Greetings from Milpitas, California. As I write this I’m sitting in my cubicle in the middle of the office building in not-quite-downtown Milpitas. Where is Milpitas, you ask? It’s situated between San Jose, Santa Clara, and Fremont. Squeezed between them is probably a better description. It’s not much of a place as size or influence goes. The section of the 880 freeway that goes through Milpitas has long been the major bottleneck. Everywhere else the freeway is 4-5 lanes wide except through Milpitas where it was 2 lanes wide. So, for the past two years (and well into the foreseeable future) they’ve been widening the freeway. It’s now four lanes wide each direction, but only two lanes each way are open. There is no conceivable reason why…. Perhaps there haven’t been enough accidents on this stretch this year?

In the news of the day, a hearse travelling along a motorway near Duesseldorf, Germany, overturned ejecting the coffin, ejecting the corpse from the coffin, and scattering coffin nails along a stretch of the highway, closing the road for more than four hours while police cleaned up the scene. The driver of the hearse fell asleep, woke up startled, and jerked the steering wheel causing the accident. What a wild ride for the corpse and those following behind! Look, mommy, it’s Halloween!

Southern California seems to be burning up. Huge wildfires stretching from the Mexico border to Los Angeles are causing massive damage. More than a thousand homes have been destroyed and many more will be lost until the weather begins to cooperate with the firefighting efforts. One lady interviewed on TV this morning talked about what she had taken from her house. She had gathered up her “computer hard drives and a couple of pictures.” Sounds like someone with the right priorities…!

Today is a day of meetings. One down already and three to go. Life is good — and even though there are billboards everywhere touting California Cheese, I still haven’t seen any. Just lots and lots of crazy drivers.

It’s a Sunday afternoon in Orem, Utah. We arrived early this morning for a short “vacation.” I’ll fly out tomorrow morning early for San Jose and Nina will stay the week. I’ll fly back on Friday evening (Halloween) and we’ll drive back to Colorado Springs on Sunday, November 2nd. The reason for the trip is that our granddaughter Danielle will be baptized next Saturday. The trip over here is part of the business trip. Sure saves money to do the trip in this fashion.

We drove over in the new toy! We finished loading up about 10 on Saturday morning and drove to the temple. We worked there until about 3 p.m. and by 3:30 we were on our way to Utah. The RV is now parked alongside our daughter Heather’s house where it’ll stay the rest of the week. Everything worked very well and the vehicle made the trip with no issues. It took about 9 hours to make the trip from the Denver Temple, including a short stop in Glenwood Springs for dinner. That last couple of hours from Green River, Utah, through Price, up and over the pass and into the valley seems to take a very long time. We were very happy to get here.

Heather had a nice family dinner this afternoon after church — turkey, stuffing, and all the extras that make up a wonderful Sunday dinner. It was almost like a Thanksgiving dinner. Heather sets a lovely table, so it was worth a picture of the table before we all sat down and had dinner. Daryl drove down from Salt Lake City to join us for dinner as well.

We attended church meetings with our daughter’s family. The featured speaker was a recently returned missionary from South America. He had just started speaking when he said that he needed to sit down as he was feeling light headed. An instant later he had passed out at the pulpit. A couple of folks helped him to the floor and a member of the bishopric stepped to the pulpit and began speaking as though nothing had happened!! It turns out the young man has an occasional problem with blood pressure dropping rapidly, generally when he’s speaking in Church! After the meeting, my son-in-law Ty asked when the last time was I’d seen someone pass out in church. I told him it wasn’t since yesterday…. We have a couple of medical emergencies a month on our shift in the temple, including one yesterday. Both Nina and I were sitting there quite flabergasted as the response was quite different than happens with the EMT’s in the temple!

The meal is done and things are being cleaned up. We’re getting a lot of unwanted help from Bradica (the dog). She’s discovered Heather’s Halloween candy and was just now scolded for climbing into the dishwasher and trying to clean off some plates. Fortunately Heather wasn’t around to see… It might have been too much! After I finish posting this, I’ll finish up getting things ready to go tomorrow. The airport shuttle driver should pick me up between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. so it’ll be a fairly short night’s sleep.

The week in San Jose will be, as usual, quite busy. There are a lot of meetings scheduled and I hope to get up to the temple for at least one session.

I’m enjoying the RV and the time here in Utah. I’m looking forward to getting back here in a few days!

Today was one of those drop-dead gorgeous fall days in this part of the country. The skies were clear blue — not a cloud in sight anywhere — no wind, and temperatures in the mid-70’s. We’ve had several days like this and the trend is forecast to continue for several more. To take some advantage of the day, we took a short drive after church to the Garden of the Gods.

The Garden of the Gods is a city park about five minutes from our house. Spencer Penrose, one of the city founders and fathers, donated the park to the city with an endowment fund so that it could be free forever. Because it was such a lovely day, there was a lot of traffic in the park and lots of people enjoying the day. This picture is probably the most popular picture taken from the most popular picture taking location. There are walking trails, bike paths, horseback trails, and one-way roads through the park. We enjoy driving through the park and have even ventured there with bicycles. The rocks are also available for climbing (technical climbing only) with the appropriate permit. We saw several people climbing on this drive. The fire department regularly has to rescue people who have climbed beyond their ability, or more often, who have climbed without the proper equipment and can’t negotiate up or down from their now perilous perch.

As I write this I’m also kind of watching the second game of the World Series. Neither of the teams I wanted to watch made it into the series — the Cubs lost to the Marlins and the Red Sox lost to the New York Yankees. The Florida Marlins handily won the first game last night. Tonight the Yankees seem to be in command with a 6-0 lead in the sixth inning. As I was growing up in Soda Springs, Idaho, the World Series always happened on the same weekend as General Conference. The radio station that broadcast conference was also the station that broadcast the World Series. I was more interested in the series than in conference in those days, and couldn’t wait for conference to be over so I could listen to the ballgames. Roger Marris and Mickey Mantle were the home run kings in those days and the Yankees and the Dodgers seemed to be perennial foes in the big game. The game of baseball has certainly changed since those days!

The Marlins will likely lose this game. However, it won’t make any difference other than to a few rabid fans. Little children in India will neither be fed nor starve over the outcome. No one’s celestial salvation will be affected. And I certainly won’t lose any sleep over the game, either. I’m just enjoying the absolutely lovely weather!

I’ve been scanning in a number of slides that were taken many years ago. These pictures start with when I was studying Chinese at Yale University up through 1973. I’ve probably got another fifty slides to scan. Many of the pictures bring back great memories, so I’ve loaded them onto the web page. Click on the Pictures link on the right side of the page, then on Picture Topic Index, and then select the AncientHistory — Pictures From the Past link. Hopefully you’ll also find some of these pictures interesting!

Over the 4th of July holiday in 1964 we went to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. It was an interesting trip, somewhat memorialized in the Caribou County Sun newspaper.

We had been in San Angelo, Texas, stationed at Goodfellow Air Force base for less than a month after finishing Chinese Language School and getting married. I was in a training program to teach me how to use the language skills I had learned in Connecticut. A bit of information about the training program is documented on the Goodfellow AFB web page. See www.goodfellow.af.mil/~ho17/ho/basehist.htm
for more information. A black-and-white picture in the middle of the page shows the equipment we were being trained on.

July 4th was the first holiday after starting school. Because the 4th was on a Saturday that year, we had Monday as a holiday and decided to take a short trip to Carlsbad and tour the caverns.

Our good friends Jim and Winnie Coursey had a Volkswagen beatle and we planned to drive that to New Mexico and back. We left early Saturday morning thinking it was only a few hours of driving (we’ve since become much better at map reading!). We arrived late in the afternoon in enough time to catch the last tour of the day.

The tour was very interesting and we thoroughly enjoyed the time in the caverns. We came out of the caverns just about the time that the bats made their exodus for their nightly search for food. The sight was quite amazing!

There wasn’t much around the caverns in 1964. I understand the area is quite commercialized now, but back then motels and other accomodations were quite limited. We had literally no money, so our plan was to camp in the National Park Campground and do some more sightseeing the next day. Texas had been beyond hot. Consequently, we didn’t bring much sleeping gear with us. Southeastern New Mexico, on the other hand, was not hot. In fact, it got uncomfortably cold that night. We were sleeping on a blanket on the ground with a blanket over us and were freezing. Then then ants came out — red ants with a vicious bite. After being stung several times, we got up to inspect the area and found we were sleeping on top of an anthill. They were coming out by the hundreds. The blankets were full of ants. We weren’t alone in this plight, either. Jim and Winnie were also up and had moved into the VW because of the ants. We had no trouble deciding we’d had enough and pointed the car back towards San Angelo.

The ride was pretty uneventful for the first hundred miles or so, and then the engine started running very rough. Inspection proved that a spark plug wire was broken. The carbon filament was broken right at the connection to the spark plug and we had no tools to fix the problem. Our attempts only made the problem worse — the wire became completely unrepairable. It was early Sunday morning so open gas stations were few and far between and none had a mechanic unless we were willing to pay an emergency fee. We continued driving but with the car running on three cylinders, we couldn’t drive very fast and the car was guzzling gasoline with wild abandon. We couldn’t afford to continue and we couldn’t afford to pay the emergency charges to get the spark plug wire fixed.

The car had belonged to Winnie before she and Jim were married (I was the best man at their wedding). Winnie had an automobile club membership so we finally called to see how that would work. We would still have to pay the charges, but they would send Winnie a bill rather than us having to pay on the spot. We were ecstatic! The repairman arrived around 4 a.m., fixed the spark plug wire, and we drove uneventfully back to San Angelo, Texas.

While we were at Carlsbad, we registered our name and address in the guest book. Wonder of wonders, a couple of weeks later, the Soda Springs newspaper published a short article about us visiting the caverns. Anything like this makes news in Soda Springs, Idaho! Of course, the proofreading was also par for the newspaper. The grammar mistake is quite noticable.

At the end of our initial training program, I was selected to go to airborne training. Jim Coursey was assigned to a intercept station on Taiwan. He elected to do an unaccompanied tour so that he would only be gone for fifteen months. Winnie went back home to Connecticut to wait for Jim to come back home. At that point we lost contact. A few months ago I got a short e-mail from Jim, but he hasn’t responded to my e-mail back to him.

Colorado has a license plates for honorably discharged veterans. Since we’ve bought the RV and need to put plates on it, I dug out my discharge paperwork so that I could prove that I qualified for these plates. In the folder was the 3×5 card with the short newspaper blurb and my comments. Sometime in the past I had put this card together! The card brought back the memories and they’re now recorded for posterity.

For the past two weeks we’ve had a little wooden guy in our family room. He’s called Aaron and is named after one of the Sons of Mosiah. The Sons of Mosiah were Book of Mormon missionaires who, rather than becoming king on the death of their father Mosiah, went on a seventeen-year mission to the Lamanites. The four sons were named Ammon, Aaron, Omner, and Himni. Our Ward has four of these wooden figures, one representing each of the four sons. Aaron has been in our home for the past two weeks as a reminder to seek out opportunities to tell people about the Church. He’s "transferred" by the missionaries assigned to our Ward. The transfers happen on Sunday. Aaron came with a bag of missionary goodies (the bag can be seen at his feet). One item was an outline for a Family Home Evening to be held at the beginning of Aaron’s stay. Other items included videos, tracts, pass-along cards, and a Book of Mormon. Finally, the bag contained a small booklet for us to record our missionary experiences so that Aaron would have a missionary journal at the end if his missionary experience.

We were quite interested in having one of these guys. We’ve several folks who have expressed some interest in information about the Church but don’t really want to talk to the missionaries. That material is slowly being distributed. The missionaries came by this evening to pick Aaron up and transfer him to his new family.

This is a kind of a novel program put together by the Stake. Each ward was given a set of four figures representing the Sons of Mosiah along with instructions and training. The guys are to move around the Ward until everyone in the Ward has had an opportunity. I’ve found it to be a good experience. In thinking about it, I’ve a few observations:

1. We always call it "the Church." Perhaps it’s because the name of the Church is so long: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Perhaps it’s because we consider the Church to be the only true church. Perhaps it’s just some ego, but never-the-less, that’s the name used by most members: the Church.
2. Telling other people about the Church is important to us. If the Church is indeed the only true church, then it’s important for other people to know about it. The issue is, lots of other folks think they’ve already found "the true church." They want to tell me about it. They want me to become "a Christian." Consequently, it’s not easy for me to do much proselyting!
3. The whole "Christian" idea is itself quite interesting. We certainly feel very strongly that we are Christian. Others certainly feel very strongly that we are not. It’s all a question of definition. We define a "Christian" as someone who believes that Jesus is the Christ and is trying to conform his life to Jesus’ teachings. Others have a much more narrow definition which rather than trying to be inclusive, is quite exclusive and we don’t fit their definition.
4. The Church is very geographic. Each congregation (called a "Ward") has a specific geographic description. Living within the boundaries of a Ward means being a member of that Ward. Moving outside those boundaries automatically means becoming a member of a different Ward. Since there is no paid ministry, a Ward depends on its members for everything: Sunday School teachers, youth organizations, childrens organzations, and everything in between. Our recruiting is done by introducing people to the Church. In mature Wards, that is, Wards in an area without much turnover in residents, recruiting (read missionary work) is difficult. People have selected and settled into their own church and aren’t much interested in changing. New residents, however, haven’t yet settled in and are more interested in finding a church that meets their needs. We have very little turnover in our neighborhood, so our missionary opportunities are somewhat limited. Is that a good enough excuse?

Well, Aaron is off to a new missionary experience. Bradica (the dog) sniffed all around the space where Aaron used to be and decided that all was still well in Zion. It’s time for bed after a busy Sunday. Good Night!

It’s about 6:30 p.m. Central Time and I’m on a flight from Austin, Texas, to Denver and eventually home. We’re climbing through some clouds with a fair amount of turbulence making typing this pretty interesting. We’ll be above the clouds Real Soon Now as it’s gotten quite bright outside the window. That should end the turblence (perhaps!). This is a small Regional Jet. There are two (narrow) seats on each side of the aisle. It looks like there are seats for about fifty people and all but two seats are occupied. Fortunately, one of those seats is right next to me. On this airplane I want to either sit in the first row or in the exit row. That way no one in front of me can recline their seatback. There isn’t much room between the seats (this distance is called "pitch" in airplane speak) so if the person in front reclines their
seat, there’s no room at all available. The seats just before the exit row can’t be reclined and of course there are now seats in front of the first row. There was a fellow sitting next to me (I’m in the window seat on the left side of the airplane in row 8), but since the two seats in the last row of the airplane were empty, he moved there. He’s at least six feet tall and was quite uncomfortable sitting next to me and scrunched up against the seat in front of us. Even though an exit row has about four inches of pitch than the other rows,
he was not fitting well into the seat. He was quite unhappy with his travel department for having booked him on this type of airplane ("They know better!" he fumed). That gives him an empty seat next to him and I’ve got an extra seat next to me. There are a couple of ladies sitting behind me that met at a conference in Austin for the first time. Yack, yack, yack, yada, yada, yada. I’ve got some noise cancelling headsets and am glad of it. At least this way they’re fairly faint background noise. We’re through the clouds, the sun is
out, and the skies above us are clear blue. It’s finally a fairly smooth light.

Three of my managers and I flew over to Austin, Texas, yesterday for meetings with Dell Computer. We got in about 2 p.m. and went on a plant tour followed by dinner at a pretty exclusive restaurant. There were four of us and five of them at dinner. I’m sure it was a healthy bill at the end. I’m spending about a million dollars a year on Dell products and the rest of the company is spending another milion dollars. For that price they should spring for dinner every once in a while. The factory tour was very interesting. The Dell plants are well automated and the automation looks to be working incredibly well. Our guide worked as a supervisor and then a line manager in the plant before moving into Information Technology (IT) managing the factory support systems. That’s an interesting transition. She certainly knew the plant very well. As we walked through the plant she would step right into a work area and literally take it over. I was very impressed and would like to have several folks like her on my staff.

After dinner we stopped at a sports bar (a glass of Sprite was $4.50!) to watch the last couple of innings of the Chicago Cubs vs the Florida Marlins playoff baseball game. The Cubs finally lost the game in the eleventh inning by a score of 9-8. It was a great game and a worthy baseball playoff game. This is the first post-season appearance for the Cubs in more than fifty years. The last time they were in the World Series was in 1918! Is this finally the year? The Cub fans certainly hope so. But, they’ve got to do better than they did last night to make that dream come true.

Today was spent in the Dell Briefing Center with a flurry of presentations by different groups within Dell. We talked about support services, the server roadmap, the Linux roadmap, the support software tools available, took a tour of the customer support center, and had a great lunch. The Briefing Center is very well equipped and is a showcase of Dell products. The trip was well worth the time. It’s been several years since I’ve been to see Dell in Austin but I think we need to do it much more often — at least once a year. It was also good to have the three managers most invoved with Dell products be there as well. It was a great interaction and more than sufficiently informative.

Tomorrow at 7:30 I’ll be sitting in the dentist’s chair. The bridge in the front left of my mouth has become "mobile," to use a word from the dental industry vocabulary. That means the bridge is moving like it isn’t quite tied down. That’s not anything near what I’d really want to be doing tomorrow morning. Hopefully this is easily fixed with little discomfort. Not very likely!

The new (to us) RV is still in the driveway. It’s been cleaned and drained of all fluids likely to freeze. Some of the stuff from the trailer has been loaded into the RV. There’s quite a bit of stuff that doesn’t have a home in the RV which has significantly less storage space than the trailer. We’re having to decide what we really need to have in the RV! We usually take lots and lots of stuff with us, most of which doesn’t get used while we’re travelling. We’ve decided to drive it to Utah the last week of the month. I’ll then fly to
California on business and back on the following Friday. We’ll stay for Danielle’s baptism on Saturday, November 1st, and then drive back home on Sunday. It should give us a good chance to use the vehicle and work out the best way for us to use it. When we get back, it’ll probably go into storage. The storage bill is paid through the end of December. In the meantime I want to find a place much closer to the house even though it’ll cost a bit more. I think we’d be much more likely to use it if we had better access to it. Where
we’re storing it now takes about an hour to get there and back.

If all goes well, we’ll be on the ground in about a half-hour. It’s been another uneventful flight. It still astounds me that United is losing so much money. Every flight is full!! There’s got to be some major overhaul required in management ranks. It is also interesting that with their reduced flight schedule (about 30% of their flights were taken out of service over the past couple of years), the airline has become on-time. It’s now rare that a flight is late or leaves late. In spite of the dentist, it’ll be good to get back home
once again.

Well, we’ve done the deal and bought an RV. We’ve traded in the trailer and purchased a small Tioga Class C RV. It’s in the driveway for a day or so before being taken to the storage lot. It is 24 feet long, just slightly longer than the Suburban. It is reasonably well equipped — a slide-out to provide more room when parked, a generator, standard kitchen, air conditioning, etc. It’s on a Ford chassis with a V10 engine which seems to climb hills quite well. It’s a 2001 model with low milage and seems ready and raring to go. Now we just need somewhere to take it and the time to go. Meanwhile, I’m sure enjoying the new toy!

The only other news of the day is that the garage door on the double side broke. The spring which provides the assist in lifting and lowering the door broke with quite a racket. Nina was on the phone with a friend when it broke and thought we were having an earthquake! The door is so heavy that we can’t lift it, so the Camery is now being held hostage in the garage until the repairman can get here on Friday. Good thing the Suburban was out of the garage when the spring broke!