Twelve people gathered around the table this afternoon for our traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It was delicious and there was plenty of food for everyone. There is still plenty of food for everyone….

As we were eating, our daughter Heather went around the table for each one to say something that they were thankful for. The answers ranged from family to flush toilets. All of the answers were very good and thoughtful. We are very blessed and have so very much to be thankful for.

I stopped at the barbershop on Tuesday after dad’s eye doctor appointment. One of the hair dressers there is from the Ukraine and we talked a little bit about holidays there and here. She said that there was no holiday in the Ukraine like our Thanksgiving and she felt it was a very good tradition to have a day specifically to be thankful. She was quite eloquent about her thanks at being able to come to the United States and to have a good job and a good husband.

I’m coming to the end of this day of thanksgiving and feeling very good about the day, the good conversation, the great food, and most of all being able to spend some time with family. In the end, all that will matter is family. Happy Thanksgiving!

Overnight in Mumbai (aka Bombay), India a group of extremists launched a series of shooting rampages in the southern part of the city. One target in particular was the Taj Mahal Palace, a luxury hotel frequented by businessmen and government officials. The news reports are still quite confused and the details of fatalities, wounded, and possible hostages changes rapidly. It’s a very serious, very sad situation.

The group claiming responsible has launched other attacks, but nothing to date on this scale. Their tactic is to load themselves up with guns and ammunition, go someplace and start firing indescriminately until they run out of ammunition or are killed by the police. If still alive, they then attempt to escape so they can strike again another day.

In my last job I had the opportunity to make several business trips to the Philippines. Muslim separatists have on a couple of occasions launched attacks against hotels and businesses. As a result, armed guards are deployed at the entrances to malls, banks, and hotels where packages are checked and people are screened for guns and explosives. I’m sure that these guards know that if an attack is going to happen, they will take the first bullets. Fortunately that hasn’t happened, yet. However, these kinds of incidents have a tendency to escalate. The next group will learn from this incident and the next one will be more severe.

Years ago when I was working for TRW Automotive Group, I was part of a group establishing a plant in Pamplona, Spain and over an eighteen month period made a dozen or more business trips to Pamplona. At that time the Basque separatist group ETA was quite active in that region. Terrorist activity takes money and their primary fund raising activity was to kidnap foreign businessmen and hold them for ransom. To make sure that the employers knew that the ETA was serious, they usually included a body part (a finger or a toe or an ear) from the hostage in the ransom demand. Consequently, TRW felt it very important to train their business travelers on how to avoid being kidnapped and how to protect themselves if their hotel was invaded.

Some of that training was pretty graphic. For about a year before each business trip to Spain I had to go through an hour’s refresher training. It must have been effective, because no TRW businessmen were kidnapped, either in Spain or in Italy where another group was emplying the same tactic. That training is still quite fresh in my memory.

However, it didn’t address completely what happened in Mumbai last night. A gunmen came into the lobby of the hotel through one entrance and began firing. Those in the lobby began moving (quickly and in a panic) towards the other entrance / exit whereupon another gunman came in that door and began firing. Complete confusion and panic ensued and many more people became fatalities as a result.

I wonder if I would react better than that? Would I go where the crowd wasn’t going?

My thoughts and prayers are with those in Mumbai and their families. It is a serious tragedy which will change life there further constraining what innocent, normal people can do and where they can be. It will aslo surely result in innocent people being railroaded, as happened to Star Simpson at Boston’s Logan Airport a year ago. Craziness reigns supreme on all sides. Sometimes I think you and I are the only sane people around (and sometimes I worry about you…).

This morning as the day started, I put the following out on Twitter:

Today I predict: it won’t snow; the sun will shine; the wait at the dr office will be long; Linksys cust support won’t be helpful.

Now that the day is coming to an end, here’s what happened….

It didn’t snow. Snow wasn’t in the forecast and isn’t supposed to be in the forecast the rest of this week. So, this was a fairly safe prediction. However, it’s past time to be snowing here. We need the snow! Not only does it bring the badly needed moisture, it also covers up all the dry, brown, ugly landscape. Let it snow!

It was a mostly sunny day today. There were some high, wispy clouds, but they don’t really count for anything (maybe they’re harbringers of snow?). The sun shone brightly the entire day. Again, this isn’t much of a hard prediction. We get a lot of sun here in Pocatello, Idaho.

The wait at the eye doctor’s office was indeed long. Dad had an appointment for a checkup for his macular degeneration. Both eyes had gone wet and he has received the prescribed four shots in each eye to dry up the problem. This was to verify that the treatment had been effective. We waited in the waiting room about a half-hour past the appointment time and then spent a fair amount of time waiting between visits from the nurse or the doctor. The news was mixed. His right eye is currently dry, but his left eye has started bleeding again and is now wet. So, he’s on a new schedule of shots in the eyes. Today he got a shot in the left eye. Next week he’ll get one in the right eye. So, this process will continue for a while. I go along on these appointments to make sure that mother understands everything that was said and gets all of her questions answered.

In the end, Linksys Customer Service was indeed helpful. It took quite a while, but everything is now working. When I was running the web servers here at home, I paid a fairly hefty monthly bill to Qwest for a block of Internet Protocol addresses and for a fairly big broadband data pipe. Now that all the web servers are now hosted at BlueHost, I revised my setup with Qwest which would reduce my monthly phone bill by more than half. But, that included giving up the assigned IP addresses. Yesterday the power went out and the Qwest device rebooted and all the Internet access from home ceased. Last night I got it partially restored, but couldn’t get the Linksys wireless router to play nicely with the Qwest DSL modem. I gave it another try this morning before going to the eye doctor with dad to no avail.

After getting back home, I first got on a live chat session with Linksys. They tried a couple of things, and then sent me to Qwest. After another significant period of time on hold, the technician (in a very noisy environment with lots of foreign accents … probably India) worked through the process of making sure that the Qwest DSL modem worked correctly. There was a setting that needed to be changed, but otherwise it was set up correctly. However, they couldn’t help me with setting up the Linksys router.

So it was back to Linksys Customer Service and another person with a pretty thick accent. She first made sure that I could connect to the Internet directly through the Qwest DSL modem and then we went through setting up the Linksys router. There were several things that needed to be set up beyond what the manual said. The result was a working system and we again have wireless access in the house. That took a little more than three hours with half of that spent on hold.

Meanwhile, I’ve started taking apart the networked computers that are no longer needed here at home, and there are several of them. Now the question is, what do I do with them?

I spent the day getting things done outside so that the snow can fly. Now I’m just wondering where the snow is? It should have been here by now. The only certain thing is that it will snow.

The motor home now has the cover on it and is put to bed for the rest of the year. The bird bath is now plugged in and should not freeze over anymore for the birds. I drained the gasoline from the lawn tractor, pulled the battery, and wrapped it up for the winter. The biggest job was getting the cover on the motor home, which takes both Nina and I to do it.

This is also the day for football rivalries. The big game here in this area was the BYU at Utah game. BYU came into the game with a 9 win 1 loss record while Utah started with a ten game and no loss record. Nevertheless, BYU was favored. They shouldn’t have been as Utah methodically took the BYU team apart. Meanwhile, the Idaho State University Bengals won their first game of the season this afternoon. It was definitely an interesting football day, but in the end it makes no difference in any eternal sense.

Mother and dad drove over here on Wednesday afternoon, spent the night, and went with us to the Rexburg Temple on Thursday. The sessions there are every 45 minutes which means I have to calculate what time sessions start. My math was right and a session did start at 9 a.m. with all four of us in attendance. The temple there is beautiful and quite simple. There is a wheat theme throughout the building, an indirect reference to the Savior being the Bread of Life. The session was well attended and we enjoyed our time there. Next will be a trip to Twin Falls so we can do a session there. It may not be many more months before dad will not be able to make these trips anymore. These things do have eternal implications.

With my new High Council responsibilities, my Sundays have gotten much busier. I have four specific assignments. First, most time consuming, and most fun is that I’m assigned as an advisor to one of the Wards in our Stake. That means attending their Bishopric meeting (9:15 a.m.), their Priesthood Executive Committee meeting (10:30 a.m.), and their Welfare meeting (1st Sunday 11:00 a.m.) and Ward Correlated Council meeting (2nd Sunday, 11:00 a.m.) and their extended PEC meeting (4th Sunday at 11:00 a.m.). That leaves the third and fifth Sundays with no meeting from 11:00 to 1:00 p.m. Then their standard meeting block starts a 1 p.m. and finishes at 4 p.m.

In addition on the 2nd and 4th Sundays at 7:00 a.m. is the Stake High Council meeting.

The next area of responsibility is Emergency Preparedness. Fortunately, I’m not the doer here, or even the organizer (the Stake Relief Society does that). I’m the liaison and facilitator.

I have a speaking assignment on the 3rd Sunday of each month in one of the Wards or Branches in the Stake. Today was a 3rd Sunday and I was assigned to speak in the same Ward that I advise. It was nice taking care of two assignments at the same time.

Finally, I have responsibility for the Single Adult program in our Stake. Single Adults are those who are not married and over the age of about 31. They come in several flavors… the never-marrieds, the divorced, and those who have lost a spouse. In the Pocatello area we try to offer them some social opportunities geared specifically for them. Each month one of the Stakes in our area organizes a fireside on the 2nd Sunday evening, which I am supposed to attend. So the 2nd Sunday of the month starts at 7:00 a.m. and ends about 7:00 p.m. In addition, one of the Stakes in the area is responsible to organize a dance, usually held on the 3rd Saturday from 8:30 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. On the nights my Stake is responsible, I have to be there for the duration. On the nights another Stake is responsible, I only have to make arrangements for the building to be open and available.

Then, once a year the Stakes in the area sponsor a Single Adult Conference with a dinner and dance afterwards. All of the Single Adult activities are held in our Stake Center (so that no one ever has to guess about where the activity is being held. 2nd Sunday 6 p.m.? Fireside in our building. 3rd Saturday 8:30 p.m.? Dance in our building).

Yesterday was the Single Adult conference followed by a dance, and my Stake was responsible for the dance and for the setup before the conference. Nina and I were at the Stake Center until midnight last night. She came over later than I did, so we were there in two cars. After I had closed up the building, we headed home. On the way, Nina tried to call me, but her iPhone was out of battery. When we go into the garage, she asked me if all the lights were supposed to be turned out in the Stake Center. They were all supposed to be turned out. Well, she told me, one hallway wasn’t dark and she noticed it as we drove past the building on the way home. It was the first hallway that I had closed up, so apparently someone had gone out into that hallway after I had turned off the lights, turned them on again, and I hadn’t noticed.

So, back to the Stake Center we went. Nina drove, I “hustled” in, turned off the lights, and home we came. Finally about 1 a.m. this morning we were in bed.

For everyone else, this is probably an uninteresting weekend. For me it was a whirlwind weekend. I’m sure there are more of these to come in the future. Meanwhile, I’m just glad this one is finished! Good Night, all!

I was coming home from the monthly Southeastern Idaho Information Technology Syndicate breakfast on a drizzly, dreary morning yesterday. I was stopped behind a pickup in the right lane on a one-way street and watching a line of traffic make a left turn onto the one-way cross street. Suddenly, BAM! I had been rear-ended. It wasn’t a hard hit, so I didn’t lurch forward and hit the pickup in front of me. I unbuckled (a rare event, unfortunately), got out of the car, to find I was the front end of a three-car collision. The young lady driving the car in the middle really got the brunt of the accident as her car was crunched front and rear.

The young lady driving the pickup truck that caused the accident wanted to just give us her phone number and leave. But by that time I’d already called 911 and the police were on their way.

The whole process took a bit over a half an hour from the time of the collision until I could leave. The Pocatello policeman was very courteous, efficient, and pleasant. He collected everyone’s information and gave each of us a paper with everyone’s information on it. The accident report will be available in about a week. I’ll probably go by and pick up a copy just for the fun of it. The perpetrator was cited for failure to maintain safe clear distance and for attempting to leave the scene of an accident. Don’t think that last one will hold up, though, because as she was trying to drive away, I told her that the police were on their way and she should probably stick around, which she did. However, the driver of the crunched car had quite a talk with the policeman about that.

No damage at all to my car. The perp’s pickup was also undamaged. A thousand dollars or more damage was done to the car in the middle. She was singularly unhappy! It was a new (to her) car, and already it was in an accident and it wasn’t her fault. I think the pickup driver girl was seeing the left lane moving and didn’t realize our lane still had a red light. Or else, she was somewhere out in LaLaLand … or maybe both. When I drove away the policeman was in a pretty intense conversation with her. The insurance card she gave us did not have her name on it. She said she was insured on someone else’s insurance… I’m glad I don’t have a claim to make!