Tom's Blog

17 Miracles, the movie

2011-09-26T22:36:00.000-06:00

Several months ago I took my family to see the movie 17 Miracles, 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.

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.

If you have a chance to see the movie, do it. It is a great movie!

10th anniversary of September 11, 2001

2011-09-11T19:35:00.000-06:00

Today 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Busy, busy, busy...

2011-08-18T19:38:00.000-06:00

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.

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.

United States Debt ceiling

2011-07-23T22:43:00.000-06:00

Watching 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.

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.

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.

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.

KSL pulling "Playboy Club" from Fall 2011 lineup

2011-06-14T23:04:00.001-06:00

CNN.com has a story 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:

People bashing on the station for choosing not to aire the program.
Claims of censorship for not airing the program.
Jabs at the LDS faith and beliefs
Agitated LDS people attempting to defend their religion and lowering themselves to the level of those doing the bashing

So, let's go through these comment categories one by one.

Slamming the station for not airing the program and claims of censorship:

Let's think about this for a little bit. According to the wikipedia.com entry on Utah, 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.

Part of the mission statement for KSL (which is a part of the Deseret Media Companies) is to champion virtue. Playboy and the Playboy brand does NOT champion virtue. The station is also a sponsor of the group "Out in the Light - Women uniting against pornography". Playboy is a champion of pornography. The goals of KSL and Playboy are opposing and irreconsileable, so the outcome is clear.

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.

I remember when I was a kid, the TV show Quark 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.

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.

Jabs at the LDS faith:

This is summed up in one word: Bigotry. It is the same stuff that the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland did during the time of The Troubles. 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?

Mormons defending the faith:

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.

The future of "Playboy Club"

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.

Hapy Mother's day!

2011-05-08T16:20:00.000-06:00

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.

The passing of Osama bin Laden

2011-05-08T16:11:00.000-06:00

Last 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.

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.

You know you're a nerd when...

2011-04-10T19:15:00.000-06:00

...you order your SECOND DSL line for your house. Yep. It is true. Last week I ordered a second DSL line for my house. Why? Well, I work from home and I like to duplicate customer issues with my resources. So, in the spirit of wanting to be able to duplicate issues without messing up my own Internet access, I decided that getting a second instance of DSL for troubleshooting purposes would be in order.

I also want to put together a VMWare ESXi server. I found some cool stuff (this list will really show off my geekiness)

ASUS KGPE-D16 Dual Socket G34 AMD SR5690 SSI EEB 3.61 Dual 8/12 Core AMD Opteron 6000 series Server Motherboard
AMD Opteron 6128 Magny-Cours 2.0GHz 8 x 512KB L2 Cache 12MB L3 Cache Socket G34 115W 8-Core Server Processor
Lots of RAM
Lots of hard drive space

Out of curiosity, I priced the above components (and a few other things) and I could put together this VMWare ESXi server for about $1,500. For a very brief moment I seriously entertained the idea. I like building stuff (putting together a new computer system) and this would be a fun project. Then reality set in and I remembered the promise that I made to my wife (no more new debt). With the price of gasoline, food and other things going up, my "project" would have to be funded by American Express, VISA, Mastercard or Discover and I opted for none of the above. We have lots of expenses coming in the next several months, so building a new work "toy" would not be advantageous. Yes, it would be cool. And yes, it would be very nice to have with my line of work, but I'm tired of subsidizing my work environment through my own wallet. Years ago I used to do that. I don't any more.

Spring, Spring!

2011-04-10T18:38:00.000-06:00

My oldest son last year had to write some poetry for his High School English class. (Note: I never really quite understand why English teachers wish to inflict poetry torture on themselves, the kids they teach, and the kids' parents who will be asked to help them write the "poetry". To the English teacher, why subject yourself to the torture of actually reading what your students write? It will never be Shakespeare or anything like unto it. So why???) He came home and he wasn't quite sure what to write about, when I came up with the following "gem"... (Please note that Spring 2010 was a particularly cold, wet, and snowy spring.)

Spring, spring,

Spring in the air.

Spring, spring,

Spring is everywhere

Spring, spring,

Spring is what I want to see

Spring, spring,

.....Dang it! Its snowing again!

That sums up this year's spring as well. Cold, wet, and snowy. May you enjoy the last bits of winter before the heat comes and melts it all away.

You know your children are hungry when.....

2011-04-10T18:26:00.000-06:00

..... they eat a "raw" Rhodes cinnamon roll and they actually like it!! Yep. That's what happened to one of my kids today. A few days ago I bought some Rhodes cinnamon rolls. Rhodes cinnamon rolls need to be set out and warmed up before baking. We had our cinnamon rolls out and warming up. My youngest son was over by the cinnamon rolls and apparently he ate one of the raw/uncooked cinnamon rolls. How do we know he did it? His older sibling came up and asked if he could have a cinnamon roll too. Sure enough we were missing a cinnamon roll.

Anyway, it was just funny to think about this.

Happy Valentine's Day - Post mortem

2011-02-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

Valentine's Day happened two days ago. In light of the big day, I'm going to offer the men in the audience some advice on how to make an impact on their wife or girlfriend. So here goes nothing...

1.) Give up the porn: Dudes, stay away from that crap and everything that is like unto it. If your wife or girlfriend is into that stuff, get her away from it too. Women don't like their men participating in that. It makes them insecure and it messes with your brain. I know too many people who have been trapped in that lie and they have destroyed themselves and their relationships and marriages. So if you're into it, get un-into it. NOW! If you need help, please see: http://combatingpornography.org/

2.) Do something thoughtful/show your wife that you love her. What's thoughtful? How do you show your wife you love her? Here are some suggestions:

Heart attack her. What does that mean? Well, don't scare the poor woman! Get a bunch of red construction paper. Cut out a bunch of hearts. Lots of hearts. Write something on them. Then disperse them in various places. For example, I taped one red heart to the inside cup of my wife's bra. I put "Not bigger, just better." Put them on her cell phone, on her key ring, inside her check book, in her car, on her pillow, in her favorite book that she likes to read, on her shoes that she wears, on the smoke detector, inside her diary/journal, and so forth. Why do women like this? Because it shows that you put some thought into what you are doing. It isn't necessarily what you do, but the amount of thought that you put into doing it.
Do some household chores. Make the bed. Wash some clothes. Fold the clothes. Clean up the dishes. Make dinner and then clean up afterward. Change a messy diaper. Do something that you normally don't do that your wife/girlfriend typically does. Women like it when you help them out around the home.
Flowers. They don't have to be expensive, just get her some flowers. If your woman isn't into flowers, then see above.
Give her a card or write her a note. Tell her how much she means to you. Tell her you would marry her all over again if you had to do it all over again. Tell her she is the most wonderful thing since sliced bread.
Be a gentleman. I should not have to say this, but treat your wife/girlfriend with respect. Open the door for her. Help her with her coat. Pull her seat out for her at dinner. This is stuff you should be doing all the time and not just on Valentine's day.
Plan something together. Because my wife is so busy, I really can't surprise her very well. About the only surprise I have in my arsenal is to do something which appears spontaneous, but has been planned in advance. Things I would like to do to surprise my wife would be to take her away for a weekend on what appears to be short/no notice, but in reality has been planned for some time. It can't work because I have to tell my wife not to commit to things for a particular time period. I just can't intercept everything that she does because I'm not always in the loop. So because of our schedules, I end up telling her what I'm planning to do and involve her in the planning process. It isn't as spontaneous as it otherwise would be, but it works.
Ask and listen. Ask your wife what she likes and then listen to what she is saying. If she likes to camp and you don't, then surprise her and go camping. Be a part of her hobbies.

3.) Give your significant other a back rub. If you have a girlfriend, rub her feet and ONLY her feet. Stop there. If you're married, start with her feet and end at her neck.

4.) Listen. Most women love to talk. They will talk for hours. You may be tempted to tune out. Don't. Absolutely don't tune your woman out. Listen to hear. Interact with her. Find out what makes her tick and use that wealth of information so that you can surprise and please her. Go shopping with her. That way you get to know her tastes. So when it comes time to making a purchase (hopefully) you've figured her out well enough to make a fairly educated purchase. You may not always hit a home run, but you'll do better than if you don't listen and you aren't a part of her life.

I could probably go on, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment. I'm going to offer some advice to the women in the audience.

1.) Whatever he does, be appreciative of it. If you want to make a guy mad, don't say "Thank you". Ingratitude (or if I thought I was there solely for the entertainment of my date and nothing else) would sink the relationship faster than the iceberg that sank the Titanic. So be gracious. Remember in these tough economic times your honey may want to do more for you, but can't. So please, please don't be critical. Additionally, a guy's ego can be invested in what he's given you. If you dis on his gift, you've just dissed on his ego. The chances of you getting something good in the future is about a snowball's chance of survival in a very warm place.

2.) Tell your guy want you like/want. Guys can't read minds. The only person that I know of that could do that walked the earth 2,000 years ago. The rest of us poor schmucks have never had the ability to do that, nor will we ever be able to read your mind. Many of us are poor communicators. So we appreciate it when the woman we love and adore is open and honest with us and will talk to us and tell us what you want. Guys will work like crazy to please a woman, so be careful with what you ask for. Be sensitive to the man's financial means and the amount of time available. Example: My wife wants a bigger house. She let me know about it. I told her "No" because of finances. She continued to push and I continued to hold my ground. She has accepted the answer and has moved on, although she does read the online ads for houses. She just doesn't bring it up any more and has accepted our situation. I would love to buy her a bigger house, but I know what I can and cannot financially afford so I hold my ground.

3.) Ask your honey what he likes and dislikes. You can't read guy's minds any better than they can read yours. You just think you can read his mind. Ask him what he likes and doesn't like. WARNING!! Some guys don't have a filter and will give you what they like and don't like, which may be devastating to you. If you cannot handle the truth, then don't ask. But if you ask, be prepared for the answer, regardless of what it is. And don't be mad at the guy for speaking his mind. You did ask for his likes and dislikes, did you not? So be prepared for the tsunami of revelation that may come from it. If you can handle this, you will receive a wealth of information that will help you understand your man.

One other thing to remember is that some guys simply won't tell you stuff. Why? Because they are afraid. They are afraid of your response to the truth. If you or someone else have asked for his opinion in the past and he's been hammered for giving his opinion, chances are you won't get much of a response from him. If he has told you personal stuff and you've used it against him in an argument, he won't be respond with much info. He might test the waters and float a few things and see how you respond. If you blow a gasket, he will shutdown, put up armor defenses and hunker down reading himself for the shelling he is about to receive. But if he thinks you are handling the truth well, then he may open up even more. So listen. Ask questions. Understand. Because if your man opens up to you, you will see his soul. If you crap on his soul, he will no longer open up unless he feels he can trust you again. If you repeatedly burn him, he may never open up to you ever again, regardless of any assurances you may give him to the contrary. Dudes just don't like getting hurt. They would rather wander in the desert for a week without food and water and risk death than get their emotions stomped on.

If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all...

2011-02-05T22:47:00.001-07:00

Gloom, despair, and agony on me.

Deep dark depression obsessive misery.

If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all.

Gloom, despair, and agony on me.

(Song from the TV show Hee Haw)

Do you ever have days or weeks where you feel like that? I do, but I think that is called life...

During Christmas break while I was cleaning a clogged drain downstairs, I noticed that the $9.99 "plumber friendly" (that's code for cheap piece of crap) sink was leaking. The sink is actually in two pieces bonded together by what looks like silicon caulk kind of stuff. So instead of making it one piece, it was two pieces. It started leaking where it was bonded together. Great. So I clean the drain and put it all back together.

So the wife and I are off to the local Home Depot. We get a sink and a new faucet because I really do dislike the "plumber friendly" faucet that is in the downstairs bathroom. I rip it out, and reinstall. I have a small problem. The faucet has one water line longer than the other and when I went to get a hose, I couldn't find anything that was short enough to accommodate it. I ended up getting one of those plastic hoses that you cut to the length you want (yet another "plumber friendly" solution) with a compression fitting and putting it all put back together again.

Everything was good until a couple of weeks ago. One morning I hear this noise in my house. It sounded like my furnace was on, but it was running for a lot longer than just the furnace. It was before 6:00 AM and I really was not interested in getting out of my warm bed to find out what was going on. Then my oldest daughter comes running in our bedroom to inform us that the basement is flooding. "Oh $&!#." We went flying down there to indeed find water in the basement. Well, come to find out my compression fitting on my hose came loose and yes, I did have a (partially) flooded basement. That story is just longer than I care to tell at the moment. We filed an insurance claim and we're still in the process of getting our basement completely restored.

Fast forward to today. I'm upstairs working on my income taxes for 2010 and my wife comes upstairs to inform me that our washing machine just puked on us. It is out of warranty for like a year. (We bought this really nice Kenmore HE3t washing machine about six years ago and I paid some extra money to get a four year extended warranty. That extended warranty expired a year ago. About once a year we needed to have something in the multiple hundred dollar range fixed on it, so we knew that it was going to cost us a pretty penny to fix it. And we just weren't interested in spending that much money on repairing it.) When you're married and you have half a dozen kids living at home (my wife calculated that she does approximately 20 loads of laundry a week), you really can't go very long without a washing machine, especially when only one of your kids has two pairs of pants to wear to school. Before shopping I troll the internet looking for trying to get the best washing machine for the money. I was discouraged because there is a lot of garbage out there.

So after dinner we head out the door. Because of my web trolling I knew that Best Buy was having a killer sale on washing machines. We talked about going to Best Buy, but instead we decided to head to the Home Depot to see what they had. Home Depot was closer than Best Buy. And I wasn't sure we were going to find anything there anyway. So we stopped. We shopped. And we talked. We discovered that LG has some pretty good stuff and they had a higher end model that would probably take care of us. It was on sale (10% off sale for energy star appliances). So the sales associate goes to Best Buy's site and finds the same washer there but for over $100+ off, even with the 10% discount. So they price match. Well, when Home Depot price matches, they match the competitor's price, plus they knock off another 10%. Cha-ching! The appliance associate writing the sale tries to override the additional discount, but the system won't let him. (I'm laughing as I type this because this is so funny.....) So, we're all good and we realize that because of Best Buy and Home Depot, we're getting a pretty good deal on this washing machine. We get all the paperwork done. We go up front and they ring us up. We get up there and when the cashier rings us up, they give us another 10% off the already discounted-price-matched price. CHA-CHING!!! And because we're buying two extended warranties (one for the washer and the drier that we're picking up), they knock 20% off the price of the extended warranties. My wife and I look at each other and we're afraid to say anything. Please realize that we are spending a wad of cash AND they are getting the full price for the drier that they sold us AND they sold us two extended warranties. (Purchasing the extended warranty on my Kenmore HE3t was probably the best extended warranty money I ever spent.) So they may be loosing their shirts on the washer, but they're making up for it on the drier and the extended warranties. (If we don't have a service call for either appliance in four or five years, then they just made pure profit on that extended warranty sale.) I figure they are probably breaking even or making a few bucks off of us. And that tax return I thought I was going to get, well, it will be used to pay for my newly purchased washer and drier.

All I can say is that someone on high was looking out for us. And to a certain degree I had the karma thing going for me. Many months ago I bought several toilets from Home Depot. Because of how my house was built, I wasn't able to use two of the three toilets that I purchased. And in all the exchanges and so forth, Home Depot ended up giving me more money back than I should have received. I found the error and contacted them and I sent them a check to make up for the error they made in my favor. So it is as if today I was being "rewarded" for being honest with them in the past. And even though I had a bad thing happen to me (my washing machine broke on me) and I had to spend a lot of money to replace it, I didn't spend as much money as I would have had things not worked out as well as they did. So, in the end, I've been blessed. And I have my tax refund there to help me pay for this expenditure. Like I said, someone is watching out for us and blessing us.

2010 New Year's Resolution (results)

2011-02-02T21:45:00.000-07:00

I was looking through my postings and I had a new years resolution for 2010 to drop 50 pounds in a year. Well, that didn't happen in 2010. Maybe in 2011. But at the rate I'm going, it won't happen this year either. I do have to try. Once I'm over this cold, I'll try again.

Vonage class action lawsuit

2011-02-02T21:22:00.001-07:00

Well, it looks like Vonage's disconnect runaround has finally caught up with it. I got an email from some attorneys titled "Vonage Class Action Settlement Notice". The actual site is:

http://www.settlementvonage.com/

So if you are a former Vonage customer, go to that site and check it out. You probably got an email from them about it. The only way these companies will learn not to hose customers is to get stuff like this thrown at them. Of course they claim no wrong doing because they bury all their caveats in the long user agreement that they have. Just like credit card offers that promised a fixed interest rate for the life of the credit card or balance transfer, but yet the fine print states that they can jack your interest rate up at any time for any reason. And guess what happened to the credit card companies. Yep, you guessed it. They got legislated. When people get hosed and they feel "cheated" and there are enough of them, they will fight back.

The $64,000 question is will Vonage learn from their mistakes? If they are smart they will. Only time will tell. Until that time, I wouldn't touch these guys with a 10 foot pole.

Text messaging

2011-02-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

My daughter loves to bend (and ignore) the rules of the house. Last week she went on a school sponsored road trip and took my cell phone because the kids cell phone battery was close to dying. While she was away, she texted a young man. My wife and I don't want her to text because she really is too young to be texting.

Yesterday I was driving home and I got a text message. The message came in at 10:55PM and had the following message:

"(Daughter's name)! Are you still awake?"

I was a bit annoyed that this young boy was texting my daughter at such a late hour. I could ignore it, but that would mean that he would end up doing it again. I wanted him to know that this wasn't my daughter's cell phone, so I sent the following text back five minutes later:

"This is (daughter's name) dad and I am still awake."

I sent it back and no response, which is what I was hoping for.

My daughter went to school today and her friend told her about the incident. I don't think that will happen again. Yeah, I know. I'm a mean Dad. She can get her own cell phone and text to her heart's content when she leaves and goes to college.

Utah is an open carry gun state

2011-01-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

The local news reported an incident where a guy took a gun to the local mall. He didn't actually go into the mall. He walked around outside the mall carrying the guns. The guns he had were in plain site and were in the style of "assault weapons".

So, why is he doing this? Well, Utah is an "open carry" state. What does that mean? It means that you can openly carry an unloaded firearm in public. Actually, if I remember correctly, you can carry a loaded weapon, such as a revolver, but you can't have a round in the cylinder directly behind the barrel and the next cylinder. So if you have a six shooter, two of the six cylinders need to be empty. Anyway, Utah state law allows you to do what this guy is doing and so he decided to do it. Is it his right? Absolutely. Is it the right thing to be doing, especially after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords? Probably not. People tend to get a little freaked out when you're marching around the mall with a gun or two in plain view. Not smart. It kind of reminds me of this video.

I'm sure Mr. Taylor is trying to prove a point that if a law permits him to walk around with an unloaded gun, he should be free to do it. Well Mr. Taylor, you're really not helping the gun group's cause. You're coming across as a gun nut. And frankly, with the recent shootings in Arizona, you really can't blame people for over-reacting just a bit. If you want to help the gun cause, then go teach someone how to shoot. Don't go parading around like you do because you're becoming the next poster boy for the anti-gun group. There are enough of those right now to go around. We don't need another one.

Happy New Year!!!

2011-01-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

Happy New Year!! Welcome to 2011! I hope everyone had a safe and happy Christmas and a great new year.

Generally we do a Christmas letter and family photo. This year, we will send nothing. Sorry folks. We were just too busy. For me, 2010 wasn't that bad of a year. I hope 2011 is better. I hope the economy gets better. I'm not overly optimistic, but I hope that it is better than last year.

An interesting article about the Stuxnet worm

2010-12-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

Articles about computer stuff generally catch my eye. Because today is a "slow" day, I decided to troll some of the news sites and look for something that was interesting. I ended up reading this article on Fox New's website found here. Before I lose anyone (either because I'm reading something from Fox News or because this might end up being technical), if you have any interest in the Iranian enrichment program, you've really got to take a few minutes and read that Fox News article. It is very interesting.

So, what is the Stuxnet worm? You'll need to read the Wikipedia link for technical analysis. (The Wikipedia link can be a bit technical, so be warned.) Essentially it is a worm that installs itself into programmable logic controllers (PLC) and causes certain industrial equipment (as in nuclear enrichment centrifuges) to malfunction. It will cause the centrifuges to speed up and then slow down, but masks these variances to the computers controlling the centrifuges. When diagnostics are run, nothing abnormal shows up. An added benefit is that the uranium that is being enriched ends up being less than optimal, and so it delays Iran's nuclear program.

According to descriptions in the article the worm is one sophisticated piece of code. According to the article, the code is also very targeted so that it only attacks certain types of PLC equipment. The people who wrote this were smart. Very smart. They used four Windows zero day exploits (zero day exploits are security holes in the code that no one knows about except for the hackers) on the worm. They understood how people work. They got the code where they wanted it and it took off like crazy. And they were able to clean up after themselves. The people involved here knew what they were doing. And they appear to have been highly successful in their attack.

So, what does this mean for the Iranians and their nuclear ambitions? Stuxnet is a delay and a learning lesson. It is a delay because they have to clean up the virus and they have to repair their damaged centrifuges. They also have to re-enrich the uranium that ended up not being as enriched as they wanted it to be. This is a learning lesson because I am sure they are hardening their networking defenses so they are not susceptible to this kind of attack ever again. If it does happen again, it means that they still have security and policy issues to deal with. But I suspect they will be better prepared than they were previously.

To the authors of Stuxnet, all I've got to say is dang, you're good. Keep up the good work.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T19:28:00.001-07:00

Friends, family, folks, and anyone else in between......

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The day all my kids have been waiting for and the day I've been dreading has finally come and gone. And yes, we all survived another Christmas. Yehaw! I hope that your Christmas Day was a pleasant one.

The Night Before Christmas (A visit from St. Nicholas)

2010-12-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite poems. I think I have it practically memorized. So here we go:

The Night Before Christmas

(A Visit From St. Nicholas)

by Clement Clarke Moore

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the brest of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

Now, Dasher! now Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes - - how they twinkled! His dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

Christmas 2010 - The good, the bad, and the ugly

2010-12-15T21:45:00.000-07:00

There are 10 more days (and one more weekend) before Christmas comes. I have this love/hate relationship with Christmas...... I love to hate it! (Just kidding.) Some years I really get into Christmas and other years I don't. This year is leaning towards one of those Christmases that I'm not liking a whole lot. Why? Because of the untimely home face lift described in this blog entry. It ended up costing us a bunch of money and it essentially wiped us out. I'm told that's called life and that stuff happens. Kewel. My house looks good. On the bright side, I was able to pay for most of the repairs with cash, so I didn't have to take on too much debt to pay for the fixes. In all honesty, we have been incredibly blessed this year. It just stinks when things come and eat into your savings.

Now for "The good". Drum roll please...

Christmas break: Several companies that I've worked for will shut down during that week. It is nice to get the time off and away from the stresses of the office.
Caroling: We have a tradition of going caroling to the widows, singles (older singles), and older folks in the neighborhood. That is a good experience and a good Christmas tradition. We generally go with a bunch of neighbors and friends.
Giving presents: Watching your children open up your gift(s) and beam with excitement and joy is something words cannot describe.
Food/Chocolate: English toffee (I love English toffee), peanut brittle, and chocolate. "Children, get your hands off my Toblerone bar!! Go eat your own!"
Charity: In years past we have donated goods to a family in need usually anonymously. That makes you feel good when you go and do that.
Kindness: People seem to be a little bit better during the holidays. A bit more friendly, helpful, thoughtful.
Snow: This one is new this year because generally I strongly dislike snow, mostly because I have to remove it from my driveway. I have a 4 wheeler with a plow and now pushing snow is fun!

The bad:

Busyness: With all my kids involved in all their doings, work Christmas parties, church Christmas parties, friend Christmas parties, shopping, visiting, etc. General stuff that you during this time of the year that you're just tired of being away from your house.
Giving presents: I hate doing the shopping, especially when there is a lack of funds in the Christmas coffers. This is the least enjoyable part of Christmas.
Mobs of people: I used to like going to the mall. Now I don't. Too many people and too much noise.

The Ugly:

My checkbook balance: Self explanatory.
January credit card bills: Self explanatory, although this is improving
Returns: Spending half of your Christmas vacation in lines waiting to return stuff.

GPSes - then and now

2010-12-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Nearly 10 years ago I purchased my first GPS. I was going on a 4,000 mile round trip road trip (say that 10 times) and I wanted something to tell me where I was at when I was in the middle of no-where. I also wanted something that had restaurants and so forth. So I got a Garmin eMap. Worked great. Told me where I was at. Life was good.

About a month ago I took a couple of trips. One trip was to Los Angeles. I was dreading the trip because Los Angeles (especially where I stayed) has bad traffic. My old GPS really wasn't going to help me out. So I ended up getting a new GPS, one that talks to you. It has traffic, weather, maps forever (until they decide to end-of-life your GPS unit), Google, and much, much more! It can even cut through aluminum cans! (Just kidding.) I took it to LA and it was absolutely fantastic. It took me where I wanted to go. It told me about traffic delays. When I screwed it, it routed me another way. I was impressed. I took it on my next trip and it worked great.

The other day I was going to a place that I haven't been to in a really long time. The trip was about 75 minutes long. I was heading up the freeway when it started alerting me about delays on my route. It finally said there was a faster route than the one that I was on and asked me if I wanted to recalculate my route. Sure, why not? So it did. It continued to receive traffic updates. Before I got to the problem area, it said that there was a faster route and asked me if I wanted to recalculate. Sure, why not? It left me on my original route. I was listening to the radio and it was telling me all along there were traffic issues. They said about where those problems were. There was a wreck that was slowing traffic. But I approached and passed the area and I didn't see any problems at all. Then the radio said the problems were gone. So the GPS was faster on the update than the radio was.

So if you're looking at purchasing or upgrading your GPS, I recommend that you do it, especially if you drive a lot. Get one of those GPSes that will talk to you and gets live traffic updates. How does it all work? Well, the GPS has a cell phone chip in it and it talks to the home server and gets the updates wirelessly. I'm not exactly sure how the server gets all the data, but it is incredibly accurate and timely.

Trial of Brian David Mitchell - Testimony of Elizabeth Smart

2010-11-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

I didn't follow the Elizabeth Smart case when it broke several years ago. When she was found by police nine months after she was abducted was absolutely incredible. I honestly did not believe they would find her alive. Fast forward to today to the trial of Brian David Mitchell. I've read some of the news accounts of her testimony against Mr. Mitchell. All I can say is, "Wow! You go girl!"

I cannot imagine the hell that she went through for nine months. I cannot believe the fortitude that she now has to testify in front of her former captor. Her story is amazing. Mr. Mitchell is a disgusting man. I hope the prosecution can bring a strong enough case that he isn't insane and that the jury sees what kind of a man he really is.

To Ms. Smart: Be brave, and be strong. I wish you the very best for you in your life.

A home facelift, AKA replacing defective vinyl siding

2010-11-06T22:26:00.001-06:00

My wife and I have been in our house for just over nine years. A year or so after we moved into our house, we had problems with our vinyl siding. We knew the siding we had was defective because we have some neighbors that had the same batch (same color even) installed, they had problems and they got their siding replaced. However, we opted not to pursue a warranty claim at the time. The contractor that built our house was not very good to respond. Our siding issue at the time wasn't very bad (we had a few warped boards) so we decided to not do anything.

A couple of years ago we decided that we wanted to sell our house. We actually listed our house on the market for six months, but nothing ever happened. It was at that time that our vinyl siding looked ~~like crap~~ pretty pathetic. It had warped in some spots and was severely faded. We talked to a siding installer and he told us that our siding has a lifetime guarantee. So we decided to pursue a warranty claim and get our known defective siding replaced.

Short story, we got the run around. The local siding dealers were not very helpful (I'm being very kind here...). The "limited" lifetime warranty wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. And, get this, warranty services denied our claims. We even had a company claims guy come out and look at our house and tell us specific issues that we had with our siding so we could get a claim. Denied. Literally, a year's worth of work all for nothing. Needless to say, we were not happy. So after trying for a year to get the issue resolved on our own locally, we decided to go talk to a regional manager and plead our case with him. And the most amazing thing happened...... We called and told them our issue. The very next day we were approved! Yeehaw! The local guys were still jerking us around, but we got it approved. We order our product and it arrived at the house.

All good. So we have the guys yank off the old siding. And while we were at it, we had some brick work that was installed that we wanted redone. So we asked one of the neighbors to help out. Well, come to find out we had a bit of a problem with the house. Check out this photo:

Yep. You guessed it. Dry rot. Our ~~fake~~ "cultured" rock and brick work was not done correctly. I can't complain too loudly because I'm one of the installers. The vinyl installers didn't help either. But we had a bad installation and so we ended up with dry rot in a portion of the wall. So we ripped out the rock so we can fix the dry rot problem. In the end, we didn't want to do this ourselves. So we asked this same neighbor to come and lay brick for us. By the way, he did an excellent job. I'll have to upload a photo or two of the finished product.

The brick work finished at 1:30 AM on Friday, November 5th. The vinyl siding guys have done three of the four walls of my home. Now that my brick is done, I hope they come back on Monday to do the front of my house. But then again, the weather is supposed to be crappy on Monday, so that may not happen for a while.

So there you have it. Our house had a face lift. Now, where did I leave my drill? Has anyone seen it?

Going cold turkey - No more cable TV

2010-11-02T22:15:00.000-06:00

Last Friday I called my cable provider and asked them to disconnect me. I thought they were going to do it yesterday, but they didn't. Instead, they came by today and disconnected us.

My first reaction was "Finally!" But then I thought about it a bit and realized that there won't be any "entertainment" on any more. If I want to watch something, it will have to be from the video collection. Or I'll have to hook the home PC up to the TV and watch something over the Internet. Ick!

So we'll see what happens. I may have it reconnected at the end of the week. Then again, maybe never! But right now, it is a relief that I don't have to pay one more thing that I really don't use much or need to have in my house. One less distraction for me and my family.

Google TV - no more cable TV

2010-11-01T09:13:00.000-06:00

A week or two ago I purchased a Logitech Revue. I bought it Friday night. Took it home. It was late, so I didn't even bother to take it out of the box. I slept on it and the next day I realized that I had made a $300 mistake. So I took it back to the store the next day for a full refund. The inner geek wants it. The realist in me knows that I have no time to waste sitting in front of the TV watching garbage or surfing the Internet. And we've had some expenses that have taken a toll on our savings account. I guess I'm just trying to be fiscally responsible this year or something.

I also decided to cancel our cable TV subscription as well. I called on Friday and they will be shutting it off today. It is only $15/month, but there is just so much trash on TV that I really don't think we'll miss it. There is a lot of stuff on the Internet. If we go through withdrawals, we can sign up again or hook the home PC up to the TV and watch TV via the Internet. Or I may break down and get that Roku player that I've been thinking of getting.... Naw. We'll just go without. We'll be OK.

High School Haikus

2010-10-26T19:01:00.000-06:00

When I was in high school many millennia ago, my English teacher ~~tortured us~~ gave us an assignment to write three haikus. I think she gave the class one or two days to do the haiku assignment. This is one of the assignments that I actually liked and had fun with. When it was explained to me, a haiku consisted of three lines. The first line had five syllables, the second line had seven syllables, and the third line had five syllables. And the topic of the haiku had to be about nature. So with those guidelines I crafted three gems of literary enlightenment. Yeah, whatever.

First haiku:

Ordinary plant

So simple, yet so complex

There must be a god!

Second haiku (and my personal favorite):

Nature is calling

Right as I get into bed

What do I do now?

And, I don't remember the other haiku. So you'll only have to put up with only two of my three entries.

Oh, and by the way........ If are a student and you steal my haiku, I hope your teacher finds the haiku online and fails you. Haikus really aren't that hard. So go and write your own.

Slow Internet

2010-10-14T22:22:00.000-06:00

Today as I left work (I work from home), I initiated several large downloads to the work PC. So I started them and walked away not thinking much of it. The download speed seemed fair enough to me.

I returned later and noticed that my downloads were chugging along. But they seemed really slow, which was really weird to me. So I mess around a bit and then for grins and giggles, I login to my DSL modem. And check this out:

Normally my "DownStream" connection speed is in the 7,000 kbps range. This is the first time I've ever experienced it lower than 7,000 kbps. So it made me wonder what is going on.

So I did a search and found others, mostly Verizon customers, have the same problem. Slow throughput. But the thing that was different is their trained up speed was normal, but using speed tests, their actual results varied.

I'll keep an eye on this. If it doesn't adjust back upwards, I'll turn it off and on again and see what happens. This kind of stuff ticks me off. Besides, I need to call the phone company tomorrow about my bill and what they're doing with my DSL fees.

The housing market collapse and foreclosure quagmire

2010-10-11T09:32:00.001-06:00

I've been reading the news about various banks (GMAC, Bank of America, JP Morgain Chase, etc.) and the mess their foreclosures are in. I've got to say is just one word: Wow.

One of my neighbors got behind on their mortgage because of health related issues. Their mortgage is with one of the three banks mentioned above. They will call the bank and ask when they will be foreclosed on. The bank representative tells them that they need to apply for a loan modification. They apply and subsequently get denied. This has happened several times. Then the bank will call them. Tell them that they need to pay $10,000 to the bank. They ask the bank if they pay the $10k if they will get to stay in their house. The bank says, "This doesn't guarantee that you will be able to keep your house." The neighbors ask what the money is for and the bank can't/won't tell them them what the $10k is for. But the bank wants the money. So out of frustration and disgust, my neighbors are leaving the house. They know they will be foreclosed on but the bank is unwilling to work with them. So they are just going to walk away. So who knows how long that house will sit vacant while the lender goofs around with it.

In order to clean up our housing mess, the country really needs to get these foreclosures done, sold and out of the way. I personally fear what this foreclosure will do to the property value of my own home, because it will probably end up being sold at about 1/4 to 1/3 less than what is owed on the house. And that will just kill the value of my house.

Interesting to see where we go with this. Probably more bailouts. Or a double-dip or triple dip recession. Bleh.

The perfect time - 10:10:10AM on October 10, 2010

2010-10-10T10:19:00.000-06:00

Today it October 10, 2010, or as dates goes 10/10/10. Being the nerd that I am, I waited until 10:10AM and 10 seconds. Even more nerdy, I actually took a photo of the event. The "perfect" moment in time. All 10s. So here is the photo from my clock, from just a few minutes ago:

Now, as you look at the clock, you just see 10:10, but the second hand is superimposed on top of the minute hand, so it was indeed 10:10:10 when I snapped the photo. I also have a photo at 10:10:00, but that isn't as spectacular as 10:10:10AM.

OK, enough useless drivel for the day.

The squirrel mug

2010-10-09T23:33:00.000-06:00

A couple of years ago I went to my sister's house for summer vacation. She lives relatively close to Yellowstone National Park. So we used her house as home base while we were there.

My sister is a party animal. She always likes to invite people over and have some fun. So they decided to do a white elephant gift exchange from all the ~~junk~~ neat stuff that she and her friends had collected over the years. One such ~~piece of junk~~ treasure was a set of squirrel mugs. I even have a photo to show you. Check this out:

The mugs ended up in my family's possession for some odd reason. So, I have another sister that showed up at the same time we were there. Their luggage was downstairs, so we took the set of mugs and put them into one of their suitcases. And the mugs silently disappeared. We didn't even hear anything of any kind come back about them whatsoever. In the end, I think we ended up with one of these mugs at our house because we failed to get rid of all the mugs. We packed it into some unsuspecting family member's car. And we forgot about it.

Last weekend both of my sisters were in town. After they left my wife went outside to turn on the water or move the water hose. When she did, she discovered the above treasure. I thought that my older sister was the culprit, so I sent her the following email with a photo of the ~~junk~~ coveted mug:

"Did you forget something? [My wife] found this outside by our water valve today. It might find a home with [your son] when he gets married."

Here is what I got back from her:

"+HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Actually, [your sister] had it in her car since July. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA"

So now I know who the culprit is. Unfortunately none of her kids are getting married any time soon. So we now have the coveted squirrel mug in our possession. I wonder who will get the mug next? Does anyone here want it?

Is this the future of TV?

2010-10-09T08:10:00.000-06:00

I have a very basic cable TV subscription. I pay $15 a month for about 13 channels. So what do I get for $15 a month? The major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN), PBS (KBYU and KUED), BYUTV, and a few others that make me go "Huh?". And I've been fairly disappointed in the content. I turn it on and think, "This stuff just sucks." I've even contemplated dropping my cable TV subscription altogether.

In the past I've looked at a Roku player. If you're not familiar with Roku, go and visit their site. Their latest line of players is very compelling. I've looked at a few other media players and Roku appears to have some fairly descent media content alternatives and is the cheapest media player out there. For $100, you can stream HD content. A hundred bucks is fairly cheap.

I was going to dive in head first and get a Roku when I decided to email a friend and co-worker of mine and see what he uses. BIG MISTAKE. (Note to self: Geeks shouldn't email other geeks to find out what they use for high tech stuff because it will only wreck your plans.) He told me about Google TV. Currently the Logitech Revue is the only stand-alone Google TV appliance that will be available soon on the market. Best I can tell, the Revue runs an Intel CPU, and I assume it is probably an Intel Atom based device. For those of you who are not in the know, the Intel Atom CPU is the brains of most NetBook PCs, the small cutesy little $300 laptops with minuscule little screens. (I've been tempted to get a netbook, but for a few hundred more bucks, you can get a real laptop, not some neutered, half-pint PC.) So I think this Revue is a netbook minus the screen. But the bad thing about the Revue is that it is $300. Dang. And it isn't available yet, but will be soon.

So the cheap person that I've become (out of necessity) tells me to get the Roku and to quit fretting about this. But the inner geek in me says that the Revue will be so much more versatile (it actually has a web browser with Adobe Flash support, along with most/all the features that the Roku has). My biggest concern is this: Do I really want a wide open web browser (or PC) attached to my 46" TV screen??? And do I really want to spend $300 for the device? That's my heartburn of the day.

I've asked some friends and looked at opinions about the Google TV appliance. Some of my tech friends discount the idea. Tech opinions (from other geeks, mind you) speak highly of the device. My gut instinct tells me that this will be a big thing, similar in nature to the iPhone. An industry game changer. Never in my life have I pre-ordered a device. This is the only thing I might consider pre-ordering. But procrastination in the tech world generally is a good thing, and the procrastinator in me may wait until the Revue is actually released and setup at a Best Buy so I can go and look at it before committing my hard earned money to the stupid thing. Like I said, it may be a hot item and I won't get to see it until next year. Oh well, so be it.

NYC Mosque

2010-09-13T20:28:00.000-06:00

This whole thing over the NYC mosque is being blown out of proportion. All this media coverage is just ridiculous. The bottom line is that the Muslims have the constitutional right to place that mosque there. Period. End of story. However, given that the hijackers of the airplanes that crashed into the twin towers were Muslim, there are some bad feelings toward Muslims. Although Muslims have the constitutional right to place a mosque where they want to place it, I think they should be sensitive to the locals and probably move the mosque to a location that isn't so close to the site of the twin towers. Having some sensitivity to the placement of that mosque will probably go a long way to healing the wounds that have been created. Like I said, they do have the right to place the mosque there, but they should probably move it to a different location.

o dark 30 - early morning 4-wheeler ride

2010-07-24T22:05:00.001-06:00

My oldest son had to go to work today. Early. Really early. He got up around 4:30AM. He had to be to his bosses house at 4:45AM. Normally I would have let him take my 4-wheeler, but I wanted it. I wanted to go for a ride and take some photos of the sunrise. And I had to be back home by 8AM so my daughter could go and mow a lawn. So I had to hustle.

As soon as he left, I loaded the 4-wheeler on the ATV trailer and took off. I got to my destination in about 15 minutes and I unloaded my rig and proceeded up the mountain. And I was flying up the mountain. I startled some animals (rabbits). I even came across a doe and her fawn. Twice. The first time one of the animals was on my left and the other was on my right. I went around a corner and they were both there - again. Funny thing is that they started running down the road and I was riding behind them. I was trying to catch up to them (I was doing about 15 or 20+ MPH) but each time I started to gain ground, I had to slow down because the road started getting rough. So they would always gain some more ground. They finally exited the road and I continued on my trek up to the top of the mountain.

I got up top (actually, near the top - the place I wanted to be) with about 10 or so minutes to spare. So I got off the 4-wheeler and setup the camera and started taking some photos. None of them are award winners, but sometimes you've just got to try. The photo below, I had to underexpose it by two or three stops, maybe more. I don't remember. I had to underexpose it so I could get some color out of the sun without it being totally washed out.

Here is another favorite I took this morning:

You might be thinking, "Tom, your shadow is in the photo. That was stupid!" Ah, my friends, that was on purpose. I have other photos where it is just my machine. But I wanted to capture the rider of the machine in the photo itself. I thought it was kind of cool.

Here is another one that I liked from this morning's shoot. I just noticed that I have a big dust bunny on my sensor. Hmmmmm... How did that get there? See if you can spot it...

I really hate it when the sensor gets dirty. The camera is supposed to shake that off, but I may have to carefully clean this one off some how. (NOTE: I just took some test photos and the dust bunny is gone.) I was also wondering why the sun has all that crappy stuff around it. All my lenses have filters on them, but I rarely clean the glass. I looked at the glass and it was hideous, like someone spit on it and it had a bunch of little dots on it. So I sprayed some cleaner on the filter and now it is crystal clear. I may try another sunrise shot later this week. If I get something a little better, I'll post the results.

I looked at my photos again and I found anouther one that I liked...

It is cool to see the shadows in the valley because of the mountains.

So, did I get home by 8? You bet. I got home with a few minutes to spare. That ride totally made my day today. Working from home really takes a toll on you. I find that I often need to get out and away from the house. So I end up going for a ride somewhere.

Family reunion

2010-07-19T17:44:00.000-06:00

Last week we had a cousins reunion from my Mom's side of the family. Here is a photo from the outing:

See if you can find Waldo (or in this case Tom). And yes, I took this picture. Thank goodness for tripods and remotes.

The death of a toilet

2010-07-19T17:39:00.000-06:00

When you buy a cookie cutter home, you usually end up with low end everything in your house, unless you take the allowance and spend it on something decent. About four or five years ago the garbage disposal died. I ended up yanking out the sink, garbage disposal, and the faucet and putting in something nice.

Well, this year I had a few extra bucks. And the toilets in my house have really been getting on my nerves. When you're clogging the toilet practically every time you have a movement, it is time to replace. So replace we did. We only did two of the three toilets in the house, but that is sufficient for now.

So, what do you do with a poor flushing toilet? You can throw it in the garbage can. Or you can take it to the dump. Or you can destroy it. The 14 year old boy in me likes the last idea. Toilet meets bullet. Toilet shatters spectacularly. Toilet pieces are collected and then disposed of in the garbage can. Nice.

So here is a photo of the weapon (not the actual weapon, but a representation of what was used in the ~~mercy killing~~ destruction of the toilets).

So here is the line up:

Here is what happens when a .223 meets a toilet:

This isn't the final photo from the outing, but it is a good representation of what does happen when bullet meets lousy flushing toilet. As you can see, the gun and the bullets win! I collected the bigger pieces, the toilet seats and internal components and took them home and threw them in the garbage. Maybe I ought to get Kels Goodman, the guy that does the viral videos for Blendtec, and see if he can blend a toilet in a Will It Blend segment.

Tom - The Good Samaritan

2010-07-10T22:56:00.001-06:00

In my last post, I let the cat out of the bag. What I find funny is that no one must read my blog because none of my neighbors knew I bought a new four wheeler. I've enjoyed my four wheeler so much that I put about 100 miles on the thing in about 10 days. Because of that I had to take it in for service. (The first service is done at 20 engine hours or 100 miles, which ever comes first.) That was Wednesday morning. I got it back Friday. Yeah, the dealer was busy and I wanted my four wheeler home for the weekend. I wanted to go on a ride today, but I got side tracked.

You see, yesterday as I was driving home from the dealer with four wheeler in tow, the passenger side tire on the trailer blew out, and I got stranded on the side of the road with a blown out tire (and no spare) and my brand new, shiney four wheeler in the back of the rig. Oh, and I have 8 minutes of time left on my Tracfone. Sweet! Long story short, we ended up retrieving the four wheeler and my Suburban, but we left the trailer, sans blown out tire, on the side of the road. Today I went and got a replacement tire for the trailer and saved the trailer. Took all of about 10 minutes to replace the tire and attach it on to the Suburban.

So, I take off. I'm going home and I'm about half way home and out of the corner of my eye to the left of me I catch a light green station wagon with a bunch of people out of the car standing and sitting around. "News alert! Stranded/broken down car." I look over at my oldest son and say to him, "Son, we won't be home in a while. We've got to go check on those people." We go up the road a couple more miles, turn around and head back. We get up to the people, slow down, pull over and stop.

We get out. This is the McLaren family and they live in Belgium (Americans living abroad, something I'm somewhat familiar with) and they are visting family for the summer. The father is on a plane flying back to Belgium. The wife with her five children in tow are on their way to California. As I pull up, the daughter's cell phone dies. I talk to the mother and I offer my cell phone. She thinks she has a AAA membership, and about 15 minutes later, we realize that they don't have one. So I call my wife and get the phone number of a towing company. We call them. They'll be there in 20 minutes. The mother asks, "So, why did you stop?" And I said, "Because when the tire blew on my trailer, no one stopped to help me. So I didn't want that to happen to you."

We sat there and waited. She called her local son (she has seven kids; five with her, one in Cali and one local) and he was on his way to rescue her and her family. One of her daughters that is about a year younger than my son talked to him the whole time. :-) I waited for her son to show up and I waited for the tow truck to come. Once they did and they were taken care of, I left the scene.

So what happened to their car? Quite simply, the car blew a hose and all the coolant leaked out. The car overheated and essentially died. The tow truck operator tried to start the car, but it was dead. The head probably got warped because of the heat, so the engine is toast. New car or new motor or new something. It wasn't going to be cheap.

Honestly, this experience was the highlight of my day. Why? Because I got to help someone out. I know what it is like to be stranded on the side of the highway and have trucks and cars pass by going really fast. That happened to me just yesterday. And all I can say is that it sucked. Hard. And I didn't want that lady and her family to be up a creek without a paddle.

Funny thing is.... I doubt this lady will remember my name or anything. Crap, I don't remember her first name. But she'll always remember that time someone stopped to help her and her kids. I'd like to know how the story ends, but that will probably never happen. Unless they happen to stumble across my blog. In which case, if the McLarens that live in Belgium ever read this, please kindly post what happened. I'm curious to find out.

So the next time someone is sitting on the side of the road broken down, take a moment to go and help out. Even if they don't accept your offer, at least you tried to help. And in this case, I was an example to my son that we need to be our brother's keeper.

Letting the cat out of the bag

2010-06-28T14:36:00.000-06:00

Meow!

My wife and I have been concerned about the kids. We have some pretty cool stuff for the kids (one iPod Shuffle, one rather large TV, BluRay player, tons of movies, one serious gaming computer, game console, trampoline, motorcycle, bicycles, books, etc.), but we have limits on what our kids can do with said fun stuff. We don't want the kids to turn into couch potatoes and play video games and watch TV all day. So the missus and I were talking. And we were grousing about how we feel our kids go to friends' houses and do things that we don't allow them to do whenever they want at our house. The electronics are permitted on Friday afternoons after chores are completed and sometime Saturday, depending on what we've got going on.

So Saturday we decided to do something unusual. I called around and found a pretty good deal on a new Honda 4-wheeler. So we went. We drove. And we purchased. Like the sales guy said, "I'm sorry to inform you, but you're the owner of a new 4 wheeler..." Funny guy.

Saturday I put an hour of time on it and 8 miles. Today I rode it before and put another hour of time on it and rode 9 miles. I had to break in the motor. Break-in time is the first 15 miles, so I had to make sure it was broken-in correctly. Needless to say, I had one heck of a time on it. I just hope I feel the same way over the next xx years as I pay it off.

Now we've just added to our debt, but I feel like this is something that we can do as a family (sort of). I've got an old XR200R dirt bike and it runs pretty good. With the 4-wheeler, we can now do doubles or even have two people ride on the 4-wheeler and one person on the bike. So it is something I can do with my older kids and some of my younger kids too.

The era of wastefulness

2010-06-26T06:45:00.000-06:00

It is early on a Saturday morning. I went to bed around midnight and the earth alarm (the sun) woke me up around 5:30AM. That's the story of my life. If I can't sleep because of work, I can't sleep because the sun got up too early.

Anyway, in this half stupor, I was thinking about the BP oil spill. I was alive and remember quite vividly of the Ixtoc 1 oil spill in the late 1970s, where oil drained into the Gulf for about nine months before being capped. I lived in Texas and I remember walking on the beach with tar balls. Nasty, but hey, such is life. Anyway, I am digressing...

So I was thinking about the world's use of petroleum products. How we are wasting oil like we have an eternal supply of the stuff. Then that got me thinking about other things. Computers. Cameras. Furniture. Cars. Toaster. Dead portable DVD player. What do we do with all this stuff when it wears out? You got it. It gets tossed into the garbage can. If it doesn't work or is outdated, it goes out the door and into the land fill.

As I thought about the prospects of what that means, I realized that in 100 or 200 or 500 years, we will be labeled "The era of wastefulness". And that will probably be a kind label. We could also be labeled, "A generation too stupid to realize what they were doing". I think the era of wastefulness will really be what it is all about. We are wasting and squandering our natural resources. We make stuff that is way freaking toxic. We use resources that are dirty. We are selfish and we don't think about the future. In 500 years when all the oil is gone, what will humans use to power their (insert some cool sounding name for futuristic item here)?

I'm not a big fan of electric cars and such. Why? Because it doesn't solve the energy problem. You have to get your electricity some how. And in the US, a lot of that energy comes from burning coal, another depleting natural resource. So you shift the pollution to where the electricity is being made. What about nuclear? Too dirty. Still have to clean up after it when the fuel is spent. To be buried by Energy Solutions out in the Utah west desert. "Welcome to Utah. The nation's nuclear dumping ground." About the only "clean" alternative that I can think about that can realistically give us some needed power is geothermal. It is clean. It is efficient. It is renewable, as long as the ground stays hot. If the thing breaks, what happens? You've got some water in the ground. Wow. Now that's toxic. Geothermal is probably the cleanest way to generate power. I wish we would get more geothermal plants up and running.

So the next time you're out doing something fun, just think for a minute what kind of a label those that come after us will give us... I bet it won't be pretty.

Windows 7 experience

2010-06-12T22:26:00.000-06:00

My home computer, up until a couple of weeks ago, ran Windows XP. I have an ATI Radeon 5770 based graphics card in my computer. I had downloaded an updated video driver for the card and decided to install it. So I did. BLAM!!! The upgrade didn't go so well. My system blue screened. The driver refused to work. I tried, and I tried, and I tried. Uninstall. Reinstall. Install the old driver. Nothing worked. Still problems. So I reinstalled Windows XP and got things back up and running, at least momentarily.

So I was doing this whole cost/benefit analysis in my head... Let's see... I've got Windows XP installed. I'll need to copy all my files over to it. Install all my apps. Get everything back to where it was before. And then, sometime in the future I'll have to do that all over again if and when I go to Windows 7. And XP is like nine years old and is two versions off from the most current version. And there is the potential for another botched upgrade. And since this is XP and not Vista or Windows 7, ATI system test probably isn't spending a whole lot of time testing and vetting the drivers.

So I made the sales pitch to the appropriations committee (my wife) and laid out my reasoning. To my shock and surprise, I got the green light. I've learned that when you get the green light to spend money, you go NOW and do it before the appropriations committee (my wife) revokes my spending authority. So I did. I came home with Windows 7 64-bit and an extra 4 GB of RAM, bringing the whole system up to 8GB of RAM. (I remember when 1GB hard drives were $500.)

I brought it home and installed. The installation was incredibly quick and painless. I think 20 minutes was the total amount of time it took to do the Windows 7 install. And the system is FAST.

After getting all my drivers installed, Windows has this user experience index. I ran the test and my machine came in with flying colors. Check out the screen shot below:

The reason why my system scored a 5.9 is due to my hard drive. Everything else is in the low to mid 7s. I found out that the index max is 7.9, so I was pretty happy. (You'll notice the machine name is Hercules. I believe that is an appropriate name for the beast.)

Bottom line, I'm hooked. And I'm wondering why it took me so long to jump on the bandwagon. We'll see how it works in the months and years ahead. At least I skipped the Windows Vista experience. Vista was a pig. Windows 7 seems to be a lot faster.

Windows 7 - The inevitable upgrade

2010-06-03T15:18:00.000-06:00

Several months ago I updated the graphics card in my home PC, among other things. On Sunday, I stayed home from Church because a couple of my kids were sick. So I upgraded my ATI 5770 based graphics card with the latest version (Catalyst 10.5 drivers) of video card drivers...... Well, let's just say the upgrade didn't go very smoothly...

So I reinstalled Windows XP. And I was looking at the task of reinstalling everything. And I was not happy. Because I knew sooner or later, I'd have to do the exact same thing when I upgraded to Windows 7. I even installed Novell's OpenSuSE 11.2 64-bit and just wasn't impressed...

So Tuesday I asked for permission to do the Windows 7 upgrade. The appropriations committee (my wife) green lighted the upgrade and I immediately purchased before the spending authority got revoked. I also bought another 4GB of RAM for the system, which brings my quad core Q9550 CPU based motherboard to a total of 8GB of RAM, the absolute maximum amount of RAM the motherboard can handle. 32-bit systems really can only use 3GB of RAM, so even though I had 4GB installed, XP was only using 75% of the installed memory.

So I went to the local computer store and purchased an OEM version of Windows 7 64-bit (and accompanying 4GB of RAM) and installed. One word explains the process: WOW. The install took place in about 20 minutes. And within a few more minutes, I had installed many other programs, drivers and such. The whole system seems faster. It boots up faster. It isn't a dog when after you logon to Windows and everything, including the kitchen sink gets loaded. I've used Vista and been unimpressed with it. Windows 7 is a different animal.

The system has been operational for only a few days so we'll see how it goes. But so far, so good. I'm sure over time performance will degrade, or I'll get used to the performance and I'll want something faster. That always happens in tech. But for the time being, I'm pleasantly surprised and impressed.

NOTE: I don't work for Microsoft and this isn't any kind of paid endorsement. And quite frankly, to make Windows 7 haul, you have to put in speedy hard drives, speedy graphics card, and fast CPU, and install LOTS and LOTS of memory. Or at least that's my opinion. If the whole system wasn't already fairly beefy, I think I could have had a totally different experience. So when you upgrade, you need to seriously think about upgrade. RAM is crucial for these kinds of upgrades and so is your hard drive and video card. Any one of those three components can have a serious drag on system performance.

Credit card debt cut in half

2010-06-02T13:47:00.000-06:00

Nearly two years ago my wife and daughter were involved in a slight fender bender which resulted in the totaling of our 2003 Toyota Corolla (something that I'm still lamenting to this day, even though I drive a newer Camry...). Last week we finally settled with our insurance company and we got a pretty good chunk of change back. We've got one card that has a pretty good interest rate, but the payment is a fairly substantial in size and it makes things hard to live on. The card would be paid off in 21 months, but today, I wrote a check and mailed it off to a certain bank of bailout proportions that will remove that payment from my monthly budget. Whew. Nice. We have some more credit card debt, but we can probably get that paid off in about the same amount of time as what we just paid off. But we have some more flexibility because I don't have to 100% commit to making that huge payment every month.

I really wish I would have known what I know today back when I got married nearly 20 years ago. And that is, credit cards can be harmful to your financial health and well-being. If we would have been smart and saved and paid as we went, we would be in a lot better position than we are right now. But then again, we wouldn't have as much crap in our house as we do right now. Which, in all reality, probably wouldn't be a bad thing.

We've been incredibly blessed financially. We are getting close to being out of the consumer debt arena. After that, need to work on the cars and then finally the house. I'd like to have the house paid off in 15 years. That would be sweet.

21 merit badges done - 1 Eagle project to go...

2010-05-10T09:17:00.000-06:00

My son is 16 and he has been a Life scout for who knows how long. Last Friday my son had 20 merit badges. On Saturday he earned his 21st merit badge, the required minimum for him to obtain his Eagle Scout award. Yahoo!!!

Last week he also presented to the board his proposed Eagle project. They verbally approved his project, but he has to rewrite the project, give more details as to what he wants to do, clean it up (type it up) and then resubmit it for official approval. Hopefully we can get him to complete this assignment this week so he can get his project done this summer.

I sure hope that he makes it to Eagle. I'd still love him even if he didn't make it. And regardless of where he is at, he is really a good, solid kid. But in today's world, when he has to compete against the best of the best, it looks really good to have Eagle scout as one of his list of accomplishments. And for his sake, I really hope that he pulls through and gets the Eagle ranking.

I have a breather from boys and then I've got three boys in a row. I'm glad my oldest is a boy so that we can figure out this whole scouting thing. I personally never made it to even Tenderfoot. Oh well. We've figured out that we need to get the other boys to 1st or 2nd Class by the time they hit 12, or something like that. And then make sure those boys are Eagle scouts by the time they are 14ish. That way they can move on and not have this scouting thing hanging over their heads.

A fine spring day (or, why my body hurts like h*ll)

2010-05-08T22:53:00.001-06:00

Several years ago (probably around 1994) my wealthy older sister picked up a pair of dirt bikes. One motorcycle was an XR125 and the other was/is an XR200R. I say 1994 because that is the model year of the XR200R. One bike (the 125) ended up at my parents house. The 200 ended up at my brother's house in Colorado.

Several years ago (3 or 4 years ago??) my brother brought the bike to me because all his kids that rode the bike were grown and gone. And he was sick of the bike taking up room in his garage. He called me one day and asked me if I wanted it. "Sure!! Bring it over." So he did. So long story short, I ended up with this fairly decent motorbike. It had been thrashed by his kids and my brother isn't known for taking care of his stuff. I eventually got the bike running and last fall I got the clutch replaced.

So a week or so ago I pulled the bike out, dumped the old gas out and changed the oil. I put new gas in and oil and dang, that thing just runs like the champ. So one of my neighbors also has a bike. I think he's got a 450 or something like that. So we talk. There is this mountain close by called West Mountain. BYU has their West Mountain Observatory. I tell him about the observatory and some radio antennas on top of the mountain. I tell him about my failed attempt to reach the summit several months ago. He's always ready for some fun and adventure. So we decide that today is the day we'll make our climb up.

I haven't ridden much since I was a kid. Last year I didn't ride much because the clutch on the bike was marginal and my oldest son toasted it. But we repaired the clutch and now it runs well.

So we go. And we go. And we go. And we climb. And we climb. And we climb. And we get near to the top of the towers. Check out some of the photos that I took below:

The picture above is near the top and I'm looking towards the east across the valley.

In the photo above, I'm looking towards the northeast with Provo in the distance. You can see the southern end of Utah lake.

These are my riding buddies. Jon was on a Yamaha 4 wheeler. Brian is on his 450. The towers (our destination for the day) is in the background.

This is BYU's observatory. Note: This is on the west side of the mountain, somewhat behind the mountain. I assume this location was selected because it is the "dark(er) side" of the mountain.

This is another shot of the valley, this time from the top where all the towers are and looking towards the south east.

I was wearing polarized sunglasses and some of these shots were taken far, far away from my eye (I have a DSLR camera). I really need to invest in a polarizing filter for my lens.

The total trip time from my house was about 3 to 4 hours. When I got home, dang, I was sore and stiff. But it was one heck of a ride It was a total blast. And I really needed that ride. I've toyed with the idea of buying another motorcycle or ATV and today cemented the idea. If all goes well, I'll end up with a Honda FourTrax Rancher 4x4 ATV. As much as I'd like to go out tomorrow and buy one, that really won't happen any time soon. So I need to save my spare change and buy one outright or finance a small portion of it and pay cash for the majority of it. I would actually like to get another bike, but an ATV is more "practical". I can put a snow plow on the front of it and push snow for people. And the kids could use it to drag their lawn mowing stuff around from job to job.

I'm hooked. I'm already planning my next trip up to the towers.

Well, it is late and I'm tired and I'm going to bed.

Welcome to middle age!

2010-05-07T10:51:00.000-06:00

I've been telling everyone I see that yesterday I "officially" became middle aged. So what do I mean by that? And what set off that comment?

A couple of weeks ago I went to the optometrist to have my eyes examined. He said that I could probably get away without the use of bifocals for another couple of years. But I've had problems seeing small print, so I ordered progressives and a pair of sun glasses with a prescription in them. Yesterday I picked up my new eyes. Wow. It is amazing to "see" yet again. I just hate the period of time needed for your eyes to adjust to a new prescription and so that I can learn to use progressives.

I remember when I was a kid, "old people" had bifocals. Does that now mean that I'm old? Compared to someone younger than a teenager, probably so. Compared to retired people, I'm still young. Hence, I'm middle aged. Nice. I feel like I'm a teenager again without all the goofy hormonal and pubescent changes that occur.

One of the things that I've found is that things that I like doing, I really like doing when I have time to do them. I have an old Honda dirt bike courtesy of my wealthy sister. A couple of friends and I are going on a bike/ATV ride up to some radio antennas at the top of a mountain tomorrow. I'd love to do the journey on my own, but I feel that it would be a lot safer to ride up there with at least one other person. I haven't spent much time in the seat of a dirt bike lately (I rode an XR75 a lot when I was young), so the companionship is welcome. I've even looked at possibly picking up another bike or an ATV. But those machines are expensive and I'm still paying off the excesses of my 20s and 30s. For now, I'll enjoy what I've got. Even though I am now, officially "middle-aged".

Seeing into your eyes you see your whole body

2010-04-26T13:16:00.000-06:00

It has probably been a good five years since I've had my eyes examined. I keep getting these "things" (I do not wish to describe what I'm seeing) which are not floaters, so I decide to go to the eye doctor to figure out what's going on.

So last Friday I go in and find out that I'm FAR sighted instead of being near sighted all along. I don't necessarily have to get bi-focals just quite yet, but I figure, what the heck. One more thing to whine and complain about. And the bill for a couple of pairs of glasses made my car mechanic green with envy.

While I was there the optometrist dilated my eyes so that he could blind me and photograph each eye and accompanying retina. Afterwards he explained that he saw a soft drusen in one of my eyes. That didn't sound good and his description (it is a piece of cholesterol trapped between the layers of the eye) didn't comfort me either. I had him write it down (I'm over 40, so I forget things) on a piece of paper and then I ignored it until today. I'm glad I ignored it over the weekend because it probably would have ruined my weekend. Here is one of the links that I found about soft drusen:

http://www.agingeye.net/maculardegen/maculardegeninformation.php

Yep. Soft drusen is a precursor to macular degeneration. Great. I'm an IT dude. I write technical documents. I depend on my eyes. What will I do if I go blind? I can't let this happen to me.

The last 10 year or so, I have not done good things to my body. Instead of diet and exercise, I've instead parked my butt and eaten. I'm up to a weight that I am not comfortable admitting. I hate looking like a near full-term pregnant woman. My primary care physician told me that your eyes are an indication, the canary in the cage so to speak, of what else is happening in your body. Great. I have this piece of cholesterol in my eye. Where else is this cholesterol parked? I know that my gall bladder was full of it when it was removed. Is it in my heart? Is it in my brain? Am I going to go blind and then stroke out for the rest of my life and end up dead because of cardiac arrest? OK, OK, OK...... I'm dooms day, but when stuff comes back that doesn't sound good, then there's a good indication that something's probably up.

Why does a man have to go blind (I'm speaking figuratively here) in order to see?

On New Year's day I thought I was having a heart attack. Subsequent testing showed that it was my gall bladder. But one of the things the doctor told me is that I needed to loose 50 pounds. 50 freaking pounds. Dang, that's a lot of weight. I've probably lost 5 pounds. The other 45 will take some time to get rid of. But I will need to get active and loose the weight. Or else I may end up blind and dead.

Saturday I bought some salmon at Sam's Club. I cooked a piece on Saturday and liked it. Today when I read that link, I had another piece of salmon for lunch. I'm going to eat healthy from here on out. 50 pounds, here I come!

Home PC upgrade - Part 3

2010-04-19T06:33:00.001-06:00

I did not know/realize this would take as long as this has, but I'm nearly complete. Here is what I've done so far:

I picked up a pair of 1TB (yes, that is one TERABYTE) hard drives and put them into the home PC. This is a pair of Western Digital Black Caviar drives. This brings the total disk storage in my PC from 2.75TB to 4TB. Yes, I have four, 1TB drives in my home PC. Why so much? I take photos. Lots of photos. Lots of photos in DNG format (which is Adobe's digital negative format, or camera raw).

The most interesting thing about my purchase is the fact that one of the hard drives came with 64MB of cache on the drive itself, instead of the normal 32 MB. Does it make a difference in speed? Does the sun rise in the east? While it does not have a profound effect on performance, it does help increase performance somewhat. I just wish I would have known that there were two different models in the boxes. I would have looked for another drive with 64 MB of RAM in it. (NOTE: I just looked at the boxes and they only show 32MB of HDD cache installed on the boxes. However, they have significantly different serial numbers and one is a product of Thailand and the other is a product of Malaysia.)

So, what's next on the upgrade path?

* 4 GB more of RAM. This will bring the overall system to 8 GB of RAM
* Windows 7 Professional, the 64-bit version

The RAM and OS purchase will probably happen around the same time as I cannot use the extra RAM in Windows XP Professional 32-bit. The current estimated price will be around $300 total. Hopefully I can get this all done by June or July. I plan on keeping my current 1GB drive with XP on it as my backup in case the upgrade goes horribly awry. I plan on using one of my new 1TB drives that I picked up as my new C:\ drive. In fact, I'll probably end up using the 1TB drive that has 64 MB of disk cache on it.

So part 4 should be the final upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit.

Nexflix streaming for the Nintendo Wii

2010-04-18T22:15:00.000-06:00

Around Christmas 2009 I was contemplating the purchase of another console gaming system. I came close to pulling the trigger a couple of times, but I never did it. I was leaning heavily towards the Sony PS3. Why? Because it has built-in wireless, a fairly decent sized hard drive and because it has a Blu-Ray player built-in. In a moment of weakness, I almost purchased an Xbox. But I didn't do it because no Blu-Ray and, more importantly, no built-in wireless networking. I could probably handle the lack of Blu-Ray, but the lack of wireless (the add-on adapter was in the $70) pushed me completely away from the platform. The thing that kept me away from the Sony was the game content. The PS3 games are mostly adult-only games. And I really didn't want my kids playing games targeted for adults. The main reason why I wanted a new console so I could stream Netflix content without the need of having a computer hooked up. Because I didn't like my options, I opted to just stay with what I have, a Nintendo Wii.

Then a month or two ago I read on Netflix's web site that they were developing a streaming option for the Nintendo Wii. I got all excited and signed up for my free streaming disk. (If you aren't familiar with Netflix, they have an option where you can stream some of their content directly to a computer, game console, or supported multi-media or Blu-Ray player. So you don't have to mail in DVDs and the like to get your movie fix.) Well, my disk came last week and I just had to try it out.

So I got the disk. Put it in. There is an activation number of some sort where you have to tie the number to your account, so you need to get onto your computer, log into Netflix, put the code in and you're done. This is the most cumbersome part of the whole process. As soon as your account is setup with that activation number, the Wii automatically refreshes itself and allows you in browse for movies or review your instant queue. Once I got the Wii activated, I was watching a movie within minutes. Sweet!!!

The picture quality is good. The Wii can only do 480p, so you don't get a high def picture. But the fact that you can browse and stream a video and watch it instantly for a monthly price, that is just incredibly cool and makes up for the fact you can't stream in high def.

My only complaint about Netflix is that not all their movies are available for streaming. Some moves are DVD or Blu-Ray only and not available for streaming. That can be annoying. But they've got like 20,000 movies that are available for streaming, so usually you can find something to watch. In fact the other day I watched the movie Look who's coming to dinner with my kids. They thought it was great. Spencer Tracey gave a great performance at the end with his monologue. Interesting movie.

Sudden death

2010-03-25T22:18:00.000-06:00

I don't know what's going on with items in the Tom household lately, but things have been breaking with an intensity not seen in a long time. Here is a list (possibly partial list) of things that have died in the last little bit.

A D-Link DSL modem. This piece of hardware abruptly died Monday this week. The modem has been in use between one and two years. I'm renting a DSL moden from the phone company that I haven't sent back yet. And boy, I'm glad I still had it. Because when the D-Link DSL modem croaked, I was back up because I had a spare. I bought a replacement DSL modem, but I need a back-up/spare before I can send the Actiontec modem back to the phone company. That may be a while. In the mean time, the rent is cheaper than the cost of the potential down time.
A D-Link eight port gigabit switch. I've had this one for a while and I was surprised that it died. One day I heard a pop noise, but I didn't realize where it came from. Everything seemed to work just fine. Then a day or two later the switch just died. When I felt the power supply, it was really hot. So I unplugged it. I suspect the popping noise came from the power supply and it probably toasted my switch. I had a port die on the switch several months before it completely died, so it was probably on its last legs. I suspect I've had this for five or six years. I had a spare, but since I'm now using my spare, I don't have a backup. So I need to eventually replace this before I actually need it.
A Panasonic over the range microwave oven. Manufactured sometime in 2004. I think the magnetron (the piece that makes the microwaves) is going out on it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. The symptoms for nonfunctioning is the oven will run for about 3 seconds and then abruptly stop. I never loose power. (I had the loose power problem just over a year with this microwave. That was an undersized fuse in the thing going out which was replaced for $100.00....) It will run and stop after just a few seconds. Bleh!
An Asus A7V266-E motherboard. This motherboard was purchased around the time of September 11, 2001 to replace my ancient Pentium (yes, plain Pentium) based system that I put together several years earlier. This is the first motherboard of my first system that I've ever build. And since then, I've built all the rest of my computers. This particular motherboard uses an old 486 style CPU fan to cool the VIA northbridge. The fan on the northbridge finally puked on me. I looked for a replacement CPU fan from that fan manufacturer, but because it is so old, they no longer make the CPU fan..... While this isn't a recent failure, it is a failure nontheless. And while I'm moaning about failures, I might as well add this one in here. Yeah, the system is ancient, nearly 9 years old. But you know what? It still worked and ran. And when you are using old hardware for a home PC lab, you'll take just about anything. Like watching an old friend on life support die. Painful. But sometimes you have to literally pull the plug.
OfficeMax chair. What the heck? Why are you adding a chair? That's not electronic. Because the chair lasted about a year before giving me problems. I suffered with it for about four to six months and finally, I had it. So I went and bought another chair. This new chair is OK, but it makes my tailbone hurt. You never win, do you?
Bosch dish washer: The motor/pump on this thing went out. Less than one year old. And it started acting up six to eight months after we bought it. The freakin' pump went out!! What the heck?!? Thank goodness the unit was still under warranty and we got the pump replaced for free. But why did that go out after such a short amount of time?

I'm sure I've got more stuff that's died on me, but this is what I can remember. The thing that ticks me off is that you pay good money for stuff and then it breaks on you. For example, the microwave. I think I paid something around $400 for that fine piece of electronicness. And all I get is six years of service out of it? And the dishwasher? Not even a year and the motor/pump goes out. What's up with that, eh?

The fan on the motherboard. I see that happening. I just wish Asus would have used a different method to cool the northbridge than using an electric fan.

The chair. OK, maybe that's a hint that I'm fat and I should go on a diet. But the chair should have lasted longer.

The switch and the DSL modem: Can you say, "No moving parts"? How this stuff died is beyond my comprehension. Other than the fact that D-Link used crap parts when they made their equipment; parts that are cheap to keep costs low. When you make stuff using low end components, you're asking for trouble. I'm sure D-Link engineers their stuff to get it through the warranty period, but who knows how long beyond that period of time? I once heard that hard drives are engineered to last three or maybe five years. After that, they fail. So make backups of that important information before it is lost.

So what's next? Well, I suppose that my hot water heater is the next item on the watch list. My current hot water heater is 9 years old. I had the thermostat on it replaced on it two years ago because it was leaking gas. I've been told if you get more than six years out of your hot water heater, you're doing good. So this one should die any time.

So what caused all this failure? Was it all just crappy design? Or was it sun spots? Or is it the radon gas in my basement? Who knows what is causing the failures in my house. Stuff just happens. Nothing lasts forever. And it is disappointing to pay good money to have things wear out and die after just a few short years.

When is 50 gallons of hot water not enough?

2010-03-25T21:37:00.000-06:00

When you have a teenage son. I told my son to take a short shower. To me a short shower is about 10 or 15 minutes. 45 minutes later he wandered out of the shower with the water coming out of the tap luke warm.

Crap. I've got five other kids that need to get in there and have showers or baths. And my son sucks every last ounce of hot water out of the system. Great.

Next time, he may get the water cut off at the five minute mark.

Home PC upgrade - part 2

2010-03-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

The home PC upgrade is making progress. The next item on the shopping list after the CPU and power supply upgrades consisted of a video card upgrade. I accomplished that two weeks ago. I put in an ATI based 5770 graphics card with 1GB of RAM on board. I wanted a 5830 based card, but the graphics chip for that card is relatively new and cards are hard to come by. So I went with the older 5770. It isn't too bad. It is significantly more powerful than the GeForce 7600GT that it replaced.

So have I noticed any differences? Yes. My son and I play flight simulator. We have Microsoft's FSX and also X-plane 9. With both games, we can crank up the complexity and the video card eats it like a goat will eat grass.

So what's next on the list? I need the following:

More RAM
Two 1TB hard drives to replace the 250GB and 500GB drives in the system
Windows 7

The drives will probably come next. The RAM and Windows 7 purchase will be made at approximately the same time. The computer currently has 4GB of RAM. I'm going to max it out with 8GB and then get Windows 7 64-bit installed. Windows XP can't use the addtional 4GB of RAM, but I can use the extra 2TB of disk space. Eventually one of the new hard drives will be used as the master hard drive for Windows 7. Western Digital makes a 2TB drive, but that drive is still expensive. If it drops in price, I'd like that drive to be my main drive. So I may end up with a 2TB and 1TB drive instead of two 1TB drives. I currently have two 1TB drives in the system and I love it. You can never have enough disk space. And when you do, you just end up using it.

Last night I was thinking to myself, why am I spending so much money on an upgrade? I was at Wal-Mart the other day and I saw a pretty decent eMachines computer for just under $400....... It had a multi-core CPU, 6GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive..... Hmmm.... Why am I doing this? I guess I like building stuff. I don't know. A frustrated Lego builder? I haven't purchased an assembled computer in probably a dozen years. All the other computers that I have, I have pieced together myself. Yup. I'm a geek. Pure and simple.

Toyota recall - Part 3

2010-03-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

So last week I took the Camry in for a 15,000 mile service. They had a couple of recalls on the gas pedal thing. They put the reinforced shims on the gas pedal, they shortened the gas pedal arm (?) about 1/2 an inch, and then they reprogrammed the computer. The computer reprogram was the brake over-ride so if I have gas and brakes both depressed, the engine would reduce power.

So, any differences after the changes? The gas pedal still feels the same. The shortening of the pedal is unnoticeable. The gas pedal seems a little bit more on the sensitive side. The car seems a little more peppy to me on the lower end of the RPM scale. That could be the affects of the shortening of the pedal itself, but that's my perception. For the brake override, that seems to work. Before the recall, I put on the gas and the brakes the the engine was still pushing hard. After the computer reprogram, the engine power will decrease. Once you release the brake pedal, normal power resumes. Kinda cool.

Is there a problem with Toyotas? Honestly, I really don't know. The runaway Prius story in California makes me wonder what is going on. And I will be very interested to read about the results of the engineering team's testing. Newer cars have a black box similar in nature to black boxes in airplanes. I'm sure that the engineers will extensively review the data from that black box. I hope that Toyota does the right thing for this guy and fixes his car - brakes and all - for free. If anything, they should fix it for free for PR reasons.

I'm on my second Toyota. The cars have been built solidly. The first car I had was a 2003 Corolla and it was a magnificent car. My 2009 Camry is a lot like my Corolla was like, except even better.

With the runaway car issue, I'm mostly concerned about my son and his reaction to a sudden acceleration problem. My Camry has a five speed manual transmission, something that is extremely rare in a Camry. We've told him that if he has that problem, to simply put the car into neutral, pull over and turn off the car. And with the brake override, he could use the brakes to slow things down. But the Prius should also have a brake override system and it didn't work in the California Prius incident, so who knows. Best bet, put in the clutch, put it into neutral, pull over and turn off the car.

Will I buy another Toyota? Probably. I think the overall quality of Toyota cars is better than the American cars. And I think Toyota will figure out the root cause of the problem and take care of their customers. Many of these problems, especially intermittent or rare computer related problems, are quite difficult to troubleshoot and diagnose. I know because I've worked in tech support for over a decade. The "easy" problems to solve are the readily duplicate-able problems. The harder ones to solve are those that are rare and random. This issue seems to appear in the latter case - rare and random. Hopefully the Prius in the California incident will provide Toyota the details that they need to fully understand the root cause of the problem.

Gall bladder surgery - 22 days and counting

2010-03-13T10:50:00.001-07:00

It has been three weeks since I had my gall bladder removed. And how am I doing? My answer is, "Why didn't I do this sooner?" :-) Seriously, though, it hasn't been all that bad. The worst part was the first week. I wasn't in pain, but I wasn't comfortable. The second week I felt quite a bit better and this week I'm even better.

So any side effects? Some. The bowels can get a little loose at times. But it hasn't been too bad. I'm still taking it somewhat easy on the food that I eat. I've been trying to eat lots of greens (salads and the like) and I've been venturing into some other foods. So we'll see what happens.

This week I also started to exercise. I got on the treadmill and went slow. It was good. It is amazing how much better you feel once you exercise. And this is no different. So life is getting back to "normal".

No more gall bladder!!!

2010-02-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

For those of you who want to know, or even care, I had a successful removal of my gall bladder. I'm somewhat sore, but not nearly as sore as I was when I had my hernia surgery several years ago. They made four incisions... One in or around my belly button (that one hurts pretty good), one just under and to the right of my sternum (that incision hurts the least), and then two small ones on the right side below my right ribs. The ones on the right are annoying as heck because I can't sleep on my right side, which is my favorite side to sleep on and they are pretty sore.

As far as drugs are concerned, I had some morphine in the hospital, a Lortab type thing, and a couple of Percocets, but that's it. The rest of the time I've had Tylenol. I may revert to the Percocets tonight to see if I can get some sleep. I'm sleeping, just not as good as I would like to sleep.

Toyota - Part 2

2010-02-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

I don't really understand all the buzz about Toyota. I've got a 2009 Camry and it has been a fine car. Today I scheduled an appointment with the dealership to get it serviced. They looked up my car and said it was subject to two recalls. They are going to put the brackets on the throttle and reprogram the computer (so if the brakes are on, the accelerator will be cut) for the first recall, and then they are going to shorten the accelerator pedal by 1/2 an inch. I think the reprogramming is a smart thing to do and should have been done long ago.

I know that Toyota is getting hammered, but give me a break. All car companies have issues. The Congressmen that want the president of Toyota to testify is just overkill. They are doing it for political points and to bash and humiliate Toyota. What will it accomplish? Will it fix the problem any faster? Will it make Toyota be more careful in their designs? Will it bring back the lives of those who died in Toyota vehicles that had issues? I really don't think it will solve any of these problems. Toyota has learned a hard and valuable lesson. They will be better in the future. And if all the other Toyotas are like the dealership I have to deal with, customers will be taken care of.

Like I said, all this frenzy about the "quality" problem and customers leaving the brand are just the press in hyper-drive. Once the recalls stop and the press quiets down and some other big topic of the day comes up, people will forget about the problems. Haiti attention has dropped off the map as the press moves on with other "hot" stories.

So I'll keep my Toyota. My only regret is that I don't have money to go and buy another Toyota vehicle, as I'm sure there are some pretty good discounts on the cars these days.

Surgery tomorrow

2010-02-18T13:35:00.001-07:00

I've been suffering with a poorly functioning gall bladder for quite some time. I got a diagnosis that it has to come out (it has a 9% ejection fraction, meaning it is barely working) back in January. With work and everything, I'm finally able to get it taken out. I have a few sniffles (I think the onset of a cold may be trying to derail my surgery), but the surgeon and hospital told me to still come. They'll make the call tomorrow if I'm fit or not.

For those that want to know, I have to be at the hospital tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM. I'm the first person getting worked on, I think. I asked for the first time slot and it looks like I've got it. Which is fine. It means I have to get up early, but it also means that I will hopefully get to come home some time in the afternoon.

If by some strange and weird chance I don't make it back (gall bladder surgery is very routine and low risk), its been good knowing you. Take care of the wife and kidlins.

I'll post something once I'm home and all is well.

Fantastic Mr. Fox - Did I really see that movie?

2010-02-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had the day off work and the kids were out of school. So we decided to go to the dollar movie and take in a cheap movie. The 12:45 showing of the Fantastic Mr. Fox was sold out, so we went to the 2:45 movie. We had lunch at one of the local fast food joints before going in.

Frankly, I was quite underwhelmed by the movie. My oldest daughter said, "That was the stupidest movie I've ever seen. It was even dumber than Napoleon Dynamite!" The humor was Sahara Desert dry. It really was not what I was expecting. It is stop action animation, kind of like Chicken Run. I thoroughly enjoyed Chicken Run, but I didn't care much for the Fantastic Mr. Fox. I suppose that Mr. Fox is one of those movies that may or could grow on you. But if I ever show that movie again in my house, I'm sure I'd be lynched, quartered and then burned before an improper burial. Like I said, I'm glad we saw this at the dollar movie. It cost me all of $6 to go to the movie. I guess that's more expensive than a DVD rental, but we got out of the house for a few hours.

The Blind Side - Who blind sided me?

2010-02-14T09:39:00.001-07:00

My wife and I had an early Valentine's date on Friday. We found a theater that was still showing The Blind Side about Michael Oher. We have tried to see it once or twice before, but it was always sold out. We have heard that it was a great movie, but I left my expectations at the door. I have had high expectations for movies in the past and those expectations have been crushed as the movie never reached my expectations. So I just wanted to go, sit back and relax and take in the movie.

The movie is simply awesome. Probably one of the best movies that I have seen in a really, really, really long time. And Sandra Bullock..... What a performance. I wish she could play parts like that all the time. She gave a fantastic performance in the movie, probably the best performance I have ever seen her do in any of her movies. The movie is up for best picture and Ms. Bullock is up for Best Performance for an Actress in a leading role. I hope they both win Oscars. It has been a long time since a movie like this has won an academy award for best picture. I have not seen Avatar, but I would not be surprised if the blue creature movie gets best picture.

Thinking about the movie some more, I want to thank the Tuohy family for sharing their story. The world needs more people like the Tuohy's who are willing to open their home to those less fortunate. The story makes me want to be a better person and help those who are in need.

Anyway, if you want a good movie to see, look for The Blind Side. It will not disappoint.

Toyota

2010-02-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

With all the publicity about the recent Toyota recalls, you would think that people are panicing and dumping their Toyotas. Maybe that is the case. Maybe there are people who are dumping their cars for "American" made cars. Maybe. There will always be sheep that are driven into a panic.

I've had a few Toyota products over the years. I have a model that is currently affected by one or more of Toyota's recalls. And you know what? I'm not worried about it. I haven't taken the car in for any of the recalls. My first Toyota got rear-ended. The impact was incredibly forceful resulting in a total loss, but in the end, my wife and oldest daughter walked away from the accident unharmed. You can't put a price on that kind of protection.

The Toyota I currently have is a well made car. And in the end, I think my Toyota will outlast any other "American" car out there. No car company in the world is perfect. There will be recalls. In the end, Toyota will take care of their customers, the problems will get resolved, and the problems will blow by. And customers will return to Toyota because of their value and quality. There will be some short-term brand issues, but I think it will all blow by and be forgotten like presidential campaign promises.

Who needs a gall bladder anyway?

2010-02-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

Remember my previous post about my annual visit to the ER/hospital? Well, I finally figured out the underlying problem. My gall bladder. I had a HIDA scan done and my gall bladder only has a 9% ejection fraction, meaning, it ain't working very good and needs to come out. Normal gall bladders have a 35 to 80% ejection fraction. Anything above or below that range is considered abnormal with the gall bladder needing to be removed.

I've talked to several people who have had their gall bladders out and it seems like a fairly routine operation. I've talked to at least 20 people who have had their gall bladders out. The more I talk about it, the more I realize how common it is. Then I hear about John Murtha passing away after his gall bladder surgery. I'm like, "Oh great. I'm going to be the 1 in 1,000. I got West Nile Virus, I'll probably die from this stupid surgery." Such an optimist, I know. I also found out on Monday that I had a case of strep throat and I'm currently on meds to wipe that out before my surgery. I need to call the doctor and see what they have to say about it. I just want to make sure the strep is gone before I get operated on.

Back to the gall bladder thing. Ever since I found out that my gall bladder is bad, I've avoided fatty foods. I've been avoiding fatty foods for years, but every now and again I'll indulge in a greasy peperoni pizza, or a large bowl of ice cream, only to be in agony several hours later. But now that I KNOW it is bad, I've been staying away from that stuff like the plague. And I've discovered that I feel a whole lot better. No more massive bloating, cramps and other common nastiness. I miss the occasional bowl of ice cream. I miss a piece of sausage or bacon. But I know that I'll be paying for it if I eat it. So I refuse to partake.

So if you have gall bladder experiences, please share.

Flying

2010-02-10T19:48:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I flew to the Bay Area for a business trip. I flew one of the big carriers, but instead of being on a "normal" sized aircraft, I flew on a Bombardier regional jet. I assume that these jets are highly efficient for the airlines, but I hate them.

First of all, when I stand straight up in the isle, my head hits the top of the aircraft. So I walk hunched over so I don't whack my head. Next, the plane only seats four across, two on each side. So you either have a window seat or an isle seat and no dreaded middle seat. Now, when I was a kid, I wanted a window seat. But that was a long time ago. And I was a lot thinner than I am now. So when I fly, I want an isle seat so my largesse can have some stretching room. My flight out to the bay area, I got stuck with a window seat. I got in my seat and felt like a stinking sardine. Remember, these aircraft aren't very big and I'm a pretty big dude these days.

The worst part of the whole trip is the bathroom experience. Remember, guys can do certain things standing up. Also remember that my head hits the roof when I'm simply walking down the isle. Now, where is the commode? Generally it is near the wall of the aircraft. So I'm having having a Brent Brown moment in the bathroom, praying profusely that we don't have any clear air turbulents and I don't end up breaking my neck. For those that don't know who Brent Brown is, he's a local auto dealer that has a photo with his likeness bending over backwards. I didn't find a suitable graphics of Mr. Brown, but here is an example of what I'm talking about (or at least this is how it feels).

So I'm really glad when the plane lands, we arrive at the gate and I'm able to get out of the sardine can. After flying in one of those small planes, the larger aircraft (737s or A320s) look pretty decent.

My trip was mostly uneventful. My outbound flight was cancelled, but I was able to get to and from my destination without any serious consequences.

Tonight's State of the Union address

2010-01-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

I can sum up President Obama's State of the Union address tonight in two words: "deficit spending". The President is promising the world and I'm sitting here wondering how he's going to pay for it. The problem is, I won't end up paying for it. My kids, grandkids and great grand kids will be paying for this deficit spending.

Home PC upgrade

2010-01-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

The home PC is about 4 years old. The PC is continually being upgraded (new hard drives, more RAM, etc.), but the core machine (CPU and video card) hasn't changed much.

A couple of years ago my motherboard fried. So I had to get a new motherboard. So here's the upgrade path for the box:

1.) CPU upgrade (already done)

2.) Power supply upgrade (done)

3.) Video card upgrade. I had to upgrade the power supply before I could upgrade the video card. The card I'm looking at is the Nvidia GeForce 260.

4.) Remove smaller hard drives and replace them with larger hard drives.

5.) Buy more RAM (max it out to 8GB of RAM) and then install Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

The old parts don't get thrown away or given away. They are recycled, meaning they get reused in my lab. I have a couple of dead PCs that are occupying computer cases. The dead PC will be taken apart and revamped with the other stuff that is no longer used.

I don't know how long this will take. It totally depends on money, and money is a HUGE factor at this point in time. I hope to complete the upgrade by the end of the year. For now, I'll just enjoy what I've got.

New Years Resolution(s) for 2010

2010-01-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

On New Year's day I thought I was having a heart attack. Come to find out I didn't have one afterall. Which is nice to know. In the course of my visits with the doctor, she said I needed to lose 50 pounds (about 23 kilos) of weight off my frame. So what do I do, eh? I guess I'll do what the doctor has ordered. I figure if I can drop a pound a week, then I'll be able to drop 50 in a year. Not a bad goal, eh? Only thing is that I can go to the restroom and drop a pound or more in one sitting. And yes, pun intended. So here's a list of my New Year's Resolutions for 2010:

Drop 50 pounds by December 31, 2010
Eat better
Exercise regularly
Enjoy life, my wife and my children

I love my wife dearly. She's been exercising like crazy (she's training for a half marathon in April) and dang, she looks pretty good. She dyed her hair her natural color (she's been coloring it lighter to cover the ever increasing gray) and she looks smoking hot. In fact, she bought this nice little black dress and wore it to my company Christmas party, and I just could not take my eyes off her. She wore the same outfit to Church on Sunday (first time for the outfit and a first for the hair) and she got tons of comments. So if she's looking good, then I've got to look good too. So time to loose the fat.

Annual visit to the ER

2010-01-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

Seems like I end up in the ER at least once a year for chest pains. So this year was no different.

We had a New Year's party. I was up with my friends. Eating things I knew would do bad things to my body. Midnight came. The guests left. We cleaned up and went to bed.

I could not go to sleep. No way. No how. I felt like crap. I had pressure in my chest. Finally at around 4AM, I woke the wife up and we went to the ER. On the way there, things started to feel better, but I still thought it would be a good idea to check in and get checked out.

I went in there. They drew blood. Did an EKG. Did all sorts of stuff. Everything looked good. But after about five or six hours, they decided to admit me just in case. More blood tests. Heart enzymes looked good.

Long story short, the heart is OK. And I didn't have a heart attack afterall. They did a stress test (now I feel like an Obama bank) on me and it looked good. So I've been cleared for exercise. So what's causing the pain? 1.) Heartburn (?) 2.) Possible bad gall bladder. For the burn, I've got a prescription for some mighty good acid reflux meds. For the gall bladder, I've got to have some more expensive tests run to see if it needs to come out or not. I suspect that my gall bladder is probably acting up. And I wouldn't be surprised if it has been bad for a while. As long as I eat fairly decent, I can get away with it. But when I eat crap, I have pressure in the chest.

Check out my new years resolutions for some interesting stuff.

Mom, what's for dinner?

2010-01-05T17:27:00.001-07:00

Last night my 4 year old asked my wife, "Mom, what's for dinner?" To which my wife replied, "Tuna casserole." And now for the famous response: "I HATE tuna casserole."

To all you Moms (and Dads) out there with small children, isn't it wonderful when your kids knock your menu choices? Yeah, tuna casserole doesn't sound very appealing to me either (and I'm the Dad), but I have to go along for the ride. Besides it was a new recipe from our Eating for Life book that we have.

Here are a few photos of the finished product:

Doesn't that just look tasty? Here's another photo:

Hopefully I haven't grossed anyone out. If this actually looks appealing to you, then look at the recipe from Eating for Life and you can make your own tuna casserole.

Christmas traditions

2009-12-18T08:33:00.001-07:00

So what's a blog without Christmas traditions. I was thinking, what would Christmas be without traditions? So here is a list of things that we try to do every year.

We try to give things to a family who is in need. Or we go in with another family.
A bunch of my neighbors and our family goes Christmas caroling. We usually sing to the older couples, the sick, the widows, or older single women.
Christmas eve, we read the story of the birth of Jesus Christ from the Bible.
The kids get to open up one present. The present they get to open is a pair of home made flannel pajamas. They put their new pajamas on and go to bed.
Christmas morning, I make my kids go into the kitchen. I usually make a killer breakfast. We eat breakfast before opening up presents. The kids really hate me for this. This is a tradition that started with my family.
After breakfast I make the kids go downstairs and line up in front of the door. It is youngest to oldest (shortest to tallest). The youngest is in front. This is a tradition my parents started when I was a kid.
After photos, the kids check out their stockings.
After stockings, the kids get to see their Santa gifts.
After Santa gifts, the kids get to open their own presents. Since Christmas is being funded by cash this year, it means there will be few presents under the tree. I am totally OK with that.
We spend the rest of the day hanging out and the kids play with their new shiny toys.

That's it. My parents or mother-in-law (my father-in-law passed away five years ago) usually comes to our house. Or my mother-in-law may spend the night with us. This year my mother-in-law will be spending the night with us.

One week from today is Christmas

2009-12-18T00:37:00.000-07:00

One week from today is Christmas. Yes, the big day. The day in which we try to remember why we celebrate the day. Yes, one week from today, I will probably be up (it is actually very early in the morning as I write) putting out Santa gifts. And in just a few short hours, Christmas will be over in all of about two seconds. Literally. Two seconds. Why? Because for the first time in my married life, Christmas has been funded by cash and not the likes of VISA, Mastercard, American Express, or Discover. And it is being done a la cheap. Well, sort of. Cheaper than is has been done in probably a decade or more.

I'm looking forward to the excitement on kids faces as it quickly turns to disappointment. NOT! I think my younger kids will be fine. It is my older kids that I'm afraid may be disappointed. They have been warned that Christmas is going to ~~suck~~ be scaled back substantially this year and to not expect much. I tried to talk my wife into giving each kid like $50, but she didn't go for it. She likes buying the gifts for the kid. She considers cash a cop out. I beg to differ, but the "do I gift or give cash" debate isn't one I wanted to get into this year. So ~~lame~~ gifts it will be.

So what do I want for Christmas? Stuff I can't possibly afford. A Canon 5D Mark II camera ($2,700 for the body only) for starters. Or a 2010 Mustang GT ($30k) with a 3.73 rear end and a manual transmission. That car hauls some serious .... serious ..... OK, it accelerates quickly and is FUN to drive hard. A lot more fun than my boring and reliable Camry. The 30MPG the Camry gets is a lot better than the 15MPG I would get if I had a Mustang GT. Or the Camry is just a bit over 1/2 the cost of the Mustang. I just need to keep telling myself that. Maybe some day I'll actually believe it. I don't like hearing it, but I can always hope and dream. (Note to self... I can't believe I'm actually complaining about owning a Toyota Camry. It really is a nice car. But the mid-life crisis part of me REALLY wants something fun to drive. And the Camry just doesn't have the acceleration oomph that I crave...) Or I'd like a new widescreen monitor (24") for the home PC. The 17" is nice, but it is just kind of small, especially when I work on a 28" screen every day at work.

So Christmas is going to ~~suck~~ be the best I've ever had. The best part? I won't be paying on this year's Christmas next year. Yea!

Can you see what I see?

2009-12-18T00:08:00.002-07:00

One of the coolest military weapons are the Predator drones that the US flies over countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The drone is a small aircraft that is used by the US military to fly reconnaissance over an area. You can get real data on where you're flying. They are cheap. The pilot is far away and safe. So if one gets shot down, no big deal. No pilot to go and rescue. You would think that the video feed between the drone and the person flying the drone would be encrypted, safe, and secure. Well, guess what? It isn't. Yup. It is in the clear. Kind of like using a telnet or ftp connection across a network. Not very secure. Here's the link to the full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8419147.stm

Funny thing is that I never heard this story in the US. The US media either ignored it or covered it up. Nothing like showing Osama the video of where we're flying so he can stay well away from those areas. Reminds me of WWII when the British had German Enigma machines and the Brits knew exactly what Germany was going to do.

Bank of America - Their attempt to change terms without an opt-out

2009-12-08T16:32:00.001-07:00

About a month or possibly more ago (I'm getting older, so I don't remember details) my wife and I got a lovely letter from Bank of America informing us that the interest rate on our debt consolidation loan was going to float with the prime rate. It had been fixed at a particular interest rate. The really neat thing about this letter is that there was not opt-out option. So we were forced to accept the terms. We called. We complained. But the answer was that's the way it is.

Today we get a new letter from Bank of America. It says the following:

==========
Dear (insert our name here):

We recently notified you in October (I guess that's when we got our fun letter) of a change to your Account Agreement describing how the annual percentage rate on your account would be calculated using a variable rate formula tied to the U.S. prime rate. After careful consideration (and a lot of ticked off customers), we have decided not to implement this change. As a result, your account will retain its current annual percentage rate and remain unchanged.
==========

We started this loan several years ago with MBNA. MBNA was acquired by Bank of America. Many years ago MBNA tried to change our interest rate from a fixed to a variable, but there was an opt-out clause. We decided to opt-out. And things were good. So when we get this change in terms even after we had opted out, it really left a sour taste in our mouths. It did not seem like they could legally change our rate like they did since we had previously opted out of going variable. I thought about complaining to the Consumer Protection Agency and others, but it just fell by the wayside. I don't know who complained or what was said. But to whomever helped change Bank of America's heart, thank you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I know the banks have suffered incredible losses in the last couple of years. However, the banks have helped create the mess they are currently in by giving out easy money. We have never been late on our payment. And it is frustrating as a customer for the banks to ignore a customer's past history and literally mess with you like we're an unlimited resource ready to be tapped out by fees and interest rate hikes. Mr Banker, I'm not the problem. I pay my bills on time. Go hose those that aren't paying their bills on time. Soak them with the punitive rates and fees, not me.

One last word... I have a long, long, long memory. If you look at the cars I drive, you will notice that my cars are imports, except for my larger vehicles. Why? Because when I was a kid, I can remember all the crummy cars that came out of Detroit. There isn't a single American car that my parents had that I liked or even worked properly. Not a one. And so for the last 20 years I've avoided American cars like the plague.

Mr. Banker, I have a long memory. If you want me to continue to do business with you, you had better treat me right. If not, I will take my business elsewhere. There is one bank (Chase) that I will never do business with ever again. Bank of America, do you wish to join that club as well?

Chase what matters - Chase them away

2009-10-11T16:26:00.001-06:00

I saw the following news article about credit cards on CNN.com today:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/09/credit.card.outrage/index.html

In the article, there is a couple that talks about Chase messing around with the people's payments. My wife and I once had a Chase credit card. One of the worst cards I've ever had in my life. They messed with my interest rate. They changed my due date. Finally I was sick of them and moved the balance to another credit card. Because of that experience, I've vowed to never own another Chase credit card ever. That was about five years ago. And we haven't been back since. Their loss and my gain.

My word to the wise - choose your credit card company carefully. And if someone starts messing with you, just switch to a different bank. Hopefully, you can switch to a different bank.

The story of uncle Lazy Larsen

2009-09-22T18:43:00.002-06:00

This is a story that my parents and my grandparents told to me when I was growing up as a kid. It is a story that I have repeated to my own kids. Here is how it goes.

Have you heard of the story of old Lazy Larsen? Oh, you haven't? Well, let me tell you about him.

Once upon a time there was an uncle that was so lazy, the people called him Lazy Larsen. He was so lazy that he wouldn't do anything for himself. He would not work. He would not feed himself. He expected others to do his work for him. The people were so exasperated with him, because he wouldn't do anything, they decided to bury him alive. So they put old Lazy Larsen into a coffin and they were taking him down main street to the cemetary to bury him. A person was going through town and stopped the funeral procession.

"Who died?"

"Oh, no one died. Old Lazy Larsen refuses to do anything. He won't work to provide for himself. He won't do anything. So we're going to bury him alive in the cemetary."

"Oh no, don't do that. If he needs food, I have a whole field of corn that he can have and he can live on for free."

Lazy Larsen rises up out of the coffin and asks, "Is the corn shelled and schucked?"

The passer by says, "No, it isn't. But that can be done easily enough."

Lazy Larsen says, "Drive on driver, drive on."

Lazy Larsen was so lazy that he was even unwilling to accept free food that required just a little bit of work to prepare.

Having the last word in an argument with my wife

2009-09-22T18:39:00.003-06:00

In my High Priest Group, there is a guy that says he always gets the last word in any argument with his wife. What are his last words in any argument? "Yes dear."

I should learn my lesson.

Midlife crisis car

2009-09-15T14:01:00.006-06:00

A guy that I used to work with is selling his Camaro. Its a 1995 Camaro convertible with 50,000 original miles on it. It has the Corvette LT1 engine in it. I've driven it before and its quite fast. Here's a picture of it from his online add listing:

Its a pretty sweet ride. He wants $7,500 for it, which is about $7,480 more than I can afford. (sigh) The wife said I could sell my new Camry and pick up the Camaro. Uhhh... No. Not that I'm in love with my Camry, but it gets 30 MPG, and this Camaro will probably get between 15 and 20 MPG. And if gas ever goes ballistic again, I'd be toast. So I'll live to covet a different day. I'm sure he'll sell the car sooner or later. And if my finances improve and its still available, this beauty may follow me home. But knowing him and knowing my finances, the chances of that happening are about the same as me winning the lottery (I don't play the lotto). But it sure would be a lot cheaper than a 2010 Ford Mustang GT........ Less than 1/4 the cost. Almost 1/5 the cost. But when you get paid and pay your bills and then you look at your checkbook balance and its almost down to where it was before you paid your bills, you know you can't add additional overhead to the budget. As much as I would love to think I could afford this beast, I really can't. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Period. Done. (sigh)

A time to move

2009-09-11T23:43:00.000-06:00

I think it might be time to move. Maybe move to the mission field. Gotta think this one through.

Can I have some bread with that jelly, please?

2009-09-03T08:48:00.003-06:00

WARNING: My blogs are written for people of all ages. However, this entry may be offensive to those that are under age 18 or 21. Perhaps even older readers. So if you're easily offended or if you're a minor, go read a different posting. Or go to lesser offensive site.

Whew! Yesterday I went in for an annual physical. I have some meds that need to be refilled and I thought that with my past history of random things breaking down, it was time to start the annual physical routine. The doctor I ended up visiting is higly recommended by one of our neighbors. My lame doctor that I've been seeing for nearly a decade has moved his practice further away than I want to drive. And he's gone "bad" in many different ways and at many different levels. He is a good person, just I have not been impressed with his medical skills as of late. So adios, amigo.

So I go in to see a new doctor. Wait probably an hour. He comes in and we talk about football from one of the local universities for probably 10 minutes. He writes up my prescription refill and then starts the exam. Everything good so far.

Finally he says, "OK, time to drop your drawers. Bend over the table, put your left arm on the exam table, use your right hand to pull on your right cheek. No, not the cheek on your face, the cheek on your rear end." (This guy has a pretty good sense of humor and he's making me laugh in preparation for an uncomfortable and ineveitable jelly finger exercise. Luckily he didn't empty the whole tube of KY jelly onto his finger.) So in goes the finger. I thought he was probing my stomach checking to make sure I really didn't eat any breakfast. Finally, after what seems like a weeks worth of probing (I have "Exit only" tatooed on my back side), he takes out his finger and says, "Well, your prostate is a bit on the enlarged side, but it feels nice and smooth, which is a good thing." They screen for colon cancer (test for blood in my stool) and rectal cancer (95% of all rectal cancers can be detected by digital inspection) in addition for prostate cancer. Everything "looked" good, or should I say, felt good. One of my coworkers says that he feels like he should at least be kissed before receiving "the treatment".

The doc and I talked about prostate health and what causes prostrates to enlarge. Some men's prostrates start enlarging at 35. Others at 40. Some even start in their 50s. He said, "The more you use it, the smaller it will stay." He even offered to write a prescription that I could give to my wife that would read "Sex, twice a day, for good prostrate health." We both laughed, but I declined the offer. Seriously though, he said that frequent intercourse helps clean out the prostrate and gets all the crud out that's in there. When I told the missus, she didn't believe me. I still don't think she believes me. So maybe the next time I see this guy, I'll take him up on the prescription. If nothing else, it would make for a good laugh.

So do I really want some bread with my jelly? If its grape jelly I do. But if its KY brand jelly, I think I'll pass.

2010 Ford Mustang

2009-08-15T12:56:00.004-06:00

Every now and again I go and drive a domestic sports car. Over the last eight years, I've rented Mustangs, or I've gone for a test drive. January 2002 I rented a Mustang and I was impressed with it. It had eight cylinders and was speedy. Later, in about 2005 or 2006 (I don't remember), I rented another Mustang. It had a V6 and I was impressed with it as well.

Then last year I tested a used V6 Mustang and a used 2007 Mustang GT. Those two models that I drove, well, they were uninspiring for me. They didn't have the punch like the earlier models had and I was severely disappointed.

A few months ago I purchased a new base model Camry. Nice car. Good mileage (30 mpg), but the car is uninspiring. How so? Its a bit on the gutless side. Don't get me wrong. Its a nice car. The ride is nice, smooth, and quiet. And for a four banger, it does pretty good. But not quite there for peppiness.

Today I took the Camry in to get serviced. The same dealer has a Ford franchise. A few weeks ago I was looking at Mustangs on the Internet. I noticed that this dealership had a V6 Mustang with a manual transmission. I've never driven one of those before and I thought it would be cool/interesting to drive a V6 with a manual. So I went in and asked if I could test drive it. I did and it was impressive. This was a much better copy than the used automatic I tried last summer. In fact, it reminded me of the V6 rental that I used several years back. It was a fairly decent car with more oomph than my pleasantly bland Camry.

I then asked for the keys for the Mustang GT. The rear-end had a 3.73 gear ratio. So it was geared low. Low gearing means this thing should accelerate like a beast. I had hoped that it would meet my expectations, because the 2007 GT that I drove last year was simply disappointing. I started it up and drove off the dealer lot. I put the gas pedal to the floor. The engine came to life and the engine roared. And it accelerated like a bat out of a very warm place. I smiled like a kid in a candy store... I took the GT on the same track that I did the smaller displacement Mustang. And I was simply impressed. This car accelerated impressively. The way a muscle car should accelerate. I drove the car my route and then went back to the dealership.

I walked into the dealership and went to the guy that let me drive the car. "I have two words for you.... HOLY CRAP!" The salesman grinned. He knew I was impressed with the car. I even told him that if I had the money, I'd be signing papers for the car right then. But I don't have the money. I have two car payments (and probably will for quite some time) and I won't be able to afford my toy car. I thanked him for letting me drive the car. We talked for a few more minutes and I left the dealership.

This little experience totally made my day. It definitely put the Mustang back on my fun car to drive list. And if I have an extra $30,000 laying around, I will go and pick up a copy for myself.

If you're interested, go drive one of those bad boys. Make sure you get a GT with a 5-speed manual with the 3.73 rear-end. The sticker should show the lower geared rear end. Give it a try and then let me know what you think....

Lighting photos and star shots

2009-07-27T21:11:00.007-06:00

Two days ago we had a pretty spectacular light show. I've taken photos before of the light show and they've turned out pretty good. But I couldn't take a decent lightning strike if my life depended on it. Check out this example:

See the lightning? Yeah, it over on the far right hand of the picture. I was taking 30 second exposures and I was just not getting the shot. The camera was taking around 30 seconds to process the image. Literally, the shutter would click and a bolt of lighting would strike right in the middle of my frame! AAARRRGGHH!!! In this case I got something, but it was not in the frame of view. The photos were blurry with lots of noise. Very disappointing. I probably spent two hours trying to grab a shot.

So I started doing the bulb thing (holding the shutter open until I got a strike) and that still wasn't getting what I wanted. Here's another lame photo:

The sky was getting lit up by lightning, but nothing was getting captured in the frame.

Overall, disappointing. I guess I keep trying.

I also tried my hand at the stary night. This one is probably my best one. Notice the aircraft flying past my field of view:

This photo should be rotated 90 degrees, but I don't know how to do that. So here it is. Hopefully you can see something.

40 years ago man stepped on the moon

2009-07-20T22:14:00.004-06:00

Hard to believe that 40 years ago man's first steps on the moon happened. And just a few lunar missions and a few chosen men have had the privilege to walk on a different planet. 40 years later, we really haven't done much in the way of space exploration. Funding for the lunar missions died out. And the best that we've got now is a taxi service to a multi-billion dollar lab in low earth orbit. Its been about 37 years since we've been to the moon. Almost like, "Been there, done that. Next!"

I don't know what the future of space exploration will be. Congress will probably trash the next rocket series and scuttle any further projects to the moon. In all reality, the Chinese will probably be the next humans up there. Maybe they'll outsource some of their space and science projects to some hungry American scientists. But then again, maybe not. Countries learn by doing it themselves than letting someone else do it for them. That is how America became so great.

I have two wishes/dreams in my life. 1.) I wish I was old enough to remember the Apollo 11 and 13 space missions. But I was too young. I barely remember one, maybe two Apollo missions. 2.) I wish I could have been one of the 12 astronauts that walked on the surface of the moon. What an utter thrill that would have been. I would have taken a bazillion photos and stored as much moon rock and dirt as I could physically handle.

Hats off to NASA for the major accomplishment they made 40 years ago. My Garmin Forerunner 50 has more computing power than all the space vehicles put together. And hats off to the all the astronauts that had the guts to strap themselves on top of a 363 foot rocket with nearly 6+ million pounds of propellant hooked on to their back sides. You can't say you wouldn't be a little worried if you had 5 million pounds of kerosene below you waiting to blow you to little tiny bits. (5 million pounds of kerosene is approximately 625,000 gallons. If you ran that in a diesel car that got 40 miles to the gallon, you would be able to travel 25,000,000 miles with that much fuel...... Instead, it was all burned up in about 168 seconds to travel a total distance of about 72 miles. That's about 0.0001152 miles to a gallon..... :-D )

Vonage, partial redemption (but they still stink)

2009-06-14T21:08:00.005-06:00

I still think that Vonage stinks. But I finally found someone who cared a little bit. I poked around their site and found this link about contacting the Vonage Board of Directors. The link (as of today - June 13, 2009) is http://www.vonage.com/corporate/corp_contact.php . You can fill out your grievance and send it in. I was still ticked off for being charged that one month and they refunded that charge. But they did not budge on the $40 disconnect fee. Will I still use them? No way. Why should I have to contact the board of directors in order to get a refund for something that a frontline customer service representative should be able to take care of? And why the heck should I have to pay a $40 disconnect fee? That's just lame. I'll just stick with my local phone company. At least the sound quality is decent. And at least there is the state public utility commission that stays on top of the phone companies. Vonage doesn't have that state oversite, so they can jack you over like no tomorrow.

Aging - The joys and surprises of becoming middle aged - Part I

2009-06-08T21:14:00.010-06:00

Later this year I will turn 43 years old. The forties have not been the most pleasant of years. High blood pressure creeps in and you have doctors start prescribing blood pressure meds that have side effects. My first BP med was Lisinopril (sp), an ACE inhibitor. Lisinopril has a fun side effect - it gives you a tickle in your lungs. So you are constantly coughing because of that nice little tickle. The cough lasted a couple of months and I went back for something different.

The doc sent me back with Benecar HCT 20/12.5. The first number is the actual Benecar. The second number is the hydrochlorothyazide (hence the HCT), which in my opinion is a nasty drug. First, if you look at HCT, it has a list of side effects and interactions that makes the Federal Stimulus Bill of 2009 look like a postcard in comparison. You can't take any ibuprofen. You can't spend any time in sun. And the list goes on. When the doctor prescribed it, I protested. I didn't want a diuretic. I go to the bathroom probably 3,719 times a day as it is. I don't need a drug making me go 18,268 times a day. And as the son of a pharmacist, I knew that a diuretic meant that I had to take potassium, which the doctor did not prescribe. (Remember this little bit of information....)

A few more words on diuretics...... Think of a diuretic this way. Take a sponge. Get it wet. Then squeeze the sponge until it is bone dry. That is a diuretic. Or think of Moses. Think of him smiting a rock and having water pour out of it. That is a diuretic. Diuretics were used by Moses in the Bible to obtain water from rocks. Seriously. That's how powerful a diuretic is.

So the body needs salts and elements for it to work properly. Under normal circumstances, the body does a pretty darn good job at keeping all those various minerals at the right levels. One of those elements is potassium. Well, now enter the diuretic into the mix. Hydroclorothiazide (HCT for short), leaches off potassium. Benecar is supposed to be potassium sparing. Together they should even out so your potassium level stays "normal".

Well, one Sunday I wasn't feeling too good. So I stayed home from Church. My wife comes home and starts undressing out of her Church clothes and my heart starts beating irregularly. Yes, my wife is pretty, but I've never had heart problems because of her changing her clothes. We dial 911. Heart is still beating irregularly. I lay down. I remain conscious but scared beyond belief. "Where is that ambulance?" The ambulance arrives, but my heart rhythm goes back to normal before they show up. They draw blood. They hook me up to an IV and they take me in. After all the labs, what's the verdict? You guessed it. Low potassium. The "normal" potassium range is from 3 to 5, or 3.5 to about 5 point something. It depends on who you talk to. My blood potassium was a 2.9! OK, not good. Actually, really not good.

Now here's the kicker. I go into my doctor. The same doctor that prescribed the Benecar HCT. I tell him what's going on. He says to me (and this is a direct quote as near as I can remember it), "I don't know what to do for you...." Dude, doc, you nearly killed me with this crap and you don't know what to do for me? Hmmmm...... Maybe take me off the diuretic? He wanted me to come in for a treadmill test and he wanted me to wait several weeks and come in and see if my potassium levels go back to normal. Doc, if they are freaking low now, I'm sure they're going to be low in a few weeks. Are you just begging for a malpractice lawsuit from my future widow? Do you really want to be invited to my funeral?

So the next day I go looking for a new car. While I'm at the car dealership, I have another arrythmia episode and I spend some time in the ER. I'll have to blog about that fun experience. Long story short, I recovered before they got an EKG of my heart so I am back to square one. The potassium levels were up to near normal levels, but they weren't there. One interesting thing the ER doc said is that one of the drugs I was taking (generic Allegra for allergies) can cause cardio issues. So I immediately went off all my prescriptions except for my blood pressure. The first heart episode happened on a Sunday. The second espisode happened on a Friday.

The following Monday I went to a cardiologist. Guess what? He knew what to do. And that is to change my freaking BP meds so I don't have a third heart problem or something that will eventually kill me.

The new meds are Azor 5/20. The 5 is a calcium channel blocker. The second number is the main ingredient in Benecar. The calcium channel blocker has a nice side effect - it can cause swelling of your feet and thus water retention. And guess what? Yep, you've got it. I've got swelling of the feet. So what does the cardiologist want to do? He wants to put me back on the Benecar HCT (no freaking way, Jose) and give me potassium pills to compensate for the low potassium in my system. No, no, no, no, NO!!!!!!!!! Listen to me... That junk about killed me before. I don't want to die from this stuff before I turn 43. I'd like to live to be 83. I want to see my kids get married. I'd like to see grandkids. So let's not tempt fate again, OK?

The cool thing about all this is the 10% I get to pay. My federal tax return went to medical bills. I am grateful that I had the money to pay for the bills. But at the same time, I sure could have used that money to stimulate the economy. I guess I did. I helped a bunch of rich doctors and hospitals. Not really where I wanted my money to go to, but at least we're good. And I thank Divine Providence for taking care of me.

Vonage sucks - don't ever use them

2009-04-27T09:17:00.004-06:00

Vonage sucks. Don't use them. If you do, I'm really sorry.

I've had Vonage for little over a year now. Things were good up until a few months ago, and then the voice over IP router thing they sold me started having issues. I used their online knowledgebase to see what they had and nothing helped. I took packet captures (yeah, I'm a geek, but that's my profession) and there were definately some problems going on with the hardware.

So instead of calling their technical support line, I just call my local CLEC (phone company) and setup a second phone line.

I called Vonage after the fact and they were going to charge me $70 to disconnect. That $70 is to recoup the $70 rebate they gave me on their phone router thing since I was canceling before 1 year. They said if I waited a month, I wouldn't have to pay $70. They also gave me a month's worth of free service, which I didn't use.

So I waited. And the month went by. And I didn't cancel. So they charged me for another month's worth of service. So I called. Want to cancel. No refund of monthly charge, which is $30. And they want to charge me $40 to cancel my service (that was a part of your terms of service - if you cancel less than two years after you started with us). So I'm screwed.

Well, I'm going to dispute the charges with the credit card company. I hope that I can do something there. Dang stinking Vonage. Customer no-service. I'll be glad to get rid of them once and for all.

Apollo 8

2009-01-04T16:23:00.003-07:00

I meant to write this about a week or two ago, but I've been on vacation trying to stay as far away from my computers as humanly possible. So I'm now just getting around to doing this.

The week of Christmas 2008 marked the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission to the moon. Apollo 8 sent astronauts to orbit around the moon. You can read details of the mission from Wikipedia's entry on the even here.

I love the space program. Every time I read about Apollo and what those first space pioneers did, I get teary eyed. Just incredible that it was 40 years ago that we sent men to the moon. And they came back!

The auto industry bailout - Part 2

2008-12-16T22:46:00.003-07:00

I've written before about the auto industry bailout. I'm disappointed that Congress failed to act. I hope that President Bush can do something soon.

So why am I concerned about the auto industry? Because it will put a lot of people out of jobs. It will ripple throughout the economy in ways that we can't and currently don't understand and comprehend. It has the potential to put auto parts suppliers out of business, which would mess up Toyota and Honda manufacturing operations. And if these companies liquidate, it means that foreign companies, such as Tata of India and Cherry of China, can come in and purchase GM and/or Chrysler's assets and start building cars in the US. And then that money will again go overseas. I have enough of a problem with jobs being sent overseas. Cars are like a national identity. If you loose your name plates to the foreigners, then what else will we loose? Imagine a Jeep Wrangler made by Tata or Cherry. The thought sends chills down my spine. Or the thought of our US forces using vehicles made by Hummer, which is owned by a foreign corporation.

Yes, the US auto industry has done this to themselves. Yes, they need to make some concessions. But at the same time, this is a delicate game of chicken. Who's going to blink? Who will call the other side's bluff? People, wake up!! Get off your butts and make some concessions. Working for less is better than not working at all. If there is no auto industry in Detriot, you're gonna be in a very bad way. Your house won't be worth anything. There won't be any auto jobs in the state. So it is better to hold on to something you already have than to give it up and be messed up for a longer period of time.

A part of me wants them to fail. But another part of me, the pragmatic, the "I own two Chevy vehicles and I want to get parts for them for the next 10 years" part of me wants them to succeed. I've waited a long time for an inexpensive, well built automobile to be made from Detroit. I want to buy one, but I don't have the nerve to do so yet. I'm still scarred from my youth and the crappy (and embarassing) vehicles I had to endure while in my youth.

Washington, help the auto industry. Auto industry and the UAW, the government ain't gonna help if you don't make some major concessions. Strike a deal while you have some support. The more time you waste, the worse off you'll be. So get it done. And get it done NOW! I want my spare parts, dang it!!

Gun sales, post election

2008-12-06T00:16:00.002-07:00

Electing Barack Obama into the White House has been a boon for gun manufacturers. Why? Simple. The pro-gun citizens of the United States fear that another Clinton style gun ban will be put in place by President-elect Barack Obama and the Democratically controlled Congress. I've been to numerous local gun stores since the election. I have also searched the gun stores on the internet. Any assault style weapon is gone. Any high capacity magazines are gone too. Poof! Obama says that he won't pursue gun control. If he's smart, he'll keep to that promise. When President Clinton passed his gun ban, he lost House control in Congress at the very next election.

So the gun manufacturers can personally thank President-elect Barack Obama for the brisk weapons sales. They will be making record profits, until the gun laws get legislated and passed. Then they will be scrambling to make something that is legal.

Stay tuned. This should be an interesting topic to watch. Let's see if Obama will stay true to his word. Let's see if the Democrats can resist playing with fire.

The automakers want a handout/bailout

2008-12-04T21:15:00.004-07:00

First the financial institutions want a bailout. Now the automobile manufacturers want a bailout. Hey, I'd like a bailout! Seriously folks, this is getting a bit ridiculous. Do I want the automobile manufacturers to survive? Actually I do. If we loose one automobile manufacturer, we might be able to survive. But what's going to happen if we loose two or even all three of the big three? It would not be a good thing for the US economy. Think about it.... How many of you have domestic automobiles made by one of the big three? Think about your car loan. How much longer do you have on your car loan? Now, you have this car loan. The manufacturer goes under and does NOT come back. They are gone. Out of business. Kaput. You have three, four, five, maybe six years left on your car loan. Six years more of car payments. What happens if your car needs repairs? Will you be able to get your vehicle repaired? Will there be parts for your vehicle? And if there are parts, will they be new or used/reconditioned? How much will those parts cost?

If one or more of the big three go under and never come back, if your vehicle needs to be repaired, you could be stuck. Stuck with a dead vehicle and car payments for xx number of years. To me, that doesn't sound like much fun.

I recently purchased an urban assault vehicle, otherwise known as a Chevy Suburban. It is three years old and I've got a car loan on that thing for a lot longer than I ever want it to be. I have a wife and six kids. So my options for vehicles are limited. I'm concerned about GM going under. If GM goes under, what am I going to do with this beast if something major goes out on it? When I go to trade it in, I won't get much on trade for it. If it dies, it will be like paying for a dead horse. I'm not real thrilled about paying on a dead horse.

So what happened with the US car manufacturers? Why are they in such dire straits? Here are the reasons that I can see that caused chaos in the US car market.

Domestic automobile manufacturers gave up on the small car market and let the imports (Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, Kia, Hyundai, VW, etc.) own the segment. Instead, they decided to focus their fleet on large SUV type vehicles. Why? Because there is more margin in the larger vehicles. And the larger margin is there to pay for higher domestic costs.
The benefits paid to union employees at the big three are greater than the benefits paid to the imports. That increases manufacturing costs which makes it harder to build small vehicles and sell them at a profit.
Resale value. The big three are known to heavily discount their vehicles. That is due to the fact that they have more manufacturing capacity than they have ability to sell cars. This causes their vehicles to depreciate at a much faster rate than the import vehicles. We were able to purchase our Suburban for about half the cost of a NEW vehicle. We're talking about an SUV that is three years old. Now its worth half of what it was three years ago when it was sitting on a dealer's lot. Honda does not directly discount their vehicles. They do offer the dealers incentive cash, but they do not offer direct cash like other automobile manufacturers do. If you look at Honda's resale value, it is near the top for resale value.
Styling. Honda updates the styling on their vehicles, especially the Accord and Civic, every four years. Toyota updates their models every five years. GM updates their models whenever. I think some models don't get updated for up to nine or ten years. Folks, in car terms, that is an eternity. Besides, have any of you ever been to Detroit, Michigan? I've been there. Once. I drove past the Ford facilities in Dearborn. The buildings are like square blocks. The landscaping is bleak. The whole area has no style. Everything looks the same. Boring. Boring. Boring. The Detroit airport is run down and boring. With that kind of environment, no wonder American cars are boring. There just isn't any inspiration to be bold, new, and exciting. (NOTE: I do love the new Chevy 2010 Camaro. Great style and design. In fact, I have a photo of the concept Camaro as my background on my computer. If GM goes under, this new Camaro may never see the light of day.)
Quality. I've seen the TV commercials from Ford and GM that their vehicles are as reliable as Honda and Toyota. They may be right. But with crappy resale value, would I rather purchase a domestic or import? And initial quality may be the same, but how does the car hold up over time? Will I need repairs? Does the car squeak and rattle? Does the interior look cheap? I get into a Toyota or Honda and the styling is clean and crisp. I get into an American car and I'm not impressed. Too much holdover from an earlier period. I grew up with parents that purchased domestics for a long time. We had Ford LTDs. Chevy Chevettes. Plymouth Satellites. Buick Skylarks. Ford and Chevy trucks. All crap. These vehicles were prone to rust. The Chevette was absolute crap. I think it got like 13 MPG (it had a 3-speed automatic) and was a gutless wonder (0 - 50 in like 2 years). These domestic cars that I rode in when I was a kid was uninspiring. Crap quality - always in the shop. My parents finally woke up to the imports. They purchased a Toyota Corona. Then another Toyota (Corolla). And then another Toyota (Corolla). Then another Toyota (Tercel). And then another Toyota (Cressida). And then a Honda Accord. I got in on the action with the Tercel, Cressida, and the Accord. And I was hooked.

I think the quality issue has been a big issue for a long time. There is apathy towards bailing out the big three car manufacturers because people think that they brought this upon themselves. They made junk cars. They know they made junk cars. But they kept building them. And they made junk cars for a LONG time. People got sick of it and went elsewhere. So they lost the car market. The big three have woken up, but I still think they have issues with big labor. Issues that may end up killing the companies as a whole. I'd like to have a domestic automobile manufacturing. I think its good for the economy and for the country. I think we need a domestic automobile manufacturing for a military and domestic security perspective. That's why I think we should help them. But at the same time, these guys need to get lean and mean. And the unions will need to give some major concessions in order to help save the companies. And let's face it, if you're a union worker, wouldn't you rather take a pay cut than loose your job altogether? So bail them out. Give them some loans. But make these guys restructure so that they will be around for another 50 or 100 years. If that doesn't happen, then let them sink and die. If they die it will hurt the US. But from the ashes, something should show up. Someone could pick up one or more of these brands for pennies and from the ashes bring them back to life.

President-Elect Obama - Best Wishes and Good Luck!

2008-11-06T23:24:00.003-07:00

As I predicted, Senator Obama is now President-Elect Obama. Congratulations Mr. Obama for a well run campaign. You will inherit a war in Iraq, huge budget deficits, a sharply sagging economy, and foreign countries that will test your mettle. Sir, you have a hard job ahead of you. And even though I did not vote for you, I do wish you the very best at such a daunting task. I hope that your friends and supporters on election night will still be your friends and supporters in four years. Please remember to govern from the center. It will be better for you and for the country if that happens. In reality, you only have two years to get what you really want to do, done. That's because your party will hold power in the Congress and the White House. Don't squander it like the Clintons. Don't upset the middle class who helped put you there. If you do, your Democratic buddies in the House will be gone. And then your plans for change won't occur.

Again, I wish you the very best. Please spend time on your knees asking for devine assistance. I will be on mine asking that you be blessed with wisdom, knowledge and courage to do what is right.

Today's Presidential Debate

2008-10-15T22:34:00.002-06:00

I watched most of the debate between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. I believe that Senator McCain did better in this debate than he has in past debates. Will it be enough to get him into the White House? I don't know.

Senator Obama is a smooth talking man. He is very well spoken. He articulates his ideas well. However, I'm not a fan of the smooth talking politician from Illinois. I'm not a fan of Senator McCain either, but I think he's the lesser of the two evils. Its sad to think that I'm not so much voting FOR someone as I am voting against the other person.

I don't know how this is going to turn out. We'll find out in a few short weeks. And then we'll have four years to think about our decision. Regardless of your political ideals, you need to get out and vote. Make your voice heard. Don't waste your vote. Make it count!

Tom's predictions for the rest of 2008 and possibly beyond

2008-09-29T21:33:00.004-06:00

Throwing caution to the wind, putting on Mr. Murphy's philosophical glasses, and adding in a bit of my cynical and pessimistic self, I make the following predictions:

1.) If the US Congress passes and President Bush signs any bill to bail out Wall Street, it will be so neutered that it will really amount to nothing. That isn't to say that the original bill that flamed out today on Capital Hill would have spared the country of a financial melt down. It just means that the flames are going to be a little bit bigger and we're all going to feel the heat from this fire. As stressful as my job is, I really like the paycheck that I bring home. It allows me to feed my family. It allows me to pay my mortgage. And it allows me to watch about 30 minutes of cable TV a day, if that. I'm afraid that the Wall Street melt down is going to reverberate on Main Street. And that we could be looking down the equivalent of a 16 inch barrel of the Battleship Missouri, pointed straight at our heads. Are we willing to pull the trigger? Today is sure looks like we are. We are going to cut off your heads so we can spite our bodies.

Am I mad that Wall Street has messed themselves so badly that it is affecting Main Street? Oh man, you better believe your last pair of pink underwear that I'm furious about this mess. I remember thinking to myself when I heard about sub-prime mortgages what the heck were banks thinking when they were loaning money to people who have bad credit histories. What is up with that? And when housing prices were soaring, I was thinking that my kids will never be able to purchase a house of their own. Then the housing bubble popped. And when the housing bubble popped, so did all the sub-prime mortgages. The house of cards started to collapse. And it continues to collapse. The problem is I don't know how big this house of cards really is. Is it done yet? I don't think so. I think its just getting started.

So as much as I absolutely, positively, and totally hate this bail out package for Wall Street, if something doesn't pass, we're going to be toasted. You. Me. And the rest of the country. I hope you have your year supply of food and money. Because if not, you're going to be toasted as well. And I'm not talking just a little brown here. I'm talking black charcoal toast. The kind that my Dad used to call, "Golden brown." The kind that my Mom would scrape the layer of charcoal off the toast so that you could gag down the rest of the toast. The kind that would set off all the smoke alarms in the house. The kind where you could smell the burnt toast for a week after it had been burned. That kind of burnt toast bad. I don't like eating charcoal.

2.) Senator Barack Obama is going to win the presidency on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. I am not a Senator Obama or Senator Biden supporter. Honestly, I'm not all that thrilled about the Senator McCain/Governor Palin ticket either. This presidential election is about the lesser of the two evils. And as much as I would like to see Senator John McCain win, I just don't think it is going to happen. I think there is too much negativism about Republicans and the Republican ticket. And I think the voters are going to take it out on the Republicans this election, and maybe some Democrats. But I just don't see Mr. McCain taking it.

3.) Government bailout - too little, too late. I think that when the emasculated bailout package fails to give the economy the credit bounce the President was looking for, and Main Street starts feeling the heat of the Wall Street melt down, you will then start to see Main Street clamoring, pleading, and begging for a Wall Street bailout package. The problem is that the economy will already be torpedoed, joblessness will be going up, and people will be gun shy about stimulating the economy courtesy of their pocketbook. At that point in time, why even bother to save the economy? Just let it sink and run its course. Let's wipe out any wealth in America. Let the US Government go bankrupt. Let's start over from scratch. The bankers went bankrupt. Might as well let the whole country go as well.

So, what will be the positives of not bailing out Wall Street? Here's Tom's top 10 list:

1.) The price of gasoline will drop. We'll probably end up with gas less than $2/gallon.
2.) Fat Americans will be forced to go on a diet and we'll end up getting into shape.
3.) Over-population in America won't be a problem any more.
4.) Americans will learn to be humble again.
5.) Americans will re-discover God in their lives.
6.) Americans will start to grow their own food.
7.) Americans will go back to hunting and finding their own food.

You know what, I really can't do a top 10 list. I'm sure the price of things will go down. But the economy can end up like the economy of a third-world country like Argentina with hyper-inflation. Or we could go through another depression with the likes of what our parents and grandparents went through in the early 1900s. (I think it will be harder on our generation than our parents and grandparents. Why? Because the majority of the country then were farmers. People were able to take care of the basics. Our economy is so specialized and we are so far removed from farming, that we won't be able to grow our food. All we know how to do is write blogs, spend time surfing on the computer, watching television or playing xBox that we won't be able to take care of ourselves.) Honestly, I don't like either scenario. But I believe that our anger for Wall Street will eventually come back to haunt us. Our economic hardships will humble us. The humility will hopefully bring God back into our country. Citizens will learn to fear God. However, if we fail to become humble, we're going to suffer for a while until we find that humility.

I love this country. I love the people of the USA. I love the freedoms that we all enjoy. I hope that we don't completely destroy our country with our little temper tantrum against Wall Street. We have very little to gain from the deal. But we have everything to loose.

In six months, let's see how these predictions went.

Crazy commodities and financial markets

2008-09-22T21:45:00.002-06:00

Wow. What a crazy ride. The market crashes 1,000 points or so last week. Then it gains 800 points. And then today it drops another 300+ points. What is going on?

Well, I'll tell you what's going on. People are freaking out. They are freaking out that all the banks are going to collapse. They are freaking out about all these sub-prime mortgage securities. And honestly, why the banks ever started lending these sub-prime mortgages is beyond me. But they did. And now we have a nice little mess because of it. A $700 billion dollar mess to be exact.

Oil prices have also done a whiplash of sorts. In July, oil topped out at around $147/barrel. The last week or two it has dropped down in the low $90's. Today it went as high as $130/barrel, but dropped back down to about $120/barrel. Oil never should have gone beyond $50 - $70 per barrel. But it did. And you can thank speculators for that.

If you're like me, you're just an average person out there trying to make an honest living. You're probably sick of paying $50 to fill a 13 gallon gas tank. And you've probably noticed that food prices have gone through the roof. Problem is that you food isn't grown where you live (unless you're a granola person and you buy at the local farmer's market). And because it isn't grown locally, it has to be trucked in. The farmers have to spend more money on fuel so that they can harvest their crops. So they have to raise their prices to cover their production costs.

Well, the oil speculators have rained on our parade enough. Now its time to rain on their parade. There is a web site called http://www.stopoilspeculationnow.com/ . It is a great little site. You can send letters to Congress via the site. The US House of Representatives recently passed HR 6604. The Senate has failed to vote on a similar bill. If you are sick of paying the high prices, I suggest you write/email you Senator and put the screws into them. If you have a Senator up for re-election, tell him you'll vote for someone else unless they get off their duffs and do something about this problem. People are hurting. The economy is hurting. Let's get it fixed ASAP.

No more car payments!!

2008-09-10T21:50:00.004-06:00

Good news! No more car payments!!

Bad news! No more car!

Tom! What happened? Well, my wife and two of my kids were in a hit-and-run car accident. They were going south on I-15 going through a construction zone when an orange construction barrel was in the middle of her lane. She slowed down looking for a way to get out of the lane and then BAM! A vehicle behind her slammed into the back of her. She pulled over and stopped. The vehicle that hit her never stopped.

So we are down to just one car. We haven't been a single car family for at least a dozen years or more. We've decided to take the insurance money and then paying off some bills. So the good news there will be bills taken care of. We'll pick up another small car probably in another six months or so.

UPDATE: We received our insurance settlement check and we just paid off our Astro van. The Astro is now making weird (expensive sounding) noises that really do not sound very good. So all the car payments are GONE! We had some left over cash and we are paying down our other debts. I wish we had more money so we could pay more debts off.

California's gay marriage ammendment and the LDS Church

2008-06-29T15:33:00.002-06:00

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also commonly known as the LDS Church or the Mormon Church. It has come to my attention recently that the LDS Church leaders sent a letter to all the congregations in California supporting a California constitutional amendment seeking to define marriage being between a man and a woman. I read an article on ksl.com that some members of the Church are upset that the Church is pushing this California Constitutional amendment defining marriage. The full article is found at http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=3641668

I disagree with the dissenters in the KSL article. I agree that the LDS Church has the right and opportunity to defend itself and its beliefs, including supporting a constitutional amendment supporting the definition of marriage to be between a man and a woman. I believe that if the LDS Church does not fight this California Supreme Court decision, it can have negative long-term consequences for the LDS Church particularly and for society as a whole. In order to understand where the LDS Church is coming from and why they are doing this, you need to look at the doctrines and history of the LDS Church and faith.

DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH:

The LDS Church believes that all humans lived with God before they were born. We were born so that we can receive a physical body and to progress. Thus the power of procreation is a sacred power. Why is it sacred? Because it is the power by which mortals can bring God's children to earth so that they can experience mortality. This sacred power should only be used in the bonds of matrimony (and as marriage defined to be between a man and a woman). The LDS Church does not condone sexual relations outside the bonds of matrimony. This includes all forms of sexual relations, homosexual and heterosexual. In 1995 the LDS Church issued "The Family: A Proclamation to the World".

With this in mind you can see that marriage is not an institution developed by man. It is an institution developed by God to serve His divine purposes. Since it is impossible for two women or two men to become pregnant, homosexual relations - even monogamous homosexual relations - frustrate God's plan.

The LDS Church also builds temples, or places of worship, where men and women can be married for time and for all eternity.

TOM'S INTERPRETATION ON THE LDS CHURCH'S ACTIONS:

There are several arguments that can be made as to why the LDS Church has become involved in the California Constitutional amendment. I think there are two main reasons why the
LDS Church has done this. They are as follows:

1.) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is standing up to the world as a beacon of moral values, which happen to be God's values. As the values of the world change, the LDS Church's values (God's values), have not changed. The LDS Church is standing up against these winds of change. It is the LDS Church's duty and obligation to remain fast to the values that God has revealed to their leader and prophet.

2.) If California does not approve of this Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, then other states can legalize same sex marriages. And if that happens, it will only be a matter of time before homosexual LDS Church members sue the LDS Church to allow them to be married for time and all eternity in LDS temples. And if the LDS Church looses that legal battle, then heaven help us. It is my firm belief and conviction that Church leaders do not wish to ever be faced with that kind of legal action. So they are trying to head that possibility off before it ever becomes an issue.

CONCLUSION:

I am not a homophobe. You are free to do as you want and choose. However, God instituted marriage between a man (Adam) and a woman (Eve) when man was created on Earth. Mankind should not mess with this definition.

Why I like my job

2008-06-12T23:18:00.003-06:00

The thing I like the most about my job is the sense of satisfaction I get when I've helped a customer through a problem. In fact today I had a customer pay me a compliment that I've been the best tech support engineer that they've had. Kind of sad since I've only been with the company for a mere 4 1/2 months. But I have some experience that few of my other fellow employees have, and in this particular customer's case, it helped. That customer made my day. The last couple of days have been brutal on the phones. Yesterday I was slammed. Today I was slammed as well until the afternoon. I was feeling a bit down about work and how well I was doing. This customer's comments made my day.

So a word to those out there who call technical support, please don't be shy about saying thank you and being gracious. Especially if you have received good or excellent technical support. It is always better to be nice than a jerk. And if someone goes out of their way to help you out, please pay them a compliment. And if you receive a survey about that person's assistance, please honestly fill it out and send it back in. These little nuggets of kindness reflected back to your helper are priceless. The verbal kudos help for the moment. The positive surveys help when salary review time comes around. I've had several repeat customers. And it is a joy to work with those who are nice to you. Its better than, "Oh crap, I have to work with this person again..."

Working from home

2008-06-12T19:47:00.001-06:00

At the end of January 2008 I quit my longstanding technical support job of eight plus years with a software provider to join a much smaller company that was rapidly growing. They were hiring. I needed a change so I jumped at it. It didn't hurt that they also offered me more money than I was making at the job I was at. And I was given the opportunity to work from home. Hey, this is a no brainer.

So I travel to California and work at company HQ for three long months. I'm married with six kids. And my wife is my best friend. It is hard to leave your lovely wife and best friend home alone with six kids. I missed them. They missed me. But now the time is over and I'm now home. And what doesn't kill you makes your stronger, right?

I've been home for about six weeks. And I've been working out of my home for those six weeks, never touching foot inside an office once during that time. So how has it been? It hasn't been too bad. There have been a few challenges and speed bumps along the way, but I'm getting the kinks worked out. I work in technology. As long as I have electricity, high speed internet and some peace and quiet, I can work anywhere. So far, here are the pros and cons of working from home:

PROS OF WORKING FROM HOME

Short commute (I have to walk downstairs into the basement to "go to work")

Huge savings in gasoline because I'm not driving into work

Eat lunch with my wife and kids every day
I can go to more of my kids' activities because I don't have to come home from the office
I am more productive because I don't have co-workers coming by to chit-chat with me
I am more self-reliant because I have to learn to search and dig for answers. That searching makes me a better at what I do.

CONS OF WORKING FROM HOME

The kids are sometimes noisy and people can hear the kids in the background
I miss the interaction with my co-workers, although proximity also increases the chances of office chit-chat, which I don't really miss all that much.
A little bit harder to bounce ideas off of co-workers. A lot of that has to be done via IM or IRC, which can be painful.
I don't have the commute time to decompress from the stresses of the job
Having adequate resources to work with
Work is only a few steps away. You just can't leave work at the office. It is always there. Ever present.

One speed bump that I had is that my wife would come and ask me to do something, such as watch the kids while she leaves to go somewhere. I can't do that. I can't take care of the kids. If I were at the office, I wouldn't be able to watch the kids. And just because I work from home doesn't mean I can do that any more than I was able to before. The first couple of weeks I had those requests. But now she realizes that I really can't do stuff around the house, unless it is on my lunch hour. I feel that it is extremely important for me to be honest to my employer and work my designated time. They are giving me an opportunity and privilege to work from home. I don't want to mess with that opportunity. I want to work from home as much as possible and not be forced to commute 100 miles round trip on a daily basis. Even though I own a Toyota Corolla that gets 30 - 40 MPG, with gas prices around $4/gallon, that is $10 - $13 of gasoline burnt in a day. That is $260+ in gasoline a month. I would rather keep that money and use it for something else. Besides that's just one less car on the road. Less pollution. Less oil that has to be imported. Less maintenance on my car. Overall, its good to work from home.

I am fortunate to have a job that allows me the opportunity to work from home. I think more employers should allow their employees the opportunity to work from home. It will help reduce our oil dependence. It will let people keep more money in their pockets so they can weather the economic storm that is raging. Employees need to be responsible enough to give their employer an honest days work. Employees need a room in their house that is their office. They need to keep interruptions to a minimum. They need to focus on their job and take a few short breaks. They need to remember that if they don't perform, they can be gone. Or their employer may ask that they come into the office.

So, do I work in my pajamas? Do I take a shower in the morning? The answer is no and yes respectively. I get up in the morning like I would for my job. I get in the shower. I get dressed. I eat breakfast. I go to work. I break for about an hour for lunch. I go back to work. And then at the end of the day I turn off my computer and go back "home". I think it is important that we prepare ourselves for a day of work. I don't want to work in my pajamas. But then again I don't wear slacks and a shirt either. Getting up in the morning and going through a routine helps me become prepared to work. I think it makes me a more effective employee at home.

I hope that employers give their employees an opportunity to work from home. Work with them. Spell out what is expected. Give them some boundaries. But in tough economic times where employers can't give raises but they want to keep good employees, letting people work from home will give people a raise. Because they won't need to spend money on gas to commute. Employees, be honest. Work hard. Be productive. Don't watch TV or waste your time. Give your employer what they need.

More on the effects of high oil

2008-06-08T22:45:00.002-06:00

I saw this article about the cost of high oil:

http://biz.yahoo.com/hftn/080606/060608_tully_oil_bust_fortune.html

I totally agree with the author of this article. As oil increases in price, there will be more and more resources spent in developing more oil resources. Eventually there will be an over abundance of oil and price will need to fall. The problem is that we need to survive this oil shock long enough for the new sources of oil to emerge.

We will see what happens. If I had the money, I would purchase a CNG car, or purchase a CNG conversion kit for my van. I'm still thinking about the CNG conversion kit for my van. If I can fill up my van for $25 instead of $100, I'm all over that. And it probably would not take too long to pay for itself. However, we need to get the car and van paid off before we can do that.

New oil record - $138.54 / barrel

2008-06-06T16:36:00.004-06:00

I've been home from California for about five or six weeks. I've been watching oil climb in price over the past little bit and this is just plain and absolutely ridiculous. Oil jumped on the following news:

"Oil jumped following a Morgan Stanley analyst's forecast of $150 oil by July 4, and in response to a drop in the dollar and fresh tensions in the Middle East."

( http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080606/wall_street.html )

Because some bozo at Morgan Stanley said that it will go to $150 by the fourth of July, the market jumps. What kind of crap is that? Who is this guy? What is going on here? I don't buy into the whole oil shortage argument. I see the price pressure being caused by speculators. People who are dumping their money into oil. Just like houses, this bubble is going to pop. And I'll be glad when it does indeed pop. And I'm sure the rest of the world will also cheer when the oil bubble bursts.

Last Sunday I did something that I've never done before. I sat down and wrote a letter to President Bush. You might ask, why send a letter to the President of the United States about the price of a barrel of oil? What are you thinking? He can't do anything about it? Or can he? Maybe he can. Maybe he can't. But he needs to feel the heat that the common American is feeling about the increase in gas prices. I wrote the letter because I feel part of the problem is that the United States does not have a comprehensive energy policy. If the US had a comprehensive energy policy, then I think the price of oil would go down. Why? Because here is what I suggested in my letter:

The US needs a three tier energy policy. Short-term goals, mid-term goals and long-term goals to help get the price of oil down.

Short-term goals:

Open up drilling for oil and natural gas in ANWR (Alaska)
Open up drilling in other locations that are currently prohibited from drilling
Create incentives so that people will convert their vehicles to compressed natural gas (CNG).
Encourage businesses to allow people to telecommute
Create incentives for people to car pool

Mid-term goals:

Research alternate fuels
Build more mass transit
Build geothermal power plants
Build solar power plants
Build wind power plants

Long-term goals:

Build nuclear reactors
Use fuel cells in automobiles
Move away from the use of fossil fuels and more to renewable fuels
Etc., etc., etc.

Biofuels (ethanol) are a mistake. They are driving up the price of corn in American and the world. The amount of corn it takes to fill one SUV's gas take can feed one person for a year. That isn't a very wise use of corn. I'd rather eat it than burn it in my car. Fuel made from things we can't/won't eat are OK. But don't use my food to propel my car.

Why will this work? Because if the President can sell the idea that there will be more oil out there on the market in a fairly short amount of time, the price of oil will drop. It has to. People are freaking out about oil. They are dropping money in it. In my opinion, the price is frothing. It is insane. People are going crazy. You drop a comprehensive energy policy on top of that stating that we will have more oil shortly and now the nation as a whole will move away from oil, that will cause these guys to lock in their profits and sell like crazy. The price will have to drop. But the comprehensive energy policy needs to be implemented or the whole feeding frenzy will reoccur at some future time again. And in all honestly, we should probably start moving away from oil quickly. The faster we move away, the better off we'll be. Why? So that we aren't dependent upon foreign oil. So we can quit funding terrorist nations like Iran. So we don't get screwed again by a major oil increase.

You'll notice that I put nukes here as something we should use. The US Navy uses nuclear power to power their submarines and aircraft carriers. Those are safe and efficient. Let's use nuclear power to split water molecules so that we can use the hydrogen to propel our fuel cell cars. If you are opposed to nukes, then use solar power. I really don't care. But use something to power the water molecule splitting so that we can use hydrogen.

Anyway, that's my proposal to President Bush. I think it would be a great thing for him to do. He's a lame duck President anyway. It would push the whole energy crisis into the 2008 election as a campaign issue. I don't know what Senator Obama's plans are for energy. Senator McCain's solution is to repeal the federal tax on gas. Ooooohhh. That's original and exciting... NOT! C'mon guys!! Let's get real here. Suspending the federal gas tax is like putting a band-aid onto an amputated person's leg right after surgery. It just won't help solve the underlying problem. Someone needs to take the energy bull by the horns and tame it. And it sounds like a great job for the President. So Mr. President, we're waiting....

Signed,
Tom

Time flies when you're busy

2008-04-14T21:51:00.002-06:00

Two weeks from today is my wife's birthday. Two weeks from today I will be home with my family. I actually leave Cali on April 25th, so I have less than two weeks of my training left to do. Its hard to believe that the time went by so fast. The month of March I went home three times. The company paid for two of those trips. I paid for the third trip home. Since I'm not made of money, I decided to stay here and not go home until the end of April. I think that is better. It doesn't freak out my kids and I'm not so homesick.

So, how has it been? Busy. Stressful. If none of you have ever done technical support of a product that is mission critical, you don't know stress. Today was a good day. I took care of several people. Got them all fixed up. Its a good feeling. I was able to actually get caught up on my work. Last week was nuts. Slammed to the hilt. Today wasn't so bad. I've been told that later in the month it will get busier. I don't doubt it.

So when you're busy, time flies. That has been so very true. The days I'm busy, time goes fast. It doesn't drag on. You don't get bored. Its when you don't have anything constructive to do that time drags. And drags. And drags.

UPDATE: I'm finishing this blog entry out on April 22. I go home in three days!! Yea! I really can't wait to go home.

Married, but single

2008-02-26T00:03:00.003-07:00

Strange posting, I know. That is the only way I can describe my current situation. I'm married. Heck, I'm married with half a dozen kids. But yet I live alone in a 700 square foot condo in Silicon Valley hundreds of miles away from my family. I have a sister that is married. She lives in Texas. Her husband lives in California. They see each other about once a month or so. Now I understand to a small degree how she lives her life. I don't care for it much. I prefer my six noisy kids and my beautiful wife to solitude. Solitude will come with time when the children move away and I become older and (hopefully) wiser. Then it will be my wife and I. The children probably will not be gone until 2022 or 2027. That's a long time away.

Today was my first day on the phones. I took three calls in a three hour period of time and I closed two of those three calls. It was a good day. I'm glad to be here and contributing to the cause.

California

2008-02-08T23:21:00.000-07:00

The summer of 1989 was the last time I spent any considerable time in California. In 1989 I sold books for Eagle Marketing. They sold illustrated scriptures with cassette tapes to families. I did OK, but other guys on my team did a lot better than I did.

Now I'm back in California for some training. The last time I was here, California didn't seem like it was that much different than the rest of the country. But this time around, there are some noticeable differences. Bottled water seems to be out. Instead, drink water from a tap. People are a lot more conscientious about recycling, good gas mileage, mass transit, turning off equipment when not in use. I have seen more Toyota Prius cars here in my short two weeks than I have in my entire life. Businesses have multiple garbage cans so that recyclable materials can be placed in bins that get recycled. Its amazing how people are conscious about recycling, about using more fuel efficient cars, etc. I'm not an avid recycler, but it is refreshing to see that kind of an attitude make its way into a society that accepts and encourages recycling.

My first photo sale

2008-02-07T00:19:00.000-07:00

Last year I purchased my first real digital camera. I've taken approximately 5,500 photos in the eight months or so that I've had the camera. One of my friends suggested that I submit my photos to an online, royalty-free, stock photography web site. So I decided to take him up on the offer and I did. The website is www.istockphoto.com . Well, I uploaded one photo and nothing happened. I uploaded two more photos and nothing happened. I got busy doing the job interview thing and ignored my photo portfolio. Well, I checked it a few weeks ago and I actually sold a photo! Yea! And I checked again today and I sold another photo! Double yea! So how much money have I made selling photos? Well, about four bucks and some change. I know. Its not a lot of money. But I only have three photos. And the site has millions of photographs for people to choose from. Its a psychological "high" that you get when someone thinks your photograph is good enough to purchase and use in whatever way they deem. Perhaps its being purchased as an example of how NOT to take a picture. Hopefully not. Hopefully the photos will be put to good use.