The taxes are done. I love electronic filing! I’ve been using H&R Block’s TaxCut program for several years (switched when Intuit put that stupid copy protection scheme on their TurboTax program). Once the program got installed (required their helpdesk to get the installation done — more later on that), I was able to go quickly through the interview and file. Because we’re getting a small refund the process went very smoothly. This is probably the earliest I’ve been done with taxes in many years.

H&R Block sent me a CD in January with the programs ready to be installed as soon as I paid the small fee for the program. I’ve just kept the CD on the desk until time to actually do the taxes. Tonight was the night since the rest of the week is occupied with other stuff and I didn’t want to wait to the weekend to find that I needed a piece of paper that I couldn’t find. So, I popped the CD in and started the install. The system quickly dinged my credit card for the $24.95 charge for the program, got 21% done, and stalled. I finally killed the program and restarted the install. Same place, same thing. So I called their help desk. Several menus and menu selections later, I got to a fast-speaking person who knew exactly what the problem was. “TaxCut and Windows XP don’t like each other,” she said. What? The program is incompatible with one of the most popular operating systems? That turned out to be true. She talked me through turning off a whole bunch of services, rebooting my computer, doing the install, turning the services back on again, and rebooting a second time. Very strange. I’d think that they would have tested this program before issuing it! That was the only glitch, but I’m afraid that my confidence in this program is more than a little shaken. Maybe next year, Intuit gets my $25.00…. While I’m sure that H&R Block pays no attention to anything being said about them on weblogs, they should be!

My dad celebrated his 85th birthday last Sunday. We drove over to Soda Springs to spend the afternoon with them and had a very nice time. A few weeks ago he was feeling quite out of sorts. He had an irregular heartbeat and appeared to be in some pain. Since then he’s gone into the cardiologist who shocked his heart back into rhythm and dad is pretty much back to normal. He’s bought a band saw at a pawn shop in Salt Lake (without a motor) and is rebuilding a motor to make it functional again. I sure hope I’ve got his energy and desire to be up, about, and doing at eighty-five. Way to go, Dad!

The planning for the Nathan LeRoy and Mary Burton Smith Family Reunion is underway. I’ve set up a weblog for the planning process with a couple of initial entries. Folks interested in the event can go to the weblog (click on the preceeding link), register, and get involved.

I got an e-mail from a Colorado cousin yesterday. She had been reading my blog occasionally and finally sent me an e-mail asking about the Smith Family Reunion. We’ve exchanged a couple of e-mails and she sent along this picture — Cheryl, her husband Sean, and children Kendal (8), Mikale (4), and Teegan (5 months). I don’t think I’ve ever met Cheryl. Delon, her dad, is the same age as me, but is my uncle. My mother and my grandmother were pregnant at the same time. But it was interesting that she was asking about the Smith Family Reunion. A few months ago my dad asked me to be on a committee to help plan the reunion. Nothing more had transpired until this weekend. Cheryl’s e-mail was prescient. This afternoon after the end of General Conference, my uncle Ross called and asked me to chair the committee to plan a reunion for the Nathan LeRoy Smith Family for this summer. He passed along the names of committee members:

• Beverly representing the LaRella family
• Curtis representing the Delon family
• Kathy representing the Ross family
• Jennifer representing the Nate family
• and, of course, me

I’ve reached two of the committee members and hopefully I’ll catch up with the other two in the next couple of days. We may have a reunion after all! I’ll be setting up a private weblog (accessible by Smith family members) to do the planning and communication for the event. The Internet should be a help in the collaboration and planning for this event (hopefully). It’ll be fun to meet cousins I’ve never met before and to become reacquainted with cousins whom I’ve not seen for thirty or more years. Way fun!

Jim and LeeAnn have closed on both houses. The moving truck arrives in Kentucky on Tuesday and unloads in Missouri on Friday. So, they’ll be somewhat inaccessible for a few days. This move and new job has gone very smoothly for them. It’ll be fun to visit them and see their new abode later this spring. It’ll also be good for them to be back together as a family!

About ten minutes before ten o’clock, what little sunlight we had was overtaken by a storm. It started to snow. The snow has continued on and off throughout the day. As I predicted yesterday, the day is cool and wet. The outside temperatures are between 32 and 37 degrees, depending on whether or not it is snowing. That means the snow won’t really stick very long

This picture shows the extent of the storm. The blue area inside the red circle is the area of snow. It literally goes from Pocatello in the north to Salt Lake City in the south. Very interesting, but quite normal!

I’m headed for bed in a few minutes; this is the last thing to do as this Friday comes to an end. I’m looking forward to a cool and wet weekend. As a result, I’m sure I won’t be disappointed. It’s April General Conference Weekend. Everyone in the northern Utah and southeastern Idaho area, regardless of affiliation, knows that it always, and I mean always, rains on conference weekend (unless it snows). We do have company of sorts for the weekend. Nina’s niece Ashlyn and her friend Claudia are here for a couple of days. It’s fun to have them here — they sure do have a lot more energy at late hours of the evening than either Nina or I have!

This past week has an unsual twist to it. The United States (or at least, much of the country) changes to Daylight Savings Time on the first Sunday in April. Europe, on the other hand, makes that change on the last Sunday in March. All of us switch back to standard time on the same last Sunday in October. So, for this week, my collegues in Belgium are 9 hours ahead of me instead of the normal 8 hours. Eight o’clock in the morning in Pocatello is usually four o’clock in the afternoon in Belgium. However, for this one week out of the year, eight o’clock here is 5:00 p.m. there. That one hour makes a difference — the work meetings that need people in attendance from both Pocatello and Belgium normally occur between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. in the morning, which normally translates to 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. in Belgium. However, during this one week, the 3:00 p.m. Belgian time meeting happens at 6:00 a.m. in Pocatello. Consequently, I’m always relieved when this week is finished. Next week we’ll be back on the normal meeting schedules.

But, all of that changes next year. Congress has changed the changeover dates starting in 2007. So, next year we will change to Daylight Savings Time on the second Sunday in March. That means next year for two weeks the time difference will be seven hours. I like that difference a whole lot better. For those two week we can move all the 7:00 a.m. meetings to 8:00 a.m. and get an extra hour of sleep. I ready for that!

It’s now about 23 hours since we left the Jensen Performing Arts Center after being thrilled (and chilled) by the Golden Dragon Chinese Acrobats. I’ve run out of superlatives to describe their show last night. Tonight I’ve got very sore hands from clapping. I think that Nina is going to post some pictures so that’s the place to go. At one point near the end of the program as one of the stars stacked chairs higher and higher to the ceiling and then did all kinds of hand stands and other tricks at each level, I noticed that I had been holding my breath for quite some time — afraid to exhale in case that blew down the stack, I guess.

A couple of new weblogs have been set up. My sister Eileen and my neice Lexie have joined the ranks of bloggers. The links are on the right sidebar as well. I was talking with a group of folks the other day about the value of weblogs in a family setting. We had been discussing corporate weblogs and whether or not they add any value (the jury is still out on that one) and had gone on to discuss political and so-called news blogs. I pointed out that the overwhelming majority of web logs are read by fewer than thirty people on any regular basis, but for those thirty people, the blogs were an important part of communication. For example, my mother really enjoys being able to read what is happening in our family. She and her siblings more than fifty years ago started what might be classified as a private, paper blog — called The Family Letter. Each sibling wrote a letter, added it to the envelope, and sent the batch of letters along to the next sibling, who removed their previous letter, added a new letter, and sent the collection along. This letter has been making the rounds for a Very Long Time. I would love to have copies of those early letters today, even though at the time they were about very every-day mundane things. Today the letter still circulates and the number of recipients has increased. It comes around to me about every three months. I make a copy of all the letters, take my last letter out, add a new letter, and send the envelope along to the next person. Perhaps someday these copies will be interesting to someone … in fact, I’m sure they’ll be interesting to some people.

Well, these blogs are the new Family Letter. We don’t have to wait for the envelope to come around — people add to the collective Family Letter at their own pace and in their own time. I like it. However, since these blogs are really nothing more than little magnetic pulses on a computer hard drive (and I do make a backup of all the blogs on my server every day at 1:00 a.m.), I need to do something to preserve them into the next generation or two of computer technology. Nina has some movie film that her great-grandfather took in the 1920’s. The film has the sprockets running down the middle of the film. We’ve not found a projecter anywhere that can show the pictures. Consequently, unless some miracle happens, this bit of family history will be lost. I’ve found over the years that paper seems to be the only medium that lasts and crosses many generations of technology. So, it’s about time to do some more programming and build an application that can take the weblog postings and the associated images and print them on paper. That way they can be put into a book or a binder and be a good backup to the computer. I’d sure hate to loose all this good stuff!