Our driveway faces east. The wind generally comes from the south or southwest. When it snows and the wind blows, the snow piles up in front of the garage doors. That was the case again this morning. I went out, fired up the snow blower, and moved the snow off the left side of the driveway so Nina would not have to plow through the drifts when she came back from Visiting Teaching. The wind, however, was blowing most of the snow back in my face. I was getting rather tired of that, so I decided to go buy a ski mask and goggles. As I was putting the snow blower away, the city Big Dump Truck with the snowplow UP came down our street spreading anti-skid, turned around, and drove up the street dumping anti-skid. “At least,” I thought, “he didn’t plow in my driveway.”

I went in, shed my wet clothes, and dressed to go downtown ski mask and goggle shopping. As I started to back my car out of our garage, the city Big Road Grader came up the street in front of the house with plow DOWN, scrapped all the anti-skid off the street, and deposited it on the side of the road (and in the front of my driveway).

“My tax dollars at work!” I marveled.

Today I needed to be in Boise for a meeting at 1:30 p.m. with the State Board of Education. The forecast was for snow and bad roads today and it started to snow as I was leaving the house at about 8 this morning. The roads going to Boise were pretty slick in some spots and completely dry in others. Coming home was no problem at all. Four and a half hours going over, three and a half coming back. All for a 90-minute meeting that hopefully something will come out of.

I stopped for gas at the Mountain Home exit on I-86. The Pilot station had gas for $2.97. Directly across the street (and I mean directly across), the Chevron station’s price was $3.14. Seventeen cents difference … or about $1.87 difference on the eleven gallons of gas I bought (at the Pilot station). The odd thing was that people were filling their cars up over at the Chevron station. Why? Inquiring minds want to know….

On another note, the oft-rescheduled Salt Lake City Podcamp will be held on March 15th. Looks to be a good event and worth attending. Signup available as well … click on the link!

President Gordon B. Hinckley, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints died this evening. He had been defying his age (97 years old) for quite some time. He will be sorely missed by millions around the world. He will definitely be missed here! According to news reports, he died at about 7 p.m. this evening (Sunday, January 27, 2007). At 8:14 p.m. the first tweet came across on Twitter from @JesseStay. KSL.com had the news up at about 8 p.m. but newsroom.lds.org didn’t have the information up until 8:45 p.m. Literally as soon as the first news was reported, it went across the world on Twitter. That’s one of the astounding powers of this new communications medium.

A few minutes later, BreakingNewsOn reported via Twitter that Archbishop Christodoulos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church died this evening. Church news across the globe being reported first on Twitter. I have a Facebook page: http://profile.to/rolandsmith/. A short time ago I got an invite on Facebook to join the President Gordon B. Hinckley Virtual Memorial event (you may have to have a Facebook page to see this profile). It’s amazing to me how quickly more than 200 people had joined the event with hundreds of invitations out. This is the new media at its best.

I drove down to Salt Lake on Wednesday night so I could be up bright and early to go to Provo for the monthly CTO breakfast. That meant staying the night at Heather’s house … a definite upside to the trip. The guest bedroom is a great benefit as well. The CTO breakfast was another highlight of the trip. Not only were two One Laptop Per Child laptops there, we had a good introduction to Facebook applications. These breakfasts are definitely worth my time.

The next stop was at the Apple store. My Macbook continues to loose contact with it’s keyboard. In fact, it currently is in that state. I’ve plugged in an external keyboard which works when the Macbook keyboard won’t. Why does this problem happen? No one knows. It would not fail for the Genius at the Apple store. No matter what we tried, it worked just like it was supposed to. A definitely downside to the day. On the other hand, this problem has happened only at the house as far as I can remember. Maybe that’s a clue?

Later in the evening I went to the monthly Geek / Blogger dinner. The event was in West Jordon, well to the south of town where the weather was definitely not cooperating. There were a couple of inches of snow on the ground when I got there. My GPS wouldn’t take the address. Turns out that 3655 West is really known to Garmin as Dixie Avenue. Further, the building where the restaurant is located is being remodeled and there is no sign outside. I did arrive on time, though, and I had a delightful time. All in all, except for not getting my Macbook fixed, it was an upper day. I guess, though, that would make it a mixed day….

The Big Storm went south, giving a much-needed boost to the ski economy in Utah. Our daughter Heather reported eight inches overnight in North Salt Lake. Some of my Twitter friends in Utah have reported up to a foot of new snow. Here in Pocatello we only got a very light dusting.

So now I’m at the computer writing this blog entry, drinking a cup of hot chocolate (Stevens Belgium Dark with a shot of vanilla), and munching some banana bread. We’ve been home about 45 minutes and I’ve certainly gotten comfortable! We went to Soda Springs this afternoon with a specific objective in mind: straighten up dad’s workshop. The picture is a “before” picture taken after we had been working in the shop for about a half hour. The first task was to get everything up off the floor (dad simply drops stuff on the floor when he doesn’t need it anymore). We then put a table into the shop with a number of bins for him to put thing in rather than just drop tools on the floor. After a couple of hours, the shop floor was clean. I’ve put some pictures in the picture album.

We had dinner and drove back home to Pocatello.

Tomorrow is a dual-dentist day. I’ve got an appointment at 8 a.m. to put in a new bridge in the top front and a new crown on the top left. That’ll leave a gap on the upper left, so it’s back to the dentist at 4 p.m. to put in a “flipper”. That’s a kind of a partial plate to fill the gap until I have an implant put in and a crown on top of the implant. The implant / crown process takes about six months for all the healing to take place.

The other thing I’ve decided to do is to move my “twittering” to a new blog devoted just to that stream. Putting them into this blog, while interesting, seems to clutter up the blog and mask my “real” posts. So, tomorrow I’ll tell you where to find my tweets in the future.

Late last week I was having some pain in my lower jaw … the kind of pain associated with a tooth problem of some sort. On Monday I called make an appointment with the dentist to find that I would have to wait until Thursday morning. The dentist wasn’t going to be in on Tuesday and I wasn’t going to be available on Wednesday (more on that below). So, this morning bright and early I was at the dentist office while he poked around in my mouth. He discovered a cavity in the lower right far back tooth that would be “awkward” (his specific word) but he hoped he could fill it without having to take out the bridge that the tooth anchored. So, I got an injection of anesthetic and waited for a few minutes. My tongue was getting numb, but the tooth wasn’t. Four more times he put anesthetic in to deaden the tooth. It didn’t work. My tongue went completely numb. The back of my throat got numb. The area underneath my tongue got numb, but the culprit tooth and the one in front if it holding up the other side of the bridge were not numb. The dentist said he really couldn’t put in any more anesthetic … that four was his usual limit and he had already injected me five times. No choice but to reschedule. So I’ll go back on the 31st for another try and will be living on Ibuprofen until then. I asked him, “What are you going to do different on the 31st to have a better outcome?” He said he’d have to do a little research because obviously the nerve he was aiming for wasn’t where it was supposed to be. “How are you going to find the nerve?” He didn’t know, yet. He was going to talk to some other dentists. I’m supposed to be comforted by that….

Five injections of anesthetic were definitely enough. I felt pretty lousy the rest of the morning and finally went back to bed for an hour to clear up my head. Next Tuesday I go in to have a bridge in the front of my mouth replaced and crown put on another tooth. But, all the fussing in my mouth this morning loosened up the temporary cement job on the current bridge in the front of my mouth and I was back in the dentist office at 5:45 p.m. this evening getting the bridge cemented temporarily back in. I feel like I’ve been living in the dentist office and they all now call me by my first name like we’re family or something.

Yesterday we took mother and dad to Logan for a Temple session. It was a crisp, cold, clear day … never getting out of the mid-teens the entire day. We had a good session and did some shopping at Sams Club and Lowes before heading home. I put three pictures from the day in my photo gallery (go to the photo album and click on “gallery” on the top of the right side column).

We left the house at 6:20 a.m. and got back right at 5:00 p.m. after a full day, which included uprighting dad’s air compressor in the shop once more. He’s trying to fix the plumbing and needs to have the compressor on the side to get at where the copper tubing has to be soldered. But, it’s too heavy for him to lift back up to test whether or not the plumbing is sealed. But it was also for naught. One of the joints is leaking. He’s having as much problem with the air compressor as I am with my teeth! But, I can also blame his genes … dad had all of his teeth removed when I was in first grade because he was having so much problem with them.