I’m wondering if it is possible to write in a blog everyday and have anything to say to myself? It’s worth a try for a few days, anyhow. It’s about 9 pm and Sunday is coming to an end. In another hour or so I’ll be making my way to bed and before I know it, another workweek will have arrived. For not having much on the agenda for this weekend, it surely has gone by in a hurry. While I’ve gotten a few things done, there doesn’t seem to have been enough hours for everything I wanted to do. So what did I do over this weekend?

Most of the time has been spent working on the weblogs and picture album software. I fixed a problem with managing passwords on the picture album software and also fixed a problem in properly reading and handling e-mail posts to my weblog. The upgrade of WordPress 1.5.2 introduced a problem where an email post could not have an apostrophe or quotation marks. If it did, the posting process would error out. Both of these problems took a while to get fixed. I also upgraded Jim’s software for his blog and made several new themes available for him to try. Perhaps we’ll get a new look from him! Heather wanted the picture album capability so I’ve put that software in place for both her and Jim. I really like the pictures from the family and perhaps this will get more of those photos online. Also, I modified the picture album software to display tooltips when the mouse hovers over the navigation bar. It may be presenting a too-busy look and feel. We’ll see how it works out.

I also did some playing with Flickr. I’ve been trying to decide if I should store the actual pictures on my own website or if I should put them on Flickr and then reference them from my website. I paid the $25 for a year’s subscription to Flickr and will do some more experimentation. Flickr looks to have the ability for me to put up a fairly large-sized image and then have a compressed version referenced from my website, but if someone wanted the picture with better resolution, it would be available on Flickr. They also have the ability now to print photos and that might be interesting as well. Anyhow, it is an interesting possibility. So far my only reservation has to do with what happens if I decide not to renew the subscription? Do the pictures just disappear? Have I locked myself into that service when I might want to do something else?

In the process of working with pictures, I found some 400 pictures on my web server that I had uploaded some years ago but had not put them into picture albums. I started doing that and have about 200 more pictures to go through. These were pictures that used to be on my Earthlink web page (which I haven’t updated in a couple of years). In those days I used to have to delete the pictures from Earthlink from time to time because they had a limit on how much disk space I could use. Now that I’m running my own web server, I don’t worry very much about space. I’m paying for about ten gigabytes of network bandwidth, but rarely use more than a quarter of the allotment. Of course, moving the pictures to Flickr would reduce the bandwidth I’m using as well. Perhaps another advantage?

I did some playing around with soldering irons and power supplies. Even though the power supply went belly-up when I turned it on, I learned quite a bit (including how hot the soldering iron is!) and want to get that project finished. I read a couple of years ago about a fellow who used a vacant high-rise building in New York to make a message board. He put flood lights in the windows in an arrangement so that messages could be shown. Someone could then send an email to a certain address with a message they wanted displayed. They would get an email back telling them when the message would be scheduled for display. Then at the appointed time, the message was scrolled across the windows in the high-rise building. One of the favorite uses of this system was fellows scheduling a message for their girl friend, and then taking her where the message could be seen. I thought this was pretty cool and would like to come up with a much less expensive and much more interesting capability. Message signs are still pretty expensive, but are coming down in price. I’d think I could build one for under a hundred dollars. I wonder what the neighbors would think if the traffic in our neighborhood increased so people could see their scheduled messages? There’s a picture on Make in their 4th issue with a loudspeaker attached to a trailer pulled by a bicycle. This is a similar capability…. Using a cell phone, one can call a special number and leave a message up to a minute long. This fellow rides the bike into some public place, turns on the system, and all of these one-minute messages get blasted out the loudspeaker — anonymous free speach.

Church meetings took up a good portion of the day today. Nina is at the Womens Correctional Center every Sunday morning. She leaves about 7:30 am and gets back about 12:30 in the afternoon (unless she’s scheduled to do an additional meeting and then she gets back about 1:30 pm). Now that our ward meets at 9 am, I’m going to church by myself. Last year she’d go to the Correctional Center in the morning and then meet me at the church (doing double duty!). This year that won’t happen. It’s kind of strange being a church all by myself in our home ward! This afternoon at 4 pm we went to the Stake Center along with the other members of the Stake Sunday School Presidency to get set apart. That will now begin taking some time, but also will be interesting. As a result of that calling, I’ll be speaking in Stake Conference in the 21st of January for 15 minutes. I’ve started preparing, but have much more preparation work to do.

So that was the weekend. Plenty to do and it certainly filled up the available time. The weekend is ending and we’ll see if anything interesting enough happens to be able to write much more often in this blog. I think that’s a good way to reduce the readership!!

Happy 2006! I’m already having problems remembering to write that date — so this is no different than previous years. Tonight I’m enjoying the Rose Bowl game between USC and Texas. We’re at the end of the 3rd quarter with Texas setting up to kick a field goal to go ahead by two points. It’s been a good game and a fitting championship game. Since I’ve been going through a year-end cold / flu, I’ve had plenty of time to watch football games on TV. By the time tonight’s over I’ll have had all the football I want for several months.

Heather and Jaelene now have blogs (see the links on the right) and it’s been enjoyable reading what’s going on in their lives. Blogging isn’t for everyone, however, as it does take time out of a busy schedule. I often find that I have to remind myself to sit down and write in the blog. If there isn’t fresh content on a fairly regular basis, there’s no reason the come back and check out the site.

The fourth quarter has started in the Rose Bowl and Texas just missed a field goal so they’re still trailing by one point. This one likely will go down to the wire as a good championship game should.

In other news, the selection committee at Idaho State University has announced the four finalists for president of the university. I’m very interested in how this process will go. I’ve kind of picked my guess for who the frontrunner is. I’m not sure if I’ll ever know who that person was going into this final process. We’ll see.

The mine explosion tragedy in West Virginia is just awful. It looks to me like the company did not have a plan for how to deal with the public, families, and the press in the event of an underground disaster. If it was possible to handle the situation more poorly, I don’t know what that would be. Thirteen miners trapped about seven hundred feet below ground and about two miles from the mine entrance with limited survival capability. Many, many hours later when the rescue team finally digs through to the trapped miners, somehow the word gets out that twelve of the thirteen survived. The town and the families of the trapped miners begin a major celebration and all the major media report the miracle. However, the real story was that twelve had died and only one had survived. Within minutes of the wrong information getting out, company officials knew what the real story was. However, for some unfathomable reason, they waited for three more hours before breaking the news to the celebrating families and townspeople. Those folks were, as one would expect, devastated and very angry. Shoot — I’m angry! This is another news story worth watching and I’m sure it’ll be in the courts as well.

The new year is well underway. It doesn’t seem any different than the year it replaced. Happy New Year!

In a few hours the year 2005 will officially end. I’ll be (hopefully) asleep when the event happens. I’ve come down with a case of the flu and I’ve been feeling worse today than yesterday. I don’t like being sick. I went to the doctor after work on Thursday where she confirmed that what I had was the flu that’s going around. She also commented that this was one of the sickest Christmas seasons she’s seen in the last twenty years. I’ve been in the house since then and sooner or later I’ll start feeling better. However, I will be starting the new year feeling lousy!

On the whole we’ve had a pretty good year. We’ve done a lot of traveling including:

• Belgium in January (business trip) — home for two days and then:
• Orlando in January (business trip)
• Chandler in February
• Manila in April, returning in May (business trip)
• Grand Tetons in June
• Belgium in July (business trip)
• Pennsylvania and a drive back home in August
• Seattle at the beginning of October
• Mediterranean Cruise in mid-October followed by a week in Belgium (business trip)
• Back to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving

We did stay home in December and will likely be home the full month of January. Next year will be much closer to home than 2005 was!

We will spend a very quiet evening here. Nina will do her normal Sunday duty at the prison, but I’ll be staying home. I’m expecting that we’ll have a very quiet beginning to the new year. We did get a fair amount of snow yesterday followed by a lot of rain today and most of the snow is gone. More snow is forecast for tonight, again changing to rain tomorrow. Snow or rain either one is OK — we need the water regardless of how it comes. I’m quite happy with rain — it doesn’t need to be shoveled!!!

Happy New Year!

Pocatello is also home to Idaho State University. The university sits kind of tucked away on the southeast side of the city and for the most part is generally contained into its own world. My personal observation is that the relationship between the University and the City is often strained. Today’s headline on the sports section of the local newspaper reads:

Taking a look back at 2005: ISU looking to clean up its image

The off-the-field antics of the University athletes over the past year is the main point of this opinion piece (presented as a news item). For certain, Paul Bubb, the newly minted Athletic Director, has his work cut out for him — both on and off the athletic field. But, I digress. The article just highlights in my mind the fact that the community and the University are not often on the same page and quite often simply ignore each other.

The University President has also not enjoyed a good year. Earlier in the year, the State Board of Education let it be known that they were ready for a new university president. Shortly thereafter, Richard Bowen, then president of the University, announced that he would be resigning when a replacement had been found. A couple of months later, another tempest broke out when the classified staff (that is, those not in teaching positions at the University) were given a significant salary increase while the teaching staff was not. That was followed by a vote of no-confidence by the Faculty Senate. The result was the president resigned and the post is now vacant.

So, a search for a new University President is underway. A week or so ago the University announced that the candidate list had been shorted to four people of whom one is a clear leader. No further information or identification was provided. A few days ago the University announced that they would identify the candidates on January 3rd, 2006. They would be coming to the University and would be meeting with various University and community leaders.

That announcement triggered a question: What if corporations followed a similar process to select their Chief Executive Officer? The process followed by most companies seems to resemble sausage making: the results are generally palatable but the “how it’s done” is not. In most companies, the Board of Directors makes the final decision. Quite often, this is a rubber-stamp of what the current CEO recommends — particularly since the CEO selects the board members (somewhat of an incestuous relationship).

So, what if a Board of Directors narrowed a candidate list down to three or four people and announced them to the world? They would then be vetted by the shareholders, the public, company employees, and anyone else with an interest. The Board of Directors could then make the final selection, but with significantly more input than they have today. I think this would be a Good Thing.

Meanwhile, I’ll be following the process to select the new Idaho State University President with some interest. Will this process work like I have it envisioned? Or will it turn into a political sham? We’ll see.

We’re driving through Brigham City on our way to Orem, Utah and Heather’s house. It’s about 4 p.m. on Christmas Day afternoon. We’ll spend the night there and come back home sometime tomorrow. It’s a mostly cloudy day with the temperatures in the mid 40’s. Most of the snow has melted, so we’re right ready for another batch. Nina is driving and talking on the phone, calling all of the kids and grandkids. I’m surfing the net and now writing in my blog, courtesy of the SprintPCS wireless modem I have from my laptop computer. These are very handy devices making it possible to be connected at a little better than dial-up speeds as we’re travelling around.

We’ve had a very nice day and weekend. Heather, Ty, and family came up Friday afternoon and spent the night. They left on late morning Saturday morning. While they were at the house, I set up a weblog for Heather. She’s put her first post up and hopefully there will be many more to follow. After they laft, Nina and I went uptown and finished off the last little bit of Christmas shopping. Mom and Dad came over about four in the afternoon and spent the evening and night with us. We enjoy having them with around. Nina and I had ordered in a couple of Strumsticks for Christmas. We opened them and I promptly broke a string on mine. Nina’s works great, however, and tomorrow I’ll go downtown and get some replacement strings. They look like a lot of fun and a reasonable challenge to learn how to play. After dinner we read the Christmas story out of the Bible and eventually we all went to bed. This morning we opened Christmas presents and the went up to the Women’s Prison for their Christmas program. The inmate choir put on the program and they did a very good job. Eighty-one inmates attended the program and thirty-one visitors were there to hear the choir perform. Mom and Dad went up with us and they also really enjoyed seeing the facility and meeting some of the girls. I really enjoyed the program and I’m sure that the girls appreciated having an audience for their performance.

Our Ward’s Christmas Program was at 12:30 p.m. this afternoon. The Ward Choir was performing along with some other musical numbers. I substituted on the organ and, for once, my feet and hands cooperated and the organ sounded reasonably well. After Church we made a quick change and are on our way south. It’s been a busy weekend, but very pleasant. The church-related activites have been very nice. It has been a delightful celebration of the birth of our Savior. Merry Christmas to all!

Today is December 23, 2005. Two hundred years ago today Joseph Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont. We humans like to celebrate things like this and today was no exception. The Church put on an hour and a half special program tonight broadcast to 81 countries around the world commemorating the birth of the Prophet and Founder Joseph Smith. The program was delightful and the music by the Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra on Temple Square was exquisite. Since we get the BYU channel on our Dish Network satellite system, we were able to watch the program in the comfort of our own home. Plus — we have visitors! Heather, Ty, and their family came up this afternoon and will stay until tomorrow mid-morning. They watched the program with us and afterwards we had another sumptious turkey dinner. It’s about 10:30 at night and folks are now fading fast. Turkey does that to you!

The work on the blog is finished. I’ve also set up a blog for Heather and will show her how to use it in the morning. I’ve got blogs for all the rest of the family in testing and will make those available to those who want a blog over the next few days. It’ll be interesting to see how well this works. The purpose of these blogs is to let family members write about what is going on in their lives and share it with the rest of the family (as well as anyone else in the world who might be interested). A blog is only as good as the frequency of posting. For a while I had to remind myself to go write in the blog. It’s become pretty much a habit in the meantime and it has also gotten much easier to write since I don’t have to think about making each post some kind of a world-shaking event. It’s been a good evening and I’m looking forward to the rest of the weekend!