I’m at our daughter’s place in North Salt Lake and appreciating being indoors. There has been a big fire (probably human caused) burning in the south end of the Salt Lake valley. In the north end of the valley, the farmers are burning the stubble in their fields. The combination is air that is almost unbreathable here.

I’m here for the Utah Open Source Conference being held tomorrow through Saturday at the Salt Lake Community College campus. It looks to be three days of good sessions and a lot of networking, and at $35, a great deal.

So, I’m here, enjoying visiting with the family, and getting Very Angry at my father. That’s a story for a different time, though.

Nina made it home safe and sound! Hurrah!!

Not breathing, though, is difficult. Glad I don’t have asthma….

Nina flies back to Utah tomorrow evening, but gets in late enough that she’ll spend the night at Heather’s before driving back home Tuesday morning. I think she’s had a great time but will also be happy to be home. It’s been mighty quiet around here!

The Twin Falls Temple was dedicated today. Our Stake had the opportunity to participate in the dedication via live satellite TV at 4:30 p.m. Consequently, each ward in the Stake only had Sacrament Meeting. Normally that would mean a light Sunday, since our ward meets at 9 a.m. However, I was invited to meet with the Stake President at 12:15 p.m. More on that next week when everything comes together.

I was at the Stake Center at 3 p.m. for the Temple Dedication. The doors were supposed to be opened at 3:30, but at the entrance where I was seventh in line, someone opened the door at 3 p.m. and let all of us waiting there come in. They quickly found the mistake and closed the door, but those of us who were already seated were allowed to stay. It was much nicer sitting inside the air conditioned building than standing outside in 90+ temperatures. The ceremony itself was very moving and inspiring. I suspect this will be the last temple dedication in this area for many years to come. We’ve had two this year … Rexburg and Twin Falls … making now four temples in Idaho.

Tonight marked the end of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. What a show the past two weeks have been and tonight’s closing ceremonies really sucked me in. I’ve read some criticism of NBC’s lineup of Olympic events being shown in prime time. There’s only a limited amount of broadcast time available and if people rely only on what’s being shown in prime time, they’ve missed an important part of the experience. Almost every event was available online, and I watched a number of events online, including some that I’ve never seen before, such as judo, taekwando, and handball. Even the equestrian events (which were held in Hong Kong … almost a continent away from Beijing) were interesting to watch. NBC, in my opinion, has done a first rate, bang up job of bringing us the Olympics.

I’ve enjoyed Bob Costas‘s commentary. Bela Karolyi was incredibly entertaining. Chris Collinsworth‘s reporting was excellent (he annointed Michael Phelps’ mother as “disappearing Debby” after she almost fainted following her son’s fingernail victory). Mary Carillo‘s vignettes from around the country were excellent and she seemed game for anything, including eating grilled scorpions. I have to admit: They have dominated my evenings for the past couple of weeks. I’ll now have to find something else to do with my evenings. Fortunately, Thursday night football begins this week!

A bit ago I got a tweet from a guy passing through Pocatello needing a fix on a tire. Shortly afterwards he was on his way again. Meanwhile I sent him my phone number if there was anything more I could do (he had already found a tire place). That was a connection that wouldn’t have been possible without Twitter.

Nina is flying to Philadelphia later today. A few minutes ago she was notified by email, cell phone, and landline that her flight had been rescheduled from 4:45 to 6:00 pm. Not all that long ago she would only have learned about the change after getting to the airport.

I’m writing this on my iPhone on an amazing WordPress app that makes posting from my cell phone incredibly easy.

I’m loving all this great technology, including a pretty dang good type-ahead and spell checker on this iPhone. Life is good!!

Here it is another night when I’ll be up until the last dog howls. Fortunately, the Beijing Olympics will be over in a five more days and life can return to a more normal pace. This has been a fantastic Olympics. For the first time ever, just about every event in the Olympics is available online. Microsoft’s Silverlight video player has worked very well, even on my Macbook laptop. Considering that the first time the Olympics were on TV was in 1960, where over a two week period fewer than 20 hours were broadcast, we’ve sure come a long ways. Some analysts have been predicted that the viewership will tail off this second week with Michael Phelps no longer dominating the screen. I certainly hope not. I’d like for NBC to finish up the series feeling very good about what they’ve produced.

Meanwhile, both Nina and I are really enjoying our iPhones. The capability is simply amazing. We were in a (incredibly dirty) Wendy’s Hamburger Joint in Idaho Falls yesterday, surfing the net, watching Associated Press videos, and checking out different iPhone applications. The phone has a GPS with Google Maps as a standard application. I’ve also installed an application called “gpsCompass” which provides a nice readout of the data available from the phone’s GPS data. It also has the ability to email my current location. So, while we were driving to Idaho Falls, I emailed my current location to my blog (it’s in the entry before this). Unfortunately, it doesn’t come through as a link (you have to cut and paste into the browser). I’ll try to work on that as it’d be fun to be able to click on the link and get a Google map with my precise location.

Another capability is to take a photo and send it directly to Flickr. I’m using an application called “AirMe” which tags the photo with excellent location data from the GPS and sends it to Flickr. I took four pictures at the mall in Idaho Falls while Nina was shopping for shoes.

I’m watching the women’s individual balance beam medal award ceremony where the US took Gold and Silver. The US women have done incredibly well in gymnastics. Visa has been one of the sponsors of the games with a lot of very good commercials. For instance, within minutes of Michael Phelps winning his eighth gold medal, Visa showed a commercial congratulating him on eight wins. They must have put a couple dozen versions of these commercials in their pocket for the games and they’re worth watching. One talks about going into the family business … winning gold medals in the Olympics, referring specifically to Nastia Liukin, whose father was an Olympic gymnastic medal winner for the Soviet Union. In the individual balance beam, Nastia took the Silver and surpassed her father in Olympic medals. She’s done well in the family business … particularly considering that her father, after immigrating to the United States, built a gymnasium so his daughter had a place to prepare.

Oh, I love the Olympics!

We have had a delightfully busy week last week. Our granddaughter Danielle came on Monday to spend the week with us. Monday evening we went letterboxing (pictures in the Picture Album). Tuesday evening after I finished with Rotary we left for Yellowstone National Park (pictures in the Picture Album) where we spent Wednesday and a bit of Thursday morning sightseeing before returning to Pocatello.

Thursday evening while Nina was at the Women’s Prison, Danielle and I went to see Swing Vote at the movie theater. We devoured a lot of popcorn and had a good time. The movie was just “OK”.

Friday was a stay pretty much home day and catch up on things needing to get done. A blog post was on my list, but time ran out before that could occur. The Beijing Olympics stunning opening ceremony blew everything else out of the way and consumed our attention. I love the Olympics and have really enjoyed the events we’ve been able to watch.

Saturday was the biannual Gillette Family get together. On odd-numbered years there’s a full-fledged reunion held in Hanna, Utah. On even-numbered years, there’s a get together for a potluck lunch and catch up conversation at a local park. This year we met in Bountiful and about twenty folks were in attendance. I picked up mother and dad at 9 a.m. We left Bountiful about 3:30 p.m. to come back home.

A week ago we had a Big Yard Sale to sell off dad’s tools. After we left Bountiful he insisted that we stop at Harbor Freight in Ogden because “he needed to replace some of the tools that had been sold.” He bought a new pressure washer and some 18v batteries for hand tools. Since then he and mother have had some “discussion” about the tools and I expect the purchases will be returned tomorrow when they come to Pocatello for dad’s eye appointment and shot in the right eye.

Then yesterday I had mistakenly thought I was scheduled to speak in the Arbon Branch. So while Nina went up to the prison, Danielle and I drove out to Arbon for their Sacrament Meeting. Turns out I’m scheduled to speak there next week, so I’ll make the trip then as well. Nina had next week written on her calendar. My Google Calendar had next week on it. But, my ancient Treo (which is now retired) had the 10th scheduled. Good thing it wasn’t the other way around and I showed up next week when I was scheduled for this week!

After I got home from Arbon and we had lunch, I spent a couple of hours getting all the calendars consolidated into one calendar and sync’d with my iPhone. Now I’ll have to find some other way to mess up my schedule!

This morning Nina is going through some of our “treasures” downstairs. I’ve been putting up pictures in the picture album and writing this blog post. There’s a trip up town to get gas so I can mow the lawn on the plan. Who knows what else will come up! This will be a “whatever gets done is done” day for me.