Category Archives: News

Things, Goings On, and Stuff I write

A Time With My Grandparents

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My Grandparents came into town Friday night on the train.  Remember those?  They’re large metal objects with wheels that roll on tracks and they make a lot of noise.  Yes, they slept on the train, and yes they said it was interesting to do so.  It took two days and they enjoyed it.  Well, my grandparents are here in town until Wednesday morning and I’ve been enjoying some time with them.  I really love them a lot because they influenced me so much growing up.  They have left a heritage that is truly amazing to me.  My grandpa’s work ethic, though over the top, was unlike anything else I’ve ever seen.  My grandmother’s raising five children is miraculous.  And their love for one another for over sixty years is a model for many marriages, some of which my grandfather did the ceremony for.  One of those marriages was my own.

It has been wonderful to see them and it has been neat to have them play with the girls (though Evie has been rather picky and still prefers my dad to either great-grandparent for some reason).  I have had several good talks with both of them and over the last couple of days we have recorded some video footage that I will not be sharing with the internet, but will be shared around our family because its certainly part of our family’s experience of them in our lives.  If you get a chance to see your grandparents regularly count yourself blessed.  We need to see them as often as possible and I pray for ways that we can do that more.

Saturday we had breakfast at my parents’ place and then took the girls home for a nap.  Saturday night we had dinner at Kurt & Becky’s with great food and more fellowship and fun.  Sunday was church & then in the evening we had them over to our place for more time together.  Today was the zoo (pictures) followed by an afternoon of rest and then dinner at my parents with some singing (yes, our family does some of that) after dinner.

Good times for sure, and I hope for still many more.

Funkin’ Punkins

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Flickr Photo

Funkin’ Punkins

Tonight we had a blast with some friends from church. We ate some spaghetti for dinner and then covered the table in plastic & newspaper and carved pumpkins. These two are my creations. Abby & Jessica did a ‘light brite’ pumpkin while I will post pictures of soon.

Yes, that is a squash for the nose & hat for the one on the left.
Yes, I’m weird like that.

The one on the right came from our garden and I used the stem as the ‘nose’.

Thanks to  Jacquelyn for hosting the event and to everyone else involved.  Thanks to April for inviting us on the Facebook.

Peppers

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Today I picked a peck of (non-pickled) peppers.  We’re predicted to have our first snow tomorrow morning so I grabbed what had grown and now its in the house and hopefully will last us a couple weeks.  I have enough habaneros to last a lifetime, but we’ll probably grow some more next year because I’m goofy like that.

What is your favorite dish with peppers in it?  I have jalapeno and habanero peppers waiting to be cooked!

Nine Years

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Today is our nine year anniversary.  Last night Evelyn kept us up with no sleeping, which falls in line to what we were doing nine years ago: Jessica was kidnapped by her bridesmaids and forced to go around Carson City, Nevada with a sign saying something embarrassing.  I was just not sleeping because I get so freaking nervous around events like weddings, baby births and waiting to pick up to-go food that I just can’t sleep.  So the lack of sleep from having two girls, one of which who is a night owl, is something that getting married prepared me for.  Not.

Upon the day of our wedding I was a super-emotional basket case.  I was unable to iron my own clothes so I had to go over to my parents house where my grandma was staying for the wedding and have her iron my clothes for the departure from the reception.  I could not operate an iron if I had to.  To further emphasize my inability to think I had to stop at the Mervyn’s on the way to the church to buy black socks because I had failed to bring some with me.  My brain was in a state of total and utter shock.  I’m surprised I could drive – I probably shouldn’t have.

Being married to Jessica has been an overwhelming success and I would definitely do it again (though I wouldn’t recommend it for others – she’s mine and you can’t have her).  She’s been through thick and thin, richer and poorer and sickness and health.  She’s also been a great spiritual partner as we have grown in the Lord.  She’s a rockin’ mommy and a great motivator (except for with working out which I refuse to do when she suggests it because I’m a stubborn dork).  I’m thrilled to be her husband and am looking forward to the next nine!

Be Hospitable

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Tonight we had some friends over for dinner.  Aaron & Trish Anderson and their two children.  We really enjoyed our time with them and learned a thing or two about them.  Hopefully they learned a thing or two about us, too (mostly that we’re quirky weirdos).  We love having people over and giving them the best time we can with a tasty dish and serving them.  If you haven’t had someone over for a meal and honestly served them in some time, give it a shot.  You’ll probably gain something from the experience and they will, too.  And its known to help solidify relationships, imagine that!

WordPress 2.3

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Just a quick FYI: I upgraded this blog to use the latest WordPress 2.3 software (as of this writing its the latest, you could find this post in the future and then it could be ‘old’ – congrats if that’s the case).  I found one small bug that I’ve fixed but I wanted to warn you that there could be surprises if something didn’t go as expected.  Odds are it won’t matter, but I thought I’d let you know just in case.

A Post Wherein Abby Joins Girl Scouts

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Abby will be going to her first Girl Scouts meeting this afternoon. Jessica is taking her and has told me (though I’m not convinced) that its not going to involve cookies at this age. At this age.  Next year or the year after she’s going to be hawking diabetes-in-a-box to help send her to a camp where they’ll teach her how to be a feminist [I’ve put my foot down, once the cookies come out, so does Abby].  Yeah! Sure, I sound skeptical, but the truth of the matter is that I’m actually just afraid that my girl is growing up.

When I was a young boy I had the chance to join the Boy Scouts but I passed up on it because of reasons I don’t even remember. However, Abby is a little social butterfly and so the idea of her turning into a brownie or whatever they call the girl scouts her age – twinkies, dough-girls, or what have you – just means that she’s going to have yet another place to be extroverted. Its good for her. I’m just going to keep telling myself that.

Big Fat Happy Birthday to Ed!

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I just wanted to say, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” to my brother Ed.  He’s 28 today.  If you do the math that makes him 28*12=336 months old.  I wouldn’t normally point that out except that when you have young children some of their ages are in months.  Evie is 22 months old.  Ed is a dad to three beautiful children, a husband to one beautiful wife (much to the chagrin of some reclusive Mormons), and the owner of many tools for working on automotive type contraptions.  I’m really glad Ed is my brother, he’s given a lot to me over the years.  A few black eyes, but a lot of good times talking and having fellowship.  Ed is my ‘Thankful Friday’ brother 🙂

An Open Letter to NBC

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[the following is from an email I sent NBC this morning]

I just wanted to let you know that I’m terribly disappointed in NBC’s decision to pull out of iTunes.  It is a choice that the company has to make as a business decision but it puts customers at a disadvantage and I wanted to make sure that you knew customers were watching.  I would also like for NBC to publicly announce what exact measures they expected Apple to take to prevent the ‘estimated’ illegal content from being distributed.

I don’t know what shows are on NBC that I will be watching this upcoming season, but I would have liked to have grabbed the missed episodes on iTunes for $1.99.  I know you wanted to double the price, but that’s rather ridiculous.  As it stands I will now have to just wait and watch them when I get home from trips on my DVR, which will record them, allow me to skip commercials, and watch them on my own schedule for the $5.00 a month Qwest/DirecTV charge me.  NBC will not get any of that money instead of making some money off of the iTunes download that I would have given them periodically.

Please re-consider your position with Apple because it would be more than fruitful for you to make things available to your customers in a convenient, legal manner, without being invasive to their normal patterns for content acquisition.  The assumption that was made in the Press Release assumes that the United State’s legal policy of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is just not part of the way NBC thinks.  This makes me very concerned for the future of the network because it makes the consumer the bad guy immediately.  Customer centric companies that buy advertising will identify this and may remove or adjust advertising budgets over time to reduce NBC’s income from commercials.

Please don’t distance yourself from customers.  The networks operate and exist because of the customers who pay for content through watching advertisements, buying TV series in DVD box sets, and through word of mouth talking about content put out by the network, hopefully building up a fan base for the network’s shows.  NBC has indicated to the public that they are not valuable as people, but only as income sources.  I know you’re a business, but if you compare this to a restaurant experience this is the scenario that you would find:
The customer comes into a Denny’s every week on Tuesday and orders a grand slam breakfast [chosen as a low cost dining experience, we’re not talking about premium channel television like HBO].  The customer comes regularly and establishes an emotional connection with the routine, Denny’s wins, the customer feels they’re winning and the waitresses become friends.  One day the customer comes in only to discover that all of the waitresses were fired because their content delivery method was deemed too susceptible to the fact that people could also smuggle in food from home for their children.  The customer who was not smuggling in food for children is immediately shocked that there is a farmer standing outside saying, “We had the owner fire the waitresses because their content delivery mechanism was not bringing in enough for us.  Now instead of us getting money for our eggs, poultry, pigs and produce, we’ll get nothing and you’ll have to go other routes to get food!  We win!”

The customer loses, the waitresses lose (iTunes), the farmers lose (NBC) and yet the customer will go to another restaurant or a store and get their own food – maybe from other sources that will continue to cut out the very farmers that killed Denny’s supply chain due to the waitresses not being effective at stopping people from smuggling in food, a minority of customers.

I buy legal copies of everything I own.  I don’t steel music, I don’t steel movies, I don’t steel software and I’m offended that NBC would imply such a thing.  I am a software developer that has to make a living through people buying legal versions of the software I work on.