A few weeks ago the Second Counselor in the Stake Presidency called and asked me to talk in the Saturday evening session of Stake Conference. That was tonight and I’ve accomplished my assignment. It was a good meeting and worth being in attendance, even if I was one of the speakers. Tomorrow morning will be the Sunday morning session and we’ll be finished with conference until November when our Stake will be part of a multi-stake conference and a video broadcast from Salt Lake City.

We got more snow over night which I moved off the driveway and sidewalks this morning before going over to the Stake Center to help set up chairs. Throughout the morning we had several snow squalls and by afternoon all of the weather had moved eastward. The people who go up in the mountains to measure the snowpack say that all of the zones measured in southeastern Idaho and western Wyoming are 125% or more of normal. While the drought probably isn’t over, this should make a good dent in it.

Our day was pretty quiet. I spent much of the day cleaning off my computer desk and reorganizing drawers. I think I’m about halfway finished with what I need to get done. I’ll spend time on this over the next week during the evening and see if I can’t get more working space as well as make much better use of the storage spaces on the desk. Nina has been sorting through letters and papers and has made all kinds of lovely finds (including finding a $100 bill … money that we had forgotten about!). It’ll soon be the case that the only boxes left downstairs will be my boxes and my junk. The truly daunting task will be sorting through the thousands of pictures we’ve taken in the past ten or fifteen years, most of which have no redeeming value. The rest will need to be organized and some put on the computer. So, I’ve ordered a new flatbed scanner that we can use for this activity. We’ll be able to plug it into any of our computers, meaning Nina will be able to convert some of her photography into digital images.

Speaking of digital images, the company that makes my really nice digital camera, Konica Minolta, announced this week that they were exiting the digital camera and film making business and selling the digital imaging business to Sony. I’ve used Minolta cameras for many years and have really liked my new Minolta digital camera. However, it’s the last one in that line. Not necessarily comforting. Meanwhile, Nikon announced that they were exiting the film camera business and were going to focus on digital imaging going forward. It kind of sounds like my next digital camera will be a Nikon camera….

A Picture Share!

Originally uploaded by Roland K Smith.

Weather that even ducks won't fly in! Near our house is a small pond popular with aquatic birds. There are several hundred ducks waiting for better weather!

I’ve had a couple of people ask about the fellow that went to the emergency room. Roy is fine — a bit battered and bruised — and fortunate that he was wearing his seatbelt. He would be in much worse shape otherwise. The hill he went down was very steep and the drop was about 50 feet. His vehicle was totaled, but that is completely replaceable.

I’ve been using my iMac Mini much more often. I’m finding I really like many of the things that this computer and operating system do — except that javascript isn’t running well in the Safari web browser. That I need to fix or else get the Firefox browser and use that instead. So, what do I like about this computer?

• The user interface is very nice. It’s easy to find capability and the interface is more intuitive than most on a Windows machine. It’s been hard getting used to the window controls being on the upper left (minimize, maximize, and close) rather than on the upper right of the window
• The iLife products — in particular the photograph and dvd programs. They are very easy to use and the result looks quite professional.
• The widgets!! There are dozens of little funky widgets that can be put on the desktop. The two that I use a lot are a little window with the current weather conditions and another that has the latest news headlines. There are many, many more
• The interaction with the other servers on the network. The Mac operating system is quite similar to Linux and Unix operating systems, so getting to my other computers and administering them is actually easier on the Mac than it is using Windows.
• Its fast! I can only imagine how much faster the Macintosh computers will be on the new Intel chipset

My brother Perry had another chemo treatment yesterday afternoon in Salt Lake City. About 3 in the afternoon his icon popped up on Instant Messenger, so I pinged him. He was siting in "the chair" getting infused. Since there is WiFi in the treatment room, he had his laptop computer running and we chatted through IM for the rest of the afternoon. It’s kind of a wierd sensation chatting over the internet with someone important to me while he is getting a chemo treatment. Technology is an amazing thing.

Five years ago I was in San Jose in a meeting when my cell phone rang. Daryl called to tell me that Trevor had been killed in a car accident. The words "Dad, he didn’t make it…." are etched in my brain. A good friend and collegue left the meeting and began making arrangements for me to fly to Salt Lake City. The only flight available was about an hour later from San Francisco, meaning I had to leave immediately. That good friend also got for me the phone number of the Denver Temple. Nina was working at the temple at that time. Somehow, the receptionist at the temple was able to sense that something was terribly wrong when I called, so she arranged for Nina to be able to take the phone call in a private room. Five years later and it’s very hard to write about that evening. Trevor, I miss you and am looking forward to the day when we’ll see you once again. All of our children are wonderful, keepers, delightful people, and dear to my heart. I love them and love hearing about what they are doing and what’s happening in their lives. Trevor’s mortal clock stopped five years ago and sometimes I think about what might have been. I truly miss the association with him. And I appreciate my association with our other children even more. Thank you all, scattered across the county, for being there, for living good lives, for being part of our family. I love you all.

The storm overnight brought snow and then wind and then big drifts of snow. I fired up the snowblower this morning at 7 and cleaned the driveway, in front of the mailbox, and the sidewalks before Nina left for the Womens Correctional Center at 7:30 a.m. I left for church at about 8:45 and thought I’d put the garage door down, but when I got home at 12:15 the door was up and the snow was now seriously in the garage. Out came the snowblower and the foot-high drift in the garage along with the snow on the driveway were moved onto the front yard. It stopped snowing about 2 this afternoon but some serious wind continued to blow through most of the afternoon. This is Nina’s week to go back up the prison for meetings this evening, so once again I was out with the snowblower moving the drift from in front of the garage and then cleaning off the front porch and walkway before she had to leave at 6:30. I’m tired this evening! It’s now about 7:30 p.m. and another small storm is making its way through Pocatello and eastward. The winds are out of the south at about 20 mph, down considerably from the 35-40 mph winds this afternoon. Whatever happens, I’m through blowing snow for the day! It’s about this time of the year when I decide once again that there are better things than snowblowers — like living where there isn’t any snow? That would also leave Kentucky out of the picture, wouldn’t it, Jim?

A Picture Share!

Originally uploaded by Roland K Smith.

What A Difference 10 Minutes Make….

A Picture Share!

Originally uploaded by Roland K Smith.

Ready For Church And The Numbers Are Few!

The storm that was supposed to arrive tonight seems to be here. It’s about 9 p.m. and the rain started about a half-hour ago. It’s still too warm for snow but that’ll change in the next hour or so. Rain before snow means very slick roads tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Denver is whomping up on New England (much to Nina’s dismay) in the NFL playoff game. It’s been a fairly quiet day.

We went to town around noon to run errands. I wanted to go to the Sprint store to see about a new phone but the helper person was distinctly unhelpful. She couldn’t figure out how to access my account and the person who could help was “too busy”. I left with little useful information. I’ll call Sprint customer service one of these days and get a detailed explanation on my account so that I’ll know what’s possible when I go back to the store. The new Treo phone really looks nice, but the price is quite high. That was a very frustrating visit to the Sprint store! Nina did a little grocery shopping at Fred Meyers and we came back home for the rest of the day. I’ve been primarily doing computer work since then. I updated software on my computer, on Nina’s computer, on the iMac Mini, and on the two Linux servers. So far all of that has gone OK. For some reason, a couple of programs on Nina’s laptop have lost their link with the start menu, so I’ll need to reinstall them tomorrow after she’s finished working on her talk for tomorrow at the Womens Correctional Center (we’ve been kind of asked to stop using the term “womens prison” for some reason). She’s talking both tomorrow morning and tomorrow evening. Today is Madison’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Madison!