Be The Pigeon

Parallel Parking

2011-12-23T10:54:00.004-07:00

It's been a while. Yeah yeah. From the annals of "Parallel Parking for Dummies" I caught this gem while in in Galveston, TX. This week. This gal might qualify as the world's worst VW-Beetle driver. The picture doesn't really do it justice. The rear of her (short) vehicle was a good 2-3 feet from the curb; it was evident that using REVERSE is not part of her parallel-parking technique. That's my rental behind her.

Being Thoughtful

2011-07-16T09:58:00.004-06:00

I've been traveling tons for work lately; so much so that I'm gone much more than I'm around. Last night I got home from a full-week trip to find the following on the doorstep.

It was from my six-year old. If you don't read 6yr-old very well, it says: Dad follw the cards and you may find a clue for the mystery you well do -->. That put a smile on my face right away. When I got inside, I wasn't greeted by the usual D-A-D-D-Y onslaught that comes after a week of being gone. Instead, there was another sign reading: Go up you well find the clue! I went up stairs and followed another arrow to my own bedroom, where the door was closed. When I opened the door, Kristen popped up from under a blanket where she was hiding. It was pretty cute. Then she gave me one last card (wrapped in the proper 6ft of tape, of course):

The card came with lots of hugs and kisses, for sure. I was touched. I'm not normally the hallmark-card type guy who gets all gushy at everything. But this was a pretty nice thing my daughter had done to show me how much she'd missed me during the week. Makes me feel bad for being gone so much lately right now. I'll have to be sure to remember her sweetness today when she has her typical 6yr-old freakout session about some all-important activity (like eating lunch). It seems like they know when you've had it with them and they come through to keep you from sticking on the curb with a 'free' sign. Maybe she will indeed live to adulthood after all! I love my kids.

Tech Stuff: Control multiple computers with a single keyboard-mouse

2011-05-30T15:33:00.003-06:00

If you have multiple computers and would like to control them all with a single keyboard-mouse combo, it's easy to do. Use "Synergy."

This doesn't require a KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) switch as it did in former days. In fact, the cool thing about Synergy is that you're not screen sharing. Each machine has its own separate display, and it can even have its own mouse and keyboard. But your main mouse and keyboard, when you move the mouse over to the new display, now controls the other machine. What's cool about this is that it works across platforms. For example, I have a Mac for my main machine, and a Windows 7 laptop sitting on the left-hand side. With Synergy running on both machines, I just move my mouse to the left until it comes onto the Win 7 laptop screen and then I can type and use it as though I were really connected there locally. It makes controlling multiple machines a snap.

Synergy is available here for Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. It's free.

Tech Stuff: Cleaning Up Your Music Library

2011-05-01T18:59:00.002-06:00

For years, I've had an ugly music library. Very little cover art, inconsistent album titles, artists, etc. I ripped all my old CD's years ago, and the formats seem to have varied quite a bit. A couple months ago I finally found a solution to clean the whole mess up. Now that I've switched to iTunes, the cover art is a nice thing to have, as it's shown on AppleTV and on the iPod when you listen. The cleanup process is very simple using a tool (which I purchased for about $20) called TuneUpMedia.

TuneUp will listen to clips of your songs for you and then search them in an online database to come up with the right info and then retag your whole library. It will also add missing cover art and even detect duplicate tracks. Very nice. It loads up along side iTunes or Windows Media Player.

I don't normally shell out bucks for this type of stuff (figuring that there's always a freebie if I look long enough), but this one was worth it.

There's a free version you can try that's limited as to the amount of data it will convert.

Converting Movies for iPod - Redux

2011-05-01T18:55:00.001-06:00

I've updated my post from last year about how to convert DVD movies for your iPod or AppleTV.

More on Movies

2011-01-30T13:30:00.003-07:00

Been a while. This is another techno-dump, so skip it if you could care about this stuff.

We got an AppleTV unit for Christmas. Jolayne was interested in playing her music through the family-room stereo, and after doing some research (and a few worthless purchases) I finally decided on the Apple products, as they have been so easy for our family to use. We started by looking for something to just play music, and Apple has something called an Airport Express that does just that. But for the same price, AppleTV does the same thing, but also plays movies (both from your own library and from iTunes downloads). It's remarkably simple and yet easy to use, which we like. What drew me to this device, though, was the remote control. All iPods, iPads, and iPhones can have a free app called "REMOTE," which allows you to use the touch-screen abilities of the unit to control the AppleTV (or your iTunes on your computer). Makes it super simple to control the music, and since it's wifi based, you can be anywhere in the house and control your media. Perfect.

Now that we've been doing the online media thing for a while, I've been trying to get our movie library cleaned up and more presentable. You may have read my previous posts on how to convert your movies for use on mobile devices. Turns out the same format works perfectly on the AppleTV (and takes up less space than native DVD formats). So getting the library online is a good idea.

Tagging

One problem I've run into, though, is that when I rip one of my movies, the tags don't get populated. If you're not familiar, tags are the meta-data inside the file that say what the movie is, who's in it, year produced, artwork, etc. Doing it by hand would be a pain, but not having it makes it harder to browse the library effectively. After searching around, here's what I've come up with as an easy for for the tagless-movie problem.

For Mac, I recommend iDentify 2. For Windows, I recommend MetaX. These programs will quickly take your files and add appropriate tags from several different sources on the web. Once tagged, iTunes will see the "album art" and all other info. They will even update iTunes immediately.

After trying other solutions (such as with Windows Media Center) I've found the Apple solution to be the easiest to use and the most reliable. AppleTV is definitely worth the $99.

Fun Football Game

2010-11-14T20:33:00.006-07:00

Been a while since I've had any reason (or time) to blog. This one was fun, though. Yesterday, I went to my 3rd BYU football game of the year. The first two were pretty much duds, though still fun. Yesterday's game, though, was altogether different. They finally found their mojo!

I had seats on the front row of the visitor section of the CSU stadium in Ft Collins. 4 foot of legroom in front of me, and polite fans behind me. Couldn't ask for more except for the 35-degree weather. CSU has had a bum season, and all their fans either gave up or just got so wasted they couldn't find their way into the game. Either way, the home side was less than half full at peak, and by mid way through the game, it was an embarrassment.

The game was 100% BYU. 35-0 at half time. Each time the team scored, the TV cameras came over to do the dutiful screaming-fan pan. As we were on the front row, I got face time with every touchdown. I'm not very well practiced as a screaming fan, but I did my best. In the pic below, my friend Chris' brother snapped the shot off his TV when he saw us. Great capture (he must have had a DVR to back it up just right.)

The fun part about it was that I got texts from several friends in Utah who saw us on TV. Hilarious. And not just once. One friend even said we were part of the evening-news highlights out in SLC.

What made the game so fun, though, was Cosmo the Cougar, the BYU mascot. He was an absolute class act. Best mascot show I've seen. First of all, he had real energy. He was pumping up the fans and celebrating every single play. He was also obviously in great shape. He kept jumping up the 8ft wall from the field into the stands and hanging out with the fans and their families. Then he'd jump back down and do a couple backflips. Then he'd do some breakdancing, moon walking, or other 80's era groovin. This guy could dance. And he interacted with the crowd the entire time.

Mid-way through the game, I pointed out to him that the Ram's mascot was over on the other side of the field, not having much fun. He ran over, patting the camera guys' butt, the ref's butt, and the CSU ROTC's guys butts along the way. Then he had a mime conversation with the Ram and started doing pushups (since the ROTC guys usually do them after points are scored). CSU had no points at the time. When the Ram got down to do pushups as well, Cosmo started doing them one armed. Ram couldn't do that. Then they came back over to our side of the field and Cosmo did another back flip. Ram couldn't do that either. Hilarious. Then Cosmo was a gent and gave Ram a hug and let him go without further humiliation. We were rolling with laughter.

After the game, all the BYU players came around and high-fived all the fans. Nearly all the BYU folks stayed till the very end. The last quarter of the game was an absolute ghost town for CSU. The camera guy showed a snowman that someone had built and placed in a chair all by himself in the stands. The snowman and the band were about all CSU had rooting for them. After the high fives, even Jake Heaps (QB) came over after his obligatory after-game interviews and high fived everyone. Classy.

On the way out of the stadium, something else very cool happened. The stadium had emptied and we were amongst the last to leave. As I was walking out, I overheard a girl who'd been working the concession stands talking to her friend. She was sharing how it was a much better concession day than normal. She said people were polite and not pushy like normal. They even said strange things like "please" and "thank you." Shocker. I couldn't resist, so I butt into her conversation and said that's what happens when BYU comes to town. She agreed and said it was much better than a normal game. Just goes to show that little stuff really does make a difference, and people really do notice. Especially in places where the hometeam crowd is usually wasted and vulgar (CSU fans have a reputation for their obnoxiousness.)

It was BYU's best show of the year, with a strong throwing game. Just what we need to succeed against Utah in two weeks. It was wonderful to hear that the Utes lost to Notre Dame that same time. Most fun I've had at a football game in the last decade, for sure. Go Cougs.

TSA: Making Us Safer

2010-08-29T18:09:00.003-06:00

I've been traveling lots lately for work. The joy of traveling is that I get to observe firsthand how obnoxious society has become. For example, I find idiot guys talking on their phones in the bathroom every week now. Stalls, urinals, everywhere. Yeah, it's totally acceptable for you to talk to your boss while taking care of business. NOT!

This week I was in Omaha. Went through security and got tagged for the "backscatter" machine. If you haven't been watching the news lately, these are the machines that have x-ray vision to ensure there's no sharp objects hidden in my armpits.

I've gone through these machines several times before, and I've learned that you need to remove EVERYTHING from your pockets to avoid problems. This time, I went through a different form of machine, so I didn't think to remove my wallet, and Mr. TSA didn't ask me if I had anything in them.

That's me in the photo!

After I got scanned, he asked what was in my pocket, so I pulled out my wallet and showed him. Apparently that wasn't good enough. He then asked me to open the wallet and show him everything in it! I was insulted. What an invasion of privacy. Do you really think I'm gonna have a lethal weapon disguised as a credit card? Watch out or I'll tag you with my Kohl's card!

There's no metal in my wallet, and asking to see what's in each compartment was just a joke. It's kind of like the extreme pat downs that little old ladies with replaced hips get when they come through in their wheelchairs (owing to them having metal in their bodies). You'd think we could actually do some things to actually be safe (like be proactive instead of reactive). Why can't we just interview suspicious looking people like they do in Israel? The next time we get an "underwear bomber" you know they'll decide we need to strip down as part of going through security.

I complained to the supervisor and asked why it's different at each airport. His reply: "you've seen one airport, you've seen one airport," Meaning that they aren't the same because they don't have time to review folks that thoroughly at larger airports. In other words, if you're a terrorist, be sure you go through O'Hare or Atlanta cuz you won't get as scrutinized as you do at small airports where there's not as much going on. Consider this: if something is dangerous enough to be a threat at one airport, wouldn't it be a threat at all airports in the system? Am I missing something here? The truth in the inconsistencies is that for the 50,000+ employees and multi-billion-dollar budget, it's just too hard to enforce rules consistently. I feel safer. Good thing the terrorists can't figure any of this out.

If you haven't been through one of these machines yet, get ready. They are being installed everywhere now thanks to the underwear bomber-thing last year (but mostly thanks to lobbying in Congress on behalf of the companies that make the outrageously expensive machines). Oh, and though the government says it doesn't store the images taken by the machines, there is now proof that is not the case. Enjoy.

Lots of Updates: Summer Activities

2010-08-29T17:53:00.012-06:00

I suck at blogging now. I freely admit it. The good news is that I know no one really cares. I just finally figured out how to get pictures off my iPhone (which I've had for 4 months or so), and I managed to grab pictures from lots of different activities this summer that I meant to report on, but which got forgotten. So, working backwards in time, here's some neat things I've been involved in.
LA Trip
I have been traveling lots for work in recent months. Recently I had a trip to SoCal and managed to take an evening to go back to the Los Angeles Temple, where I was sealed to my parents in 1979. To my knowledge, I hadn't been back since.

Just prior to that, I also drove over to Santa Monica and found the house my grandparents lived in until I was 12 or so. The home is nearly completed obscured by landscaping now. Absolutely amazing neighborhood, though. It's within walking distance of the beach, right up on the hill above the Santa Monica Pier. Serious bucks.

The house has been beautifully maintained, along with everything else in this older neighborhood. Everything was immaculate.

Can hardly see the house itself from the street.

The best part of the trip to LA was the rental car. Hertz finally saw fit to give me a smokin upgrade, and I was treated to a yellow 2011 Camaro with all the bells and whistles. That thing is scary fast!

Unfortunately, the tire-pressure warning activated about 20 min after I left the airport. I filled it back up for two days because I didn't want to give the car back. It was just sooooo much fun to drive. Mostly I got to put my foot into it on the onramps, since the freeways themselves are so crowded and slow.

Finally, I contacted Hertz and made arrangements for a like-for-like exchange. The new car was a silver one, which didn't have all the toys but which was equally fast. It was the most fun I've had driving in a long time.

Demolition Derby

Took the kids to the Boulder County Fair Demolition Derby again this year. Sadly, Misha didn't get to go because of some things she'd done. Found some great ear protectors at Harbor Freight for Kristen. Made the super-loud event much more fun for a 5yr old.

Here's a short video clip that shows just how loud these things can be.

Science Museum
We joined the Denver Museum of Nature and Science this year since we knew we'd be traveling to other cool museums, and the exchange network allows us to go to the others for free if we're members. The DMNS has a new-member night with dinner and exhibits last month. It was fun, and we really liked that it wasn't crowded like normal. Grandma and Grandpa Rice went with us. The kids enjoyed playing in the rubber pieces, "digging" for fossils.

RMNP
Took the family up to Estes Park in July and had a wonderful time. We don't spend as much time together as we once did, and days like this are becoming very memorable. We went to several places in Rocky Mountain National Park, managed to avoid the worst of the rain, and even got a good hike in to Alberta Falls.

Farm
I took (read: made) the kids to the church farm again this year. It's an hour drive, and you have to leave about 5am, so it's a very early start. Then you walk through the half-mile-long rows pulling the big weeks. The kids say they don't enjoy it, but I bet it's something they remember when they're older. They didn't appreciate my picture taking, either.

Laser Tag
For a family activity earlier this summer, we went to do laser tag. All together! The younger girls were a bit trepidatious, as I think was Jo. But we had a great time, and shooting one another turned out to be lots of fun, even for Jolayne. Good workout, too.

July 4th
Finally, we spent July 4 in Colorado Springs. Jolayne blogged about our trip, so I don't have to. However, I just found this silly video that Amy made in our hotel room, which I'm simply posting for posterity. Now I have something to hold over her head.

Passing the Torch

2010-08-29T17:10:00.005-06:00

When I was a kid, my parents taught me in the ways of the force by having me scoop dog poop and mow the lawn on our hilly yard. I hated it. No, I loathed it. Now as I raise my own kids, and though we don't have any animals, it's fun to pass down the tortuous activities.

A month or so ago I decided Amy was old enough to learn how to check, start, and run the mower. At first it was fun for her, new activity and all. I had her help me push the mower around the yard, and she enjoyed helping her dad out. Shortly after that I informed her that it was her turn to mow the front yard all by herself. Insert weeping, wailing, and general girl drama. However, after a tough 20-30 minutes, she got it done. Since then, I've had her do it a couple more times, and though the wailing and drama always precede the work, Amy has really stepped up to get it done. It's made me proud of her. Pushing that no-frills mower around our not-flat yard isn't easy. I'm sure it's even more challenging when the mower weighs as much as you do!

After she got done last week, Jo snapped a couple photos. It was hot, and she was definitely wiped. She had just enough energy left for a dramatic flail in the yard. But the yard looked great!

Each week right now I'm amazed at how much grass has grown. I've even debated calling the TruGreen guys and canceling because my grass is too green! Not sure they've ever heard that excuse before. But I'm thinking grass that's a little less green would be faster to mow, for sure.

Turns out that all the training Amy received in our yard recently came in most handy. We have a lady at church who's not able to care for her own large yard right now. Amy has gone with me several times to help mow it. She was admittedly glad that she already knew how to run the push mower (and it was much easier on a flat yard). She also happily managed the rite of passage by learning how to pilot the riding mower. She was grinning ear to ear the first time we did that. However, the mean old landlady at the farm we were on tried really hard to keep Amy from being happy but thinking up the most ridiculous things to make a fuss over. I was proud of the way Amy didn't let any of the senseless chiding bring her down.

My kids are getting bigger, and it's fun to do new things with them, even if they do involve work. Now we're just missing the dog poop.

Rodents Digging

2010-06-27T20:25:00.006-06:00

We're having all sorts of interesting home-related things right now, it seems. A couple weeks ago Jo told me to "come here" while she was in the other room in the basement. It was one of those "come here now" kind of inflections, so I complied immediately. I went over and saw a nice fresh hole in one of our window wells. The wells are 5 feet deep or so, so this was surprise. We definitely had an uninvited guest who was a digger. We stood there long enough to even have a welcome-to-the Kline-zoo experience through the glass by watching Mr Digger come up to dump some of this dirt. I think he even smiled at me faintly. My enemy was visible.

Jo looked it up online and found that it was most likely a mole (did I get that right?) We went over to Home Depot and observed a plethora of rodent-killing options (who would have known?) I settled on the pyrotechnic approach and bought gopher-bombs. After all, fire is the answer to many of life's toughest problems, right?

My first try at gopher bombing was, shall I say, ridiculous. You're supposed to stick a fuse into this fire-cracker thing, light it, and then shove it down into the rodent-infested hole. Surprisingly, that's not very easy. I managed to get the fireworks lit, but getting it into the hole didn't work out too well, and I wound up gassing myself pretty well. Yup. Here's my sign. Too bad you just can't fix stupid.

So we moved to plan B. I opened up the hole as much as I could and ultimately had a survey stake down to the point where I heard Mr Digger yelping. No Mercy! I wasn't sure I could finish him off with the stake, and besides, who really wants dead, stinky, plague infested guts smelling up their window well. So I elected not to shish-kabob him. Instead, I wound up getting him into a little box where he made all sorts of interesting noises.

I must have missed in the Be A Good Father brochure where it says that you're supposed to capture large, rabid rodents with bare hands, without getting bit. Happy to say, though, that I've now earned that badge.

Fact for the masses: Mr Digger was much bigger than you might think:

I really wanted to finish the punk off, but the neighbors were out and wanted to see him and I wound up in a short moment of mercy that ultimately saved his life. I rode him on my bike over to the empty neighborhood across the street and let him go. Bet he winds up in someone else's window well shortly. If you see him, get out your 9mm and do what I should have done.

Roof Leaks and Karma

2010-06-27T20:02:00.007-06:00

And now from our sponsor, a lesson in karma.

A couple weekends ago, I found out at church that we were being asked to go up to the girls' youth camp in Wyoming and cut and move timber affected by the beetle kill. It takes nearly 2 hours to get up there. I have to admit I wasn't happy about losing my whole Saturday for the service activity, but I was planning on going. As the weekend drew near, the weather got very sour, and so did my attitude. I murmured. By Friday night, it was pouring in Colorado-Spring style.

A short detour: Amy is definitely her father's child. When I ask her to do something, she often comes up with ways to flat out tell me no, or to--in my words--dilly dally her way around to get her way. This has been status quo for some time. Routinely I will send her to bed only to have her still milling around 30 minutes later doing some terribly important task. As a dad, that gives me material to launch into her. End detour.

That Friday night at about 10pm, I sent Amy to bed and she commenced in her usual (I thought) dilly dally routine. A while later she came in to talk to me and I immediately launched into her about how she couldn't be obedient, etc. I thought I was being a good dad and teaching her to do as she was told. She said only one sentence, which stopped me in my tracks.

"Dad, my wall has a blister."

Uh oh. I had had issues last year with some small leakage in her ceiling, so I knew just what she meant. I ran upstairs and looked at her wall and found a fist-sized blister of water just below the ceiling. I called Jolayne and ran for the ladder to get up into the attic. I then spent the next 90 min or so hanging from joists and eating insulation while I tried to figure what was going on. Turns out it was the fireplace vent that was leaking, and my fix-it job from last year was, shall we say, not completely appropriately.

Jolayne lanced our wall blister and got things cleaned up while I got buckets in the attic. I later found another location that was leaking from our furnace vent, although not as badly.

At this point, I knew I couldn't go to the girls' camp for timber day. Instead, I had a lovely Saturday of moisture in my future. I should have chosen girls camp. Ain't karma a wonderful thing?!

I spent 4-5 hours on Saturday up on the roof and inside the attic figuring out how to get these leaks fixed. Luckily, I was able to find some really well documented information on the Internet, which showed me exactly where to look.

Isn't the Internet absolutely amazing? I'm floor that some guy took the time to document with minute detail how to fix a leak. He had probably 20 pictures, documented each step of the fix process, and then put it all together. Amazing stuff. Thanks random internet guy!

I think it was the sealant on the flashing that had simply become brittle and chipped apart. I made a nice mess of some high-temp silicone caulking on both vents and hope to have the problem resolved now. This was the first major house issue we've had here, so it's sort of a milestone for us (not one of those good ones, though.)

So the lesson here is that I need to not murmur or something will pop up that's even less fun than what I've been invited to help with. Lesson learned (or as they say at work, learnt). I also learned that Amy is ALWAYS dilly dallying (just most of the time!) Sorry Amy. I'm ready for better karma now, please.

We'll find out soon if I did the job right this time. This is a pic of my attempt to keep the caulk dry (in the rain) while it set up. The buckets are still up in the attic and the next time it rains when I'm at home I need to climb up and see if there's anything still dripping. I sure hope not. By the way, the view from my second roof (there are two levels) is really quite good. You should come over and check it out.

August Update: After waiting for a good rain storm while I'm actually at home, I climbed up into the attic in my undies the other night to find out that my fix is holding nicely and there's no more water leaking in. Hallelujah. That one ranks right up there on the "crappy daddy jobs" list.

Tech Note: Verizon MiFi

2010-06-27T19:43:00.002-06:00

I recently switched my broadband data service to Verizon and go a MiFi 2200. This is quite a neat little device. Instead of just giving your Internet from anywhere on your computer, it also acts as a WiFi hotspot and allows you to connect up to 5 other devices wirelessly, with no config. So for me, that means that iPad, iPod Touch, etc can all be connected to the Internet without having to pay for data service for each device. The device is about the size of a deck of cards (sans card box), and runs for about 4 hours per charge. When you have it plugged into your PC, it acts like a normal USB-style data card and tethers for Internet access to your PC only. When you unplug it, the wireless access point lights up and you can connect yourself and 4 friends. The wireless mode has lots of settings that allow you to be secure, etc.

Here's the interesting side note (honestly, only if you're me, but I needed a place to write this down). You can only charge this thing via the special wall charger Verizon sends. I hate taking extra cables on my trips. Everything should be able to connect to my PC and charge via USB. However, if you connect MiFi to your PC, it will only charge when you have it in tether (not wireless) mode (and ON!) You can't run it in wireless mode and have it charge. Nor can you connect it to external charging sources (like a USB-converter wall plug or an external battery source like Major Mojo Juice, which I highly recommend to recharge your phone, iPod, and other elctronic devices while on the go). So that really limited me if I wanted more than 4 hours of Internet away from a wall plug and standard charger. Kind of defeated the purpose of having the thing to begin with.

After hunting around, I found a forum where a guy explained that MiFi uses nonstandard connectors, blah blah blah. Then he explained how you could chop up your USB cable and make a charging cable out of it. For anyone with MiFi, it's worth a read. For everyone else, the net is that I now have a slightly scarred USB cable that can charge MiFi no matter where I'm at, and I can have Internet for 5 devices everywhere I go.

For what it's worth, I was just a little worried about taking some dude's advice from a random forum and resplicing a USB cable and plugging it into my electronics. I had visions of sparks and a 19-year-old guy laughing at me from the other side of the world because I was dumb enough to take his advice. Happily, that worry was unnecessary. Guess that means everything on the Internet is true.

I'm saving money and device sprawl, and the service has worked well. I recommend it if you're in the market for a mobile broadband data card. Warning, though. Verizon limits you to 6GB per month (no unlimited plans available). All the other carriers are going that way as well, though, so it's not really a standout disadvantage. Just don't download big movies and you're fine.

Converting Movies for iPod

2010-06-09T18:02:00.011-06:00

{This post was updated in May 2011 with things I've learned over the last year.}

Our family recently joined the Apple revolution (a few years late, we know). Jolayne got an iPod Touch (basically an iPhone without the phone part). I got a nano and iPhone, and there's an iPad in transit somewhere for me. With all this iHappiness, I knew we'd need to find a way to watch movies on these intrepid little devices. I managed to get it done just in time before our Disney trip a few weeks ago. Let me say, having movies on the iDevices sure makes long flights more fun. The amazing thing to me is that because of the hardware decoders built into the devices, it takes very little battery to watch a movie. A full-length movie watch on my iPhone takes less than 15% of the battery. Not bad at all.

Once you've converted them, the movies can also be streamed via AppleTV (or equivalent) and watched on your main TV as well, so it's a great single format to do everything in.

After researching how best to get this done, I have settled on a few tricks and free tools and work pretty well. Several of you have asked me how to do it, so read on (look for a separate post for converting recorded TV shows):

Steps to Convert Movies

To convert movies to iPod or AppleTV, you need to convert the DVD files (stored natively as .VOB files) into either .MP4 or .M4V files, which is what Apple uses. A typical movie takes up to 4-5GB of space on a DVD, usually spanned across several VOB files. Usually, a single VOB file represents the main movie, with the other VOB files being special features and such. There are a number of tools you can use to play with these files, though the MPAA has tried to quash many of them for piracy fears. The files are encrypted so you can't just copy them from one place to another with any expectation of success.

By the way, the steps below focus primarily on Windows PC's. Mac options vary, but it seems that there's more packaged software out there that does the whole thing for you at a reasonable price. For example, you might look at RipIt (but I haven't used it).

Step 1: Copy the DVD Files

Before I go any further, you should know that you really don't have to copy (rip) the DVD files to your computer if all you want is an iPod/AppleTV version of a show. You can go straight to that (see step 3). However, since kids like to scratch and trash DVD's, this is a good way to keep a safe copy of the stuff before it gets broken. Besides, once it's copied, you can use Windows Media Center (included in Vista and Win7) to watch the ripped version. If you have a media extender (something like the Linksys DMA2100 or even an XBox), you can even watch the ripped version on your TV and skip the disks all together (though there are some restrictions that can make it a pain)!

But the best reason to start with copying the files to your PC is that the conversion process is much quicker when done in a couple of separate stages.

Step 1a: Rip the Movie

There are some very good pay packages that can copy the DVD files (you can't just copy them from the DVD and paste onto your PC hard drive), but there are some good ones that are free as well. The free one that I have settled on is called DVDFab. It's a full-feature program that can do the converting all the way down to the iPod/AppleTV, but that part is trial-only and is pretty spendy to purchase. There's also an embedded free mode (called DVD Decrypter) in the product that just copies the DVD files from one place to another without converting them.

DVDFab will remove the FBI warnings and all the you-can't-skip-me content. You can also choose to copy only the main movie and drop all the extra soundtracks and such, which should lower the space required by quite a bit.

Download DVDFab for Windows

Download Mac the Ripper for Mac (not described here, and very old, but free)

Once you get it installed, the free portion is called DVD Decrypter or DVD-to-DVD. Select the source as the DVD disc and the target as a location where it should copy the content. Then select on the left side to copy the main movie only (unless it's a series disc that has multiple VOB files that you want copied.)

Uncheck all the extra languages for captions and soundtracks on the right side (usually only the very top English box should remain checked).

Step 1b: Get MyMovies (if you wish to catalog the originals)

This step is completely unrelated to converting movies for iPod, but once you've copied your DVD's to your PC, you might as well categorize them all nicely. This is especially useful if you want to use a Windows Media Extender (like an Xbox) to watch them on a remote TV. However, if you're going to use AppleTV, it will use the same format (mp4 or m4v) that iPod's use, so you can skip this stuff.

There's another free product called MyMovies that will automatically catalog, download cover art, and get all the info for Windows Media Center to make your movies show up pretty. Easy setup, and it automatically picks up new movies as you add them.

Download MyMovies (Windows Only)

NOTE: It appears that MyMovies can copy DVDs to PC as well, though I haven't tried the feature there, and DVDFab has more options for tweaking what parts get copied.

Step 2: Transcode the VOB (DVD version) file to MP4 (iPod version).

This is the main step.

As mentioned above, DVDFab can do this in one step for you, but it's part of the for-purchase features. Another free and easy-to-use product is called Handbrake. Handbrake can read directly from DVD disc, but can also read your ripped movie if you copied it above. If you read directly from the DVD, it seems to be MUCH slower, and it can have issues with decrypting the DVD if you don't have the right dependent software installed. It's simply easier, in my opinion, to do the two-phased approach discussed here.

Download Handbrake (Windows or Mac)

Handbrake can queue up lists of files to convert, which is nice if you want to set it to run overnight while you're not using the computer. So start by copying a number of movies to a temp folder on your PC, and then queue up the conversion to run as a batch.

The interface is pretty straight forward. Just select the source via the upper-left button; it should be the directory where the copied movie is located). Then the output-file location. Choose which title to convert (it will preselect the longest one on the disc, which is usually sufficient), and then choose iPhone/iTouch/iPad/AppleTV (or whatever type preferred) on the right-side presets to get all the settings for how it should be converted. Then add to the queue or run the single job. The conversion will take anywhere from 20-45 minutes normally (based on my multi-core machine). Movie-length output files for iPod formats are typically in the 500mb range and AppleTV is about 1GB or so.

You can test your output file by opening it. It should play smoothly in your media player, but with a smaller format than the original files (which can go full screen easily).

Step 3: Add Tags to Your Movies

Your new MP4 files will play just fine but do not have all the meta-tags that programs such as iTunes use to determine name, rating, description, etc. You also won't have cover artwork, which is really nice to have. You could add all the tags by hand in iTunes, but that's really slow. The solution is to run the files through a tagging utility that compares the titles to Amazon titles and then pulls the info over and applies it to your files.

For Mac, I recommend iDentify 2. For Windows, I recommend MetaX. These programs will quickly take your files and add appropriate tags from several different sources on the web. Once tagged, iTunes will see the "album art" and all other info. They will even update iTunes immediately.

Download MetaX 2 for Windows

Download iDentify 2 for Mac

See the linked sites for directions, but in a nutshell, you open the new tagless files and then do a search for the best match (usually off Amazon). Then when you double-click the match, it will apply those tags to your file. I've found that I need to check the artwork field manually in most cases to get it to update. Repeat this for all your new movies. Then click the "Write Queue" button and it will write all the updates at once and import them into iTunes.

Be sure to correctly choose "TV Show" or "Movie" when you tag the new files, or they may show up incorrectly in iTunes (but that's easily fixed with a right-click -> Get Info -> Options -> Media Kind update on the item in iTunes.)

Step 4: Import to iTunes and Copy to iPod/iPhone

If you used MetaX above, this step will have already been completed for you automatically.

Once you have the mp4 files ready to go. You need to import them into iTunes. The simplest way to do this is to drag and drop them onto the "LIBRARY" section of the left-side pane.

Once it's in your library, hook up your device and click on the Movies tab in the sync settings. Then choose how many movies and what type you want to sync to the device. Click Apply at the bottom and it will send the new files over and you're ready to watch.

Incidentally, you can choose to have only unwatched movies on your device. A movie is considered unwatched until you get to the very very end of it. You'll see circle icons in the list of available movies. A whole circle means unwatched, half circle means partially watched, and empty circle means completely watched. If you set it up right, you can have it automatically cycle through the movies as you watch them without having to do settings each time.

That's it! Not bad at all.

Vacuum Attire

2010-04-28T08:36:00.001-06:00

This is what my hot wife wears to vacuum the house. Nice 2 1/2 inch heels. Goes ever so nicely with the sweats.

How Many Holes?

2010-04-27T22:13:00.004-06:00

I really enjoy living in Colorado. Most of the things we deal with here are great. Some are not so great. A few are downright annoying. Let's focus on the latter tonight. Last night, at their insistence, I took the kids for the first bike ride of the season. We rode on pathways over to the 'tree park' and then road dirt roads over to another neighborhood. Nothing too crazy--except my inability to get the clipless pedal thing, so I wound up falling twice more to the laughs of my children; no respect!

As we got back home from our 3 or 4 mile jaunt (I don't have my cycling computer hooked up yet on the new bike), I could tell I was getting a flat (this is the first real ride I've taken on this bike, mind you.) That yielded some not-so-pleasant grumbling on my part because I knew what was coming next. The goatheads were out of control! If you haven't spent time in CO, you likely aren't familiar with these insidious little torture tools. We should package them up and send them to the Taliban. They come from sagebrush and are very barbed on multiple sides. They poke through darn near anything. Like fingers. Like shoes. Like bike tires. I had hoped that since we didn't just go ride across an open field, we wouldn't have too many problems with them.

I hoped wrong.

When I went out this afternoon I saw that we had not 1 or 2, but 4 flat tires (Amy's and my bikes completely flat), and Misha's bike was a goathead memorial, but the heads themselves were plugging the holes so the air hadn't yet leaked all the way.

Tonight I decided to get to work on cleaning up my handiwork. Took about two hours! Out of Misha's bike alone I pulled over 100 goatheads! Crap. Her tires had a good 10-20 holes each. Mine had 2-3 holes each, and Amy's had 4-6 each. What a mess. But after my labor, I have a few lessons I've learned, which I'm now prepared to share with my Internet posterity:

Slime--which is apparently the worldwide leader in tire care (and which I learned tonight even owns the expensive web property slime.com); who wudda thunk--is heavenly stuff. It even tastes ok. It won't kill you, except if you live in California, where they passed a law saying it could kill you, just like breathing their air, drinking spirits, and riding in hotel elevators.
Slime doesn't just "work." Even though I've had in most all of the bikes (sometimes 3 or 4 times it seems!), you have to give it a hand. When you ride into goatheads, you have to pull them out with pliers, let the holes start hissing air, and then spin the tire to get the slime to go into the hole. If you just ride around on goatheads, you're inviting problems. You might even swear in front of your kids if your tube goes flat while you're riding and you wipe out in front of them (luckily I avoided that one; instead, I prefer to wipe out in front of them for no good reason at all, like because my feet are welded to the pedals).
If you wait until you get home and then pull them out and then go inside, you also have problems. You'll come out into the garage the following day and then start grumbling. You have to spin the tire and let the slime get into the holes before all the air is expelled. Good to know, eh? Once I learned this, I was able to fix Misha's bike without even taking the wheels off (a good trick on a kid's bike with quick-release nuttin.). Slime 101.
Tire liners ought to be mandatory in my state. When you change your address, the welcome kit should come with tire liners. If you haven't seen these babies, you should move to CO so you have a reason to need them, like me. My old bike didn't have a flat for several years after I put them in.
Amazon
is sending me 3 sets of tire liners immediately. They should send you some, too. All bikes in our family shall have tire liners henceforth (except Kristen's, cuz she has 12" tires and I'm not stupid).
Presta-valved tires are not very easy to put slime in. In fact, they are downright miserable to put slime in. You have to work some magic on them. I got one done great and was proud of myself.
My other tube, though, got ruined when I bent the valve stem and couldn't get it back into the hole. Scratch one tube and one hour of only mild swearing. But then I saw the label on the tube. It had the words "Taiwan" and "thin" so i stopped being sad that it was trashed. It also turns out that my presta-to-schraeder adapter isn't here yet, so I was stuck with a little hand pump trying to complete this charade. My air compressor was sitting there mocking me the entire time! Why is it that fancy bikes all have elitist presta valves, anyway?

I spent over twice as long fixing things tonight as I did riding last night. That very low ride-to-suck ratio is unacceptable. I'm hoping it will go up in coming weeks. Much of that time I spent simply thinking about how much I've been falling on those new clipless pedals, and thinking that perhaps I shouldn't go to the mountains this weekend, at least until I can get more graceful at falling. My neck still hurts from my not-so-graceful fall last night (yes, it was even at the playground, and I even managed to fall on the nice soft play turf with woodchips, but I did something odd to my neck in the process.)

So the moral of the story is that you should not take your children riding on dirt roads, even if they want to. If they insist, you should contact Amazon immediately for tire liners before proceeding. Lesson learned.

Funny: New STD On The Rampage

2010-04-20T17:12:00.002-06:00

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of this old disease. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim. It's pronounced "Gonna re-elect 'em."

The disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior involving putting your cranium up your rectum. Many victims contracted it in 2008 and many more in 2009...but now most people, after having been infected for the past 1-2 years, are starting to realize how destructive this sickness is.

It's sad because Gonorrhea Lectim is easily cured with a new drug just coming on the market called Votemout, (proncounced "Vote 'em out"). You take the first dose in 2010 and the second dose in 2012 and simply don't engage in such behavior again; otherwise, it could become permanent and eventually wipe out all life as we know it.

Several states are already on top of this, like Virginia and New Jersey, and apparently now Massachusetts, with many more seeing the writing on the wall.

Please pass this important message on to all those bright folk you really care about.

Yes, I Really Am That Special

2010-04-08T19:36:00.005-06:00

Hi, I'm back! I've struggled with time or content for some time now, but I think I finally have a good post tonight. For a long time, our home alarm system has been unused because I didn't have it monitored. When we first installed it ourselves years ago, I had it go to my pager whenever it would go off, and my insurance company agreed that it was "monitored" and gave me the homeowners-insurance discount. Cool. Didn't have to pay the $30/month to ADT or anything. But then I joined the 21st century and got rid of my pager, and I really didn't want it calling my cell phone because it would just look like a call from home; no big deal. So we didn't arm it for a long time.

Recently, I got to thinking about getting rid of my landline, or at least moving it to VOIP to get cheaper long distance, but I wasn't comfortable doing that because the alarm needed a line to call on in case of emergency. So I started looking around for newer technologies, and finally found a company that used a broadband connection instead of a phone line. Cool. Long story short, I now have an adapter in my alarm system that will send emails, texts, and even phone messages when the alarm goes off, and it doesn't use my phone line. It goes over my Internet.

Even cooler, I can now arm and disarm the alarm from a web browser or even from my mobile phone. Now that's 21st century! Here's what it looks like in my browser:

So yes, I really am that cool, cuz my alarm is cooler than yours! Now I can arm my alarm all the time, feel safe, and even arm it after I leave home because I always forget.

Oh, and BTW, the service that does this is only $6/month, which seems a pretty good bargain over $30 with ADT. Pretty neato-shmeato. If you're interested, learn more at http://myvirtualmonitoring.com.

Windows 7 Trick

2010-01-22T15:00:00.005-07:00

Most of you won't care about this one bit, and I have little that's good to blog about these days, but after updating to Windows 7 there's one nagging issue that I just finally figured out and need to document somewhere.

I like to share files between all my machines at home. I backup data on one machine to another, and I keep all my downloaded files centrally. When we upgraded to Win 7, my mapped drives to administrative shares (C$, D$) broke. I searched high and low to find out why, and it appears to have something to do with Homegroup usage and increased security, blah blah blah.

Finally, I found a registry update to fix the whole thing:

How to access Administrative shares in Windows 7.

I rarely use network shares on my computers. Ok, I have a few setup for the family to use if they need to copy something from one computer to another and a share for our network storage. Other than that I have always favored using admintrative shares. These don’t show up in network neighborhood, but can be accessed by using \\computername\C$. The “$” at the end of a share name makes it invisible to network browsing, but otherwise it is a regular share. As the name implies, administrative shares are only available to those in the Local Administrators security group. This is turned off by default in Vista. Bummer, it’s so handy… I guess that’s part of the big security push. *shrug*

To enable administrative shares you gotta make a registry change. Click on the orb and in the search box type ‘regedit’ and hit enter. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System. Add a new DWORDÂ called “LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy” and give it a value of 1. Reboot and yer done!

There, documented.

Peanuts and Legacies

2009-12-25T17:02:00.011-07:00

Then (1994) ...

Now...
When I was a kid, I'd sometimes fly with my dad on his routes around the country.

During my college years, this was a particularly fun time, and my freshman year I spent many weekends flying all over the country with him, doing my homework in flight and helping out as a volunteer flight attendant. Things got to the point where I even had a uniform shirt and was accepted as one of the crew. It was a great time in my life. It was a great time for my dad and I to grow closer, and I enjoyed the fast pace in my first year away from home. It wasn't uncommon to fly to the Northeast and back to the west coast again in a single weekend.

To date, my kids haven't exactly shared in the fly-wherever-you-want lifestyle. A few weeks ago, however, when we went to see my parents in PDX, they got a taste of what it was like for me. It was a great time to pass on a bit of the Peanut Legacy to them.

On our return flight from PDX, I noticed that the flight attendant was readying her snack service and asked if she wanted help. At first she politely declined, but then I said something (don't recall what) and she picked up on my heritage with a "you've obviously done this before" statement. I smiled, told her that I'd grown up with it, and asked if it was OK if I had my kids help out. She was happy to oblige. When I went back and pulled the kids from their seats, they must have thought I was a little crazy. I gave them a basket of peanuts and crackers and told them to start passing out to the passengers. After a couple rows of "how do I do this" behavior, they caught the spirit and had fun. They wound up doing the entire plane's snack service! Amy got so into it that I

convinced her to even go help with garbage service, and a few minutes later she was moving down the aisle with a latex glove on one hand pronouncing "Garbage?" over and over. It was so cute. And she even got a $2 tip from one passenger. She was pretty proud of her self.

Afterwards, I told them that I used to do the same thing with Grandpa and that there's

a picture on our wall at home (above) with me doing just that. They'd never noticed it before, but they have now.

It was a real treat to be able to share a bit of my history with my kids, and especially in a way that was unique and fun. It helped remind me of the great things I've been able to do in my life.

Scout Ski Day

2009-12-07T17:04:00.006-07:00

A couple years ago, Jo and I decided to take the two older girls skiing for scout ski days. It's not the kind of thing we typically do, for lots of reasons. The day didn't go so well. It was super-de-dooper cold and the kids didn't eat anything good before we started. After one try down the hill, they were done, and so was our day.

Last weekend I decided to try my luck once more, but learned from my previous mistakes, maybe. It was again Scout Ski Day, where you can get a lift pass and free lunch for $25. How can you pass on that when it can easily cost triple on a normal day? To boot, Amy is in fifth grade and gets a free pass from the ski people. Double bonus. So we had to go.

First, it was just Amy and Misha with Dad this time. A little quality bonding time. Jo doesn't have any love affair with snow. My coworker was kind enough to let us stay at her condo so we could avoid the morning drive and enjoy a more leisurely morning. We wanted to leave by 5, and in normal fashion, it was closer to 7 by the time we got on the road. We got up to Silverthorne around 8:30 after passing several accidents and slowdowns. Our major issue of the night was that the address we'd been given didn't actually exist! I tried getting through to my coworker but since she was on vacation herself, wasn't able to. So I did the next logical thing (I thought). I figured the address was a typo and started trying garage codes on nearby units. I only selected units that didn't have snow tire tracks, since I knew no one had been there recently. After my fifth or so try, I found the right place and it worked. I think the kids were slightly freaked that Dad might get arrested for attempted breakin, though. We then had a nice evening at the condo.

The next day, I had planned to get the kids into ski lessons, but overnight I realized I could save $250 by not doing that part and trying to teach them myself. I'm cheap, what can I say. The kids were fine with the decision. In fact, they were happy to spend more time together with me. Wow, surprising. I also cheaped out on rentals and went to Sports Authority in town instead of renting on the hill; I saved 50% on that.

On to the good part:

We finally got onto the hill around 11:00am. The green mountain (easy side) wasn't open for the season yet (still less than two feet of snow, though I bet that's changing rapidly). We buckled in and went to the top of the only-open bunny hill. I gave the kids a few tips and we started down the hill. Amy struggled a bit (sadly, she's got her dad's sense of athleticism.) Misha acted like she'd done it multiple times before. Amy and I spent some more time together, but she was really stressed out and it kind of overwhelmed her so she took a break. Misha was going down the bunny hill and back on the lift before I could even find her. She was having so much fun.

We did this a few more times and then went for lunch (free chili for Boy Scout Ski Day). After lunch, I was worried Amy wouldn't want to do anymore since she'd had such a hard time. But she really surprised me and toughed it out the rest of the day. We found another practice area where she could stand on the magic carpet (moving sidewalk) and hone her skills. We worked on it a few times together, and then she spent several hours all by herself working on it. She didn't fall at all and greatly increased her confidence. I was so proud of her for not quitting despite how hard it was for her. It was one of those rare moments where I was truly proud of a kid. Not in a "that's my girl" kind of way, but rather a button-busting moment of awe.

While I was helping Amy, Misha went a couple hundred yards back over to the bunny hill and was having tons of fun all by herself. She asked me why I came back when she later saw me! I convinced her that she was doing so well that she should try something more challenging, so I took her up the big lift to the top of the mountain; notice her Misha smile. It was cold up there! In typical Misha fashion, she just said OK and figured "I can do that." This is Misha at the top. She pointed her skis downhill and slowly snowplowed all the way to the bottom. In fact, she didn't fall once! Pretty cool. She didn't know it at the time, but one of the sections on the way down was intermediate and fairly steep. She just zig-zagged down the hill without saying anything negative at all.

All the way down I was cheering her on with the kind of pride that I've rarely felt towards my kids. I was so proud of them both for what they'd done. They both overcame the limits of what they thought they could do. It was a special day as a dad.

Afterward, we had planned to stay overnight again and skip the bad afternoon traffic. But the threat of a heavy overnight storm changed our minds, so we stopped for pizza, waited out any traffic, and then zipped home without any issues at all. The next morning we were glad for the choice, as there were several inches of snow in Denver, and surely much more in the mountains.

We had a wonderful day, didn't spend too much dough, and indeed bonded. Good weather, good skiing. Mission accomplished. I may actually even take them again! I think I even earned some good daddy points to cash in later when they don't love me so much.

Smoking Christmas Light Deal

2009-11-29T11:45:00.002-07:00

If you live near me and have United Power, they have a smoking deal right now for buying LED Christmas Lights (notice how I said Christmas Lights and not holiday lights!) You can get up to $4 per strand rebated to you, with no limit. So if you buy LED lights on sale (I got a bunch for $7.99 each yesterday at Ace), you can get half the price rebated and then the rest will pay for itself in one season with the 90%-lower power consumption of LED's. That's a nice deal.

Rebate Info

For those in other regions, your utility might do the same thing. It's a nice way to switch to the newer technology.

Blogging

2009-11-08T20:15:00.002-07:00

Maybe blogging is losing its appeal for me, because I just can't seem to make myself post anything amusing or ranting any more. It's strange. I even have three or four 90%-completed drafts (mostly of rants) that I just can't manage to publish. Wonder why.

Things That Bug...

2009-11-03T07:23:00.002-07:00

Daylight Savings. Really, it's 2009. Can't we do it differently? Changing clocks is so 1985! Not knowing if Arizona is the same time as me or not is just plain stupid. Now I'm all depressed because it's dark before I even finish work. It's nice to be light earlier in the morning, but I think we should stop playing like we control the light.

833!

2009-10-17T12:20:00.004-06:00

That's right, the answer is 833!

I took my new GPS trainer on a mtn. bike ride today and now I know the answers to many of life's deepest questions.

How tall WAS that hill?
1200 feet, baby, but with two loops at the top, it was 1700 feet vertical!
How many calories did that hill burn?
Yep, 833! I like that number. Now I can eat garbage the rest of the day and feel good about it!
Was I really about to have a coronary?
Yes. With an avg heart rate of 155 (including at rest), and peak at 176, I really was about to blow a gasket!
Did I look ridiculous at my pathetically slow speed, getting passed by all whole came after me?
The GPS was hazy on that one, but I have a hunch...

Isn't it good to know? Of course. And now you know too.

Seriously, this mountain bike stuff is SOOOO good. Coming down that hill (at 23.2 mph, since you asked) is adrenaline like nothing else. If you live in CO, you must go ride Hall Ranch. It truly is wonderful.

Thanks for the bday present, Dad.

How Much Does Paint Cost?

2009-10-16T11:02:00.003-06:00

So for the last couple months, I've asked this question nearly every time I drive to Denver. Turns out the answer in this case is ONLY $200K!

This is because CDOT has has a fairly robust restriping process going on. I was amazed when I saw that they removed the fogline stripes only to put new ones a foot away. Then, a few weeks later, I saw double stripes, followed by a removal of the new one. I figured this was typical government insanity.

In case you live local and care where our tax dollars are going, here's the official response from my inquiry to CDOT. (Yes, none of you is surprised that I actually contacted CDOT about it, I'm sure!)

The project in question is a striping project that is scheduled to be complete in the next couple of weeks. While we did remove and replace the stripes a couple of times, it was due to the fact that we removed the original striping, replaced it with temporary striping and then came back and put down the permanent striping. We have to do it in phases like this as it is impossible to get the entire process done in one night and we can’t leave the highway with no striping. The project is only $200,000.

Now you know.

Jiffy Pop!

2009-10-15T16:09:00.005-06:00

You all probably heard about the goofy family that built their own airship balloon and whose little boy reportedly went for a trip in it. Now that he's safe, I can share my opinion.

It looks like one of those Jiffy Pop things floating around in the sky!

I bet The Onion could make a great headline out of this event.

Remembering 9/11

2009-09-15T19:13:00.002-06:00

My sister posted this on her blog, and I liked it enough to repost. Cool story.

Returning with Honor

2009-09-09T20:51:00.002-06:00

So as to not sound like I'm just ranting all the time, I'll depart from recent topics for this episode.

As Jolayne mentioned, we took the kids to the Air Force Academy last weekend. Whenever visiting a base or seeing a display, I'm in awe at the power of the US military. It's not because of the size of the guns they carry; it's because of what they teach. They teach lessons that much of America seems to have forgotten. There's much wrong in the military, as everywhere. But there's still some things they teach that are spot on. At the academies especially, they teach you to become better than you are.

While at the visitors center, we came upon a display about the Honor Code. It's a simple code: We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.

For some reason, it was a powerful thing for me to read. It reminded me of the honor code while I was at BYU. At the time, I often resented certain implications of the big-brother nature that came with such a code. However, as I now look back, I'm grateful for such a code and what it represents. Integrity. Imagine how different our world would be if each leader in government, if each person in a position of trust, and if each person in a business were to abide by such a code. The power would be awesome.

We took a moment to teach our kids what it meant to have honor and integrity. Though we've spoken of these terms at home before, the kids quickly forget. I taught them the importance of being different from everyone else; of leading where others would rather follow, and of choosing the right even when no one knows. It was intensely rewarding to see the flicker in their eyes, and I knew that they knew; that for just for a second, they got it. (Then they went back to being normal kids.)

Another phrase we teach at my house is "Where much is given, much is required." We are so blessed in our society. Indeed, in my own life I am blessed with everything I need and much of what I want. I'm in the smallest fraction of minorities, when you consider all who have ever lived and the conditions of their lives. And yet I often find it easy to get ticked off about little things like recycled napkins, continuous feed toilet paper, and voice-prompted phone trees. It's easy to lose focus and to look beyond the mark. It's a problem for our whole society, and keeps us from being better than we are. It's a plague that causes us as a society to blame things on others and shirk responsibilities ourselves. After all, we see it in the news every day. Nothing is anyone's fault. Political agendas seem to rule each day's headlines, and often, simple actions are misinterpreted and laid out as something much more nefarious than originally intended. Nearly everything can be considered a conspiracy if we look hard enough.

So here's a challenge for America. Be better than you are. Stop blaming others for problems and find a way to do something instead of simply complaining. Create yourself an honor code and then commit to live by it. When you leave home each day, commit to return with honor and then act to do so. The outcome will be extraordinary.

And your children will notice.

Things That Bug...

2009-09-09T20:45:00.002-06:00

Recycled Napkins. Have you ever noticed that they're more like plastic than paper and that all they really do is squish the goo you're trying to wipe all over? Are we really saving mother earth by using them? Since nearly all paper is grown from trees specifically grown for that purpose, I have trouble understanding how we're barreling towards certain Al-Goreian destruction by using real napkins.

Educate me, please.

Dogs

2009-09-07T19:36:00.006-06:00

It's been a month and if I'm really honest I haven't had many useful ideas to share with the entire Internet recently. Alas, spending the last few weeks among the masses of America has solved that problem.

Let me start by stating clearly that I like dogs. I really do. I had dogs growing up and I loved them dearly. I just don't like YOUR DOG IN PUBLIC. Now let me explain. Over the last couple weeks I've witnessed people doing some really strange things with their dogs in public. It's been so weird that it's time I spoke up (you know, as part of that whole be-a-good-citizen-thing.)

First, last week a guy brought his two HUGE mastiffs (think Turner and Hooch) into the small office at the local Jiffy Lube while I was waiting to get my oil changed. To begin with, this was socially unacceptable. These dogs were huge and they drool like it's totally in style. The guy (a twenty something frat-boy looking type) kinda smiles at me with a "yeah-I'm-cooler-than-you" look. He worked on getting them a drink of water. Acceptable? Outside perhaps. About a minute after he came in, one of the dogs pukes all over the floor. Acceptable? Not even outside! He swears loudly (the guy, not the dog!) and then only does the most cursory cleanup (by rolling up the carpet the dog puked on and taking it outside, but not actually cleaning any mess.) Does he take the dog outside then? NO! Acceptable? Perhaps in Afghanistan (but I've never been there and so don't really know.) This punk finally takes the dogs outside, but brings them both back in a couple minutes later. YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! I was about to say something (probably not witty and entirely rude) to the guy, but my car was finally done (wasn't nuttin Jiffy about that lube, BTW; took 45 min!)

Second, I was on a flight last week and a lady bring on her dog in a super-chic suitcase that's actually a doggie condo. Why is it OK to bring your dog in the airplane? I know the airlines actually allow this, but if we're honest we all know it's just because they can charge extra for it. The airlines shouldn't be our social barometer. They'd allow you to get on the plane naked if they could charge an extra hundred bucks for it.

Third, we often find that when we go hiking, where there's still leash laws, that dog owners think they're special and don't need to follow the rules; they're in NATURE afterall! In Boulder, you can even get a no-leash permit now, but that's just because everyone in Boulder is special. All too often, a dog comes running down the trail at us as fast as he can, and it freaks my kids out. Then there's usually the obligatory crotch smell that takes place before the dog's owner catches up, says he doesn't bite, and acts like it's no big deal. IT'S A BIG DEAL! Come on, please be courteous.

Finally, today we were at the factory outlets in Castle Rock (a large place) and I noticed "Dog Friendly" stickers on more than one establishment's door. Then I noticed probably a dozen or so shoppers that had their dogs with them. I found dog crap on the grass, and I heard dogs snapping at each other more than once. Many of these dogs were small, granted, but THEY DON'T BELONG AT THE MALL! Let me say that again to be very clear:

YOUR DOG DOES NOT BELONG IN PUBLIC PLACES OF COMMERCE, TRANSPORT, OR ANYTHING ELSE BESIDES PERHAPS A PARK, BEACH, OR OTHER RECREATION PLACE.

I don't care if the dog doesn't bite. That's not my main objection. There's noise, messes, fur, smells, etc. It's just not cool. Just like smoking in public isn't cool. One of my daughters is terrified of dogs, and every time we have to deal with you exercising your rights, you take away one of hers. If you want to take your animal out, that's fine. Do it at one of the cool new doggie parks. Don't do it at Jiffy Lube or the grocery store.

In Colorado now, it seems to be chic for people to bring their dogs into places of commerce. Even if there's a SERVICE DOGS ONLY sign, people seem to think they're special and often ignore them. Then the employees at these establishments rarely say anything, either out of fear that they'll lose business or because the little doggie is so cute. Not cool either.

I'm a big supporter of service dogs. I think they're very cool; never get tired of watching them work, and they never bother anyone, no matter where they're at. I just wish that we'd all dump the "I'm special" attitude and observe the rules and be considerate of others. That's it.

Wow, that turned out to be quite a rant. But remember, it's not that I'm a dog hater.

Things that Bug...

2009-08-03T20:10:00.001-06:00

Continuous-feed toilet paper. Are we such a shoddy society now that we can't even pony up for two-ply perforated squares? Nearly every single commercial establishment has now succumbed to that continuous-feed post-consumer recyclopaper. I bet we give our terrorists better stuff in prison.

Things that Bug...

2009-08-03T20:05:00.004-06:00

Voice-prompted phone trees. They NEVER understand me. Ever. They took an obnoxious IVR concept and made it even worse, if that was possible. And most places are adopting them. Can those darn things understand anyone who speaks English? Today it was Fedex. Yesterday it was the travel agent. They sound so chipper and happy, even when they don't understand a single word I reply with.

What's Old is New

2009-07-16T17:19:00.002-06:00

We were sitting looking at old pictures when Jolayne looked at this one and said, "Look, you're wearing the same shorts today."

Today's shorts:

Feel the love.

Mountain Biking in BC

2009-07-15T17:41:00.004-06:00

One of the highlights of my recent family vacation to Canada was taking a day to go downhill mountain biking at the Sun Peaks resort in BC. The place is only about 6 miles from my aunt's ranch where we were staying, so it was a must do. I went with my brother Kevin, my brother in law Kyle, and some-family-relation-that-I-don't-care-to-figure-out Rylee (we'll say cousinephew).

This was serious downhill, unlike anything I've done before. It's a groomed, sculpted set of trails for bikes; curves are built up to make them faster, etc. They also had a terrain park with lots of jumps. The biggest of them looked like this:

In case you can't see it, the sign pretty much says "you can die if you're stupid enough to go down here!". That wooden jump would take you up about 10-12 feet off the ground, followed by several other large jumps behind it. Needless to say, I went the other way.

The day I took these pictures (during the cattle drive) was warm and sunny. Very nice. The day we went riding was cold and very, very wet. The trails became very muddy throughout the day, and we got about as dirty as I've been in many years. My new socks will never be the same. By the end of the day, the mud on our backsides was inches thick.

But we made it down the 1800' vertical hill 7 times, and it was WAY FUN! Full suspension bikes are the best. You should get one. Come to think of it, I should get one!!!! For now, I just rent them and covet.

We had to wear full face helmets and armor. This was a serious hill. The mud made things quite a bit slower, but it was still a great day, and I had a wonderful time. In fact, I can only think of one thing more fun than biking...
Most everyone took a spill or two, most of them without injury. Sadly, Kevin went over the handlebars just once, but landed on his shoulder, and it's still very much messed up a couple weeks later. He even used the S word (surgery) this week. Let's all pray that he recovers quickly!

Cattle Drive

2009-07-06T19:04:00.002-06:00

I watched my first real cattle drive yesterday (watched is the operative word, as I would have been completely useless to help). It was pretty cool. It ran for about 4 hours and went 16km along the paved highway from my Aunt and Uncle's ranch in rural British Columbia up to the Sun Peaks ski resort where we then pushed them another 2-3km up the slopes to their summer grazing areas. There were over 75 cows total, including two bulls (rest were split between calves and their mamas).

I posted a bunch of pictures on my facebook page, so I won't put them up here. Go see. It's pretty entertaining.

Cell Phone Karma

2009-06-27T09:24:00.000-06:00

There's a bit of truth to this.

Stiff and Sore, But Worth It

2009-06-20T17:26:00.005-06:00

Went biking again today. It was great. I still huffed and puffed all the way up the hill, but felt like it was slightly less puffing than on previous trips, so we'll count that as progress. We did about 10 miles at Hall Ranch and the weather was perfect; overcast and cool, but no rain. I can think of fewer things more fun than riding down the hill almost out of control (but not quite, unless your name is Adam!)

I've come to the conclusion that the ride down is more fun after you've suffered and labored through the ride up. If you take the lift to the top (or that equivalent), it's surely fun, but a little less rewarding since you didn't work for it. Today, we took two circles at the Nelson Loop at the top of the trail to rewards ourselves for all our pumping uphill. The loop runs for a couple miles and is mostly smooth single track with a few jumps and such, and on a great incline such that you can get going pretty fast. Today, my friend Adam was over 30mph coming down that section. That's the kind of adrenaline that says "don't stop!"

Here's some shots that my friend Sam took from our last outing on Memorial Day (to a trail called Apex, which is right behind the Heritage Square amusement park in Golden, CO.

This is my friend Robb, who is always fun to have along. He was getting used to clipped pedals, and it led to some fun pictures as he was a little unsure of things.

In fact, Sam got a great set of burst shots showing a fairly technical section as we came down. Robb has a great expression on his face right before he crashed. Good thing he made it over the handlebars and jumped down without a scratch.

I was wondering in Omaha last week what people do in that part of the country for Mountain Biking. Do they call it "small hill biking" instead, perhaps?

I need a new bike. Thing is, a new bike isn't cheap. Mine is probably 15 years old, and though it's actually in really good shape now that virtually every component has been replaced, it's still older technology and a little too small for me. Anyone want to sell me theirs for really cheap?

Peel Your Grapes, too?

2009-06-16T20:01:00.003-06:00

Went for the first bike ride of the season with Amy and Kristen tonight. Amy did 5 miles, which I was proud of. The rain nearly got us, but at least no tornado warnings for the first time in a couple weeks. Kristen, of course, was all too happy to be pulled in her chariot. She was yelling at me "faster dad, faster" and "beat Amy". I wouldn't let her get out and play at the park, though, until she finished her flour tortilla that was her unfinished dinner. So she sat in the trailer for another 15 min to finish the darn thing while I said "faster, Kristen, faster." Payback, baby.

I'm glad this is the last year of the pulling-a-trailer thing. So not cool for my tough-man biking image.

Only in Utah

2009-06-16T19:59:00.002-06:00

Took this a couple months ago in Utah. Oxymoron!?

For those who can't read the small print, it says "Luxury Dental Spa."

One of these is not like the other

2009-06-16T19:57:00.004-06:00

See if you can spot the subtle difference between these two days:

The first one was at a work event in Omaha last week. The second one was taken in March at another work (golf) event in Tucson. Hm, they're almost the same!

Winter Quarters

2009-06-16T19:49:00.002-06:00

So I was lucky enough to find myself in Omaha last week. Wow, lots to do (BTW, anyone who knows of anything fun to do in those parts, let me know. I get to go back for a full week soon, and boy I'm excited.) During my stay, I stopped over at the LDS Church's Winter Quartersmemorial, a site that commemorates the thousands of Mormon pioneers who stayed the winter while awaiting better weather waiting to go to Utah. They walked 1,200 miles and were kicked out of their homes on multiple occasions. The site, though small, was very well kept and very peaceful. It's the first LDS history site I've been able to visit, so was fun.

My Kids

2009-06-16T19:46:00.001-06:00

Yeah, I'm proud.

PDF: Pretty Dang Funny

2009-06-03T10:55:00.002-06:00

In comment to my recent Wolf Shirt posting, my friend Ryan alerted me to another awesome Amazon product that you really need to purchase:

Playmobil Security Check Point

REVIEW:
I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.
The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I've heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I'll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).

Thanks Ryan. I think Amazon might be my new fun place to hang out online.

Reply To None

2009-05-30T21:27:00.003-06:00

I have a new pet peeve. Actually, I have about 20 of them, and according to my wife, I'm nothing but a petty complainer, but nevermind that. Read about the peeve. I think we need to start a petition that we can send to ALL email-software vendors to request that they remove the REPLY TO ALL button from their software. Never was a worse feature added to a program, really. That REPLY TO ALL button is far worse than the DUH button a friend gave me for my keyboard years ago, because it actually works. The reason it's so bad is because people are magnetically drawn to it for absolutely no sane reason. My coworkers seem to think that if replying to the sender with schedule information or other relatively useless detail is appropriate, then it must be 20x more appropriate to cheerfully include the other 20 people on the message. This happens all day, every day, to the point that my email box is brimming with threads such as the following (all REPLIED TO ALL).

SENDER: We need to have a meeting. Please provide me with your available times.

{aside}You know, email programs have calendars and features that search for freetime, but folks would much rather spam entire groups to ask them when they're free. What year is this, again? 1999????!!{aside}

ME: {replied to sender only} Read my calendar freetime.
REPLIER1: I'm free at 9:00 and 2:00, but I'm getting a colonoscopy on Tuesday. I'll need to stay home on Monday because I'm drinking lots of yummy fluids as I prepare for my exam.
SENDER: Oh, that's too bad, I hope it all goes well. We should sell our software to your doctor.
REPLIER2: My wife has a scary rash that I think might be contagious. Maybe it's swine flu.
REPLIER3: 12pm
SENDER: OK, not everyone is free at a good time, so can we meet at 10:00?
REPLIER1: I said I'm busy then.
REPLIER2: What's the best cream for itchy rashes?
REPLIER3: 12pm
...
You get the idea...

Keep in mind that when you carry a blackberry, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE SENSELESS REPLIES CAUSES MY BELT TO BUZZ IN THE MIDDLE OF MY CLIENT PRESENTATION. By the end of Thursday's presentation, my right hip was so thoroughly massaged from the blackberry buzzing that I considered trying to attach the blackberry to my low back just for some tension relief.

You can't make this stuff up.

Stop the madness.

I move that we also petition that email-software companies to replace that feature with a handy new REPLY TO NONE button. Now that one would be awesome.

Dig the Wolf Shirt

2009-05-30T21:22:00.003-06:00

So there's been quite a bit of noise lately about a certain "Wolf" tshirt on Amazon. It's one of the funniest things I've read in a very long time. You have to read the reviews, because, as in one reviewer's words, "this is why they invented the Internet." This thing made me laugh out loud for minutes, literally! Read it.

More Tales from the Road

2009-05-26T17:47:00.003-06:00

Was actually taken in town, not on the road, but surprisingly, I've seen more than one of these since then in my travels. I guess it's not as original as I 'd thought.

Tales from the Road

2009-05-08T17:33:00.001-06:00

Strange Moment At Macy's

2009-05-03T21:48:00.003-06:00

Jolayne and I went on a date the other night. Wahoo. As part of our date, we were in the lingerie section at Macy's (yeah sure, I'm expecting the jokes to roll on that one!) and saw the following picture. This is real stuff, not made up. That's what makes it so dang funny.

I've just never even conceived that a lady on oxygen might be my special helper in the underwear section of the department store! Jo and I both laughed quite a bit at that one.

Snowplows and Transplants: Very Cool News Story

2009-04-08T17:49:00.003-06:00

I was reading the paper this morning when I came across a short but very cool story about someone doing the right thing. I suppose it makes all the more difference based upon the experience Jo and I had last year with snowplows, where we followed a congo-line of plows home from Denver in heavy snow in a surreal experience that had many gospel metaphors.

Story pasted below:

Snowplow convoy clears way for transplant patient

1 day ago

CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Chuck Forbes has battled liver disease for half of his 59 years. When the time finally came for a transplant, a blizzard blocked his route to the hospital — until a corps of snowplow drivers saved the day.
Forbes was recovering after undergoing transplant surgery Sunday at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver. He and his wife, Ruth, made it there from their home in northwest Wyoming despite the storm that closed roads Saturday in the southeastern part of the state.
"I hope those WYDOT (Wyoming Department of Transportation) guys know they performed a miracle," Ruth Forbes said.
She said her husband had been on a transplant waiting list for about a year when "we got a surprise call totally out of the blue at 7:30 on Saturday morning."
They had already made it all the way to Wheatland, some 250 miles southeast of their home in Meeteetse, when they encountered a road-closing barrier Saturday afternoon. A bit panicked, Ruth Forbes called 911.
"The operator said 'The road is closed, we've been forecasting this storm all week,'" she said. "Then she said 'Hang on, I'll get a patrolman to come talk to you.'"
Trooper Chuck Bloom arrived, talked to the couple and then returned to his patrol car.
"He came back to our car and said 'If you wait right here, the area boss for WYDOT will be right here,'" Ruth Forbes said. "In a matter of 10 minutes, we had a convoy of plow trucks."
The couple followed nearly on the bumper of a plow truck from Wheatland in whiteout conditions.
Other trucks joined their caravan to plow a wider path.
In Cheyenne, one plow led them through the city. South of the city, another snowplow driver got them to the state line.
In all, the escort involved eight snowplows and covered some 80 miles.
They made it to the hospital at about 9:30 p.m. Chuck Forbes underwent his transplant at 7 a.m. Sunday.
"He is having a heck of a time getting out of the anesthesia, but they say that's normal because of all of the meds he's on," his wife said. "But the transplant went wonderfully."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

A Moment of Silence...

2009-04-04T14:03:00.003-06:00

You should all pause from your busy days to take a moment of silence for...

MY DVR!

It's about to croak. Very sad. Makes me want to cry. Take drugs. Valium.

Seriously, can you think of a better invention in the last 20 years? No way. It's wonderful. It's like sticking it to all those networks and their commercials every time I turn something on.

We bought this unit a number of years ago second-hand on eBay to avoid charges from Dish Network. It was the last model that didn't come with the monthly "access" crap fee. It's served us well for years.

Now, it freezes up and does all sorts of indigestion things at least weekly, but usually every couple days.

So I've been out shopping for new services lately. I've long been opposed to cable. I think Comcast is anything but Comcastic. Sadistic might be a better word. Just for kicks I went to their site this week to see what they'd want to charge me to switch to them. Didn't take me long to realize why I don't like them. Too expensive.

So I'm wondering whether I should switch to DirecTV or stay with Dish. Any suggestions? Dish will soon be releasing a DVR that has Slingbox built in (means you can watch your junk remotely via Internet--good for when I travel--or on another computer if your kids are hogging the TV). Direct already has the "start my DVR from the blackberry" scheduling function, which I like. I'm even toying around with the Windows Media Center and a media extender. Hypothetically, I should be able to record HD content over the air and play via my extender, getting 70% of the shows I like to record without spending a penny. Sadly, WMC should more likely be used with the word pathetically than hypothetically. Early tests show it's not quite ready.
The good news is that no matter what I choose, my new DVR will certainly be HD. Wahoo.

The bad news: small mortgage payment each month to support my habit. Have you ever considered that if you spend enough time in front of the tube to justify the $80 bucks a month they want you to spend for the HD DVR, that you're probably wasting too much time and shouldn't be there anyway? Dang.

Pocahontas

2009-03-30T08:37:00.002-06:00

Just now, the kids were sitting down to a spring-break breakfast and turned on Pocahontas. I told them it came out in my late teens, and Amy immediately asked if it was in color back then.

Nice.

Boundaries

2009-03-29T20:58:00.003-06:00

Growing pains. Today at church our ward (geographical congregation) was reorganized with new boundaries. They did a 3-for-2 split because we'd grown so large that the primary (kids group) was over 200 and was breaking fire code. While growing up, I can't recall more than perhaps one such boundary realignment. Yet since I've lived here, this is my third one. Guess that's both good and bad.

Ever since word got out last week that things were changing this week, there's been a buzz of speculation on what the new boundaries would be. You see, a ward for LDS folks is very much like a surrogate family. Therefore, messing with the boundary lines can be quite tramatic. We knew that since a division was about to happen (as someone said today, like cells multiplying) we would undoubtedly lose some friends on the other side of the new lines. When the new maps were released this afternoon and we saw what was to happen, it quickly became apparently that while we're keeping many close friends in our new ward, we're losing many longtime buddies as well.

But, as one friend pointed out, "it's not like you're moving away! You just happen to go to church at a different time!" Good, simple wisdom. We do tend to blow things a little out of proportion, yes. Yet it's nice when you're forced to bump into friends at least weekly in the halls at church. You smile, shake hands, and rub shoulders. It's good. We're often too busy to make it happen otherwise.

To all my friends who have done so much for my family over the last seven-plus years, I thank you warmly. You are definitely my extended family. You'll never really know the impact you've made. Like most folks, my family has weathered some pretty steep ups and downs, and I honestly don't think I would have made it so easily without you. I have enjoyed every minute of serving with you. I have absolutely cherished watching the achievements many of you have made in your own lives. You are some of the most amazing people I've ever been among. Really.

I have also absolutely enjoyed the chance for the last 18 months to teach Sunday School. What a totally fun calling! Best ever. There's nothing better than getting together each week with dear friends, laughing, recharging one another's batteries, and walking out feeling better than when we came in. Complete therapy. Will I get to keep doing this fun stuff? Time will tell. (For those not familiar, we don't choose our assignments or callings, they choose us...)

The good news is that, in perhaps several more years, I'll very likely be saying the same thing about the new ward and its boundaries. Anyone hear Lion King Circle-Of-Life music in the background right now?

The bad news? Two words. 1pm church.

Togetherness

2009-03-29T20:14:00.006-06:00

Wow, the month has flown by. I have had very few witty things to share with the world. Mostly, it's because I've been playing Mr Mom for most of the last two weeks. Jo had some surgery. Let me tell you, HARD STUFF! Anyone want to watch my kids for the next 5 days?! It's spring break week, and ain't I excited... They're good girls, but last week was not our best week. It seemed that all I did was go through the house, pick up crap, and yell "didn't I tell you to do {something}" statements, only to do it all over again.

I know, this is the part where both the women who read my blog laugh confidently with a "serves you right, you out-of-touch male!" However, I've been through this before, and I honestly think this has been the hardest bout. Jo had multi-day recoveries in the hospital with all of our kids, and so I'm no stranger to the Mr. Mom routine. It's just that now they're bigger and tend to make messes and trouble much more readily. Imagine a F-5 tornado with size 1 feet. In my own defense, it's very challenging to try and give an honest day's work to my employer and to watch 3 kids full time. Makes me oh-so-grateful for my sweetheart who does this hard stuff most of the time.

To top it all off, we had the only stinkin' snow storm of the year (yes, at the end of March) this week, and school saw fit to cancel not only the actual blizzard day, but the super-nice-and-sunny day after. Total conspiracy. I'm convinced it's because it was the last day before spring break, and someone somewhere wanted a jump start on some vacation. In fact, we went over to the sledding hill behind our home on Friday afternoon (with literally a hundred other people), and half the snow was already melted. Yeah, good idea to cancel school; maybe it was people on the other side of the street who were snowed in. Not like I live in a state with tall mountains that expects snow or anything. Don't you know it's my government-supported daycare?! So all in all, I've gotten to enjoy much more loving together time than I'd originally planned.

To my kids, I suppose I owe a blanket apology for all the yelling and punishments last week. You surely deserved them (right?!), but perhaps I should have at least smiled while hurling thunderbolts and doling them all out. I love you anyway. I bet you really want your mama to recover quickly (and daddy to take a REALLY long business trip). When I yell at you, know that I'm doing it with love!

You are great kids.

To everyone who's helped us out, you are our angels. You make our lives so much better, and you touch us with your service. Thank you.

Suburban Stupidity

2009-03-08T20:39:00.004-06:00

Today while driving down the street, I found the perfect blogging topic. Small towns tend to do things their own way, and though I really enjoy the town I live in, it has its quirks, too.

First, a few years ago the town was growing very quickly. Growth was so malignant that you'd have to camp out (literally) the night before a builder released new lots for sale in order to get a chance at a good one. (We had our realtor do that for us since we were still living out of state in 2001.) At that time, when all the streets were first plotted, some genius figured it would be a great idea to use only a handful of street names. Where streets ended in cul-de-sacs and such, and then continued at approximately the same position further down, they decided to use the same names. Thus, there are about 4-5 different neighborhoods in our town where the same street name can be found. Hello, people! Who came up with that one?!

So if you don't know which neighborhood you should be looking in, it's very easy to get lost, even in our little town of less than 10,000 folks. Just go google "Echo St" and you'll see what I mean. It's like the town planners had a conversation and concluded that there were no more good names available, so they had to make the most of the totally great names they'd already managed to call dibs on. Perhaps no one was brave enough to stand up and remind the planners at the time that normal people don't all know cross-street numbering like (6000 block vs the 7000 block, etc) the fire department and police. Since none of our streets in the newer side of town are permitted to have numbers, how would we know this unless we're OCD like me?

At the other end of the spectrum is our neighboring town...

First, a little background. Our two towns run into each other in multiple places and are all the same congruent area. If not for the "Now Entering Lovelyland" signs, you wouldn't know you're in a different town. Lovelyland town planners had a conversation a few years ago and concluded that, in order to preserve their independence and chicness, they needed unique street names. So, all the county roads (usually noted by numbers, like CR-11) thus needed to be renamed to more suburban names like Lovely Blvd. It makes the town more lovely, you see. The thing is, my town did the same thing about 5 years prior; WITH THE SAME STREETS! And so, thanks to all the suburban planners out there, we now have a county road known by its number, my town's name (Birch Street), and Lovelyland's name (Silver Birch Street). COME ON, PEOPLE! Does the same road really need 3 different names in under a 5 mile stretch? Is it really worth the expense of re-signing all the roads, and forcing homeowners to notify everyone of their new addresses? Why not just all use the same name?

This is a great example of the ridiculous waste that we see everywhere. I can sort of see why they wanted to rename the county roads and give them more suburban-like titles. Sort of. It makes us suburbanites feel more special. But for each town do it its own way is simply stupid. Now Google Maps will get lost, my GPS will get lost, and the few friends I do have will get lost whenever they feel sorry for me and decide to come visit.

Epilogue-

I forgot to mention my rant about our post office with all this. If 3 street names weren't enough, we also have 2 zip codes. HERE'S YOUR SIGN, I say to all you government types. Turns out I need a zip code assigned from the next city over because the only mail officially in our towns is rural route delivery to PO boxes and not home delivered (dating from before the building boom in 2000). All the automated systems out there (like when you buy something online), thus, think we live in Longmont, about 7 miles away, because I'm forced to use their zip code. I've had dozens of arguments with vendors over the years about where I actually live, as though I'm not bright enough to answer that question reliably without legal assistance. The post office, however, is unwilling to do anything about it because all the home-delivered mail out here comes from Longmont. Thus, they say, we should all have a Longmont zip code, even if we live officially in another municipality. Smart, eh?! Do you think I--or anyone else who doesn't work for USPS--really cares one iota from whence our mail is delivered, so long as it gets to its destination? I think we care lots more about the mail actually getting to us. Instead, we have to deal with mail getting lost because someone used the wrong zip code, nearly 10 years after all the houses popped up in suburbia. The postmaster, in his zeal to make his point, will return mail addressed with the wrong zip code, despite the fact that the entire facility knows EXACTLY where that mail should be delivered. So we are stuck with giving one zip code to the UPS man, and another to the USPS letters. Not like it's the 21st century or anything.

And you thought the economic woes were what got our country in trouble...

(In case you haven't noticed, I'm writing all of this with a big grin on my face. Nothing too serious. Despite the silly small-town antics, I really do enjoy living here. It's just fun to have something trivial to complain about. Better than having big stuff to complain about. Keeps it fun and fresh.)

End rant.

Tagging

2009-03-03T10:07:00.006-07:00

Warning, this is a rant.

So the new fad on Facebook is for people to "tag" one another, asking us to fill in various and sundry questionnaires about the super-interesting parts of our lives. In the last month, I must have received 20+ such tagging requests.

My plea: Stop the madness!

I hardly have time to keep up with the blogs that I follow, write a sarcastic entry of my own every now and then, and watch my friends' facebook status. Now I'm supposed to tell people 2543 interesting never-before-revealed facts about my life, along with the last 1932 books I've read (with full reviews on each), and what I loved best 15 years ago about high school!

No offense to any of you who have sent those, but I'm not completing them. No time, no interest.

In case you hadn't noticed, it's just a new vehicle for the lovely chain emails that we all love to receive. "If you don't complete and forward this message to 20 of your friends, you'll have five years of terrible luck and children will starve in Africa." Uh, ok. I don't forward those either.

You may say "then why are you even on Facebook?" with scorn on your face. My reply would only be that in the interest of being a well balanced individual I choose to not spend every free moment (and some of those paid working moments) needed to complete all such tags.

From here on I hereby declare that tagging will once again refer to my gangbanger friends' graffiti-laden artistic renditions around the community and not the things I'm supposed to do on Facebook in order to prove my friendship and loyalty.

How about instead of tagging, we take that time to go outside and go for a walk, or better yet, come up with some really sarcastic stuff on our blogs?! lol

Get The Door, It's Domino's

2009-02-27T17:45:00.003-07:00

It's Friday night, and we've got RedBox waiting for us, so I just called for pizza for dinner. We've long enjoyed the economical 5-5-5 deal where you get 3 pizzas for 5 bucks each. A while back, it went up to 5.55, so the deal became 555-555-555; a mouthful.

Tonight, I called for the first time in a month or two, and of course due to the crummy economy, the prices have increased yet again (and I'm now noting that the pricese are up 20% in under a year while inflation isn't exactly at 20%; hmmmm).

I digress...

The lady tonight tells me that the pizzas are now six bucks each. I guess that makes it the 6-6-6 deal. I then told her I'd like to order a Satan Special and laughed at my extreme wittiness. I'm not so sure she found it as funny as I did. Do you think sales on this new deal will go down by chance?! Ha.

Sad Reality

2009-02-24T22:55:00.001-07:00

Did you know that a Mounds bar has 100% of the RDA for saturated fat. My whole world is getting ruined by this be-fit thing.

Useless Drivel

2009-02-17T21:44:00.004-07:00

Why do I have nothing useful to say lately? Seriously, I'm having a tough time coming up with anything but useless drivel. My life is apparently pretty boring right now, and my wife has written about all the good stuff. How's that for a pathetic excuse?! Maybe it's just a mid-winter funk.

So here's some randomness:

Congrats to my brother, Kevin, and his wife Candace (who obviously did all the work). They had their fourth child, Joseph, tonight.
Why does President Obama have to come to Denver to sign the stimulus bill into law? If you're spending billions to try and help the economy, why is it so important to spend hundreds of thousands more just to go somewhere special and sign a bill? Oxymoron? Just seems that money could be used better elsewhere, like bailing out the auto industry since that's working so well. Yeah.
I'm so stinking tired of wind and brown, dead landscape. I can't wait for spring and green grass once more. I can live with the brown, but the wind is SO obnoxious. Jo said she saw a traveling trampoline somewhere down the street today. I'd rather have a foot of snow than wind.
Jolayne covered pretty much all the exciting stuff of late, so I won't. For our long weekend, we went to a sweehearts dance, had a great night at a bed and breakfast, paid full price (cuz adults really should) at the Denver Children's Museum, and enjoyed a wonderful 60-degree sunshine day yesterday. It was a nice weekend, with a quick visit from Grandma, but now it's back to work.
I had a great time a few weeks ago at a handgun-safety class. Got to shoot about 20 different handguns with a bunch of friends. What else could be more fun?! The place we went was over an hour northeast, 20 miles past nowhere, but still in our county.
I'm still waiting for the next generation of Dish Network DVR receivers to come out. The upcoming one will reportedly have some additions to the HD DVR stuff, which is like being addicted to crack once you've watched one; you just never want to go back to the way things were before. DVR's are quite likely the best TV invention ever. But the new generation will also have Slingbox built in, which will allow you to stream your recorded content to any computers you like, either in your home or on the road. Being able to watch my recorded stuff from hotels while I travel is pretty cool stuff. On that subject, I've been told by folks in the industry that the best promotions of the year start on Feb 1 annually, so if you're considering updating your satellite or cable package or hardware, now is probably a good time to do so.
By the way, most hotel-based wireless access really sucks. Dialup without the wires. Just thought I'd share.
And finally, why is it that customer service at darn near every company out there is worse than ever? Tonight it was Hertz that treated me poorly. You'd think that in tough financial times, people would try to distinguish themselves so they could keep what customers they still have.

A pretty ugly brain dump. I really need some sort of drug to help me get over it. I can imagine what the TV commercial would be like, along with the long list of possible side effects I might get;

Stupidest Commercial Ever

2009-01-27T12:08:00.003-07:00

Not too long ago, I was absolutely shocked at a commercial I saw. You may have seen it, too. It's an oatmeal commercial that shows a bunch of kids in the back of a van happily eating their oatmeal in bowls.

The Horror!

See it for yourself.

Is this not the most ridiculous thing advertisers have come up with in a very long time? The commercial ends with "Every day should be this good." Do you really think that it's gonna be a good day when kids are spooning warm oatmeal all over your car, rubbing it into the carpets, making designs on the windows, and using it as ammo against their siblings?!

These high-paid Manhattan metro-ites obviously a) have no kids, and b) have never taken care of a child for more than 30 seconds. Fire them all!

I can imagine how the conversation in our van might go with oatmeal:

Amy: Misha, watch this!

~~Amy takes spoon of oatmeal and sticks it to the window to watch it glue~~

Misha: Wow, cool! Let me try.

Kristen: I like oatmeal!

~~fingers in bowl, then on seat, then on window~~

Misha: Uh oh, dad, my oatmeal just fell on the floor.

Amy: Misha! It's getting on my bag, you stupid girl! DAADD!

~~Amy spoons oatmeal onto Misha to get even~~

Misha: AARRGGHH!! DDAADD!! Amy's putting oatmeal in my ear!!!

Dad: Don't make me stop this car! (You know we all hate saying it, and yet we ALL say it to our children with alarming regularity!)

Dad: I'm not sure our benefits will cover therapy for this one...

Yeah, Every day should be this good!

The Bet

2009-01-18T09:47:00.003-07:00

I'm in need of some encouragement. You see, Jolayne convinced me to take a bet. Actually, I'm not sure "bet" is really the right word. It's more of a challenge. For those who don't know Jo, she's extremely diligent about regular exercise (so much so that she often does two workouts a day, with the first one starting before 5:30am most days). I admire her greatly for that. I'm nowhere near that, and I've long been content that way. I really want to be fit, and I take pretty good care of myself. I'm no slob, but I just don't have the motivation to work out religiously like some folks. Over the last couple of years, I've put on a few pounds. Nothing serious that would land me on a primetime TV show, but pounds nonetheless.

Winter has always been a tough time of year for me to stay fit. It's usually cold and/or windy outside, and I'm not really an inside-exercise person. I'd much rather go do some miles on my mtn bike, work in the yard, etc. That kind of exercise works well for me.

For the last couple years, my former employer paid us $150 to exercise regularly for 12 weeks (the morality of that is a whole different story, though!) So I'd exercise for the minimum time, lose a few pounds, and feel better, then go back to my old ways. Easy money, right? My new employer has no such program, however.

Jo has challenged me to exercise 3x weekly for the next 6 months (she even used the word "contract"--gasp!) She, likewise, will do so, but since she's so good at it already, she has to drop to a certain weight. She was worried that I'd drop to that weight too fast, so we each got the harder of the goals.

At the end of the 6 months, whoever has done better will get my commission check that month to use as desired. Nice, eh? I'd like to get a fancy new mountain bike with full suspension, since my current bike, though decent, is probably 10-12 years old and only has front shocks. I'm ready for something more advanced.

So can I do it? Of course, the technical answer would be yes, but winter is a hard time for me. I'm not one who enjoys the treadmill at all; it feels like a hampster wheel. I'm not really a jogger, at all, actually. Running for the sake of running has never thrilled me. Involve a ball, some rules, or SOMETHING, to make it more interesting. And when I travel I find it hard to force myself to go exercise at the hotel. I'm great at going for long walks before or after work when the weather is nice; not so good at the routine version of going to the hotel gym.

It's a good challenge, I know. I need to drop a few pounds to get my BMI where it should be. That isn't really that hard, but the rewarding part for me is to see the difference and to look in the mirror and say "I did that". Trouble is, it's not so super important to me that I'll make it a priority over all other things. That's both good and bad. In the sense of this challenge, it's more bad than good. So encourage me the next time you see me sitting down and eating crackers instead of working out.

Oh, and if I find out that sales are expected to be slow during the commission month, game off... :-p

Bargaining with the IRS

2009-01-13T08:43:00.002-07:00

I got this silly mail from my Dad yesterday and it just made me laugh over and over. Now I understand how he deals with IRS audits.

The IRS decides to audit Grandpa, and summons him to the IRS office.

The IRS auditor was not surprised when Grandpa showed up with his attorney.

The auditor said, 'Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I'm not sure the IRS finds that believable.'

I'm a great gambler, and I can prove it,' says Grandpa. 'How about a demonstration?'

The auditor thinks for a moment and said, 'Okay. Go ahead.'

Grandpa says, 'I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye.'

The auditor thinks a moment and says, 'It's a bet.'

Grandpa removes his glass eye and bites it.

The auditor's jaw drops.

Grandpa says, 'Now, I'll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye.'

Now the auditor can tell Grandpa isn't blind, so he takes the bet.

Grandpa removes his dentures and bites his good eye.

The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Grandpa's attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.

'Want to go double or nothing?' Grandpa asks 'I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between.'

The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there's no way this old guy could possibly manage that stunt, so he agrees again.

Grandpa stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can't make the stream reach the wastebasket on the other side, so he pretty much urinates all over the auditor's desk.

The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win.

But Grandpa's attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.

'Are you okay?' the auditor asks.

'Not really,' says the attorney. 'This morning, when Grandpa told me he'd been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty-five thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you'd be happy about it.'

Compromising Positions

2009-01-12T10:34:00.003-07:00

Jo said she was going to post this one, so I figured I had to beat her to the punch. The faucet on our kitchen sink continually comes loose (due to a lovely design that makes it impossible to get a wrench on the fittings properly.) So every so often I get to lay under the sink and tighten things up as best I can. Jo's dad was working on it last week while visiting, but I felt bad for him and jumped in when Jo snapped these shots.

You could certainly enter your own captions here. Jo's was "new way to do pilates" since I had to keep raising my butt up.

Do You Deal?

2009-01-01T09:41:00.004-07:00

It's come to my attention that my friends consider me the "deal king." I can think of better nicknames, but I can also think of a few worse ones, so ok. I got to thinking about all the places that Jo and I find deals, and thought I'd share a few. In truth, I think she finds way more deals than I do. The toughest part of deal finding is what I call the "Costco Effect." The Costco Effect explains the phenomenon where you walk into a place like Costco (or a web site) and see all sorts of stuff on good deals that you didn't know until right then that you couldn't live without. You know what I'm talking about: the stainless-steel 22 piece barbeque tool set, the 5-pack of flash memory cards, or a 3-pack of 24" summer sausage! We've all fallen victim to those deals.

On the net, here's a short rundown of my favorite deal sites:

Spoofee. I like deal sites that a) show me a picture of the item and b) don't have so many deals that I never have a prayer of getting through them all. Besides, who really needs to know about free samples of glow-in-the-dark nylons, etc. Spoofee meets both of these criteria, has RSS feeds (so you can have the deals pop up on Google Reader or iGoogle, etc.), and has a rating system that shows you whether the deal is really that great. For these reasons, Spoofee is my favorite deal site.
*I have to share, though, that I'm really not a fan of mail-in rebates any more. I never liked them, but I tolerated them for years. Now, unless it's something really compelling, (like the 24" LCD I got a $70 rebate on a few months ago), I won't go through the hassle. Can anyone justify/explain why it would actually take 12-16 weeks to cut a check in 2008?! No way.
Slickdeals. I've only started using this one recently. It also doesn't post so much stuff that I can't consume it. Though it doesn't do pictures. What I do like, though, is that it provides a little more detail about each item, as well as dimming out the items whose deals have expired. It even does a little fire icon to show items that are judged (through some secret algorithm) to be really hot deals. You can do RSS feeds on it, as well. I found several really great items here before Christmas, including a George Foreman grill for Jo that was about 60% off. I find that about half of the really good bargains show up on both spoofee and slickdeals together. They have forums that are very handy for ensuring that deals actually work, that quality of items is as expected, etc. I'm amazed, really, at how much dialog people can have over something simple like gummy bears on sale.
Overstock. I'm not sure if it really qualifies for a "deal" site in the pure sense, but we've found plenty of things here that have worked out well, and their shipping is reasonable, plus their return policy has worked out nicely for us on a couple of occasions. They really do have quite a large selection of stuff, and the quality has been quite good in our experience.
Costco. Another non-purist "deal" site, but lots of good bargains to be had, nonetheless. Costco.com is technically a separate company from Costco, and you can pay online with any credit card (as opposed to AMEX only at real Costco's). The selection is much bigger than the stores, and you can return stuff to stores if you need. I've learned, though, that it's not a great deal just because it's there. The best stuff comes from matching with the coupon books Costco sends you in the mail a few times each year. The best deal I've found: tires.
Chainlove. This is a collection of specialty sites that sell one item at a time from a particular outdoor genre. Chainlove does biking gear (and will shortly be launching a sibling that does pure mountain-biking stuff). The parent company, backcountry.com (based out of SLC), also has several other storefronts that do the same one-item-at-a-time clearance, but for different genres: (can RSS these as well)
dogfunk.com (snowboard gear)
steepandcheap.com (outdoor gear)
tramdock.com (ski gear)
whiskeymilitia.com (skateboard, surf, snowboard, wakeboard, and bmx market)
backcountryoutlet.com (all sorts of discounted outdoor gear)
Woot. I've not actually bought anything from here yet, but their methods are pretty funny. They also sell only one item at a time, but usually add a few paragraphs of highly strange dialog around the item and its description. It's worth a watch just for a laugh, if nothing else. Their discounts can be very steep, but you should be sure of the quality of the items, as some are questionable, according to the forums. Can RSS these as well.

More sites, but I'm not as fond of these:

Deals of America. Though it's not a bad site, there's just too much material for me to consume. I don't have enough time to sit and watch everything that comes up here, and they have hundreds of items each week. I only go here if I'm looking for something in particular that I just need a deal on right now. Can't recall that I've ever actually made a connection and purchased anything, though. But they do have nice little pictures.
FatWallet. This one is another full of discount codes and coupons that can come in handy.

If you have other sites you're addicted to, pass them on. This is a good chance to share and find even more places that will sell me stuff I didn't know I needed!

BTW, Happy New Year.

Christmas Newsletter

2008-12-18T20:08:00.002-07:00

Merry Christmas to everyone. Please see our annual family newsletter, compliments of Jolayne.

A Love Affair

2008-12-18T19:40:00.004-07:00

I'm in love. I'm having a torrid affair. The relationship is such that I just can't hide it any longer. I must proclaim my feelings for... amazon.com. It makes it possible to be a genetically lazy male and still do a decent job with shopping for Christmas.

Seriously, I've done a fair amount of my Christmas shopping online this year, and it's been a totally joyous experience. The UPS man now shows up at my house with presents! What a wonderful thing. No lines, no fighting, and I even get to check reviews and prices, to boot. What could be better? Why would anyone want to go to the mall and wait in line with all the hassle?

And at this point I'm even thinking there's little point in shopping anywhere else online but amazon. They make it soooo easy to spend money. Their prices are nearly always the absolute lowest. Their customer service has always been very good for me, and their web site was designed by some smart people who actually considered my experience. It's simply wonderful. All you holders of Amazon stock should thank me for helping them make their sales goals this year, because I've sure done my part!

Let's just hope it all gets here in time this year (slight faux pas last year due to the blizzard and all; or so goes my excuse).

Spontaneity

2008-12-14T20:47:00.002-07:00

Today at church our bishop, who was conducting the meeting, said he wanted to take a "slightly different format" to things. That's when bells and whistles should start going off in any sane person's head. I "knew" right then that I'd be involved with what was coming.

The bishop said he was going to call a few of the congregation up to speak spontaneously about their experiences attending the temple this year. Of course, I won the lotto and was selected! Funny how we so often know ahead of time when we're going to be picked for those types of things.

Amy leans over to Jolayne and says "Did Dad know he was going to get picked?" Jo says "Nope." Amy then replies very triumphantly, "heee heee hee hee hee," absolutely loving the way it was going down.

Yep, funny stuff, Amy.

Good thing I don't freak out about that kind of stuff (which is likely why he knew he could pick on me).

The Art of Possibility

2008-12-08T20:30:00.003-07:00

Two years ago I attended a conference for work that included a presentation by motivational speaker Benjamin Zander, who is also the conductor for the Boston Philharmonic. He is one of the most inspiring people I've ever heard speak, and I've been looking for something that shares who he is that I could post for some time. Finally found it.

This one gives some better background about who he is.

When he speaks, he shares the things that we commonly place over our own heads that limit our achievements. He provides simple ways to view things that can help you to be more positive, opening new possibilities. It's great. If you ever have a chance to hear him speak, jump at it. Otherwise, get his book, The Art of Possibility, off Amazon. It's cheap.

Fishing

2008-12-08T19:52:00.003-07:00

OK all you female types who accidentally stumbled on this rugged, handsome, one-of-a-kind blog. I'm gonna give you a tip for Christmas: the perfect gift for him. As I was penning my Sweet Nothings entry, Amy came down to the office crying.

"What's wrong, Amy?"

"I need your claw thing."

"Why do you need my claw thing?"

"Because I accidentally dropped Mom's earring down the drain."

{lots of crying, followed by dad saying something insenstive, yet witty, to his eldest daughter}

Enter "the tool".

{dun dun dun}

I should clarify something before continuing. The PERFECT gift would be an Acura TL.

Let's not mix signals here, afterall.

But the next most perfect gift (for under $10) would be a flexible grabber (about $5 on google). Seriously, if you don't have one at your house, you NEED to go shopping. Buy 3 of them. The kids will have fun grabbing one another's skin on Christmas morning. What could be more fun?! You push the spring-loaded end and a claw comes out of the other end. When you let go, the claw retracts, grabbing whatever is just barely beyond your reach. They're great for the garage, but invaluable for a home with young children.

Or dads.

They also come in magnetic varieties. You need both.

These things come in handy all the time. Tonight, it came in handy to fish out the earring on the first try. Peace and harmony restored!

By the way, sweetheart, I need a new one. The kids have broken mine... :-)

Sweet Nothings

2008-12-08T19:24:00.006-07:00

Tonight we made a gingerbread house. Mind you, my use of the word "made" is a little nouveau. When I was a kid, "make" included the connotation of actual baking. Today, "make" means $9.95 for the pre-fab kit. Ahh, progress! But you're getting me off of my point.

My point is that while we were creating our sweet habitat, I expected Ozzie-and-Harriett styled-conversation. You know, stuff like "gee, golly, Dad. This sure is swell." Afterall, it's blowing snow outside and my kids are gathered around the table with sticky fingers. However, if you included non-dubbed dialog to accompany this pic above, you'd hear things like:

"SSTTTOOPP! MOMM! She took my gumdrop."

"Hey! That's my tree!"

{insert dad yelling assorted orderly commands}

and my favorite of the evening,

"It looks like bird poop!"

What?! Huh?! Bird poop?

That last one was offered by none other than my wife, made of course in reference to my attempt to do windows on our house. The nerve!

A little history. I've always been known as the one with no artistic talent whatsoever. When I was a kid and mom got us all porcelain ornaments to hand paint, mine was the one that always needed to be repainted by someone else. When doing art in elementary school, people would often say "what's that?" even after I explained my drawing. Yes, I'm really that bad.

To illustrate the contrast, here's "their" side of the house.

and here's my side of the house:

I suppose the window does have a certain bird-poop look to it. I prefer to think of it as yellow creativity.

So if you ever need any window work, now you know who to call.

The final product:

Despite the windows that will need an HGTV makeover, we all had a fun time assembling the house.

By the way, for the last couple weeks, I've had a dearth of things to post on my blog. Nothing came to me. Thanks to a good insult tonight by Jo, now I'm back on my role. Thanks, sweetheart.

Life Lessons

2008-11-17T00:08:00.002-07:00

I picked up a little morsel tonight that I thought you would all profit from:

It's generally preferable to have an actual reservation at the car-rental agency if you expect your name to appear on the big board! Apparently, not having a reservation will cause you to not show up in the system. Go figure.
It's generally preferable to make an actual reservation at the hotel you want to stay at if you expect it to have any rooms left when you arrive. They don't ask other people to leave just because you arrive without a reservation. Hmmm.

So I thought I'd made reservations for my latest trip, but it turns out I was mistaken. Whoops. Good news is that after calling for help, I have a room, although at a different place, and I have wheels that will be fine for the week. (In my defense, I did try to make the reservation weeks ago, but it erred out and I simply forgot to do it again. Too bad close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades...)

Lesson learned.

Crackberrys

2008-11-09T16:13:00.003-07:00

I've seen it all now, I think.

Any of you who travel with any regularity have no doubt observed the guy or gal who thinks he/she's just too busy to stop the phone call long enough to use the bathroom at the airport. A least once a year I have the pleasure of sharing some bathroom time with the guy who's sporting the too-cool bluetooth headset, which allows him to tend to his bio-business while continuing his phone call. And since he's just talking away it's rather apparent that no, he's not on mute.

Dude, on behalf of every other traveling American out there, I'd like to share with you that this is not cool! Not even a little bit. You need therapy. You need to have your phone taken away. You need public ridicule. What the heck does the guy on the other end think you're doing, anyway?!

But as if that weren't the worst bathroom infraction one can encounter in an airport, I think I have a new chart topper. This week I tended to business next to a guy who was standing at the urinal--I'm not making this stuff up--with his blackberry in one hand while he texted/emailed as he was doing his business! Um, what do I even say about that? Certainly the hand-eye coordination he employed was commendable, BUT PUHLEEZE! I can only hope the next time he does it, the darn thing falls into the urinal, because that's where it rightfully belongs.

Now I know the true meaning of the phrase "Crackberry." It has nothing to do with ownership of such a device, but how you use it. Say no to crack.

Armrest Wars

2008-11-09T15:21:00.004-07:00

Anyone who has ever been to a movie theater or on an airplane has done it at least once. You know you have, you just won't willingly admit it in public, right? What's that, you ask?

... No no no, not that! Come on, keep it clean! This is a PG-rated blog, after all. I'm talking about how we have all fought over control of the armrest at one time or another.

As personal space in public places--particularly on airplanes--continues to decrease, it's obvious that the traveling public has gotten progressively more serious about elusive control of the all-important armrest. Afterall, he who controls the armrest controls the comfort.

I'm guessing that if we took a straw poll, most everyone would say that when they purchase a ticket somewhere, they expect that they are puchasing usage of a seat and a couple armrests, not half an armrest. Yet there just ain't enough armrests to go around.

I used to feel kind of sorry for the guy in the middle seat when I was lucky enough to be on either side. Afterall, he can't really lean away at all (thus the reason I prefer window seats). But as airlines have squeezed more of the unwashed, overweight public into ever smaller stalls on planes, I find now that feeling is now often fleeting. Just like you, I'm fighting for every inch I can get, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. The key is in how suave you can be about it. And so, as we're quietly pretending to read our books and papers, the real-world chess match is always underway, from the second we size one another up at boarding time.

First, reconnaissance. We observe the boarding area for any types that we need to start willing to sit as far away from us as possible. Usually this involves yelling, crying kids whose parents say things like "it's just a phase" or some guy whose hygenic aroma can be shared from 5-10 feet away. Or there's the guy who's talking SOOOO loudly on his cell phone about how awesome he is, usually with a number of choice expletives. Or there's my personal favorite, Mr I'm-sick-and-shooting-snotballs-but-still-gotta-fly. Oh yeah, we ALL want to sit next to you!

And so we all start silently hoping we'll be lucky enough to sit somewhere in between these folks.

Then the charade continues with the NASCAR-derived boarding process (and no, Southwest airlines isn't the worst. In fact, I think their boarding process is actually better than the other guys now). Most of us are just waiting to lunge at the gate agent the second our number is called to board. After all, if we don't get on first, there won't be any room in the overheads, thanks to the brilliant pay-for-all-checked-baggage plan we all now enjoy. If you're not first, you're potentially really up a creek trying to find a place to put your carryons. I can't stand it when I have to put my bag 5 rows behind where I sit, because it's easier for a salmon swimming up stream to spawn than it is for me to retrieve my bag after landing.

Often, people will make up a reason to board first. I used to chuckle when I'd see a guy traveling with his 10 year-old daughter, who thought he needed extra time down the jetway and thus needed to board first. Right, dude. My favorite is the "oh, I wasn't paying attention" guise where some last-row-to-board guy gets in with the first group, acting like he doesn't know what he's doing until he's in front of the agent. Sure, we all believe you, buddy.

ASIDE
A friend told me recently that he prefers to NOT board in the first group on Southwest, since it's open seating. He'd much rather board in the second group, so that he can size up where all the nut jobs have elected to sit and then choose his location more strategically. It's really funny how we all strain to control what little parts we can, in a place where we are most certainly not in control.
/ASIDE

Then, once we're finally settled into our seats, the game begins in earnest. He shifts ever so slightly while feigning to read a magazine, and his arm moves over just a fraction. I then adjust my recline and press my elbow back on the armrest casually, indicating that I'm not yet ready to cede the victory. Turning pages on a newspaper is often an exercise in seeing just how far the other guy is willing to go...

Back and forth we go, sometimes for the duration of the flight. But occasionally there is a great equalizer: bathroom breaks. Everyone gets up and does their business. Then we come back and reset for the next round, having leveled the odds. I've even observed on some flights where this game includes the dimension of floorspace. People will sometimes declare the space under their seats to be in their possession as well. Yup. Or, even worse is the guy who thinks he can sit with knees spread, awkwardly touching his legs to mine. Oooohhhhh, the mere thought sends shivers. Yuck. Those guys are certainly the pros. They know just how to maximize their space.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a sadist by any means. We all need our comfort. And we all come in different sizes. But I'm certainly glad that armrest is there. It's a sort of clear property line that normally keeps most parts of the guy next to me in their rightful spots. I can't remember the last time I traveled with someone I didn't know and permitted the armrest to remain up. Gross! Not happening. Anyone who's traveled lots has at one time or another had a miserable flight experience of being next to a guy who doesn't really fit in his seat, and thus declares that 20% of your seat will serve as his overflow. Not fair. I could barely walk after 3 1/2 hours when that happened to me. I was so glad when the airlines decided he needed to pay for two seats if he occupied them. Yay for the little guy! Boo for seatbelt extensions.

So all of you up there in your elitist first class, I hope you're enjoying your legroom. But more importantly, I hope you also enjoy that your armrest is more than 1.5 inches wide!

Go Cougars!

2008-11-02T18:00:00.004-07:00

I was able to attend my first BYU Football game in at least two years last night with a bunch of friends. We drove up to Ft Collins (about an hour north) to watch them play an away game at Colorado State. I was surprised at how much beer was flowing at this game. Wow. Nearly everyone in green had at least one cup in hand. Those in blue...not so much. :-)

We had a great time. It's a nice field, and we were very entertained by the back-and-forth scoring nearly the entire game. BYU is presently in the top 20 (though we were top 10 before an ugly loss a few weeks ago). It's the first time in a long time that we're back in the national spotlight, and it just raises the fun level for everyone.

As is often the case, the last 5 minutes on the scoreboard were the most intense, and we wound up coming away happy after a close win. In two weeks we're taking the kids and another large crew down to Colorado Springs to attend another away game at Air Force. If the weather holds, it'll be great fun. If not, we'll practice staying warm.

One neat thing was that at the end of the game, after all the CSU fans made their hasty exit, the BYU players all trotted around the entire perimeter of the stands, high-fiving all the Cougar fans. It was a classy way for them to connect with those who don't often get positive sports role models, and there were a number of kids with beaming faces. These guys are top notch.

Airline Safety

2008-11-02T17:33:00.004-07:00

OK, here's a few questions I've had for some time now. Maybe one of you is much more intelligent regarding airport security and can answer these questions.

Why do you have to show a boarding pass as you go through the magnatometer in some airports but not others? Shouldn't it be consistent? Is there any actual security value to needing a boarding pass?
Why do I never set off the detectors at some airports, but often at others? It's obvious to me that they are not all set with the same sensitivity. Does that mean that I'm safer at some airports than others? It's kind of like when taking off your shoes wasn't quite mandatory. Some airports thought you had to do it and others weren't as concerned.

I actually asked these questions a while back to a TSA guy at the airport. The answer was a cursory government-smokescreen response: "the TSA boss at each airport gets to choose." Reassuring.

If something is a threat, is it not a threat for all of us and at all locations? I have trouble with some of the silly things that we're put through now, all under the guise of heightened security. The truth is that many of the security protocols do very little to protect us from those who would do us harm. I believe they are mostly there for a cosmetic reassurance to help the traveling public feel more confident. If a guy really wanted to do something bad, needing to show a boarding pass, for example, would do little to stop him. He could either pay $500 for a ticket (big deal if you're on a mission to destroy) or play with Photoshop for 5 minutes.

I absolutely support what the TSA is trying to do, and their task is nothing small. These men and women are our first line of defense against too many crazy sociopaths who think airplanes are fun to destroy. I just wish some of the procedures were considered a little more thoughtfully. But after these comments, let's hope I don't show up on a no-fly list somewhere soon. :-)

On the upside, I'll be allowed to take more than 3 ounces of toothpaste on the plane again sometime next year. Small victories...

More Traveling Fun

2008-10-28T00:00:00.003-06:00

Apparently my fun with flashing lights wasn't enough last week in Portland. No sooner had I checked into my hotel in southern Cal tonight than the hotel fire alarm started going off. At first, the staff came on the PA and said to ignore it a couple times. Then they changed their minds and told us to evacuate the building. Hmphhhh. I'm tired.

So a couple hundred people filed down the stairs (I was on the top floor), but at least it was still 70 degrees outside. Let's all be glad there was no actual fire, because the Fire Dept didn't actually roll up for about 20 minutes. Not sure on that one, but seems a little odd. I can't really trash firemen, though, cuz they're off limits. :-)

Every few minutes, the staff told us to move further away from the hotel, perhaps just to keep us all interested. When the FD finally did arrive, the guys jumped out with their full gear and SCBA tanks and went inside. Funny. I decided I needed a drink and so went down into the parking garage to my car to get a bottle of water. (No need for comments about my frame of mind in going into the garage, btw!) There were a couple of firemen down there checking it all out. Kind of made me laugh that guys like me were down there doing our thing and they were down there doing theirs. No one told us not to go there.

Needless to say, no fire. 45 minutes later, we got the all clear and the firemen went back to their poker game or whatever it is that firemen do while waiting for some doof at a hotel to pull the alarm.

Phew.

New Sponge Day!

2008-10-26T17:50:00.003-06:00

There's some things in life that are just worth celebrating. For me, it's new sponge day. Come on, you've all experienced it. You go along doing dishes with an ever more disgusting sponge as your tool, only subconsciously realizing that you're probably just moving the grime around. Then one day, the sponge fairy comes to visit, and presto. You now have a nice, clean sponge in its place. At our house, that happens pretty regularly (thanks, Jo).

Jolayne was kidding me recently that she can very often hear me whenever she breaks out a new sponge. Usually, she's somewhere down the hall when she hears, "O, I love new sponge day!" And no, I'm not embellishing there. (And there's the proof that I do a large amount of dishes at our house!)

So let's celebrate the little things in life and all give three cheers for new sponge day. Next time you're in the dog house, you might just bring home a new sponge. It could do wonders for your problems.

Dinner and a Show

2008-10-23T21:33:00.005-06:00

It's been a couple weeks since I've come up with anything witty enough to be publicly shared. Even now, no wit is to be found between my ears. But I have to share something anyway. Tonight, however, I was walking around Portland when I stumbled on a Macaroni Grill. Yum, I thought, so I doubled back and went in. After ordering, I was settling into the page-turning USAA magazine (it's a freeby from my insurance company; just shows how pathetic I've become).

I'd cleverly thought to bring along for some 8/5x11 dinner companionship when the waitress mentioned something going on directly across the street, directly across from my window. Some guy apparently had another guy in a sleeper hold, with a good 15-20 people standing by watching. Apparently, in Portland, that's a perfectly acceptable behavior. From my vantage point, it seemed like one of the onlookers was a security guard. Also, apparently, interdiction wasn't part of his job. A few minutes later, a single cop jogs up. Then, moments later, a couple cop cars roll up, code 3. As if that wasn't enough, transit police then showed. Fast forward a few more minutes and there were about a dozen cops. Bike cop then rolls up. This was getting entertaining. All it really needed was more cops.

Salad comes.

Salad was tasty.

Next, (and I'm not making this up) a hook-and-ladder fire engine pulls up. My joke was that they needed the long ladder in order to get in close because there were so many cops. Why on earth do you need a block-long fire engine for such an event?! Few more minutes pass and then finally the ambulance shows up. That order seem a little backwards to anyone else?

For the next 20 minutes, there was all sorts of hussle outside, but the strobes got a little annoying after I started twitching nervously... :-) Not entirely sure what happened in the end, but they eventually loaded a guy into an ambulance. Couldn't see too well after the blindness settled in from those strobes.

I don't generally enjoy going out to eat alone, for obvious reasons (I have no friends). But tonight, with my trusty companion USAA magazine (yawn) and the entertainment outside, it wasn't bad. The grilled salmon was quite good, too.

Now you know.

Is China Breakable?

2008-10-05T20:42:00.003-06:00

I'm on my way home right now from a visit with Grandma in the middle of nowhere, CA. (That's about 3 hrs north of Sacramento and an hour from the nearest puddle-jumper airport). Took Misha with me this year since Amy got to do it last year, and we dug for things to do in the mighty town of Mt. Shasta. Frankly, that's a tall task to accomplish, but if you ask Misha, I did it pretty well. She wanted to go back over and over to the fish hatchery, after all. I'll tell her story in another post.

Grandma is moving to an assisted living place in Phoenix, in a couple of weeks, and so most of the visit was taken up with moving furniture and packing stuff. Grandma appears to have gotten over the first emotional blow with a move like this, and she's now unloading junk like there's no tomorrow (pun intended). She's very matter-of-fact about the whole thing, which is refreshing.

Grandma bequeathed her nice china set to us, which was very nice of her. We thus spent many hours trying to figure out how to get it home for the least cost and fewest casualties. After flip flopping a few times, I'm now sitting in the airport in Sacramento with a gifted suitcase full of precious china, hoping it makes it the remainder of the way home without breakage. I managed to fit about half the set into the bag, and the rest will follow with the movers to Phoenix, where I'll figure out the rest of the story somewhere down the road. In case you didn't know, china is pretty heavy stuff. This roll-on bag is right at its 50lb limit, helping me to remain that buff specimen of masculinity that you all know I am... :-)

Poor Misha won't get home until well after midnight, and she has school tomorrow. Add to that a delayed flight and it's going to be a pretty tiring day tomorrow. But hey, it's all about the china, right?! ...

Perspective

2008-09-28T20:06:00.003-06:00

I'm going to break my no-work-stuff rule this time for obvious reasons. Yet I'll try to keep things generic enough to be mildly entertaining. If you actually want details, ping me on the side and I'll fill you in.

After a number of years, I chose to leave my current employer this week. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, and one that never got easier by following traditional weigh-the-facts type discussions. You see, I had a good gig going there. I had friends, respect, a good assignment, and great upward mobility. Some people thought I was crazy to leave. Maybe I was. And yet, there was something in me that said I should look beyond my comfort zone, consider a bigger picture, and take a leap of faith. I can say for sure that there were multiple times in the last couple weeks where I wondered if I was leaping right into a brick wall of some sort, though. To boil it down, I guess it all comes down to a simple word: "perspective."

I've wanted to change what I was doing for some time now. Not because I had some crummy job, or because my manager was a jerk (he wasn't). I simply wanted to experience more of what was out there in life. Whether that was with my current employer or not wasn't really a part of that equation for me at the time. A few months ago, a chance to have that change kind of fell into my lap, and now here I am today.

I've been taught in my life that when the really hard decisions come along, that after careful prayer, pondering, and study, that the decision should be "there" somewhere in front my my face and that once that decision is made, I was supposed to feel good about it and move on, reveling in having followed "the recipe." This lesson taught me it doesn't always work that way. In fact, I think I felt crummier after making my decision than I did before. But it wasn't the kind of crummy that really had me questioning my choice in any major way. Rather, it was the kind of crummy that I knew I was going to have to do some things that would be very hard. I'm not the type who likes to let people down. Sometimes that's a real fault. I'm always very accommodating, and I didn't want that to change now. Having to look at the leaders I respect in the eye and tell them I was leaving was hard. But on the upside I finished a major project that made a real difference, and I wasn't exactly leaving things undone.

Leaving this job has taught me lots about leadership, about choices, and about what's most important in life. Sometimes, leaving the "sure thing" for something unknown around the next corner can be very scary. But I'm sure it will be rewarding, too. Besdies, I'm not really leaving anything that's truly important to me. I still have the same friends, though we won't interact as often. I'm even taking most of my mentors with me, which I thought was pretty amazing! (Makes it sound like they all squished into a little shoebox, eh?!) The biggest lesson of all in this whole charade, though, has been that the Lord has everything under control, and that if we simply have the courage to follow and do as we should, everything will work out in the end. That's no promise for what will happen around the next corner, just what will happen in the end. I guess we all learn that a little more each day.

Perspective.

Cell Phone Greetings

2008-09-21T17:50:00.003-06:00

Here's a rant for ya. Today I'm mad at the automated greetings on the voicemail systems of cell phones. You know, the part that comes on after your message and says 'press 1 to hear things you don't care about, press 5 to repeat these options, press 7 to order a pizza, press 9 to learn Tongan' and so on. THEY DRIVE ME CRAZY. Worse yet, you can "do nothing" and lose 30 seconds of your life that you'll never get back while this prerecorded lady drones on and on about nothing. The least they could do is give her some super-sexy voice or something.

On some systems, they've had the good sense to make #1 skip all the junk and just go to the message-leaving part. But apparently there's no consistency in the industry on this, and on other systems #1 does nothing but anger the prerecorded lady and make her repeat everything from scratch, all in an effort to simply tick me off further. It's working.

Can we not have some consistency here?!

My plea to the mobile-phone industry: please make #1 skip all junk and go to the good part on all voicemail systems. Better yet, skip all the crummy messages, period.

We should start a petition. I'm sure there's a conspiracy to be uncovered here somewhere.

Ups and Downs

2008-09-21T17:11:00.008-06:00

Saturday I went mountain biking.

It was awesome!

It was so awesome!

It was almost better than sex.

Wait a minute, let's not be unreasonable here!

But boy was it fun. The weather was absolutely perfect (70 and clear), and there weren't too many people to observe all my bad techniques. I'm ashamed to say it was the first real mountain-bike trip I've done in Colorado. And we started with a biggie. A friend, Ken, and I went to Hall Ranch in Lyons, about 20 minutes from here. It's right at the base of the mountains, and all trails lead only one direction... UP! We bit off more than we bargained for, but it all turned out good. The round trip was almost 10 miles, and I think we did about 1,200 feet vertically (though the site we used said 2300, which sounds nicer to post!) It was the most challenging terrain I'd ever ridden, with a couple miles being extremely rocky (think big, steep boulders and such that are more suited for climbing than riding).

Side Story:
While riding in a state park in St. George, Utah back at Spring Break this year, my kids learned a very valuable lesson about Ups and Downs. You may recall my rant about this. They insisted on riding as far down the hill as possible, only to learn that for every mile you ride down hill, there was another mile back up that hill to the car. It was a great life lesson. Luckily, I had that lesson reaffirmed yesterday, but in a more positive way because we did the UP part first. :-)

The trail guide said it would take 1 1/2 hours. We took 3 1/2. Ha. But it was really an amazing trip. The going up part was surely hard. I thought I was going to swallow a lung more than once. First time I ever ran out of water in my hydration pack. And there were a few times where I wondered how many limbs I might lose before returning home. But as I do more of this biking stuff, I'm learning that confidence is really key. As I've become a little more confident in my technique and abilities (though they are nothing fancy), I find that I'm actually safer. Turns out that stopping on a steep, rocky section isn't so safe and that the right amount of speed is actually a much better choice.

Once we got to the top of the trail, there was a nice loop with a single track that was built for going fast. The views of the Rockies were incredible. And then as we began the ride down the adrenaline kicked in. Now I understand why people do this kind of stuff. I couldn't stop! It was absolutely addicting. Every time I'd stop to rest, I just wanted more. Riding down the hill at an almost-but-not-quite-out-of-control clip was amazing! It made all the uphill sweating worth it. Most rewarding.

At the end of the trip, we were completely spent but very content. I'm even really happy that my old junker bike is working so well. I was ready to toss it a few months ago. But after some good adjustments and a few minor repairs (thanks Mitch), now I'm ready to keep it for a while longer. The fact that we made it home without any crashes was also a great blessing, and cause to go again! So next time, come with me (we're probably going next weekend). It's one of the most fun things a person can do. You owe it to yourself. As Ken said, we think it beats skiing. Besides, it's always more fun when you can trash talk the whole time! :-)

The Posse

2008-09-18T09:39:00.003-06:00

I'd like to share a concept a friend at work taught me a while back. It's really stuck with me as one of those "life lessons." He calls it The Posse. You all know what a posse is. Most often we associate it with the Sheriff, or perhaps the Old West. I think of the posse as that group of men in Tombstone days who the sheriff called when someone needed help or a bad guy needed catching. These men came from many different walks of life, but when duty called, THEY RODE. It didn't matter if funding was available, if guyA was friends with guyB, etc. They simply rode when there was a need.

Life isn't all that different today. We all have events in our lives and in the lives of those near and dear that require the posse to ride. In a career sense, having a posse is SO important. It's via your network and friends that the real work so often gets done. One thing I've learned in my job is the great value of that posse, and how the good old mantra 'what goes around comes around' is so true.

But as I think about it more, the posse in the other-than-career life is just as important. Last year, when we had a serious crisis in our family, I was absolutely amazed as the posse of our friends "rode" and came to our rescue. Those are events I will never forget.

And so, I end with two questions.

Whose posses are you a member of? Do they know it?
Do you have a posse that can ride when the need arises, whether at work or at home?

Building Bleachers

2008-09-15T18:06:00.003-06:00

Last Friday was the annual volunteer day at work for a girl scout camp up in the mountains. It's always one of my favorite things to do at the end of each summer. The camp is about an hour's drive, and it's situated right at the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. I've been 6 or 7 years now, and the weather is usually pretty beautiful. The leaves on the aspens are usually just beginning to turn. This year, however, things were a little different. For starters, it was only about 45 or 50 degrees. Usually it's in the 70's. And of course it was raining. I'm amazed whenever I go into the mountains at how quickly the weather can change. Over the course of the time we were there, the weather literally changed from rain to overcast to sun and back again about 3 times. Funny stuff.

One of the things that makes this volunteer day so fun for me is the chance to build things. I always sign up for the construction projects; they're the most fun. When you get a bunch of IT geeks trying to build real stuff as opposed to the virtual stuff they spend most of their time building, it can be quite comical. This year we built bleachers to go near a horse arena. All we had to go off was a hard-to-read plan that had been copied blurry. The plan wasn't that good anyway, so we added a few of our own ideas to the project. I have to say, though it took us quite a while to actually get started (and more than one "oh no, let's do that again" moments, the two bleachers we made actually turned out quite well. Since we were concerned that the original design wouldn't support all the weight needed, our additions ensured that there wasn't anyone who could sit on these guys and break em.

The final product. What's a perfect day when you can be in the mountains using power tools?

Hilarious Seinfeld and Gates Commercial

2008-09-05T14:10:00.001-06:00

Just Tell Me!

2008-08-31T09:43:00.002-06:00

Here's a little pet peeve.

Have you ever gone somewhere and been interacting with others for a while, only to go into the bathroom and learn that you have some nasty piece of half-eaten food stuck somewhere in your teeth? Smile!

Happens to me all the time!

Come one, people. If I have half a picnic stuck in my teeth, tell me! How else am I supposed fix the problem? Instead, you like to ignore the whole thing, silently thinking, "He has almost a whole picnic stuck in his teeth!" the entire time.

Some of us are genetically prone to what I am dubbing "picnic tooth." It's not our fault! I'm sure we could get government protection as a disability class. I could probably even get a handicapped parking placard, a special box to check when I do my taxes, and certainly a discount on my hefty medical premiums for the whole thing.

My only saving grace is that I work from home and rarely actually interact with real people!

Bees... Here's Your Sign!

2008-08-31T09:23:00.004-06:00

If there's something in life that I just HATE doing, its climbing on the roof to shoot and kill wasp nests! It's right up there with puke cleaning. Yesterday, I emptied 2 1/2 cans of spray on a couple new nests--which, incidentally are always in hard-to-reach places on the 2nd story--and found that the very resourceful beasts have now found a way into the eave near our master bath. I have nightmares that they get into the attic, build huge nests, and take over everything. After shooting all of them that I could, I took some spray foam to fill the gap they were using, and it was obvious that the ones I didn't kill were kinda ticked at me the rest of the day for filling in their hole.

Another fun mental image. Last year, I ran out of spray one day, so I took my pressure washer up on the roof to make battle with the beasts. Afterall, you gotta use the tools you have, and it seemed like the proper tool for the job. I could not bow away from the call of battle. I can imagine what that must have looked like for passers by as I was trying to shoot the little snots out of mid-air! :-) Had anyone had a camera, I would have paid dearly.

Here's Your Sign

So here's a thought. All the literature says you should go kill bees at night when they are all at home watching TV in the nest. Come on! What genius thought that one up?! Can you imagine me up on the roof at 10pm, not able to see anything, shootin' wasp nests like a madman with spray. As the bees take a timeout from watching American Idle to come and get me, I'd of course fall off the roof (power washer in hand), and then get stung 100 times, not having actually seen any of the little buggers BECAUSE IT'S DARK!

As Bill Engvall says, "Here's Your Sign!"

So the next time you see someone on the roof with a can of spray (or even a pressure washer), shooting nasty wasps, be glad they're doing it during the day and stop to give them a cheer. And DO NOT post the pictures online.

The Multitasking Myth

2008-08-28T09:56:00.004-06:00

So often these days, we try to do multiple things at the same time. I routinely hear people, both at work and outside, say that they're multitasking. The funny thing is that we humans are single-threaded beings and are pretty much incapable of such behavior. In non-computer terms, we can only do one thing at a time physically (unless you count breathing and blinking in there). Any yet, we all live under this myth that we can actually do a bunch of things at once.

The younger generation is even worse. They like to listen to their iPods while watching TV, surfing on their laptops, while eating dinner, (and probably painting toenails!)

With blackberries and such all the rage today, it gets even worse. People try and do all these things driving down the freeway (not that I ever do it, you know!) I've even been in bathrooms (usually at the airport) where the guy next to me is on a phone. Can you say L-O-S-E-R? That, my friends, DOES NOT QUALIFY AS MULTITASKING!!!

In my work, I often engage with people from around the world, where I have to take calls outside of normal business hours. It happens. My family has been really good about adjusting to it. Just don't try to "blend" those (or any other) calls into the rest of your life. I can imagine some hard-working type sitting at the dinner table with his family while trying to finish up a call. Stop the madness.

My request (for myself AND you) is that we try to be a little more conservative in how we manage all these things together. I'm tired of people who waste my time because they aren't paying attention, and then ask me to repeat whatever I was saying or doing when they decide it's convenient to participate. It's turning into a pretty ugly social phenomenon, and I need your help to try and fix it.

And please, please, please, if you are routinely on conference calls at work, don't say "please repeat the question, I was on mute," or anything like that when you're supposedly "multitasking" (meaning, doing your email and instant messaging!) Just fess up that you weren't paying attention. You'll get more respect.

Don't be a social reject!

What I Think of The Political Conventions

2008-08-24T17:42:00.003-06:00

I don't normally wax political here, but with local happenings, I can't refuse the bait...

So the Democratic National Convention (DNC) comes to Denver this week. Yay. Not! The paper tells me I should be happy because it'll do great things for Colorado. However, the only great thing I've encountered so far is that they'll be closing the freeway when Obama does his speech, making it impossible for locals to get around their own town. Oh yeah, it'll be great. My cop friend also tells me that professional protesters are all coming to town to disrupt anything they can for the week. Oh yeah, I'm sure glad they chose Denver. Thanks, leaders!

I don't really understand why, in an age where we complain about spending millions of dollars a day on the Iraq war and we have record prices at the pump, we get to also pony up $40 million for events such as the DNC (or, for that matter, the RNC which will be the following week in Minneapolis), for what is really nothing more than a taxpayer-funded weeklong party and pat-ourselves-on-the-back event. Sheesh, what a waste. I mean, congress only works a fraction of the weeks of the year, and of those, on a fraction of the days each week. Of course, they all need big parties to congratulate themselves for a job well done.

For a great description of the events, you might like to watch Uncle Jay Explains (3 min or so). He does a good job of satire-izing world events each week. At least I can understand his reasons for the insanity.

Best of luck as you try to live through the obnoxiousness that will be televised live for the next two weeks. Hopefully I have enough History Channel already recorded on the DVR to live through it all.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

2008-08-20T20:54:00.002-06:00

Jo mentioned our elation at the kids going back to school. I thought I'd show you the commercial she mentioned. It's old, but hilarious. Totally captures our attitude.

So what are your favorite commercials? We should create a compilation of the funniest ones.

11 Great Years

2008-08-16T13:52:00.004-06:00

11 years ago, Jolayne and I were married. Amazing how quickly the time goes. The other day, I asked Jo what the traditional gift for an 'eleventh' anniversary was. Without so much as a stutter or hesitation, she quickly replied 'diamonds.' Way to go, sweetheart. Should have married a sugar-daddy. Oh wait, I do like sugar, dang.

As diamonds were just slightly beyond my budget for the oh-so-special occasion, I bought the next best thing for her. What's that, you ask? A Ped-Egg, of course! Nothing says I-Love-You like a callous remover that's shaped like an egg! Wow, I'm good! I know, I'm just such a romantic.

Seriously, I am so fortunate to be able to share my life with Jolayne. She is probably the most amazing person I've ever met. Here's just a few things about her that contribute to her Super-Awesome-Great Sweetheart status:

She doesn't know how to sleep in. Not even on vacation. Really.
She exercises countless hours each week. Really.
She never yells at me. Really. No, Really.
She's a great kisser. Really. O-la-la!
She keeps an impeccable house. Really. Not that this by itself should be a top-10 item, but always having a clean place to live really does help us to be happier.
She's anything but high maintenance. Really. Sometimes I wish she'd take more time for herself. And, since she finally took me at my word and will be done for a girls' weekend soon, perhaps I'll change my tune in a few weeks after I have child-induced war wounds.
She's one of the most generous, caring people I know, and is almost always doing something for others around her. Really.
She's pretty good with a computer (even has friends ask her for help). Most people wouldn't think this is a top-10 item, but when you're normally the go-to guy for tech support, it's definitely a great trait in a spouse. Really.
She's a hottie. Really. Duh!
She loves me and let's me be me. Really. Of course, that's because she's already spent 11 years bending me to her will and sculpting me into the perfect husband-ish specimen, so she no longer needs to try to change me because I'm now perfect!

And so I now shamelessly share my undying love for my someone, posted for the Internet to see, remember, mock, and use against me at will.

Wow, I'm really not good at this public mushy stuff, am I?! Think I'll stick with Buick bashing and ice-cream conspiracies for a while now.

I love, you, sweetheart! <insert Kristen-speech...> Yoooo, B..e..s..t!

The Ice Cream Conspiracy

2008-08-14T19:31:00.005-06:00

OK, here's a new conspiracy for me to rant about. Upon returning home after a nice, uneventful drive through southern Wyoming (which, by the way, is far prettier at night!), we stopped for groceries and I picked up some ice cream. Something seemed wrong, however. Either I had become an amazing specimen of muscular masculinity since previously purchasing ice cream or the ice cream container had gotten far smaller and easier to lift. Sadly, it was the latter.

Notice exhibit A. On the right is the ice cream I purchased a month or two ago. It is 1.75 quarts (since a "half gallon" of ice cream is obviously 1.75 quarts and not 2. Probably a previous conspiracy I somehow missed). On the left is today's ice cream, on sale for $3 (so no cheaper), and now a lovely 1.5 quarts. Looks smaller than that to me, so I'm sure the conspiracy goes even deeper. I might have to Call 7 for Help on this one. It's so heinous!

Sad proof that, in addition to the price of practically everything we buy going up way faster than wages, the size we get continues to go down. Now my only consolation is that the size of our waste lines will not suffer and will surely continue to increase as well. At least there is some justice in it all! :-)

And so to my friends at Dreyer's, thanks for caving in and joining ever-more-clever club of US marketing geniuses. Good thing consumers are too stupid to notice! You know most people will simply respond by buying two containers now. Next thing we know, Dreyer's will be adopting the Ikea model that Shane recently uncovered and we'll be buying a small container with only the ingredients and little pictographs showing how we can "assemble" the ice cream ourselves.

Eat My Dust

2008-08-13T22:04:00.003-06:00

I've loved mountain biking for years, but I haven't exactly done a ton of it. I'm looking for someone who lives nearby who's into it, since I'm not comfortable going by myself. However, this week while in Utah, I've been able to do a few great trails with a couple of Jolayne's brothers. They go a couple times a week. Makes me jealous. Mitch helped me adjust the derailleur to stop skipping finally (apparently the $100 I paid for a tune up to the Longmont bike shop last summer was so they could look at it really hard without actually doing anything useful) and it's now finally a fun bike to ride. That's good, cuz I was ready to throw the thing out and get something else, so now I can save some money for a couple more years.

There are tons of great trails within a 30 minute drive of Jo's brother Brad's house. How nice that would be.

Tonight, just before sunset, we went up American Fork canyon (very nice shots here) and did a nice 4 mile ride at about 8,000 feet. It was so lush and green. Nice and cool. Very steep in places. Very dusty in others. Nice downhill single track ride on the way back down. Pure heaven. If you've never done this kind of thing and you like to get out, you owe it to yourself to try it. It's not really dangerous if you keep under control, and I'm living proof that you don't have to be an Olympian to be able to hack it. You might want to invest in a pair of "biking diapers," as Jolayne refers to them, however. The padding on bike shorts is well worth it and makes all the difference. Only looks goofy from an entirely goofy angle, anyway! :-) Riding is just such a rush, and a massive stress reliever.

Any ride where I don't crash is a great ride.

Today was thus a great ride! (Because crashing after you've stopped doesn't count!)

Colorado Cares Day

2008-08-03T17:28:00.005-06:00

Q: How do you tell a crazy Mormon from a sane one?

A: The crazy ones will go clean dumpy alleys in town on a 100+ degree day!

Yesterday was the "Colorado Cares Day" and our Stake (the collection of local congregations for our church) was asked go help clean up a section of Longmont. Probably 300+ Mormons showed up on what was supposed to be the hottest day of the year to cut weeds, pick up garbage, and shluck trash. Thankfully, it clouded up even sprinkled abit, dropping the temp 10 degrees.

We separated into small groups and were each assigned an area to clean. Our area must not have been too bad, because the worst we found was a Walmart shopping cart, a pallet, a mattress, and a few I-don't-want-to-know-what-it-is items. Other groups, we saw later, found old toilets, bbq's, and more.

At the end, we rode back in the flatbed one of the guys had brought. One of the things I learn from these events is that it really doesn't matter how unpleasant the task is when you're working with friends and having fun while at it. Collectively, we covered a HUGE section of the city in under three hours. City leaders were very impressed, and I was happy that we managed to laugh alot along the way.

I do enjoy service, and I hope the kids grow up learning the same. I also hope that those folks whose alleys we cleaned will think twice before tossing the toilet over the fence next time.

Bumper Cars for Big Boys!

2008-08-03T16:59:00.006-06:00

I'm white trash. I admit it. I'm comfortable with it, even. How liberating to proclaim!

As promised, I took a group of dads and their kids to the county-fair Demolition Derby. It was so much fun! I had never been, and really had no idea what to expect. After a lengthy trip to Burger King for some nutritious dinner (took 15 min to get the first order served, so be very careful at the Ken-Pratt location if you're in any sort of hurry), we made our way over to the fairgrounds. Parking was a disaster. Without nice little white lines to guide us, we are apparently a fallen society. People were parked pretty much everywhere, usually with about 7 feet between cars, just so there wasn't room for another car. I wound up parking in the race-team pit area.

But once things finally got started, WE HAD FUN! You all obviously know that the basic tenet of such an event is for the cars to cream one another. But, come to find out, there are actually rules to the whole thing! They begin each heat with 8-12 cars or so all stationed around a perimeter, facing away. Then, when the green flag is waved, they all back up towards a stake at the center as fast as they can. Then the smashing commences. You're not allowed to hit on the driver's side, and you're not very smart to hit head on since your own radiator will surely be toasted. Beyond that, not many other rules exist. (There was, though, one rule that went something like "don't run over the judges" that almost got broken a couple of times and thus the big black flag got waved, signaling the offender's disqualification.)

They had a compact and full-size class. The initial heats went until only 4 cars remained mobile. The immobilized vehicles had little colored sticks to display, indicating that they were out and should no longer be rammed.

At the end of the heat, the winners drove off, and the losers got towed off or hauled off by a loader. A handful of the drivers were really quite good. One even advanced to the next round by driving around and whacking others after he lost a wheel on his own car. Pretty funny stuff.

Then you rinse, lather, repeat until you're at the final round. The final round was SOOOOO LOUD. There were 15 cars, with probably 500 horsepower each, all trying to kill each other.
Several of the more-skilled drivers had some pretty interesting tactics, and it took quite a while to get a winner. He did win $2500 for his trouble, however, which is a nice take away for not getting sent to the hospital.

T-shirts

This is my friend, Mark.

In between bashing-sessions, the crew would come out and launch t-shirts up into the stands with those huge slingshots you see at professional sports matches. The kids were so excited that they might get one. I can't count how many times I heard "Get one, Dad!!!", as though I could just reach out and get one whenever I chose. Luck wasn't on my side, but Mark caught one, and since he left his kids home for the evening, he gave it to Misha. (I couldn't fathom why he wouldn't ABSOLUTELY need such a high-quality t-shirt.) Misha was as happy as I've seen her in a long time. Ear-to-ear grin! Way to go, Mark.

And so now Misha is the proud owner of a "I got smashed at the demolition derby" t-shirt. We need another white-trash activity since we'll now be properly attired.

Tire Rolling

In between another session, they had a bunch of kids come down onto the field and race tires from one end to the other. Amy gave it a shot, and though she was somewhere in the bottom 30% of finishers, she was happy to have participated, and for the free fair tokens she got in return.

To sum it all up, we had a fabulous time! Well worth my $35 and crummy parking arrangement. We'll go again next year, I hope. My kids got a little testosterone boost, and I went hoarse from hooting and hollering. Time to start shopping for an appropriate t-shirt to wear next year.

Pretzels and Sunday Traditions

2008-08-03T16:40:00.005-06:00

As a kid, one of my favorite things to do on Sundays was to bake treats. It started with my mom when I was pretty young, and progressed from there. I actually got pretty good at it at one point, and picked up a reputation in our family as "the pretzel maker." Years before, my mom had come across a recipe in a school newsletter, if I recall, which showed a simple method for making soft pretzels. These are more like the kind you get at the mall than the kind you get in a frozen box at Costco.

When we were married, I forgot how to cook. Really. Still can't remember much! One thing I've managed to pull from my childhood memory banks, though, is how to cook pretzels. And now, my kids love baking them with me. During the last school year, Amy had to take treats a few times. She tells me that her class always told her to bring pretzels after that first time when she did.

Today, when I got home from church, I was greeted not with "Daddy! You're home!" but "Daddy! Make Some Pretzels!" Same difference I suppose. And so, instead of a nap, we made pretzels. The best part is at the very end when you stuff your face with them. They're very soft, not crunchy. They're not even bad for you, though there's probably something not-too-healthy about eating 70% of the batch in 10 minutes. It's really a simple recipe, and if you're not slowed down by little hands, you can make a batch in under 30 minutes. I usually double the batch since they disappear so quickly. Still, they don't usually last 24 hours.

So, my challenge to you dads is to make some pretzels with your kids. They absolutely love making all sorts of play-dough shapes, and when they can cook and then eat their creation (legitimately!) it makes it even more fun for them.

We've searched the Internet for other recipes that might work better, and none have ever turned out for us. So try this one. I think you'll like it.

For those of you willing to take on the challenge, here's the recipe:

Soft Sunday Pretzels
1 pkg yeast (2 1/4 tsp per pkg, in case you forgot)
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
4-5 cups flour (will vary, so start low)
1 egg, beaten
course salt
Items in red were not in the original recipe but have come from my experience.

Measure warm water and yeast into mixing bowl. Cover and let raise for 10-15 min so they don't come out like rocks. Add sale, sugar, and flour and mix. Sometimes it takes more flour, but don't go crazy up front. Roll dough into long snake shapes and twist into knots. Place on greased cookie sheets and brush with beaten egg. Sprinkle with salt. Let rise for just a few minutes more. This can be in a 100-degree oven or, on a warm day, just on the counter. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 minutes.

And so I suppose we have a full-blown family tradition to pass on to my girls' kids someday, too.

I still can't remember how to cook anything else, and any comments to the contrary will be promptly deleted! :-)

Buick Drivers

2008-07-27T19:11:00.003-06:00

So I had probably preface this post by saying that if you drive a Buick, you'll more than likely be offended. Read on at your own risk! :-)

First, some context...

Several years ago, I took a business trip and received a complementary upgrade from Hertz to a full-size car. Nice, right? Well, it would have normally been fantastic, though in this case I guess it was just simply a little too much car for this man. You see, they gave me a absolutely-freaking-huge Buick. This was the kind of car that normally comes with simulated-wood-grain paneling as siding, Sinatra and Lawrence Welk preprogrammed on the XM radio, and 0-60 times measured in minutes, not seconds (but that acceleration is oh-so-smooth). I drove the thing around (alone) for a day before concluding that it just wasn't the vehicle for me. I think people must have been following me around most of the time wondering when we'd get to the funeral. When I went back to the airport to trade, the Hertz guys were somewhat shocked. Afterall, they only had midsized vehicles, and so I had to downgrade, which I told them was just fine. I'm sure they had a good laugh, though, when I left in a Ford Taurus. My stress level was much reduced the rest of that week. Come to think of it, not sure I've gotten any complementary upgrades since then!

So now to the point...

I've had a thing for years about "Buick Drivers." Tell me if you think the premise works. You see, there's a certain demographic that Buicks are generally targeted towards. Suffice it to say that it's not the 20-something crowd (at least until those silly Tiger Woods commercials that didn't last too long). When I had that rental, I realized why the dials in the instrument cluster were done in a 97-point font. Most of the people driving can't see anything smaller than that! And while they're not generally the most dangerous hot-rodders on the road, I've observed that when there's a plug in traffic, it very often can be pinpointed to a slow-moving Buick somewhere near the front of the cluster.
Have you ever tried to get past what I refer to as "traffic constipation" only to find one--or even worse, two!--Buicks hanging out in the left lane, complete unaware that there are other cars trying to get down the road at a reasonable speed? It happens all the time! I've gotten to the point that when I see the tell-tale shielded emblem on the vehicle in front on me, I'll change lanes if possible.

Your task, now, is to carefully observe traffic patterns for the next couple weeks and tell me if I'm crazy. I'm betting you'll find that I'm not crazy at all (at least on this one). I'm actually not the only one on the Internet to have made this observation, either. Your comments can only be based upon facts, not opinions, since I'm basing this post entirely upon facts! :-D

Now I realize that someday I'll be one of those can't-see-smaller-than-97point people too. I'm just not sure I'll be driving a Buick. And Dad, I'm really glad your Buick got stolen and you traded to an Acura so I could make this post with a clear conscience! And Grandma, I'm really glad you have no idea what a blog is, so I won't have to justify myself to you the next time I visit and have to drive your Century all over town!

And an interesting final note...

The most prestigious vehicle in China today is none other than a black Buick. Go figure. Maybe they just like the big dials.

Do You Have An Awesome Bar?

2008-07-20T18:00:00.003-06:00

I know I probably do more "techy" posts than I should, but it's my blog and not yours, so there. If you're not an avid Firefox user, shame on you. It's so-way-entirely-cooler than Internet Exploder. And, version 3 came out just recently. What's so cool about version 3, you ask? Simply put, it's the "Awesome Bar." Does your browser have an Awesome Bar? If not, you need one.

The so-called Awesome Bar is the navigation bar where you enter your URL. In Firefox (FF), you can now enter the actual site you want to visit, but you can also put in partial names of bookmarks, places you've been, and so on, and it's remarkably good at finding just the perfect place you want to go. There are many sites out there explaining the finer points of it, so I won't waste space here.

You can now also tag bookmarks for easy lookup, plus it's pretty much the fastest browser out there. My gmail loads 3x faster than with FF2. I love it. When you add the fact that you can add on plugins to make it do whatever you want, it's pretty neato-shmeato. BTW, I highly recommend FoxClocks (to show timezones in the bottom of the browser; helpful for working with people around the world), ForecastFox (shows the weather forecast in the top or bottom of the browser), and FoxMarks (syncs your bookmarks across multiple machines) as addons. You can get them all by clicking Tools --> Add Ons.

Jolayne was even converted to the Awesome Bar recently, and now I'm happy to say that our house is IE-free. Check out FF if you haven't lately. It's great.

Expectations and Orange Buckets: Part II

2008-07-20T17:44:00.004-06:00

A while back, Jolayne blogged about our summer project with having the girls move a good-sized pile of rocks in our yard (primarily for the "work" experience). Then, she just recently posted about some of the problems we're having with sassiness, especially in our eldest. I feel compelled to offer a little more detail.

Last night, we were talking at dinner and I said something about being respectful to parents, but I was kidding and having fun. Amy took it a little too far when I asked her to do something a shot off a "like I care" comment. That left me no choice but to demonstrate my pecking-order superiority by handing down swift punishments as though I was Zeus on Mt Olympus! (OK, maybe not.)

The rock project has moved along, and they are nearing the end. However, due to Amy's speak-before-you-think problem (which incidentally I had just as bad at her age), she now has the awesome punishment of getting to finish the job HERSELF! You would have thought I removed a vital organ last night. There was much crying, whining, and torment. I kind of enjoyed it.

Jolayne and I recognize that we have to get on top of this now or we'll never have a chance to get there. Come to think of it, I have more than a few acquaintances who never quite seemed to learn these life lessons. Maybe they should come over and move some rocks, too!

It's kind of funny that a project she was already sharing with her sister and wasn't any big deal became SO heinous once she had to do it all by herself. Bet you she uses her Jedi powers to try and rope Misha in to helping her finish. Last night, she kept coming in to ask me if she could be done (after only filling one 5-gallon bucket part way!), and when I told her to stay out there until sundown, she was more than a little miffed. As parents, we sure hope that someday our kids will thank us for these little lessons.

Once the rock is all moved, I'll just have them move it all back if they keep up with the sassiness. Who says being a parent can't be fun!?

Of course, the HOA will very likely be sending me a letter soon for the unapproved orange buckets and trashy landscaping in my front yard. (That's a whole other post I could do; they've become a little TOO stringent after not doing anything for years). Good thing I'm on the hearing committee and can vote myself a reprieve! Ha.

Demolition Derby

2008-07-20T17:20:00.003-06:00

The Boulder County Fair is coming up soon, and on the opening night they have their demolition derby. I've always wanted to go to something as white-trashy as that, and this is my year. I'm trying to get a group of guys together to go, so if you're interested, it's Aug 1st, let me know.

That means you have only two weeks to totally trash a tshirt and jeans so you'll have something appropriate to wear!

HOMEWORK: If you're going, you must watch 10 hours of CMT reality shows before you can buy your ticket. Start with My Big Redneck Wedding.

By the way, the fair is changing things this year, in case you didn't know, and admission and parking will both be free again. Yay. Now we can go with the kids and see all the animals. No way I was paying last year.