Monthly Archives: May 2008

Sad Twitter News

E-Mail Musings

We’re coming up on Glenns Ferry, Idaho, a picturesque small town on the Snake River. The town was recently hard hit when the major employer announced that is was moving operations overseas and closing the plant there.

A little while ago one of the fellows I follow on Twitter (phil801) tweeted that he was at the hospital with his 2-year-old daughter getting blood drawn to check for leukemia. A bit later he said the results would be available this afternoon and they were on their way home. That was followed by information that the doc had called and they were to return to the hospital immediately. Then came the news that the baby was in an ambulance on her way to Primary Children’s Hospital for treatment of probable leukemia.

Interspersed were dozens of messages of sympathy, offers to help, and support. Here I am in a car in the middle of Idaho getting news about an emergency going in in a guy’s life. A guy I barely know, and then only through a meeting I attend each month in Provo. He’s well liked and respected and I also think highly of him.

Never-the-less, reading the news from Twitter on my cell phone was emotional. I feel some of his pain as we’ve been there, in that same hospital (as well as others) with our youngest son. It is a nerve-wracking, painful, emotional roller coaster. You hang onto every hopeful word from the medical staff while trying to ignore all the bad news.

I feel for you, my friend Phil. May the Lord’s blessings be with your daughter, your wife, your family, and you.

Headed to Boise

E-Mail Musings

We’ve just left the Pocatello City Limits on I-86 westbound. Jill Garmin says we’ll arrive at our Hilton Garden Inn overnight stay at 3:11 pm. Little does she know that we’ll need a lunch stop, potty stop, and a gas stop. Probably can’t get them all to coincide.

My visit to the dentist to have a temporary bridge replaced by the permanent bridge successfully brought to a close this round of dental work. It’s been going on for almost eight months and included two bridges, three crowns, four root canal’s, and a crown lengthening. Good dental insurance has been valuable.

The Social Security Admin has responded and our claim for retirement has been approved. The first check arrives on June 18th (symbolically as it’s being direct deposited). The envelope contained a thick booklet on all the do’s and don’ts (many, many more of the latter). With SS, we’ve let the gov’t into our lives in a big way. Income always comes at a price.

American Falls going past on our right. There used to be some beautiful falls on the Snake River here. No more. The town was moved to make way for a reservoir which covered the falls. A huge cement grainery stands in the middle of the reservoir as a reminder of what used to be. They couldn’t get the grain elevator to fall, so they left it with a big gaping hole on the right side from the final dynamite attempt.

Blog Revamp Pretty Much Complete

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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.

Time For A Change!

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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.

How Much Is Enough?

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Now that we’ve signed up for Social Security, the next question is how much more money must we have coming in each month in order to maintain a reasonable standard of living. Nina’s been tracking our spending over the past few months and she’s come to a pretty good estimate of the minimum amount of money needed in addition to Social Security. Today we met again with a financial planner to go over some figures and possible investments he has put together. The net result is that we have several options to choose from, all of which more than meet our needs.

I’ve kind of felt for a long time that we had enough money to be able to retire. I would have liked a couple more years of corporate life to put more money into the 401k but that certainly didn’t happen. It is, however, a serious stress reliever to know that we don’t have to move in with one of the kids any time soon!

The planner gave us four options to look at. All of them produce sufficient income and each of them can be implemented now and start paying out next month. The monthly payouts are within a couple hundred dollars of each other. In all four cases the monthly payout will never be less than the initial monthly payout. So what are the choices?

First is the question of inflation. If the investments perform better than the payout percentage, what happens to that money? In a couple of cases, the payout amount can increase. This is a good thing because inflation inevitably eats away at the buying power of the money paid out each month.

Another consideration is what happens when I die. At that point, the plan ends and whatever the investment value is at that point is paid out to Nina. Consequently capital preservation needs also to be taken into account.

We also need to have some flexibility with the money. For instance, Nina’s car is eight years old with 175,000 miles on it. It’ll have to be replaced. My car is five years old with 60,000 miles, but in reality is more worn out than Nina’s car. We will probably need access to money from the investments to be able to pay for a car at some point in the future.

There are other issues to be considered as well, such as the mortgage and the value of the house, when will we downsize, go on missions (and how many), and more. Finding the right combination to meet all requirements levied by an unknown future is somewhat mindboggling … but significantly more fun than if we had nothing saved for retirement! It looks like we have “enough” with a bit to spare. Hurrah!

I’m At 47% For The Year

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My good friend Duane Slocum has been out in Maryland for the past week or so and flies back sometime today or tomorrow just in time to celebrate his 72nd birthday this coming Monday. He’s been telling me he wants to stop by to see us in Pocatello sometime in June as he’s planning another road trip. So, I’ve got to put together my schedule for the month of June and send it along. Meanwhile, Duane set a goal to post a new blog entry every day this year. He’s come pretty close. At last count, he’s posted an entry 70% of the time. Sometimes his post covers more than one day, so as far as recounting his life this year, he’s probably up around 85%, if not higher. Duane substitute teaches and always draw classes with the typical, hormone driven, anxiety ridden, socially inexperienced teenagers and has developed a variety of names for them. I think it’s kind of funny, but I guess at 71.981 years of age, he’s having a hard time remembering being like that in flatter-than-a-pancake Kansas. But, he’s definitely got me beat in the blog post category!

I’ve only posted 47% of the days in this year. Plenty pitiful if you ask me. I think I’m too busy or perhaps have other things I want to do, and pretty quick it’s been a week between blog entries. Well, it’s time to change that practice. For this year I probably can’t catch up with Duane (unless he breaks his fingers and can’t type anymore), but I can definitely get above 60%…. I’ll check the stats again in a few months.

I am now somewhat more retired. The application for Social Security is now official and the first check should arrive in August. We’re meeting with a financial planner again tomorrow to see if what we’ve got in our 401k plus what we’ll receive in Social Security yields a comfortable retirement. I’m also looking at some other ways to bring in some income by building a small business on the internet. That’s been chewing up a lot of time, including attending an on-line seminar series. The seminar has been very interesting so far. It’s pretty intense … 90 minutes a day plus homework for one week followed by a week off to complete the homework, repeated 4 times. Today the time was spent on website design principles.

I was going to write about what’s upcoming. But, if I do that, I don’t have anything to write about when the day actually arrives. Stay tuned!

Thespian Watching

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Yesterday afternoon we drove down to North Salt Lake to spend the evening and overnight with Heather and her family. The occasion was that grandson Michael Brown was performing in three one-act plays at the Jr. High School. That was plenty of reason to leave Pocatello and warm up by ten degrees in the Salt Lake Valley. As an added bonus, Heather planned to open up their pool and have a pool party for Danielle’s soccer team late Saturday morning.

The drive down was completely uneventful (as it should be) and perhaps the Utah drivers have realized the cost of gasoline (currently about $3.70 a gallon in this area) and many have slowed down. That would be good as sometimes the traffic is way to hectic for people like us who drive in southeastern Idaho where a five cars on the freeway constitutes a traffic jam.

Michael was in all three plays produced on Friday evening. I’ve put one picture up from each of the three plays. He is a budding thespian, I think. He did a great job of projecting his lines and speaking not quite so fast. The middle play, “Great Ceasar!”, was the best of the three plays, although all three were just right for Jr. High School aged students. They seem to have a good drama teacher who also helps them to have fun doing the plays.

Heather’s household is busy! It almost makes me out of breath how much is going on around this house. I’m sure our house was just as busy when we had all the kids at home with kids in high school, middle school, and elementary school, but memories are somewhat vague (probably due to age-related leaking gray matter). This morning Ty is out cleaning the pool with the help of Michael and Danielle. Stephanie was called into work, Chris must still be sound asleep, and Heather left about 6 this morning to to go a State track meet in Provo to support a young man who doesn’t have a lot of family support.

Later this morning we’ll drive back to Pocatello and get ready to go the Idaho Falls Temple. We’ll attend a Chapel meeting at 5:15 and then do an endowment session at 6 p.m. It’s been a fun visit at Heather’s and a nice prelude to a busy weekend. I’ve got a Priesthood Meeting at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning, followed by Branch Conference in Arbon (about 45 miles south of Pocatello) at 10. This is a fun Branch Conference as they always have a Branch potluck dinner after the meetings … and we eat really well.

Mother’s Day Afternoon Drive

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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!