All posts by rksmith

Hooper Springs, Soda Springs, Idaho

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While Perry’s family were in Soda Springs, we made a stop at Hooper Springs, a carbonated water spring just north of town. These are some pictures from this stop.

The photo gallery is a new feature in WordPress version 2.5. I’ve posted and deleted and posted this set of pictures working out how the gallery feature works. I still don’t have all the process understood, it seems. If you click on a picture, the text associated with the picture will show. Click again, and a full-sized picture will be displayed.

Spring, Yard, Motorcycle, Piracy, Taxes, and a Pregnant “Man”

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Raking the Grass

The snow piled up pretty deep on the front yard. The anti-skid piled up on the tree lawn. The voles made several pathways under the snow leaving lots of dead grass behind. Now that the snow is gone, the yard needs some serious attention. I raked a strip last Saturday. I took a few days to recover (with an intervening snow storm) and raked another strip yesterday. I figure at this rate it’ll take a couple of weeks to get the front yard raked and ready for fertilizer and ready to have the sprinkler system checked out. Raking is definitely a workout! I was pooped for the rest of the day.

Of course, with the departure of the snow, thoughts turn to … motorcycles! My battery wouldn’t hold a charge so I picked up a new one this morning and have it on the charger in the garage. It’ll go in the bike tomorrow and I’ll fire it up for the first time this spring … and maybe take a short trip around the block. The appointment is set on Tax Day for the oil change and spring tuneup. Let the riding begin!

Speaking of Tax Day, I finally entered everything into Tax Cut Pro. There’s a couple of small adjustments needed, but I’m very close to being able to file. We will get a refund from the Feds but have to write a check to the State of Idaho. A few years ago the competing program TurboTax very stupidly tried to combat supposed piracy of their software by putting a hidden program on the user’s computer. This hidden program caused a number of computers to crash, including mine. They eventually refunded my money but it took a lot of work to get the malicious program off of my computer. While they quickly realized their mistake, I’ve not returned as a customer. Tax Cut does just fine and there’s no reason for me to change providers. By the way, I just ran across an interesting article on H&R Block and Tax Cut. Click on the link.

Speaking of piracy, a luxury yacht was seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden yesterday. Fortunately no passengers were on board, but the 30 crew members are being held hostage. I think we’ll avoid doing any cruises in that part of the world! According to the news article, more than 25 ships were seized by pirates in that area last year. Looks to me like a captain needs to find other work.

Finally, in the weird news department, some ten years ago a woman underwent a sex change procedure to become “male”. “He” is now six months pregnant in what “his” obstetrician is considering “a normal pregnancy“. I’m speechless.

Of Whirlwinds and Dentists

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I think it started with the colors on the walls in Jaelene and Scott’s home in Chandler. Unlike our house, where every wall in every room in the house is exactly the same color, the Chandler house has rooms of many colors. None are bland beige, either. All are in vivid color sometimes with different colors on different walls in the same room. It must have somehow inspired Nina. She got home late Saturday evening, contemplated during the day on Sunday while she was recuperating from the long drive. Bright and early Monday morning she began moving furniture. So far major pieces have remained in their original place, but bookcases, chairs, plants, and just about all that isn’t nailed down has moved. Some things have moved three or four times. I’m certain that she still isn’t satisfied … she told me I need to get the ladder out so I can get down some of the items up high on shelves so they can be cleaned and rearranged. So far all the rearrangement is fine with me!

Today also included a visit to the dentist (do a search on ‘dentist’ in the blog and see how much time I’ve spent in a dentist’s chair!). I have a tooth that is giving me a problem. The tooth is on one end of a bridge and he’s attempted to fill a cavity in the tooth before. That has not been sufficient so today he planned to pull the bridge and see what was going on underneath the crown. However, he wasn’t able to get the tooth numb. Everything else went numb … tongue, lip, cheek … but not the area where the tooth is located. He’s a good dentist, young and a year out of dental school, but he’s failed to get this area numb two out of three tries. After a few injections of the anesthetic, I begin to get affected. My heart rate goes up, I get the shakes, and feel a bit nauseous. With that, the work has to stop as he can’t try again with the anesthetic. When he called it quites today, he decided to refer me to an endodontist who specializes in this kind of work. Next Wednesday I’ll be yet again in another dentist chair. How the furniture will end up in the house is far more certain than what will happen in the dentist chair, it seems. And it’s a whole bunch more interesting!

Upgraded!

Computer Stuff,

WordPress has released a new version of our blogging software. I’ve installed it on my blog and will run it here for a few days. Then if there are no problems, I’ll upgrade the other blogs on this site as well. There is some new capability, particularly related to pictures and videos that I want to try out so I can answer questions that other blogs on this site may have. Stay tuned!

Princesses and Snow

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DanielleGranddaughter Danielle sings in the International Children’s Choir and had a concert tonight. She gave me a quick pose after her mom finished fixing up her costume. She’s definitely Princess Picture Perfect!

I’m finishing up a couple of days in Utah. I took Chris with me to the OpenSocial Hackathon last night sponsored by Bungee Labs with great participation by Google. We enjoyed learning a bit more about the process for developing applications using Google’s OpenSocial specification. Orkut wasn’t working and my MySpace developer account hadn’t been approved yet (the approval came in today), so we did a lot of watching and not much hacking. The food was good, the event was fun, and we got back home about 11:30 p.m.

This morning I was planning to be in Provo for the monthly CTO Breakfast. But, my alarm clock didn’t work correctly (possible operator malfunction, though) and I woke up a half-hour later than I had planned. I hustled through the shower, dressed, and went outside to find that there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground and the snow was coming down rather furiously. In spite of that, I arrived only a half-hour late for the gathering in Provo. That was another very interesting and invigorating meeting with some really fun folks. Tonight I’m taking Chris with me to the monthly Geek / Blogger dinner at the Taj restaurant in Salt Lake City. After that fun event, I’ll drop him off back at home and then drive north to Pocatello. I’ll actually sleep in my own bed tonight. That should be a fun experience! (Isn’t there a Beach Boys song about ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’?) The visit here in Utah has been a lot of fun. Heather has really gone out of her way to make things comfortable, including a generous dish of Easter Chocolate in the bedroom, all of which will be gone by the time I leave tonight!

Chandler Visit Ended … Cooling Off in North Salt Lake

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Nina and JaeleneOnce I got to the Phoenix airport this morning for my flight to Salt Lake City, I remembered once again all the reasons I don’t like flying on Southwest Airlines … except for the price. The boarding arrangement, the tight seats with no legroom, the small gate areas crowded with people, and lining up to board the airplane without assigned seats. The flight was full. I got through security with no issues (other than a long line). I ended up in a window seat near the back of the plane which worked out OK. The flight left early, flew fast, and arrived early. That part I really liked! On the flight I learned that while I paid $133 for my ticket, the woman sitting next to me paid $420. What’s up with that?

I had a very enjoyable visit with Jaelene, Scott, and the boys. Each day we were there, though, the temperatures got warmer and warmer. I left Phoenix this morning at about 9:30 a.m. when the temperature at the airport was 84 degrees and arrived in Salt Lake City at 12:00 p.m. where the temperature was 62 degrees. The cooler temperatures are very, very nice! I’ll be able to have the window open tonight and actually have cool air coming into the room! Ahhh … refreshing…

For My Friend Duane in Ecuador….

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I’ve gotten a couple of emails on my blog from my friend Duane … who is having trouble getting to his blog and being able to write on the blog. He’s in Ecuador, so I guess the Internet bits and bytes move more slowly way down there….

So, Duane:

You blog is located at http://slocum.rnsmith.com/ and your userid is ‘Duane’ … with a capital D. I don’t know what your password is, though. If you don’t remember, write to me again and I’ll reset it to whatever you ask me to set it to.

Hope this helps!

Game Playing

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Boys Playing GameColten, Jackson, and Austin are avid gamers. Usually Colten is playing something like “super smash brothers” (0r whatever it’s called) on the Wii with Jackson while Austin is playing his own games on the PC in the game room. Colten and Jackson both have GameBoys and I think that is also one of Colten’s most important activities. If one wants to find Colten, follow the power cord for his GameBoy. There is also an Nintendo in the game room hooked up to the wide-screen TV where the most popular game is Guitar Hero III. Jaelene and Colten duke it out on that game with Jaelene winning the competitions lately. I suck at Guitar Hero III, but definitely suck there less than at most other of the games the kids play … except for Wii bowling. For some reason, I’ve got that motion down pretty well.

Today is Easter. Nina and I went to church at the Pleasant Second Ward’s Sacrament Meeting this morning at 9. There were a lot of people there for a nice Easter service. We were happy to attend Church, take the Sacrament, and remember the meaning of Easter: The atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

This afternoon Scott’s mother, sister, and a couple of nephews came over for dinner. Afterwards the nephews staged an Easter Egg Hunt for Colten, Jackson, and Austin and then challenged them to a water balloon fight (Jaelene provided the water balloons in the boy’s Easter baskets this morning). Everyone will be gathering in the back yard tomorrow morning to clean up all the pieces of balloons. They are everywhere!

Jaelene prepared a very nice meal for the family and we definitely had plenty to eat followed by a delicious beehive cake for desert. That makes three cakes prepared in this household in the past five days. There’s been some serious not-good-for-you eating going on here! It’s now going on 8 p.m. and the kids are starting to settle down. Their last day off from school is tomorrow and Colten and Jackson start back to school on Tuesday. Jaelene goes back to work tomorrow so Nina and I will spend the day playing with the boys. Nina’s got some nefarious plans already set up with Jackson. He’s quite excited and so far has avoided Jaelene’s third degree on what these plans might be. I fly back to Salt Lake City on Tuesday and I’ll probably have some time then to load some pictures. I have taken a few, but not nearly enough. Tomorrow is it, so I’ll have to be shutter-happy for the day. We’re having a good time!