Climing in the rain

Pam surprised me yesterday when she wanted to procede with hiking McLaughlin in spite of an unfavorable weather forecast.

It was raining as we unpacked at the trailhead, and the kids surprised my by unflinchiningly heading down the trail ahead of me while I got Gideon bundled up and loaded.

I was thinking to myself that if they're not going to complain, I'm not going to be the first. And I was wondering how we suceeded in getting them to think this sort of thing was normal.

An hour and a half later we were passing though snow fields making the dangerously short trip from uncomfortable to miserable when the rain lightened then stopped. Over the next 2 hours we partially dried out, and even saw partial sun on our way to the top. We felt very fortunate for this.

Erik was a trooper tailing me on the way down in spite of almost loosing his lunch.

The reward for sumiting (beyond the bonding, adventure, sceenery, and exercise) was Mongolian BBQ. We got there just before closing, so did take-out and had a better time eating at home than we would of there. (off-topic--When did places start charging a 20% surcharge for take-out)

Do it yourself kind of girl

My dad has always been real gung-ho about fixing things himself. The dryer's broken or the computer or the camera, he'd read up about it, order the parts and just fix it himself. (he's particularly proud of the camera) It was under this "fix it yourself" regime I grew up. By the time I was in high school I could do most of the basic maintenance cars need by myself and I had even replaced the clutch (with much assistance from my dad) in our Saturn. It's time consuming and hard but fun, cheaper and gives you a sense of self accomplishment.

While talking about daily plans with a friend the other day they mentioned that they were taking their car in to get the oil changed. My world stopped, people do that? Really? "Why don't you just do that yourself?" Was my immediate response. He responded with, that he knew how, having been taught in boyscouts, and had done it twice (when he was fifteen) but that his family didn't have any tools. To this I replied get me the oil filter and I'll do it for you. I mean really, it takes like half an hour... So we went and got an oil filter, few things of new oil, jacked up his car and crawled under the hood. I located what I believed to be the bolt on the engine for draining oil and went to work trying to get it off.

It wouldn't come off. We tried for maybe 15min before I made an emergency call to Dad just to make sure I wasn't messing up. I wasn't. Part of the reason could have been we were trying with a size slightly too big because the size we needed was missing (BTW - Grandpa your 13mm is missing) another reason could have been that the mechanics particaly welded it on. Eventually, after running over to his house in search of a 13mm and double teaming the stupid bolt it came off. What should have been half an hour turned into an epic sixty minutes of frustration but it was fun.

- ps. Grandma, we stayed in the drive way the whole time and we were careful not to get oilstains everywhere. Please don't be too upset.

-pps. Yes, the guy was Jason. How sad is that? At least he knows more about bikes and has promised to do some much needed maintanence on mine.

maintain and break

Pam asked to do yard work for our date last week. I though that sounded nice and low maintenance.

The hydrangea doesn't look so good durring the winter, so we moved it to the back yard and replaced it with a new rhodie as well as the 2 Japanese maples that had outgrown their planters. I love blueberry plants, but only 1 of the 6 we planted has done very well. We put in another one and I doubled the amount of drip irrigation to it.

The evening was still young, so I embarked on a project I had put off for some time involving repositioning the pear tree. I had to dig down and around it, which was more work than I anticipated. I was almost underneath it when things started to gang a-gley. The post-hole digger struck something solid, and water boiled up with a hiss. The project turned from casual to serious in that moment. Turns out our neighbor's water main runs right under that tree. It was 10pm on a Saturday night, but they took the news well that tap water, showers, and toilet flushes were indefinitely suspended at their place. We ran our hose to their property. Pam toured Medford until she found a Safeway open past 11pm that had bottled water.

I moved a couple tons of dirt to get good exposure, then schemed about how to fix it quickly.

The next morning proceeded like a normal Sunday, except instead of Sunday School in the Relief Society room, I went to the PVC isle in Grovers plumbing and electrical. There I learned the virtues of the expansion coupler. Eager to put this teaching into practice in my life, and more importantly into the life of my neighbor's water main, I retired to my front yard and after bailing out a buch of rain water I glued it in place and made it back just in time for the close of Priesthood opening exercises. I gave it extra time to dry because I stayed for scout committee meeting, but the thing worked great. Pam and the kids helped tonight to refill the hole and hose off the drive-way. Apparently Erik needed to plant a tree for some cub scout requirement, so this worked out great for him.

Piano Tribute to Mother

As I was playing prelude for the stake conference priesthood leadership session yesterday, the visiting presiding authority came over and interrupted me. I stopped and shook his hand. He said "tough mother." I gave a confused smile. He said "a man that can play the piano must have had a tough mother." It was L Tom Perry. She used more chocolate chips and rewards for finishing books than threats. Elder Perry was also the one who set dad apart as mission president. Without mom's strength of will and character I doubt either one of us would have met Elder Perry. He was a relaxed and entertaining speaker. He said he was ready to throw his 2 grandsons into the ocean out of frustration for not finding wives yet. He said our responsibilities should be first to take care of ourselves including getting enough sleep (a big problem for me) and even some recreation, second to our spouse, third to our work, and forth to our callings. Another thing I thought was interesting was he testified Preach My Gospel is inspired. We're going to do some FHE's from it.

And here's a closing Piano Man thought from the web site of a Michael Squires (pictured above) via Billy Joel:

It's 10 o'clock on a Sabbath day.
The regular crowd shuffles in.
Our ward is still praying for move-ins,
'Till then it's me on the organ again.

The bishopric thanks me for prelude
And announces the opening hymn.
The chorister stands, as previously planned
And now we officially begin.

La da da de de da, la la de de da … da da

Play us a song, you’re the Piano Man,
Play us a song, won’t you please.
‘Cause some in the church hold various keys,
But very few will touch any of these.

In my mind I review the day’s lessons
As our wonderful meeting ends.
Though sometimes off-balance, I offered my talents,
And the day was enhanced for my friends.

expriments in home computing

I've changed operating systems and installed the following with my computer:
--Ubuntu version 8.10 which I downloaded, burned to a CD and installed easily.
--Getting it to use wireless card was hard until I found a good tutorial specific for my card and it's chipset from the main ubuntu forum.
--I followed another tutorial from a forum to make restricted "codecs" available, and can now watch videos like on Youtube, quicktime, and video from Conferance. It can play CD's but can't copy very fast.
--wine runs windows programs which I'm hoping to use for Civilization and PrintShop where there aren't linux alternatives. It's slow and clunky.
--Dansguardian is a parental control program that was hard to install but seem to be working but blocks normal stuff too.

I think their business model is sound- give away the product and then offer paid customer support because it's a royal pain to get it going.

It took a lot of time. It's not not as versatile and is frustrating when I can't get something to work like I want.

I like being out from under Microsoft's thumb. It was a blast getting the old worthless computer going well. I don't have to worry about viruses. It seems to work fast for most basic things. I learned a lot from doing this.

Ubuntu- an "intuitive" way to embrace your innner geek

Seems like there is often competition in the house for who is going to be on the computer. I thought getting another computer would solve the problem. I paid $60 for a surplus computer from work 2 years ago that I thought was a fabulous deal until I figured out it crashed all the time and wasn't good for squat. I figured I didn't have much to loose, so I finally followed Carl and Ken's examples and tried a whole new operating system to which Ken introduced me. Ubuntu is an "intuitive" Debian-based distribution of GNU's GNOME GUI applications and environment using a Linux kernel. And dog-gone it if the thing doesn't work great! There were some challenge, like having to use the terminal program and relearning some unix commands in order to install an adobe flash player but a web site walked me through that OK.

For the next program I installed, I thought using the synaptic Package Manager might be easier, but I had to edit the sources.list file to add a couple of mirrors to install libraries for which there were dependencies before I could get all the packages installed. That was right at the edge of what I am capable of, so it was a gas when it worked. It's a kid-friendly paint program called Tuxpaint. Other things, like using a flash drive and printing, have gone super slick. It's definitely not Apple, but I'm thrilled to be peaking out from under Bill Gates' thumb. Next up: setting up a wireless connection instead of ethernet cable. And in April the next update of Ubuntu comes out.

Epiphany +1

Epiphany (Greek for "to manifest" or "to show"), January 6th, is a Christian feast day which celebrates the revelation of God in human form in the person of Jesus Christ (thanks wikipedia). Also known as holy 3 kings day in Denmark, it also commemorates the visit of the magi, which incidentally are not specifically mentioned as holy, 3 in number, or kings. Apparently it is the official end of Christmas.


I remember it as the day they would take down the Christmas tree, which they set up on Christmas eve. I love Christmas lights, and having a Christmas tree. There's a Danish song about Christmas lasting until Easter. I don't go that far, but ours tree goes up as close to T-day as possible and comes down around now. But today, and throughout the year, wise men seek Him still. So the spirit of Christmas lives on at our house another day. And I'll get to the lights on the roof by spring.