizens. Do we <i>really</i> want the police to go through our houses to search for high capacity magazines? Do we really want to make felons out of people who are currently law abiding citizens? Anyone heard of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution? Because we the people are protected from unreasonable search and seizure. Our legislator know this. They know that if they ban the high capacity magazines now, sooner or later the ones that are in circulation will wear out and go away. This will take many, many, many years to happen. This feel good legislation with little or no substance.<br />
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<b>Banning "assault" weapons:</b> Assault weapons are those weapons that are used by the military. The types of guns that normal, everyday people can buy are not assault weapons. Why is that? Because <i>real</i> assault weapons are machine guns. The average person cannot simply buy a machine gun. Real machine guns are extremely expensive and you have to go through a six month background check in order to buy one. The AR15, M&P15 and all the other M16 style rifles are semi-automatic (one shot is fired for every pull of the trigger). The way that they fire is like any other semi-automatic firearm out there: one bullet fired for every time the trigger is pulled. The reason why legislators want to ban these is they are scary looking. They look like their military inspired cousins. They are used in movies to mow down people. They are dangerous. Yep, my chainsaw is dangerous. My car with a drunk person driving it is dangerous. My razor sharp kitchen knife is dangerous. Alcohol is dangerous. The item itself in and of itself isn't dangerous, but how it is used. Banning one type of gun is just feel good legislation. Gun manufacturers will find ways around the legislation and still manufacture guns that are just as lethal as they were before.<br />
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It is getting late and I must go to bed so I can go to work tomorrow. But I want to make one last point. Alcohol is abused much more than guns are. Alcohol kills more people through drunk driving fatalities, disease, cirrhosis of the liver than guns do. Alcohol is bad stuff. But you don't hear the drum beat of people wanting to bring back Prohibition. Would we be better off if we were a dry nation? Probably. But we went through that experiment once and it failed miserably. We had our assault weapon ban from 1994 to 2004. It really didn't do anything for us. It didn't make us any safer. We still had Columbine. Regardless of what we do, we will always have Columbine, Sandy Hook or some other place. Today, at the Boston Marathon finish line, someone got a burr in their bonnet to kill a bunch of innocent bystanders with bombs (no guns, but bombs). The guns here aren't the problem. The problem is with the people. The people have to be fixed, not taking the guns away from the people.<br />
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<br />Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-25634083863925530092013-04-15T22:29:00.001-06:002013-04-15T22:29:31.339-06:00My 2013 Hyundai Sonata SE 2.0TI am the proud owner of a 2009 Toyota Camry base model car. The car is a 2.4L four banger with 155 horsepower. The car is nice. It has a nice stereo and a nice ride. It is quiet to ride in it. It seats four people very comfortably. But I don't like my Camry because it is boring. Disgustingly boring. I had a 2003 Corolla that was faster than my Camry. The Corolla wasn't as refined as the Camry is, but from a pure performance perspective, it had the juice. I missed my Corolla.<br />
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Over the years I've gone to the car dealer and I have test driven numerous Mustangs and Camaros. Some of those cars were nicer and more fun to drive than others, but for the most part, they are frivolous cars. All fun, but just expensive toys. I had a girlfriend that called those cars "f-dude cars". OK, whatever. That's why she's an EX and why I never married her.<br />
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The last six to nine months, I've really been looking at the Hyundai Sonatas. In 2011 Hyundai redesigned the Sonata into its current form. I've been very pleased with how awesome those cars look. I have several friends and neighbors and friends that have Hyundais and they've had really good luck with their cars. So I've gone to the dealership and take a few for a spin. I'm not overly impressed with the normally aspirated Sonatas, but the Sonata turbo is a totally different animal. I've driven a few of those and they are fun to drive. (As a side note, I've driven the Hyundai Genesis Coup with the 2.0T and the Sonata with the 2.0T and the Sonata was more enjoyable to drive than the Genesis Coup and was FASTER!)<br />
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I have learned in my married life that there are little windows of opportunity that float by. If you are not ready to pounce on that window of opportunity, it closes rather quickly. That window of opportunity came in 2010 when I got my first (and only) ATV. In February this year, that little window of opportunity came back. At the time we owned two vehicles - the Toyota Camry and a Chevy Suburban. I drive the Camry to work and my wife drives the Suburban. The Camry gets 30MPG, whereas the Suburban gets about 16MPG. My wife has been using the Suburban extensively and it was costing us a ton of money to drive (in gas) and we were quickly adding miles. We still have many children home and at the rate of use, we were going to use up the Suburban before we could realistically give up the large SUV. So my wife said that she would like to have a small car to drive around.<br />
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Watch the window of opportunity open... So I immediately go to the local Hyundai dealership and test drive several different vehicles in earnest. I found the car that I wanted, but it wasn't at the dealership. It is in transit from the factory to the dealership. So, I bought the car sight unseen. Not something that I typically do, but I did it because that car could be sold from underneath me if I didn't buy it before it arrived.<br />
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That car is fun to drive. It is quick. Normally turbos have a bit of a lag, but this one does not have much of a lag. The only time the lag is very noticeable is when the car is first started and you romp on it. You really need to get the car warmed up to operating temperature in order to appreciate the power of that motor.<br />
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So, how does it do on mileage? Well, when I'm driving it like a maniac, it will get mid to high 20s. However, if I am careful in how I drive, I can usually get about 30MPG out of it. One day I filled it up and then drove to work with the cruise control set to 70 MPH. I drove about 45 miles to work and I ended up getting ... get this ... 41MPG. Yep. 41MPG going at 70 MPH down the freeway. In reality, I don't get that because my wife likes to drive my car around town and use my gas. Just a warning... The Sonata Turbo is NOT the car to buy for driving around town. It is very thirsty in stop and go traffic.<br />
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Some technical specs about the car:<br />
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Engine: 2.0L turbo (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbocharger#Twin-scroll">twin scroll</a> Mitsubishi turbo) with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbocharger#Intercooling">intercooler</a>. <br />
Horsepower: 274 (same as my 5.3L V8 Suburban!!)<br />
Torque: 269 ft-lbs<br />
Heated front seats<br />
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Bottom line: The car is fun to drive. So if you're looking at a Hyundai Sonata, take one for a spin one day. It might end up following you home...<br />
<br />Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-87223273025355227552013-04-15T21:42:00.001-06:002013-04-15T21:42:03.738-06:00Busy with changes - The movie 42 Life has been busy crazy since the last time I wrote. Work has been busy crazy. Always something to do and really never enough time to get it done. Kids are in school and consume copious amounts of time to go and support them at their events. Church comes a calling and you spend time there for the benefit of those that are around you...<br />
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This weekend was one of those rare moments that you get where you actually feel like you had a weekend. Friday, we were scheduled to have some friends over. Things didn't work out so that little get together got postponed until Sunday, which was a really good thing. My wife and I haven't had a date in a while and so we went and saw a movie. The movie we saw: <i>42</i> - The Jackie Robinson Story.<br />
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<b>Short movie review:</b> Great movie. Go and see it. Reward the movie studio with lots of money so they make more inspiring movies like this instead of the garbage they've been making for the last 12 months. It makes you appreciate how far society has come since the late 1940s. Highly recommended. <b>Warning:</b> If you are offended by the use of the "N" word, then you will be offended by this movie. It is probably time to grow up and take the diapers off and grow a little bit thicker skin. The use of the "N" word is to show how disgustingly racist people were in the 1940s. If you can overcome your "N" word sensitivity, this is a powerful movie which shows the determination of a young black man and a bunch of white men who are willing to endure hatred to start bringing blacks into professional baseball. Truly groundbreaking. Harrison Ford does a great job in this movie. One of the best Hollywood movies I've seen in a long time. And I'm serious about making this a box office hit. If the public will support good movies like this, then we won't have a <i>Scary Movie XV</i> in the year 2025 or <i>Saw XXXII</i>.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-15664939810711619452012-11-06T17:30:00.002-07:002012-11-06T17:30:24.838-07:00Breaking radio silenceLooking at my blog postings, I went radio silent sometime in May, right after my sister passed away. Time flies when you're busy. Work has been keeping me busy. My family has been keeping me busy. Life has been keeping me busy. I'm glad the kids are back in school. <br />
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Speaking of children, my oldest son received his mission call and will enter the Missionary Training Center (<a href="http://www.mtc.byu.edu/">MTC</a>) on November 28, 2012. He will be going to Minnesota on his mission. Funny thing... He wanted two things. First, go Stateside. [check] Second, go someplace cold. [double check] My wife said the average temperature in Minnesota during the winter is 6 degrees F. Six degrees. Thinking about that kind of cold numbs my brain. He dislikes the cold so he's excited about going there. I've been getting up with him at 5AM and going through <a href="http://www.lds.org/languages/additionalmanuals/preachgospel/PreachMyGospel___00_00_Complete__36617_eng_.pdf"><i>Preach My Gospel</i></a>. I haven't been perfect for the 5AM thing, but we're going to do that from here on out. He has a lot to learn and he's nowhere close to being prepared from knowing the missionary discussions and the scriptures that he needs to know. We might have to buckle down and do some two a days. If he gets 2 weeks in the MTC, then that will be a blip before he's out teaching people. Then again, he'll be hitting Minnesota mid-December, so staying warm will be the top priority on his brain at that time.<br />
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Need to run. Hopefully it won't be another six months before my next blog posting.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-80292500951171031352012-05-09T22:42:00.001-06:002012-05-09T22:42:39.201-06:00The death of a sisterA little over a week ago one of my siblings passed away. She had stage four breast cancer. She lasted more than five years with the cancer. This last year has been especially hard on her. In the end she died at her home. She was the most determined soul ready to beat it. Apparently that was not her path to take. As hard as it is to lose a family member, she is in a much better place than all of us collectively put together. She does not need to worry about chemo or radiation treatments any more.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-22189831741708547662012-03-27T21:29:00.000-06:002012-03-27T21:29:45.646-06:00A geek's dream - A descent VMWare ESXi server for less than $1kOK, for the non-technical geeks out there, I'm going to say I'm sorry in advance. This post is going to be pure geek speak.<br />
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I work for a company that has a cloud offering. I need to have several different devices in my lab in order to duplicate connections to the Cloud. Honestly, I have a lab at home that is probably as good, if not better than what I have at work. One of my pieces of lab equipment is a computer that runs virtualization software. What that means is I have one PC that can run many different operating systems on it all at the same time. So instead of having 10 different PCs all configured differently, I have one machine where I can make virtual machines and I can stop and start them at will.<br />
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My "old" rig had an AMD E-350 (think if it as an Intel Atom on steroids) motherboard, with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive and about 4 networking cards on it. The nice thing about it is when it was maxed out, it would only eat about 50 watts of power - max. The problem is that it was so underpowered, it would literally take me days to setup and configure a Windows server VM for duplication purposes. Not hours, but days. After much frustration, I gutted the system and purchased the following items:<br />
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AMD FX 8120 (eight core CPU running at 3.1Ghz)<br />
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 motherboard<br />
32 GB of RAM<br />
Crucial M4 SSD hard drive (128GB boot drive)<br />
Intel dual port PCIe networking card<br />
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I put this all together and all I can say is that this thing absolutely, positively flies. The difference in processing power between the two is the difference between night and day. Stability is rock solid. Worth the investment? Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it.<br />
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So if you're looking for a relatively inexpensive, but very capable VMWare ESXi 5 server, this is the equipment to get.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-5898789736498994022011-09-26T22:36:00.000-06:002011-09-26T22:36:44.034-06:0017 Miracles, the movieSeveral months ago I took my family to see the movie <a href="http://www.17miracles.com/">17 Miracles</a>, by T.C. Christensen. The movie recently came out on video. Last Saturday I purchased it. For family home evening tonight, we watched the movie again as a family. This is such an incredible movie.<br />
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The movie came out about the time my Dad passed away. There is a scene in the movie where a candle is burning. It burns, and burns and burns, burning all the way down to nothing before being extinguished. I have often compared my father's life to that of a candle. That scene exemplifies how I felt. The first time I saw the movie, I cried like a baby.<br />
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If you have a chance to see the movie, do it. It is a great movie!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-36692584365878702312011-09-11T19:35:00.000-06:002011-09-11T19:35:46.580-06:0010th anniversary of September 11, 2001Today is the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. As a tribute to that day, I will record my memories of the events of that day... Details that I remember.<br />
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I got up that morning and prepared for work just like any other day. I got in my car and drove to work. As I was heading into work, I turned on the radio and started listening to the news. I then realized that something bad had happened. I really couldn't believe what I was hearing. That the World Trade Center buildings had been hit by aircraft. I quickly called my wife and told her to turn on the radio or turn on the TV and to find out what was going on.<br />
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I went into work and everyone was just awestruck. Work was quiet like a morgue. I tried to go to cnn.com and CNN's servers were so busy and overwhelmed, I was unable to get to their news site. After repeated tries, they finally put up a blurb of text up on their site and that was it. Someone pulled in a TV into a meeting room and several people were watching TV trying to figure out what had happened.<br />
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One of my co-workers had plans to be at ground zero the day of the attacks. Something happened and he and his girlfriend had to reschedule their trip to NY one week earlier. He was back at work from a trip to the NY/Boston area the previous week. He was pretty shook up about all of it. I mean, he was really shaken up about it. He was from Germany and his girlfriend/fiancee was in Europe and he was in the United States. He went back home shortly (within months) after the attacks. Honestly, I didn't blame him.<br />
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I remember thinking about my own mortality. How, in an instant, your life can be snuffed out like that of a bug. And I took an evaluation of my life and I didn't like the direction I was heading, so I made some changes in my life.<br />
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My house is 50 or 60 miles south of a major airport. While there isn't a lot of noisy air traffic where I live, there is a fairly regular stream of air traffic over my house. In the days past 9/11, I remember how weird it was to go outside and not have ANY air traffic at all. No airliners. No prop planes. Nothing. I remember how quiet it was outside and how the skies were free of any noise. I also remember how unusual it was to hear airplanes again once commercial service started again.<br />
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In the hours and days after 9/11, I remember I had co-workers who worked on people's networks and systems who had been affected by the 9/11 attacks. They were cleaning up the electronic messes made by the terrorists.<br />
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In my short life, I have lived or visited many countries of the world. I have met people who don't like Americans, but generally they are few. I remember meeting one guy (he was a German living in Argentina) who hated Americans. I'm sure he was a part of Nazi Germany from WWII. He was probably the person I've met in my life that hated Americans and America the most. I have met people who don't like Americans because we are loud and obnoxious. They don't like our government or our policies. They don't understand us or what we do or why we do it. They think we are ignorant because our news only consists of news from the United States and not the entire world. But as much as I know people have disliked America, little did I know that there were people out there who hated us so much that they wished to destroy us like Osama Bin Laden wanted to destroy us. I just didn't know there was that kind of hatred towards my country until 9/11/01.<br />
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To a degree I understand why people dislike Americans. We do have some character flaws. As a nation, we have gone astray. Religion is no longer important. Morality/honesty is losing its value or has been lost. Our elected officials can't/won't work together and compromise. We are hated because we trample the commandments of God. We are viewed as the great Satan. There are good people here in America, but I think there are ever decreasing numbers of good people. <br />
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How do we fix it all? First and foremost, we need to return and become a God fearing nation. We need to be humble. I believe we are reaping the fruits of our selfishness both as individuals and collectively as a nation. God will have a hard time blessing us unless we do humble ourselves and change our ways. If we keep doing what we are doing or we become even worse, then it won't get better. The country has had numerous wake up calls. We had 9/11. We had hurricane Katrina. We had the economic crash of 2008. We have a sputtering/stalling economy. What more do we need to wake us up and get us to change? Or are we so blinded/proud that we can't change?<br />
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The only solution that I offer is to make a change for the better in my own life. I also need to raise my kids to be good kids and to stay out of trouble. I can't change the whole country, but I can change myself and help those that are around me. That's what we can do.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-39470256624640857052011-08-18T19:38:00.000-06:002011-08-18T19:38:33.171-06:00Busy, busy, busy...Life has been very busy lately. Work, Church, kids all consuming every waking moment of my life. The hardest part is the lack of sleep. I've been averaging about 5 - 6 hours of sleep per night for the last six to nine months. It is taking a toll on me. And even though I'm tired, when I lay down, I can't sleep because my mind is going. So, I stay with the poor sleeping routine.<br />
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Several weeks ago I was having a discussion with my two oldest kids about school and the home PC. I have two kids that will need to be on the computer a lot during the year for an extended period of time. At the time, we only had a single PC to split amongst all the kids. So I decided to pick up a netbook computer at a certain large retailer for $250. When I got there, I looked at some of the other machines that were in the $300 range. Then I ran across something that made me wonder.... It was a fairly non-descript box, but it was a computer with specs better than the netbook for $278..... It was $30 more than my original purchase price point... I thought it over and decided to get it on the spot without doing any research. I ended up with a low end Toshiba notebook with an AMD C-50 as the brains. It only had 2GB of RAM, but much to my surprise, it had a 64-bit version of Windows 7 and could take 8GB of RAM. So for an extra $60, I upgraded the RAM. While it will not be any sort of speed demon, it will serve the purpose of writing papers and surfing the web just fine. In fact, I'm writing this blog posting on it at this very moment. And strangely enough, even though I'm a tech guy, this is my first laptop that I purchased with my own money. I have a laptop from work, but I've never purchased one for myself or for the family. I've been eyeballing a laptop for about a year, but I haven't really been impressed with the offerings out there. So I waited. In tech, waiting is good because it means new stuff will come out and prices will drop. The C-50 really is good because it uses very little power (I think it is rated at like 9 watts) and is sufficiently powerful to do what I need to do. And I get to do the geek thing and max out the RAM to a truly outrageous amount for such a low-end processor. Life is a balance of trade-offs. I feel like I got my money's worth out of this purchase.<br />
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Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-43424795739109928972011-07-23T22:43:00.000-06:002011-07-23T22:43:49.614-06:00United States Debt ceilingWatching the Democrats and Republicans squabble over the national debt ceiling is like watching my six and eight year old fight with each other. You know what's going to happen. No one will win the fight and they will both end up crying. The thing that ticks me off about these two parties, they are more interested in pushing their own agenda than actually putting aside their own differences and working on making something happen. You can sit and blame one party over the other, but the fact of the matter is that both parties are to blame. Both parties don't care enough about our country to get something passed. Neither are willing to compromise. I'm sick of both parties. If I could, I would vote for something other than the two ring circus we currently have. Yeah, you have all the other political parties out there, but they are so far out there they are practically unsupportable. So we are stuck where we are at.<br />
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If I had more time and energy, I'd craft some clever email, spam a few hundred of my closest friends, and do some sort of march/protest somewhere. I would encourage others to do the same. But, I don't have the time or the energy to do any of that. Instead, I may blog about it and I may send my congressmen an email or two about it. <br />
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So, I don't think we will get a deal passed unless there is an outcry from the citizens of the United States. Americans are too self-absorbed to do anything meaningful about it. I don't know exactly what will happen when the government defaults, but I know something for sure, we will have some gnarly inflation happen because faith in the dollar will cease. If you look at the exchange rate of the dollar and the price of oil and gold, the dollar has weakened against all of those things.<br />
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Additionally, the country has too much outstanding debt. We will never be able to do anything about it. The only way to "fix" it is to monetize the national debt. When you monetize the debt, that causes inflation. And with inflation everyone hurts. So, hold on. Our bumpy ride will just get that much bumpier. Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-71426219946330778612011-06-14T23:04:00.001-06:002011-06-14T23:04:51.668-06:00KSL pulling "Playboy Club" from Fall 2011 lineupCNN.com has a <a href="http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/14/utah-station-pulls-playboy-club-from-fall-line-up/?hpt=hp_bn5">story</a> about KSL pulling "Playboy Club" from their fall show lineup. KSL serves a predominantly LDS community and is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (otherwise known as the LDS Church). I went to nbc.com and looked at the show and it looks like garbage TV to me. It was interesting to read the comments on the CNN.com page. To sum it up, here is what I saw from the comments:<br />
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<ul><li>People bashing on the station for choosing not to aire the program.</li>
<li>Claims of censorship for not airing the program.</li>
<li>Jabs at the LDS faith and beliefs</li>
<li>Agitated LDS people attempting to defend their religion and lowering themselves to the level of those doing the bashing</li>
</ul>So, let's go through these comment categories one by one.<br />
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<u>Slamming the station for not airing the program and claims of censorship:</u><br />
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Let's think about this for a little bit. According to the wikipedia.com entry on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah">Utah</a>, 60% of the state belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That TV station services the entire state. The station is a business. Would you show a TV program that will immediately offend 60% of your audience? Would you be willing to get emails, phone calls, letters, and threats of boycotts from your audience? The TV station is a business. It doesn't want to inflict that kind of pain upon itself.<br />
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Part of the mission statement for KSL (which is a part of the <a href="http://deseretmediacompanies.com/content/view/68/our-mission">Deseret Media Companies</a>) is to champion virtue. Playboy and the Playboy brand does <strong><u>NOT</u></strong> champion virtue. The station is also a sponsor of the group "<a href="http://www.outinthelight.com/">Out in the Light - Women uniting against pornography</a>". Playboy is a champion of pornography. The goals of KSL and Playboy are opposing and irreconsileable, so the outcome is clear.<br />
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KSL does recognize that 40% of the state that may want to view the show. There are inactive and probably some "active" LDS that want to view the show. KSL is trying to find a different station in the state to carry the program. If they were trying to censor the show, do you think they would go about trying to get another station to carry the program? I don't think so. KSL does not carry Saturday Night Live. Is that censorship? There is another station that carries SNL, but KSL chooses not to do so.<br />
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I remember when I was a kid, the TV show <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077066/">Quark</a> was produced. The local TV affliate refused to air that program. They opted to show something else. Is that censorship? Or is that using your business smarts when reviewing the program and saying to yourself, "This program isn't going to fly here. We can't afford to waste time on a loser program. Let's show something else." This TV program is like any kind of product that is made. Car dealers don't have to carry every product the manufacturer sells. If a particular vehicle is not popular, then it isn't carried by the dealer. This program is no different than that. If your viewership is going to tank for that 30 or 60 minutes, you won't get local advertisers who will sponsor the program. It just doesn't make business sense to air a program that won't be supported.<br />
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If you really want to watch the show, I am sure it will be available on a different station. NBC.com will probably stream it. It may end up on hulu.com or a part of Hulu Plus. If it is really popular, you'll even be able to buy it like other popular shows. You might not be able to see it when it is originally aired, but who cares. You'll still have access to it someway or some how. Heck, you can even have your friends that live outside the state tape it for you and send it to you if you're really that interested in it.<br />
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<u>Jabs at the LDS faith:</u><br />
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This is summed up in one word: <strong>Bigotry</strong>. It is the same stuff that the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland did during the time of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles">The Troubles</a>. Bigotry. Just because someone has a different belief than you have doesn't mean they are worth less than you are. It just means their beliefs are different than yours. You can believe whatever you want to believe. We may agree. We may disagree. But you are no more or less of a person than I am for what you believe in. We are ALL children of God, regardless of our beliefs. And I will defend your right to practice your faith. If you don't defend my faith, then who is going to protect you when your faith is attacked?<br />
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<u>Mormons defending the faith:</u><br />
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If you kick a man's faith, you're going to get slammed. I do not defend or condone the disrespect that the defenders put on the CNN.com comment board. They should be more respectful and try to use reason and kindness rather than the same kind of vitriol and poison the Mormon bashers use. People, remember what the Savior said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" (Matthew 5:44). If we want to be taken seriously as a religion and not despised for what we believe in, we need to show Christ like attributes and attitudes. If we don't do that, then we aren't any better than the Mormon bashers on the site. They know that the LDS faithful will read the comments and they will retaliate. They are baiting you. Don't take the bait. Simply state fact and move on.<br />
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<u>The future of "Playboy Club"</u><br />
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The "Playboy Club" will probably have the same success as "Brokeback Mountain". It will be heralded as great cinema. It may be successful. But at the end of the day, I doubt that it will be compelling drama. Maybe I will be wrong. It will probably have its season and time in the limelight, but in the end, it won't have any more significance on popular TV culture than Quark had on TV culture when I was growing up.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-14895084981276060992011-05-08T16:20:00.000-06:002011-05-08T16:20:36.596-06:00Hapy Mother's day!To all the women in the world, single, married, divorced, or widowed, thank you for being a woman and thank you for all your thankless service. To my school teacher cousin, you are a mother to many, many, many children for 20+ years. Although things in your personal life may have not gone the way you expected them to go, you have been a good, positive, and uplifting influence in the lives of thousands of children that have been fortunate enough to go through your class. Keep up the fine work. I wish school teachers would get paid hazard duty pay for what they do because they have a thankless job.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1642890295833004106.post-9885410504453402222011-05-08T16:11:00.000-06:002011-05-08T16:11:25.682-06:00The passing of Osama bin LadenLast week the United States went into Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden. I wish no man dead. However, sometimes it is a relief to find out that certain people are no longer among the living. To me, Mr. bin Laden is one of those people. To certain people he is a hero and a martyr. His death will only ignite added hatred to the United States. To me, he is a terrorist that masterminded the deaths of many thousands of US citizens. He is an evil man who will have to account for his actions, just like the rest of humanity. However, I am glad that I am not Mr. bin Laden as I would not want to have to account for his actions. I have done many stupid things in my life. However, his actions are not actions I would want to account for to my maker.<br />
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Long ago when Mr. bin Laden escaped justice and got away from American forces, I said that it will be a matter of time before the US finds him and takes him out. He is like a pesky gopher in your yard. Ever elusive and hard to find and kill. But one day that gopher will pop up and he will be taken care of. That day arrived for Mr. bin Laden last Sunday when that special ops team showed up and did their job. To that team of Navy Seals, I thank you for your act of bravery and for your professionalism. Thank you for going into harms way and doing your job. In my book, you are heroes and you would be welcome at my house for dinner any time. Words cannot adequately summarize my gratitude for the fine men and women of the United States Armed Forces and for the tough job that they have keeping our country safe. I hope that you find my pathetic attempt of gratitude acceptable. You are in my thoughts and prayers. Thank you for being there and literally putting your life on the line daily.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10245496173363440517noreply@blogger.com0