We’re about 15 minutes west of Denver and have just flown into some clouds
at our assigned altitude. It is occasionally quite bumpy! If I were writing
this by hand in my regular journal, this would be quite unintelligible. At
least this way, the words can be read; whether or not they make any sense is
up to someone else to decide.

I left the house at about 6:30 for an 8:00 a.m. flight. That’s a bit late,
actually, that I would have preferred, but that’s how things worked out. If
there are a lot of folks going through security, I possibly could have had a
problem. However, the airport was relatively quiet. The flight from Colorado
Springs to Denver was full — and this flight from Denver to San Jose is
completely full. No empty seats on the flight at all.

Airport security is quite a bit different than it was a year ago. It’s no
better (and in fact may be worse) but is definitely different. One of the
changes is “random” searches of people before boarding the flight. As an
aside, it’s quite amazing to me the things that are found in this random
search that the screening at the concourse didn’t pick up. The folks doing
the screening usually pick someone in the first two or three people to board
the plane. That person is taken aside and thoroughly searched, including
removing shoes and belts. It takes up to ten minutes to do this screening,
so as soon as someone is picked out of line, then the folks behind move
through the boarding process quite rapidly.

The general process is to board First Class and higher-level frequent fliers
first. If you’re a frequent flier, you have to have been asleep not to
notice how the “random” search candidates are selected. Today as we were
getting ready to board this flight, the agent called for First Class, 1K and
Premier Executive frequent fliers. No one approached the agent to present a
boarding pass!! A second call went out and more folks gathered, but no one
approached to board. Finally one soul went up, and headed through to
board — he wasn’t selected! Another wait. Then a fellow, part of a group of
people traveling together, ordered one of his subordinates to go “volunteer”
to be searched so that the boarding process could begin. As soon as he got
there, everyone lined up. The agent joked with the screening person, “See,
everyone knows!” Well, we sure do. Hence the observation that security,
while different, is not necessarily better.

We’re approaching western Colorado and Eastern Utah. Grand Junction,
Colorado, is on the left front of the airplane. We’re flying a bit more
northerly than in the past few months. Because of the flight restrictions
associated with the Winter Olympics that were held in Utah in February, the
airlines had adjusted their routes to fly through Central Utah rather than
over Provo as they head into the San Francisco area. The routes are just
this month being adjusted back to normal patterns. But, it’s quite cloudy
and there’s only an occasional view of the ground. I’m in a window seat. The
guy next to me in the middle seat is a young fellow with the most beat-up CD
player I’ve seen in many years. It’s held together with Duct Tape! There
isn’t much room on the table, partially because I’m quite wide front to back
and that the seats are pretty close together. I’ve got to keep kind of an
eye on the guy in front of me because if he decides to recline his seat, it
could possible break the display on the laptop computer I’m using. So far
he’s been quite content to visit with his wife seated next to him in the
middle and hasn’t made a move to recline the seat. I’m of the opinion that
with these seats as close together as they are, none of them should be
allowed to recline.

Yesterday was a pleasant Sunday. I had Priesthood Executive Committee
meeting at 7:30 a.m. in the Bishop’s office. That was followed by the
meeting block. The High Councilor assigned to our ward, Peter Burnett, came
over to the house around 3:45 in the afternoon to conduct his monthly PPI
with me. Then at 8:00 p.m. we went over to Duane Slocum’s to give him a
blessing. He’s going to have cataract surgery on Wednesday and wanted a
blessing before he went in for the procedure.

PEC is held generally on the 2nd and 4th Sundays. The 3rd Sunday is Welfare
Meeting at 7:00 a.m. followed by Ward Correlated Council at 7:30. There are
a lot of folks attending PEC — and the Bishop keeps adding folks to the
fray. We can barely all fit into his office. If he adds anyone else, we’ll
have to find another room. The major activities going on right now are:

1. Aaron’s Camp for the young men 14 years old and up. This is a camp held
instead of a scout camp or other young men super activity every other year
to help prepare the young men to be ready to go on a mission. It’s a fairly
expensive affair, costing about $175 per boy. So there’s a lot of fund
raising activity going on to finance these boys.

2. Young Women’s Camp. This is put on by the Ward on alternate years with
the Stake putting it on. This year the cost will be about $100 per girl. So,
that requires some fund raising as well.

3. Getting a sister’s house ready for sale. She is a single mother having a
lot of difficulty maintaining the house and yard. She’s decided to sell the
house and move into something that would be maintenance free for her. So,
there’s a lot of work needed to make the house ready for sale. This Friday
evening and Saturday morning there’s a work project to paint the front of
the house and trim the weeds and bushes. It’s one of about 3 or 4 work
details needed. The house has been listed for sale and it’d be good to get
the work done soon.

We’ve also got several people out of work with slim prospects of work in the
near future. There’s not much that can be done other than making sure that
we’re being generous with our Fast Offerings.

We’re flying over some mountains covered with snow — so we must be
somewhere in the Salt Lake area. It’s still very cloudy so not a lot of
opportunities to see what’s going on down below. I very seldom sit in a
window seat — I usually want to be in an aisle seat so that I’m not hemmed
in. There weren’t many options on this flight, however.

I’ll be in San Jose for the week, flying back on Friday afternoon. I’ll get
home around 7:30 p.m. on Friday. Other than being available to the folks in
California who work for me, there isn’t a lot of requirement to fly out
there. I go at least once a month. It is a good way to build frequent flier
miles, however! We’re definitely in the building mode, since all of our
Saturday’s are busy at the Temple. That limits our ability to go anywhere
that would require an airplane. I think the next time will be in September
when we fly to Vancouver, Canada, to board the cruise ship for the trip up
the Inside Passage. We will do a few things this summer. We’d like to go
somewhere for Memorial Day if we can work out how to do that without taking
much vacation. We may decide to take the vacation time anyway. The Temple
shuts down for the first two weeks of July and that is when Soda Springs is
holding a multi-class reunion. We will go over that way for the week. The
reunion is on the 4th of July. Wendy is getting married in August and Nina
would like to be in attendance, so we’ll take a week to pull the trailer
over to Oregon for the wedding and back. I’ll try to put a business trip to
Gresham in the equation to give us some additional time on vacation and get
some of the expenses paid.

Dad is in the hospital in Idaho Falls. He had a rough night Saturday night
and was transported by ambulance to the hospital on Sunday morning. The
doctor’s don’t know what is the matter, exactly, just that something is the
matter with his heart. They are doing a catheterization this morning,
probably as I’m writing this, and we hopefully will know more as the day
progresses. Mother called yesterday afternoon with the news. She feels that
things are generally OK, now that he’s at the hospital. She’s sleeping right
in the room with him, so she isn’t getting much rest, either.

The Temple on Saturday was very hectic. We were very short of ordinance
workers, both brothers and sisters. So it was a scramble all day long to
meet the assignment schedules. We have a prayer meeting at 12:05 p.m. which
consists of a hymn (I play the organ and Nina conducts the singing),
followed by a prayer and a spiritual thought. Then the Matron or Assistant
Matron (depends on which member of the presidency is on duty that
afternoon), presents the confidential information for the sisters. They all
leave the chapel and the duty member of the presidency presents the
brother’s confidential information. We then go to our training meeting.
That’s where the assignments are handed out and we have a (hopefully) short
training lesson. I’m currently assigned to be the shift training, so I
present this material. We then go to our assignments. Saturday’s instruction
is the longest lesson in the book and was on officiating an endowment
session. It took 20 minutes to go through the material.

We had a new brother assigned to our shift, so I spent a few minutes getting
him oriented and we tossed him into the fray receiving patrons at the veil.
He had a good afternoon, I think! No question about his feeling needed. I
filled in wherever we were short and then officiated on the 4 p.m. session.
It was a busy, but fun day. I certainly enjoy the afternoons we spend at the
temple. It’s a major time commitment, but one of the more enjoyable things I
do each week. Afterwards we went out for tacos with the shift supervisor and
his wife, Br. and Sister Stott. We learned that he was in Japan in the Air
Force the same time we were at Yokota AFB. He wasn’t a member of the Church
at that time, so we wouldn’t have had an opportunity to meet. Small world!

We’re over western Nevada and I think we’ve begun our descent. We’re out of
the clouds right now, but it is partly cloudy below us. A lot of clouds
ahead, which usually means the Cascade Mountains. So we’ll be on the ground
in about 45 minutes, I think.

So that’s all for today.

This entry was copied from a older journal system into this program on 29 November 2002.

It’s a lovely Friday evening. Today in Germany, a young man took a
handgun and a shotgun into a school from which he had been recently
suspended. He shot and killed 14 teachers, 2 students, and a policeman
before taking his own life. Dressed completely in black, he sought out
the people he wanted to target and calmly shot them to death. Germany
now joins the ranks of countries now needing to re-examine their
cavelier attitude towards school safety. This morning a lady living
somewhere near the Colorado College campus was found beaten and killed
on the campus. Not a good news day.

However, tonight we’re going to the SkySox baseball game. The SkySox are
a minor league club, part of the the Colorado Rockies Farm Club system.
They’ll be playing a club in the Arizona Diamondbacks system from
Tuscon, Arizona. LSI Logic (my cost center, actually) is paying for the
tickets for the LSI Logic employees who are encouraged to bring family
or friends with them. They are responsible for all other costs except
for their own tickets. It’s kind of a employee morale activity. We’ll
have about 30 people there for the festivities. It’s partly cloudy with
occasional thundershowers, so hopefully we’ll be able to stay dry! It
should be a lot of fun.

Eighteen employees are attending out of about 40 possible. So, I’m
missing quite a few people. I think I’ll look at taking everyone to the
movie after Star Wars debuts. Not sure how we’ll work that out, but I
think it’d be a good thing. In a time when we’re not giving pay raises,
promotions, or bonuses, and are laying off people, increasing workloads,
and restricting training, I need to be doing something for folks to have
a good time. In Japan we always had one social event each month to help
relieve stress and to help folks get to know each other so that they
would work together better. That much work-social activity wouldn’t work
here, but we can do something at least once a quarter.

So, that’s the news for today!

This entry was copied from an older journaling system into this program on 29 November 2002.

The system has been set up to automatically process journal entries at
10 minutes after 10 every evening. So, I’m putting this entry into the
system so I can check tomorrow morning to see if the automatic process
has worked correctly. Good night!

This entry was copied from an older journal system into this program on 29 November 2002.

How about this! Three journal entries in the new system. I’m still
working out the process where the entry is taken from the e-mail and put
in the database. I think I’ve got it working correctly. A couple more
entries should show that everything is working correctly. Fortunately,
these e-mail journal entries are also in the “sent” folder on the
computer I sent them from, so they’re easily recreated and resent should
there be a problem.

It’s a Wednesday night. I’ve been working from home today. The time has
been quite productive. Most of the day on Wednesday is spent on the
phone in meetings. Today was no exception. It started with the weekly
Change Control Meeting at 10:00 a.m. where we review the changes planned
to production systems. At 10:15 I went into the weekly Autonomy Meeting.
This meeting has to do with the project to implement the new search
engine for the LSI Logic intranet. This project is moving along quite
smoothly and is yielding some very nice results.

At noon I was on the phone about the strategy to finish off the AT&T
contract for North America voice and data services. At 2 p.m. was a
phone meeting about the problems we had with the network in Milpitas
yesterday afternoon and evening. 3:00 p.m. was the final phone meeting
on hardware needed for the new disaster recovery site. In the meantime I
built a web page to explain to Bruce Decock, my boss, how we would go
about reducing the amount of spam e-mail that’s coming into the company.

I was supposed to meet at the Church this evening for a Home Teaching
Rescue Night. However, I’ve still got a major cough and get coughing
fits that literally double me over. I’ve also broken out in a rash! No
idea what the cause of the rash is, hopefully it doesn’t have anything
to do with the cough which I believe is left over from the cold I had
last week. I’d sure like to get rid of the cough and be finished with
the cold. My belly is sore enough from coughing!!

This entry was moved from an older journal into this program on 29 November 2002.

This is the second entry to get into the database. I’m still testing the
functionality and verifying that everything gets into the database
correctly. Nina wanted to know what I was doing and was somewhat
incredulous that I’d spend the time doing this rather than just writing
on a piece of paper. It’s fun and interesting, that’s why!

Got up this morning and rather than going down to the club, decided to
work in the yard. With the schedule at the Temple each Saturday, getting
things done in the yard has been rather difficult. So, I’ve decided for
the next several weeks to spend the time in the yard rather than at the
exercise club. I suspect this will be some reasonable exercise, anyway.
So this morning I raked the front yard. I thought it would take about a
half-hour. Wrong. An hour later I was still at it and starting the
cleanup. My arms are quite tired and a bit sore. That was a lot of
workout those muscles haven’t had for quite a while.

With that work, the front yard looks quite a bit better. Much more work
is required!! We’ll go over to Home Depot tonight to pick up some wood
chips / bark to put down in the flower beds in the front yard. We
haven’t done anything with these beds since we got here, so I guess it’s
high time that we upgraded them. I’m sure the neighbors will be relieved
that we’re doing something with the yard!

This entry was transferred from an older journal into this program on 20 November 2002

This should be the first entry in the new journal system. I’m going
“high-tech” with my journal. I send an e-mail to rksjournal@rnsmith.com. A
program on my home computer extracts the journal entry and places it in a
database. From there the entry can be displayed on-line or printed, or
whatever else can happen with an electronic entry. I looked at several other
pieces of software, but none of them had the ability to take an e-mail and
turn it into a journal entry.

Exactly how this will appear on-line is still to be determined. I’m not even
sure I’m ready to have my journal available on-line. One of my options is to
make it available several months after-the-fact. Time will tell what will
really happen. I think that journals are intended to be somewhat private and
only become more public a long time after they are written, perhaps even
after the writer is dead.

But, for right now, the process is to write the journal entry in an e-mail
and send it to the home computer. I will also build an ability to send the
entries in HTML format as well as in the database format to a CD-ROM so that
the contents are somewhat preserved in case of computer problems at home.
It’s been known to happen….

This change comes about in part because the journal that I’ve been keeping
is almost full. I’ve bought a new book, but haven’t started it yet. Also,
most of the entries in my journal happen as I’m on an airplane as that’s
when I have the time to write. My handwriting has gotten so bad that I think
the written journal is fast becoming unreadable. With this system I can
write entries anywhere. All I need is some kind of a mail client, either
browser based or otherwise. The risk is that since these entries will exist
as computer bits rather than as ink on a page, they somehow disappear, or
technology changes so quickly that the format in which the data is created
can no longer be processed, or that the entries get altered somehow. Paper
seems to be a fairly universal media. So, the system will definitely include
the ability to print these journal entries, one per page (or set of pages),
and put them into a notebook. So, the entries will be preserved on paper as
well as on a CD-ROM.

Since this is the first entry, perhaps I should describe the home computer
system. We have a wireless broadband connection to the internet from Sprint
Broadband. Their antenna is on top of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs
and I have a corresponding antenna on the top of our house. Their modem
provides me an RJ-45 ethernet jack. That jack is plugged into a small HP
Pentium 90 (circa 1996) computer running Linux and a Linux firewall. The
firewall is currently compromised and I’m working on a replacement which
isn’t being very cooperative.

On the other side of the firewall we have four other computers. One is a
generic Pentium II computer, named Bradica, running Linux as the operating
system, Apache as a web server, Sendmail as the Mail Transfer Agent, PHP as
the scripting language, and MySQL as the database server. It is also running
Samba to provide file and print services. I have my own computer, a Dell
Pentium III computer running Windows 2000 and a bunch of other stuff. This
is my primary computer at home. Nina has an IBM Thinkpad Notebook computer
as her primary computer. I often bring my office notebook computer home and
plug it into the home network as well.

I have another Linux computer on the network that I use as a kind of a test
bed as I’m developing software or capability. This system is named Heather.

The journal system is running on Bradica. It is written in PHP and the data
is stored in a MySQL database. Over the next several months the system will
probably grow and change significantly. Meanwhile, from time to time I’ll
mail in another journal entry!

This entry was transferred from an older journal system into this program on 29 November 2002.