All posts by rksmith

Shot

Computer Stuff, General, ,

I am actually quite paranoid (a disturbed thought process characterized by excessive anxiety or fear) about needles. But, I still go get a flu shot most every year. Today was the day this year. Nina told me that a local pharmacy was giving flu shots today for $15, a very good price. So I made my way to the pharmacy this evening, paid my money, sat down, and closed me eyes to make sure that I did not see the needle. So what did the nurse do? She gave me a countdown before the jab! Ugh. I was not happy. Then as she was putting on the band aid she said, “Oh, you look a little pale! You better sit here for a minute…” I told her it would have gone much better had she not said, “Ok, here it comes … 3 … 2 … 1 … JAB!” But I did sit there for a couple of minutes before standing up. I still felt a little wobbly-kneed, but got out of there without going down. Next time I’ll make sure to give some instructions first.

I’ve mentioned Twitter before. I’m finding it quite interesting. I try to send an update every few hours, most are bland and inane. I’m following a couple of family members (one of whom has never “tweeted” .. hint, hint littletwerp) and a few other people that I know or know about. A couple of them are very interesting and they often send links to interesting stuff (in addition to sending just inane, bland updates). Twitter also has a capability of “tracking” keywords. Any tweets that contain that keyword come to me even though I’m not following that person. So, I’m tracking three keywords: Idaho, Utah, and Mormon. That has also been very enlightening. This afternoon about 3:30 I got a tweet from the U.S. Geological Service that there had been an earthquake on the Wasatch Fault at 3:06 p.m. this afternoon. It was a magnitude 1.2 quake just down the hill from Heather’s house! That’s probably not strong enough to be felt, but still that was pretty close to hearth and home! One of the people I follow (Phil Windley … teaches IT at BYU, former CIO for the State of Utah, host of the monthly Utah CTO Forum) somehow grabs all of his updates that he’s sent to Twitter and puts them on the sidebar of his blog. I’d like to figure out how to have that automatically happen (it’s kind of cool!). There are so many interesting web things going on!

The company I used to work for here in Pocatello today did another round of people cuts. The company is having some serious problems and it’s being taken out on the people who work there. I’m very happy not to be associated with them anymore. Their idea of culture and ethics are a very long way from my idea and a very long way from those held by the Pocatello community (where the company is still the 800 pound turd). Woodrow Wilson said, “Never murder a man when he’s busy committing suicide.” Unfortunately, my former company seems to be high on the list of companies busy committing suicide … they can’t even release their third quarter earnings because of inventory valuation accounting issues. Meanwhile, no one in senior management is getting shot … for now they are doing the shooting. But, they should be warned: what goes around comes around.

Halloween Over For Another Year

Computer Stuff, General, , , ,

The conference in Boise worked out such that I was able to leave there about 11 this morning so I was home about 3:30 this afternoon. Once outside of Boise I set the cruise control and didn’t get out of that mode until I exited the freeway in Pocatello. It was very nice to get home. The Trick-of-Treaters started showing up about 6:30 this evening. They came in waves, as usual. First the really little kids with mommy and daddy hovering nearby. Then the grade school kids, either with an older brother or sister in the background or mom and/or dad in a car driving slowly up the street. After another break then came the junior high and high school kids, always in big groups, many with no real attempt at a costume. I closed up the candy shop at 9 and Halloween was over at our house.

Then it was time to refresh the mouse traps. One more mouse had been snagged by a trap in the basement. I’ve no idea how long it’ll take to get rid of all the mice. It’s a definite frustration. Maybe I need to borrow a cat or something! Jaelene, maybe you can come for a visit for a week or so … the cats would probably be well fed!

I’ve upgraded the operating system on my Macbook to the latest version (Leopard). It is very cool. Since my Macbook is so new, the upgrade went without a hitch and very quickly. I’m already in love with a couple of new features, like TimeMachine (which keeps a constant, browse-able backup) and Stacks (a great way to organize icons). So far I haven’t found anything about the new operating system that I don’t like.

The next task will be to get all of the weblogs on my server upgraded to the latest release of WordPress. I’ve been running the latest version on my blog for a couple of weeks and it’s working well. For most folks, the upgrade will be almost invisible. That’s all for tonight!

Moving Around

General

Tonight I’m in Boise, Idaho staying at a Hampton Inn and Suites hotel near the Idaho capitol building. Last night I was in Orem, Utah again at a Hampton Inn and Suites hotel. Tonight I’m actually in a suite. Last night was a normal room. This suite is very nice. Last night’s room was just OK. In fact, I may find time sometime to blog a bit about hotel rooms and all the dumb things that hotels do. I just saw on Twitter that there was a magnitude 5.6 earthquake near San Francisco a few minutes ago. That reminded me of the first big earthquake in Japan. I had moved into the house we were renting a little west of Tsukuba and Nina and Jared weren’t there quite yet. The earthquake happened in the middle of the night and I flew out bed, and then didn’t have a clue what I should do. The house was still moving and I stumbled to the bedroom doorway and stood there hoping that was the strongest part of the house. The earthquake seemed to go on for a very long time. The next day at the office I learned that the quake was a magnitude 5.2 and had lasted for twelve seconds. No damage done. It was considered a “small” earthquake. I knew then I didn’t want to be in anything larger than that.

This morning I attended a CTO breakfast that Phil Windley organizes each month. The link has a recap of the event. I really enjoyed being there and meeting the folks that attended. It was well worth my time and I’ll be at all future breakfasts that I can work into my schedule. Then it was over to American Fork to my new “office”. It’s a small, one-room office in the middle of a larger office space. Big enough for a desk and a chair. The phone is set up and working. I don’t know how much time I’ll spend there, but it does give me a place to be while I’m doing the business development work down there. After lunch with a potential client, I then drove to Boise. Once out of Salt Lake and Ogden, I didn’t have to slow down but once through a small bit of construction and got to the hotel about an hour earlier than I had expected. Downtown Boise is DEAD at night. There was a small pizza place open not far from the hotel, so that was dinner.

Tomorrow I’m attending a conference being put on by the governor’s office on how to do business with the State of Idaho. In attendance will be representatives from all the state agencies. There is some potential work here as well, so the meeting should be useful. Then comes the four-hour drive back to Pocatello. I’ll miss Halloween, but Nina thinks she’s got a mouse trapped in the house and has seen another one. Obviously we’ve still got some in the house … moving around!

Phone Update

General

The Treo cell phone powered up this morning and seems to be working … I’m quite surprised. The manual says that the phone is definitely not waterproof. I’m putting it on the charger and keeping my fingers crossed!

A Mystery..??

General

For the most part it’s been a pretty good day. The RV is winterized. I’ve replaced the water in the hot tub so it’s ready for the winter. I got the winterizer fertilizer down on the front yard. Ohio State clobbered Penn State, USC got spanked, and Texas came back against Nebraska. The Rockies are working hard at not going down three games to zero. With luck they’ll manage to win this game. On the other hand, while changing out the water in the hot tub, I managed to dump my Treo cell phone into the tub. I snatched it out, pulled the battery, and have been letting it dry out since. Maybe tomorrow morning I’ll put the battery back in and see if it has any life left. I’m afraid, however, that it is toast. That would be very unfortunate. I’m headed back down to Salt Lake on Monday, then after my noon appointment down there on Tuesday, I’m headed to Boise for some meetings on Wednesday. I’d kind of like to have a working cell phone for that trip!

I have two pedometers. One was a gift from my favorite brother (which was for him a freebe from the State of Wyoming). The other was a somewhat expensive unit, costing a year ago about $8. I wanted to know whether one or the other was somewhat accurate, so I’ve been wearing both of them for the past three days. They aren’t even close to each other. The freebe from my brother registers a little less than half the number of steps that the eight dollar unit registers. I thought maybe the freebe was counting only steps on the left side where I was wearing it and the eight dollar unit was counting right and left both. So, I reset the two of them while I was putting fertilizer on the front yard and counted my steps while I was doing that. I had 644 left steps … so if the theory was right, the brother unit should say about 644 steps and the eight dollar unit should say about 1288 steps. Nope. The brother unit said 580 steps. The eight dollar unit said 1055 steps. So, neither of them is very accurate. How does a person know when they’ve really walked 10,000 steps in a day? I should use the eight dollar unit for that, I think. It seems to be fairly generous in its counting.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox added four more runs and now lead the third game in the World Series 9-5. It’s the top of the eighth and not much chance left for the Rockies in this game (and in the series). It’s probably time to turn that game off! They were doing better when I wasn’t watching….

Times Are “Busy”

General

At a little after 9 p.m. on a Sunday evening I’m sitting in my easy chair in the family room. Game 7 of the American League Championship Series is on the TV, but Cleveland is trailing 5-2 to Boston. I’ve been kind of reading my book, but until the end of the game, I’m not sure I’ll get much else read, so I’ll blog instead.

It’s been a fairly full week. I’ve been talking with a company in Idaho Falls about doing some business development for them and we’ve come to an agreement. It’s a commission-only position which suites me just fine. I start to get quite busy with this new adventure starting tomorrow. I spent the past Monday and Wednesday in Idaho Falls. I was told that I needed to be at a Church Regional Training meeting on Wednesday evening, but that turned out to be incorrect … it was for the Primary, Young Women, and Relief Society leaders and not for the Sunday School. As a result, I missed an Idaho State Symphony concert. Nina took good care of that, though. She took her friend Cathy with her to the concert and they had a grand time. I came back home and finished my preparation for my Thursday evening assignment.

Thursday morning, very early, we were on our way to Soda Springs to pick up mother and dad and take them to do a temple session in Logan. Dad needs some assistance now in the temple so Nina and I will take them once a month. Thursday was the first time. We were there for the 10 a.m. session, then made stops at Sams Club, Deseret Book, and the Pepperidge Farm outlet store. We left the house at 6:30 a.m. and were back at 4:30 p.m. Enough time for both of us to have dinner and be off to our other assignments: Nina went to the prison and I was off to the Stake Center for Stake Auxilliary Training. I was running the session for the Sunday School.

Turnout for the Sunday School training session was actually quite good. We got home in enough time to see the end of the baseball game won by the Red Sox. Friday was a day for errands and putting Nina’s car in the garage. It’s leaking something and smells like oil is burning. The garage said that the problem was between the engine and the transmission and they would be pulling the transmission out to figure out the problem … which will be at least $700 to fix and most likely much more than that. In any event, it’s cheaper than buying a new car! Both of our cars are paid for and we’d like to drive them several more years.

Saturday evening was the Kinport Branch party. The Kinport Branch serves at the prison and is where Nina is the Relief Society President. The party was a potluck dinner followed by playing games. We had a lot of fun, but came home to find that Cleveland had lost again and Boston had tied the series at three games apiece. I was able to take some solace, however as Notre Dame got clobbered 41-0.

Today I had a speaking assignment at the prison and at our home Juniper Hills ward. I spoke twice this morning, once in the high-security area of the prison and once in the minimum-security area. That’s the first time I’ve been up there on a Sunday and it was good to see Nina in action and to meet some of the women she talks about. The assignment in the Juniper Hills Ward also went well.

Tonight has been very quiet at home other than my shouts at the TV screen. Unfortunately, they can’t hear me. It’s now the bottom of the 8th and Boston has scored and scored again. The score is now 11-2 and the inning isn’t over. It has been fun watching Twitter during tonight’s ballgame. All of the folks I follow who are paying attention to the game are rooting for Boston.

Cleveland is making it easy for me to know who to cheer for in the World Series that starts on Wednesday. Go Rockies!!

Being Followed….

General,

A bit ago I wrote that I was trying out Twitter and had started following a couple of folks that I knew about, knew of their reputation, and liked what they were on about in the world (Phil Windley and Dave Winer). That has turned out to be interesting. Both of them send little “tweets” fairly often. For instance, I know that Phil Windley gave a talk to the LDS Church’s computer department this morning on digital identity. Dave Winer has been working this morning on bugs in his TwitterGram application. Dave Winer sends lots of little tweets, most referencing interesting information he’s come across. Phil is not so prolific.

Meanwhile, I’ve been sending my tweets to Twitter. Essentially that has been sending this stuff to the big bit-bucket in the sky. The only person receiving them was me. However, I’ve been learning a lot about the system. I mostly send these updates from my Sprint PCS phone as an SMS message.

All well and good, until this morning when I got an email from Twitter that a particular person (who for now will remain unnamed) started following ME! I don’t know the person. I’ve checked out his profile on Twitter and verified that he’s an unknown person to me. He is also just starting to use Twitter and playing with it. All of a sudden, I had to stop and think about this. Someone is following what I’m sending to Twitter. I now have to start making some sense! I have to stop blathering! I need to say something important! Oh my. Then I re-thought and decided that I’m not going to change anything about what I do with Twitter. My follower can continue to follow me or not as he chooses. It is a bit of an upper, though, to know that someone whom I’ve never met and probably never will is getting my little tweets!

So, here’s how to join my following:

You can set up a Twitter account at http://twitter.com/ and then specify who you wish to follow. I’m known on Twitter as “rolandksmith”.

Or, using your cell phone, send a text message to 40404 stating: “follow rolandksmith” (I think this will work … but you may have to set up a Twitter account first).

The tweets will start rolling in….!!

Sometimes I’ll send a picture with some text. The picture process uses Dave Winer’s TwitterGram capability. That process is this:

1. I take a picture with my phone and then send it to my account in Flickr.

2. The Flickr account is set up to tag any pictures coming in on a specific email address with the tag “twitter”.

3. I’ve signed up with TwitterGram and told it to look at my Flickr account for any pictures with the tag “twitter”. Any photos it finds, it creates a “TinyURL” and sends the subject line of the picture (which in my case is always “You have new Picture Mail”) along with the TinyURL of the Flickr photo as a tweet to my Twitter account.

4. A few minutes later, the tweet shows up as an SMS message on my phone with the link to the picture. It also appears in all other channels that the tweets get sent out on to whomever is following me. Clicking on the link in the message brings up the Flickr picture along with the text that I sent to Flickr with the photo.

It’s an interesting process and pictures sometimes add a lot of context to a tweet.

Next is to add my own capability to this process. I’m working on a way to send video clips from my phone to my server and then automatically post a link to these clips as a tweet to Twitter. I can do it manually. Next is to build the application to do it automatically.

Am I Celebrating Too Soon???

General, ,

With the new performing arts center here in Pocatello, a variety of performing groups are now coming here to perform. For the past couple of years we have bought season tickets to the series called “Season of Note”. One of those concerts was scheduled for tonight: a British group called “Zum”, five guys, a pianist, a cellist, a violinist, a guy on the bass, and an accordian player. That last instrument was a clue. The attendance was fairly sparse and we weren’t the only ones who bailed out on the concert at the break. There was a baseball game on TV and it was much more interesting than the concert!

Now it’s important to know that in our family, we have a family member who is an avid Arizona Diamondbacks fan. That person has scheduled their life around the playoffs over the past couple of weeks … including spending significant coins of the realm for tickets. The past few days the Diamondbacks have been paying baseball against the Colorado Rockies with the winner to represent the National League in the World Series. However, Nina and I are Colorado Rockies fans. Right now it’s coming up on the bottom of the sixth inning with the Colorado Rockies leading 6-1. They lead the series 3-0 and if they win tonight it’ll be a sweep of the Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks will have to make quite a comeback to avoid being swept!

But, in honor of a beloved family member, we’ll keep the celebration down over here in Pocatello…. Shouldn’t be too hard for folks who believe staying up past 10 p.m. is hazardous to our health.