Daryl and Laura did the deed last Saturday (October 18, 2008) in a beautiful, traditional wedding ceremony. The service was held at the First United Methodist Church in Dalton, Georgia. It started promptly at 4 p.m. and lasted a bit under 25 minutes. Laura was stunning in her wedding dress and Daryl looked quite handsome in his tuxedo. Everything proceeded without a problem and they are now husband and wife.

The events of the weekend started on Wednesday evening. We arrived at the campground north of Dalton in the early afternoon and did some sightseeing at the Chickamauga National Military Park, the scene of the Confederacy’s last victory in the Civil War (and the turning point where the North won the war). We then took the twins with us to dinner with Daryl, Laura, her parents, Nina, and me. Nina has previously met Laura’s mother when they were in Philadelphia for the bridal shower. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Robert (goes by Bob) and Dorothy (goes by Dot) at dinner. She’s the department head for the humanities at a college in Chattanooga. He’s a retired professor from a college in Dalton. They’re both well known and respected in the town. He’s been working on the genealogy for his family and has been recently published on the first of a two-part series on his grandfather’s experiences in World War One. Then evening ended much too quickly. Then, just as I was settling into sleep, Nina’s cell phone rang. It was her two sisters standing outside the camper door. They had both arrived a day early and wanted to surprise her. They succeeded!

Friday afternoon was the wedding rehearsal. Further, Jim and LeeAnn arrived from Missouri, Dawnmarie and Kirk arrived from Pennsylvania, Heather and Ty arrived from Salt Lake (via England), and Jared and Arlene arrived from Seattle. Our contingent for the wedding was complete. Nina says that we had 32 people from our family present for the wedding.

The rehearsal went very well. I think the lady at the church responsible for weddings was quite pleased with our promptness, soberness (often a problem, both she and the minister told us), and attention to detail. After that we retired to the rehearsal dinner. Nina had been working on and arranging this dinner for a couple of months. It was to include not only the bridal party, but all family members on both sides of the family who had come from out of town. In total 63 people were there from 14 states. It was truly a family gathering. Nina had arranged for the Spiced Apple restaurant to provide the dinner. We had the restaurant to ourselves and the buffet they provided was delicious. We had a delightful time.

Friday Nina and her sisters did some playing and we met at the wedding hotel (the La Quinta in Dalton) in time to go to the church at 2:30 p.m. for pictures. The pictures went well and at 3:55 pm (right on schedule), Daryl escorted Nina and me to our seats. Promptly at 4 the organist started playing the march and Laura’s father escorted her down the aisle to numerous oohs and aahs from the congregation. They’ve lived in Dalton for close to 30 years and there were a lot of friends and neighbors at the wedding.

After more pictures we went to the reception in downtown Dalton. The reception included a buffet-style sit-down dinner, cake cutting, bouquet toss, and a garter toss (which our son Jared deftly snagged in a NFL style catch). There was a City of Dalton celebration happening as well (some kind of a Liberty Tree commemoration), so about 8 p.m. the sky lit up with fireworks. What a delightful (free) show! The videographer was able to get a lot of video with the sky lighting up with fireworks behind the bride and groom. More reasons to buy the video!

Congratulations, Laura and Daryl!

Two days after we left, the Internet access to my house went down about 1:50 am. The next day I was able to get a Qwest tech into the house to find that the Qwest modem had died. He was able to install a new device, but couldn’t program it. So, everything was still inaccessible.

I sent out a status about the problem on Twitter, but had no idea what to do next as someone fairly computer literate would need to be in front of the computer inside my house and I wasn’t sure who I could ask.

Yesterday as I was driving to South Carolina, a fellow I know who is an excellent systems admin at Idaho State University asked me on Twitter if I needed some help as he noticed the blog was still down. I called him and he said he’d have time that evening (Sunday) to go over to the house. I emailed him the info and he got it running. Hurrah!! I will be home somewhere about the 28th or 29th and everything otherwise would have had to wait until then.

A huge thanks to Ben (and his able assistant daughter)!!!

Two days after we left, the Internet access to my house went down about 1:50 am. The next day I was able to get a Qwest tech into the house to find that the Qwest modem had died. He was able to install a new device, but couldn’t program it. So, everything was still inaccessible.

I sent out a status about the problem on Twitter, but had no idea what to do next as someone fairly computer literate would need to be in front of the computer inside my house and I wasn’t sure who I could ask.

Yesterday as I was driving to South Carolina, a fellow I know who is an excellent systems admin at Idaho State University asked me on Twitter if I needed some help as he noticed the blog was still down. I called him and he said he’d have time that evening (Sunday) to go over to the house. I emailed him the info and he got it running. Hurrah!! I will be home somewhere about the 28th or 29th and everything otherwise would have had to wait until then.

A huge thanks to Ben (and his able assistant daughter)!!!

Right now we’re just south of Omaha, Nebraska. Nina is driving and we’re going about 67mph south on I-29. The road is bumpy and writing difficult. It’s a bright, sunny day with no visible clouds. Cell service today is pretty good.

Yesterday was far different. We spent the night Tuesday in Ft. Robinson State Park in northwest Nebraska. As we pulled into the campsite we lost cell signal. If you held your mouth just so and tilted the iPhone just right you’d get a week signal long enough to almost do something before the signal disappeared.

As we drove across Nebraska yesterday on US-20, there were occasional places with signal, but mostly not.

We left Pocatello on Monday afternoon around 3:39 and drove to Green River, Wyoming and spent the night in my favorite brother’s driveway. We had a good visit with them in Monday evening. After visiting their hole, someday to be a house, we headed east to Rawlins, then north to Casper, and east on US-20 into Nebraska and Ft. Robinson. The drive was mostly boring with occasional interesting bits. About eleven miles west of the fort, Nina said she was resigned to the scenery and expected little change. I agreed and then it changed dramatically. We went from flat, brown down into a bally with hills and rock formations and trees. I guess you either get scenery or cell reception, but not both.

We’ve now crossed into Missouri.

The road was so bumpy that I had to stop writing. We’re now in Springfield, MO at our son’s house. The drive today was mostly on the freeway and fairly boring. Yesterday’s drive was much better. We enjoyed the drive through northeastern Nebraska. The afternoon sun gave beautiful light. The cornfields and soybean fields were beautiful. We’re having a very good time.

Saturday it rained. Not the occasional thundershower, but a real, soaking rain. The entire region got close to an inch of rain during the day yesterday. The rain is quite timely as fields have just been planted for next year’s crops and the ground has been very parched. Along with the rain came a twenty-degree drop in temperatures. Friday we had a high of about 80 degrees, today the high was 54. Fall is definitely here and winter snow probably isn’t very far away. We’ll delay that for a few weeks while we go to Georgia and South Carolina for the next three weeks for our son Daryl’s wedding (hurrah!) and to visit Nina’s sister. This seems like a very nice time to be in the south as their hot weather has also abated. Even better, all our children will be at the wedding. I think that’s the first time in many years since they’ve all been in the same place at the same time.

Friday night we attended the first Idaho State Civic Symphony concert. The new music director, Dr. Chung Park, made his outstanding debut as the conductor. From even before the first note was played, it was clear to me that we’ve entered a new age of Symphony in Pocatello. I’ve no idea how the Symphony Board was able to persuade Dr. Park to come to Pocatello, but they’ve scored a major coup. The scheduled start of the concert was 7:30 p.m., but Dr. Park held an fairly informal question and answer session in the rotunda from 6:30 to 7:00. He was exciting to listen to and delightfully vibrant. It was almost like he didn’t want the session to end when 7 p.m. came around. We took our seats and promptly at 7:30, he came on stage, snatched up the baton, and launched the orchestra into Wagner’s “Prelude to Act III, Lohengrin”. He pulled music out of the orchestra that just made my heart soar. They followed up with a Hydn Symphony and wrapped up with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with an absolutely outstanding soloist, Corey Cerovsek. He was just incredible … truely a virtuoso performance. As an aside, he obtained his Ph.D in both Math and Music at age 18…. I’m so happy we’ve got season tickets to the symphony this year. We’ll definitely make sure we’re in town for every concert!

Yesterday (Saturday) we made a quick trip to Soda Springs. Dad had a shopping list for me from Harbor Freight (he’s busy restocking his shop after he sold all of his tools a couple of months ago). My brother Perry and his wife Chris were also there and it’s been a couple of months since we’ve visited with them. While there we watched the first session of LDS General Conference. After the session and a quick lunch, we came home in time to watch the second session, load some things in the motor home, and for me to go to the Priesthood Session on Saturday evening.

This morning Nina had her usual meetings up at the prison, while I stayed home and watched conference. We then watched the afternoon session of conference together.

I love General Conference. It is a rejuvinating experience in all aspects … spiritually, mentally, and physically. For some reason each conference seems to be better than the one six months ago. Then, to my surprise, the MP3’s for all the general sessions have already been posted on lds.org. I’ve already listened to two of them for a second time.

What a great weekend: a fabulous symphony concert, a great (but too short) visit with my brother, time with my parents, General Conference, and rain. Life doesn’t get much better than this!

One of the apps on my iPhone is called gpsCompass which is a marginally useful application. Using the built-in gps information, the app shows the direction I’m traveling along with up to four other pieces of information. I have it set to show latitude, longitude, avg speed, and altitude. The most important of those for me was altitude.

I’ve checked it with the highway signs as we go over a summit and there’s a sign telling us our altitude. It’s usually pretty close. Right now the app tells me that I’m at 4,462 feet, plus or minus 156 feet, meaning that my real altitude is somewhere between 4,306 feet and 4,618 feet. If I let the phone sit still for a while, it’ll eventually resolve the altitude to be plus or minus 56 feet. I’ve never seen it get any more accurate than that. I’d certainly not want to pilot an airplane at that precision, though.

Another capability is that it’ll send an email with a google maps link. Clicking on the link supposedly brings up a map with a pointer to my location at the time the email was sent. However, my WordPress blog doesn’t handle the email correctly, or else the email is poorly formatted. First problem is that there’s no timestamp on the email. Consequently an important piece of information is missing: When was I at that place? Second problem is that the link to google maps is incorrectly formatted, so the blog software doesn’t think it’s a link. The email gets posted to my blog, but the link can’t be clicked until I later go into the post and modify it to be a real link.

Maybe it’s time to look around for something a little better.

There are currently 134 applications in the iTunes application store related to navigation, one of which is the gpsCompass app that I already have. There are more than ten applications that will send the current location by email. There are a couple that are setup to aid geocaching. There are others built specifically for subway systems (including New York, Seoul, Korea, Paris, and a bunch more, including the Utah Transit Authority, Trax, and FrontRunner maps and schedules). Others show traffic information (but only in places where that information is free, such as in London). There are some built for bicyclers. One is set up to help you find your car (take a position snap when parking the car, then it guides you back to the car later).

An application called Altitude does just that … shows the current altitude in either meters or feet. It costs $0.99 … pretty inexpensive. Another shows only speed (it’s free).

An application called iHere sells for $9.99 and contains all the functionality of my gpsCompass (which cost $1.99) but that seems pretty steep for this one, particularly where the application notes says:

If the application crashes during start, try resetting the iphone, or deleting and reinstalling the application….

At that price, it shouldn’t be crashing anything!

I’ll probably try a couple of the “email my location” applications and see if I can get something a little more useful. But, I’m not sure I want to clutter up this blog with that information. Maybe a new blog just for location information???

Meanwhile, it’s a fairly warm Wednesday afternoon. We’re going to a concert this evening, a French group Samarabalouf. They’ve been here once before and had fairly interesting music. This is the first Season of Note concert this year and it should be fun.