We spent a delightful day in the Boise area on Saturday. We stayed Friday night in a Hilton Garden Inn on the west side of Boise. The hotel turned out to be across the Interestate from the Boise Temple.

Whenever we’re traveling, we like to do a session in the temple in the area if at all possible and we’d definitely planned to do a session here. We were able to attend the 9:30 a.m. endowment session and afterwards had the opportunity to do some sealings. It’s a lovely temple and we enjoyed our time there.

After the temple (and a delicious ice cream cone at a drive through hamburger shop), we went over to my cousin’s house for the real reason that we were in the area. Her husband Sean was being baptized after having seriously investigated the Church for several years. He and his wife Cheryl along with their three boys are a class act and just wonderful people. When Cheryl told me about the impending baptism, I told her we would love to be there. They arranged the date such that we were available and then Sean invited me to be one of the speakers at the baptism.

The event was well attended from their ward. The baptism went off without a hitch. Afterwards we gathered back at their home for a backed-potato dinner and some delicious chocolate cake. Even though Cheryl made the cake especially for Sean, we didn’t leave much of it behind for him….

It was good to see my Aunt Nelma, Cheryl’s mother. A couple of months ago we made a sad trip to Las Cruces, New Mexico for her husband and my uncle Delon’s funeral. She is doing well as can be expected, but lonely as expected.

We had a great time and all too soon we had to leave to drive back to Pocatello as both Nina and I had obligations this morning in Church. I was substituting on the organ and Nina had to be at the Prison. We made it into bed about 11 p.m. last night and both found that the night passed all too quickly.

Thanks, Cheryl and Sean for a very nice weekend!

Most of the things I wanted to do with this revamp are now done. The SpyCam picture now shows on the rightmost column. I’ve added my tweets back into the middle column. I’ve put most of the links into pages across the top of the blog to give better access to my picture album, the about-me page, William P Smith, and Trevor. I’ve moved the information on Trevor into pages on the blog so they now look much better. I’ve also added an Amazon link to their digital music and video library. There were other things as well, but that’s the major items. Jaelene started this process by changing her blog theme and I got infected as well. Change is good!

Earlier today, CNN and other news sources reported that the Texas 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled that the State of Texas had overstepped it’s authority in removing the FLDS children and granting custody to the state.

I have been deeply concerned about the handling of this entire issue by the State of Texas. Their initial raid of the FLDS compound near San Angelo, Texas was triggered by a hoax. Their handling of the children and their mothers was beyond belief. If the State of Texas could do that, what rights do any of us have as parents?

I do not condone the FLDS practice of polygamy, spiritual marriage, and the assignment of women to husbands as wives. These practices are reprehensible and illegal and should be prosecuted as such. However, the government has a very poor track record on this front.

Near the end of the last century, federal authorities hounded Mormon polygamist husbands into exile when they couldn’t be apprehended and jailed. Families were ripped apart and husbands prohibited from caring for their families. It was a traumatic time for the Mormon Church, one that most Mormons are not likely to forget anytime soon. Some in the media have suggested that the FLDS practices are those of the Mormon Church in the last century. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The government overstepped their bounds with the Mormons in the last century, and the State of Texas has done it again now. Fortunately, this time there are courts and judges who understand the law and the constitutional rights of citizens.

I’ve decided to update the theme for my blog. The one I’ve been using is, from a software standpoint, quite dated and it can’t take advantage of some of the new WordPress features. So, time for a change. The new theme is basically in place. I’ve got some additional changes to make … the picture at the top of the blog needs to change, the web cam picture needs to be added, and a few things on the sidebars need to be changed. But, so far the new look is appealing to me… Comments?? Either send a message (Contact Me) or enter a comment.

Video link: Mothers Day DriveThe new blog software suggests that it has the facility to add video to a blog post. That’s true … within limits. Video files are generally huge. For instance, this afternoon we took a drive to see what birds might be found (a Nina passion). I took a few pictures, then used iPhoto (a Mac program) to make a slideshow and then GarageBand (another Mac program) to record an audio track to go with it. When it was finished, the final file size was more than 56 megabytes. The server software won’t allow files that large to be uploaded, and even if it did, it would take about twenty minutes to upload and that long to download again to anyone that wanted to see the movie. While the image size (640 x 480) is a nice size to view, the file is just simply too big.

My next step was to run the move through QuickTime Pro and export it as a smaller picture (320 x 288). That reduced the file size to 21 megabytes. Still too large to be uploaded to this web server. The upload and download times are more reasonable … about 8 minutes to upload or download, but still too long for most people to wait.

Finally, I exported it as a movie MP-4 file. That was a much more reasonable 2.4 megabytes with upload and download times of about 2 minutes. This time I uploaded the file to Amazon Web Services and set the file to start playing as soon as enough of the file had been downloaded. That’s a nice feature of MP-4 files.

So, what’s the best method of putting a video on a blog on my servers? Put the file on YouTube and link to the file on your blog. It works well. If you have questions on how to do that, give me a call and I’ll show you the process.

We had a nice day today and I succeeded in exceeding Nina’s expectations for Mother’s Day. Perhaps she’ll write about it on her blog…. Meanwhile, Happy Mother’s Day!

Soda Springs GeyserThe link is supposed to be to a video clip that I recorded earlier today when we were in Soda Springs, Idaho. I’m using the “add video” feature on the upgraded blogging software so I can see how this all works. In theory, you should be able to click on the link and somehow get to the video clip. If it doesn’t work, I’ll modify the blog entry. Update: It does work, however, the way I set up the movie you have to click on the movie title twice to actually see it.

Today is Saturday, my favorite brother‘s birthday, and the day before Mother’s Day. My FB (favorite brother) was born on Mother’s Day when we were living in Soda Springs many, many years ago. He’s older than dirt and I’m eight years older than him, so that makes me like really old. However, he’s not acting his age and has embarked on this new massive construction project that will probably take up the rest of the time he has available so that he’ll never put up another blog post … wait, he doesn’t put up blog posts now. I guess it won’t make much difference. If it wasn’t for twitter….

Today had another special significance. The Bannock County Landfill was free today. Free Trash Day == More Room In The Garage. That’s a big deal and I was quite happy to load up the backend of my Tracker and wait in line (both going to the landfill and coming back) to make my contribution to the archaeologists of the 25th Century.

This afternoon we made a quick trip to Soda Springs to take over a Mother’s Day present for my delightful mother and to set up dad’s new headsets for watching his new TV. Just in case anyone needs to know, there are instructions underneath his TV about how to turn the speakers on and off. Since he generally watches the TV with headsets on, the speakers are turned off so he can turn the sound up as loud as he wishes in his headset. When we left he was happily sitting in the chair watching the National Basketball Association news on ESPN. His beloved Jazz are down two games to one in the playoffs against the Lakers.

Isn’t it odd that the Jazz are in Salt Lake and the Lakers are in California, both teams a very long way from their original homes? The Jazz were originally the New Orleans Jazz and the Lakers were originally in Minneapolis (having moved there from Detroit). Neither the Jazz nor the Lakers changed their names when they moved across the country abandoning the few faithful fans back home. Money is king in this (and most other) sports. Except maybe Lacross … where the Pocatello team made the playoffs for the first time this year and promptly lost. It’s a building year…

Happy Mother’s Day!