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!

It looks like moving the blogs to a new hosted service has worked reasonably well. There are a few minor things to get fixed, but the process went easier than I had expected. My favorite brother was able to get into his blog on the new server last night which was very encouraging. I’ll soon be completely out of basic systems administration business. As my grandkids text-message: “W00t!”

I admit that I stayed up until 2 a.m. this morning waiting for the local election returns to finally get posted. Nina came into the computer room about that time just to make sure I was still around. I had fallen asleep earlier and snoozed for about an hour sitting in my chair in front of the computer.

We both voted about 10 a.m. on November 4th. Nina went to the polling station a bit before I did as we were taking separate cars. She had a set of errands to run and I had a separate set of errands. The polling station was busy when I got there but there was no waiting. The entire process took about ten minutes.

About 9 p.m. I wandered up to the Holiday Inn where Election Central was getting underway. The idea was that the Democrats would be on one side of the ballroom, the Republicans on the other side, and local races and issues would be put up on a board in the middle of the room. Things never work out as planned, however. By the time 9 p.m. rolled around and the event opened, the presidential race had already been decided and the only thing left was to listen to McCain’s concession speech and Obama’s acceptance speech. A number of TV’s were set up in the ballroom, each on a different station. Consequently it was difficult to hear anything on the TV, particularly the speech making as none of them were in sync with the others. As soon as President-elect Obama’s speech ended, most everyone left. I stayed around for another hour, but no local election returns were being posted. I talked with the two Republican candidates for County Commission and they were both very frustrated at how long it was taking to get any information.

When I got home, the first preliminary numbers were showing up on a crawl at the bottom of the screen on one of the local TV stations. The vote on the hospital question was favorable, but the vote for the two County Commissioner seats was going against the two candidates I supported. In fact, both of them were significantly behind throughout the evening. The results posted at 1 a.m. showed them both behind. Finally, on the results posted at 1:41 a.m., with all precincts counted, they both had prevailed.

This means that Bannock County, for the first time in many years, Republicans will have two of the three seats on the County Commission. Congratulations Mr. Hadley and Mr. Anderson. Big things are expected of the two of you … the spending by the County has to be reigned in and county agencies need to become much more accountable.

The other Very Important Questions on the ballot was about our local hospital. The proposal was to contribute the assets of the hospital into a Community Benefit Organization which would be a partnership with Legacy Health Care. The local entity would own about 22% of the organization and Legacy would own about 78%. The benefit would be the new hospital would get built significantly faster and the health care in this area would be significantly improved. There was some opposition to the proposal, as expected. In the end the proposal carried by a significant margin.

So, the 2008 General Election ended nicely (in my opinion) in Bannock County. The country voted in favor of Obama and he now has quite a set of expectations to live up to. I wish him well, but I’m also quite skeptical of the real outcome. I’m concerned that the country will move rather significantly towards socialism with the new administration also having a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. Fortunately the Senate majority is not fillibuster proof.

The only real surprise for me was in Idaho’s other congressional district. Republican Bill Sali was defeated in his bid for a second term in congress by Democrat Walt Minnick.

So, I’m tired today. There is definitely change in the air both at the Federal level and in our Bannock County. I even saw some people removing campaign signs from along the roadway this afternoon. I was sick and tired of the election campaigning and all the negativity. I feel that hurt the Republicans in a significant way in this campaign … but not nearly as much as running the wrong candidate for president. The Republican Party is in need of some serious fixing.

Enough of my political views. It’s very cold today and the snow levels are down to around 6,000 feet. Winter is arriving! Time to go winterize the motor home.

This morning Nina and I went to the north end of Pocatello (into Chubbuck, actually) for the baptism of my eight-year-old grandnephew. James was so excited to be baptized and really looked sharp this morning. Mother and dad drove over from Soda Springs and went with us to the baptism.

Dad came without his glasses. Somehow yesterday he lost a lens out of his glasses and neither mother nor dad could find it. He was out in the shop when mother came out to say, “Come quick!”

He dropped everything and hurried (as fast as he could) after her into the house. The emergency turned out to be a mouse in the mousetrap downstairs in the storage room. Dad collected the mouse and took it out to the trash when he discovered the lens in his glasses for his best eye was missing.

The both searched … dad not very effectively with his vision and mother’s isn’t all that much better. The lens was not to be found. After the baptism my sister Terry (and James’s grandmother) and her husband Allan went to Soda Springs to finish up some work they had started a week ago. Terry quickly found the lens in the shop on the floor. Dad then regained his vision so he could watch the Jazz game tonight. Dad is a major Salt Lake City Jazz fan. In fact, dad’s whole world seems to revolve around either the Jazz or Rush Limbaugh. He’s very concerned about the election next Tuesday and is sure the world will end if Barrak Obama is elected.

I’ve been sorting through pictures from the trip. Sure wish there was an easier way to put together picture collections. Time to start looking around for a better way. The current version of WordPress look like it’ll take big pictures and resize them automatically. Need to test that out. Next version will have some pretty good additional capability, it appears. We’ll see in December when it’s finally released and stable.

Meanwhile, next week the blogs are going to move to a new server at BlueHost. I’ve been testing the move process and it seems to be working well. When that happens, the blogs will be in read-only mode for a day or so while everything settles down. Then I’ll get out of the business of running my own servers. That’ll be interesting as I’ve been running Linux web servers for more than ten years. Now I can have someone else do that for me and save money in the process. My how the cost of technology has changed in the past ten years.