I upgraded the software I use for the weblog to their latest version. Along with the upgrade, I also downloaded several "Themes" that change the look of the weblog (the content doesn’t change, just the look). I found one that I liked and have implemented this new look on the weblog. The picture at the top is of Nina and me that we had a passer-by take of us when we were in Mykonos, Greece last October. I kind of like the new look. The font seems to be a little easier to read on a computer. There’s a couple more minor fixes I need to make, but this will be the new look for the next while.

I’ve no idea whose fault it is (drunk drivers hitting telephone poles, ice breaking power lines, or activities by the power company, or whatever), but we’ve had more power outages at our house in Pocatello, Idaho in the past 18 months than we had in the entire previous five years in Colorado Springs. It’s a common occurance to come home to see the clock on the oven door blinking due to a short power outage. Most of them, however, happen at night. This past Thursday evening I woke up about 11:45 p.m. when my sleep apnea nasal CPAP machine stopped running. When that happens, I wake up within seconds (usually in a panic because I can’t breathe). Then there isn’t much more to do except get up and wait for the power to come back on.

The computers all have some kind of a battery backup, so they should be OK for a few minutes. When this outage lasted more than 15 minutes, I started shutting down the computers, starting with the two in basement (the web server and the development server) followed by the iMac Mini and my desktop Windows XP PC. I also, for some reason, turned off the Dell laptop which had a battery that should have run for another couple of hours. About fifteen minutes later, the power came back on. So, I then restarted all the computers in the right sequence and all was well — except for the Dell laptop. For some reason, the hard drive doesn’t power up. I have a spare hard drive with Suse Linux loaded on it, but the Windows 2000 drive is kaput. The Linux installation is fairly old, so today I ordered a new version of the Novell Linux Desktop. It’s supposed to work reasonably well with a laptop, so I’m leaving the darkside with yet another computer. By the way, when I went to order the Novell software, their top reseller link was to CDW. I went there and found that they didn’t have any prices on their website for the Novell products — they were all “call” pricing. I don’t call. Ever. I just did what I usually do, go to another website where the prices are listed and do my business there. So, CDW missed a small sale. Why do websites do that? Do they really think that it’s worth my time to make a telephone call and get hassled by some salesperson trying to make their quota?

I also decided that I needed to do something about being able to run my breathing machine when the power goes out. I had thought about buying another UPS (universal power supply) battery backup, but the problem with those units are that they start beeping rather incessantly when the power goes out — I guess to let me know that the power is out? Plugging the machine into one of those could be a good idea, because the battery backup would just keep working as the power went out, automatically switching to battery and then back to regular power when the power was restored. But I’d have to do some surgery to the UPS to disable the beeping noise. Meanwhile, I was at Harbor Freight to pick up a couple of tools for me and some stocking stuffers for dad, and I saw a Jumpstart unit on sale. Since I can also plug my machine into a cigarette lighter (12V), this would make a good backup and has other uses as well. So, I bought one. It doesn’t have the feature of automatically taking over if the power goes out (without beeping), but I do have the ability now to run the sleep machine should the power go out for any extended period of time. Maybe one day I’ll upgrade one of my UPS’s and use the old one as a power source for the breathing machine.

Being dependent on the machine can sometimes be a real problem. For instance, I can’t sleep on airplanes. When I doze off, a few minutes later I’ll start snoring rather loudly and then will have an apnea event and wake up startled (and sometimes in a panic). It’s just not worth it to try and sleep. So, on long overseas flights, I take enough stuff with me to keep myself occupied and just force myself to stay awake through the entire trip. I’ve read recently about a dental device that might help. I called around town and found a dentist who has had some success with this device and have had a first appointment with him. I’ll go back tomorrow to see what he thinks he can conjure up. The device isn’t covered by my dental insurance (but possibly may be covered by my medical insurance?), but having a backup device that I can also use on an airplane would be worth it. The device is kind of like a denture or an insert used to prevent people from grinding their teeth at night. It forces the lower jaw forward which opens up the air passageway. According to the literature, it is effective in light to moderate cases of sleep apnea and I’m in the moderate category.

Several years ago when I was on one of my around-the-world trips, the long leg from Hong Kong to Frankfurt was to be on Lufthansa. That airline was one of the first to equip business class seats with power for laptops and other small devices. So, I decided to take my breathing machine, hose, and mask with me on the airplane. I could put the blanket over me, plug in, put the mask on, and sleep a good portion of the twelve-hour flight. I got everything hooked up, arranged the blanket, put the mask on, and turned on the machine. It was great. I fell almost immediately asleep, turned slightly, and pulled the blanket off my head. The flight attendant saw me, eyes closed, with the mask and hose running down my body, and immediately called the head flight attendant. They woke me up and wanted to know what I was doing. The head flight attendant was actually quite angry! I hadn’t told them that I had a medical condition. Any medical devices have to be cleared by the airline. I was frightening the other passengers. etc. and etc. She really read me the riot act without once stopping for me to say anything. Since I speak pretty good German, I finally interrupted her in German and told her in no uncertain terms to go away and shut up. I put the machine away and read for the rest of the flight. I’m also not interested in flying on Lufthansa again. It was not a stellar customer service moment for them!

But, now I’ve put one more backup system in place. When the next long power outage happens at night, I’ll be able to plug in my machine and go peacefully back to sleep, no matter what the drunk drivers, ice storms, or Idaho Power does.

I’ve deleted all the trash e-mail, read what little e-mail remained, looked through the websites that I usually visit regularly, fixed a couple of upgrade problems on my blog, and now it’s time to do a little writing before the evening comes to an end. We’ve had some snow today — mostly a snow squall — that coupled with the wind deposited about eight inches of snow right in front of the garage door. The rest of the driveway was bare. It took about a half-hour to run the snow blower and clean off the front walk before having dinner. We could use a lot more snow but none is in the forecast for the next week. The continuing cold weather, however, is definitely still in the forecast. A high pressure ridge on Canada’s west coast, coupled with a big low pressure off the Oregon / California cost, has the jetstream going way south along the California coast before heading east. As a result, all the moisture is in the deep south and the frigid Arctic cold has the middle of the country in the very deep freeze. This pattern also shows no sign of changing any time soon.

My brother Perry (see his blog through the link on the right) and his wife Chris went to Soda Springs last weekend, so Nina and I drove over on Saturday to visit. We sure enjoy spending time with Perry and Chris. He will be starting chemotherapy in January. He’s been diagnosed with a treatable but uncurable form of a lymphoma. He’s young, healthy, and the disease was found in the very early stages, so the longer term prognosis is pretty good. It’s possible that a good treatment will become available in time to restore his quality of life. We certainly hope so. Meanwhile, he and I are in the process of putting high-speed internet into our parent’s home in Soda Springs. They don’t really do a lot with the Internet except e-mail and a very little web browsing, but when we visit we’re looking forward to being able to take our laptop computers and have a good high-speed internet connection. Their current dial-up provider has wireless available in town, but some trees in the neighborhood are blocking the line-of-sight to the two access points. DSL is not available anywhere in the town from Qwest (and probably never will be — as that phone company simply won’t invest in these small towns). There is a small independent cable company that offers a cablemodem option (they don’t seem to have a web page!) so that’s the option we’ve chosen. I’ll put a Netgear Wireless Firewall/Router in after the cable company completes their work and another household in America will have high-speed wireless internet.

Perry and Chris brought mom and dad with them on Sunday evening to Pocatello for the annual Highland Stake Messiah Sing-Along. We all took our music scores with us and spent two hours with a small orchestra, supurb soloists, and some 600 other people singing The Messiah. Perry is also a bass, so we sat together in the bass section and had a great time. It helped immensely that there were a couple of very strong bass voices behind us. The annual sing-along is a Christmas event that I thoroughly enjoy every year. When we were living in the Ogden area, the second Sunday of December was their annual Messiah Sing-in followed on the third Sunday with a Christmas Carol sing-in. A thousand or more people would gather in the Ogden Tabernacle on the third Sunday to sing almost every known Christmas carol accompanied by that lovely pipe organ with readers intersperced reciting Christmas poetry. That’s another event that I’ve longed for since we moved away from Ogden. It sure helps to instill a true Christmas spirit centered around the birth of our Savior rather than the commercial Santa Claus.

All else is very quiet (and cold). The day is done and so am I. Merry Christmas!

We arrived back home last night at 10 p.m. to find that Pocatello had a lot of snow! About six inches of snow had fallen on Saturday and Sunday followed by strong winds. The drifts across the front of the house were about three feet deep. Some Good Samaritan had run his snowblower on part of our driveway and shoveled a path to the front door. We were very grateful because otherwise we would have been parking on the road and walking through the drifts! This evening I fired up the snow blower and finished the job. We’re supposed to get more snow tonight and tomorrow, so I needed to clear away the last batch before the new deposit arrives.

The trip back was OK. Our flight was delayed about an hour, but was only about a half-hour late arriving in Salt Lake City. Nina’s checked baggage arrived, mine did not. It’s amazing to me how I can check in two and a half hours early for a direct flight and the suitcase doesn’t arrive. They delivered it this afternoon, so all is back in order. Jared’s flight was delayed a couple of hours due to air traffic control into Chicago, so he was very late getting home to Seattle. Everyone got where they were going, however.

I had a wonderful time at Dawnmarie’s over the Thanksgiving weekend. She and Kirk were marvelous hosts. They worked very hard to make sure everything went smoothly for everyone. They cooked and cooked and cooked. I ate and ate and ate. A great combination! Rachel gave up her bed for Nina and me. Madison gave up her bed for Daryl and Jared. Kate gave up her bed for Jared’s girlfriend Arlene. We all were very nicely accomodated. The Thanksgiving dinner was great. Food in prodigious quantities, well prepared, and well presented. Ham as well as turkey, apple, cherry, pumpkin, and chocolate cream pies. A garden variety of vegetables. Relish plates with all manner of goodies, including my favorite olives. As I said, the eating was very fine.

Actually, I should better describe our stay as being at Dawnmarie’s Bed and Breakfast! We arrived to find bath towels with bows and chocolates and bath supplies on the bed along with a menu for the time we would be there. She had gotten a small bucket and filled it with all the toiletries that one would need and put that in the bathroom. I can only say that few hotels provide this much service. No wonder I had such a great visit! Thanks, Dawnmarie, for everything. Nevertheless, I’m glad to be back in my own bed…!

It’s been a lovely Saturday here in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. While the sky was cloudy all day, temperatures went above freezing and the roads were much better. Since we all were going to Spencer’s baptism, that was a very good thing. I’ll put up some pictures from the baptism later. Nina took the best set of pictures and she’ll put those on her website. However, I did get a nice picture of Jared’s girlfriend Arlene and that’s the picture accompanying this post. She’s a delightful young lady and we’ve really enjoyed having her here this weekend. She’s had no problem fitting right in with the family. Jared is certainly smitten with here, and it’s easy to see why.

It’s fairly late on Friday evening the day after Thanksgiving. We’re having a good time in New Wilmington. This afternoon Kirk built a bonfire in the back yard to cook dinner. It was dang cold, but a lot of fun being outside around the campfire. We ended up cooking the hot dogs, brats, and hash potatoes on the campfire and then eating inside. There are some twenty people congregated here for the weekend and Spencer’s baptism tomorrow afternoon. We’ve had a lot of fun, lots of conversation, and lots of noise.

Today was bright and sunny … and cold. The temps maybe got into the mid twenties. The kids had a great time outside sledding down the small hill in the back yard. Madison had no sooner gone outside than she was back inside bleeding and bordering on hysterical. She had fallen and split open her chin in the same place as her bicycle accident last year. She needed to go to the emergency room, of course, and get stitches, of course, and that was not what she wanted to do today. Five stitches later, she’s now the wounded soldier and feeling rather sorry for herself. That was the major event for the day.

Tomorrow afternoon is Spencer’s baptism and then people start leaving. We’ll head for the Cleveland airport on Sunday about 11 a.m. to get folks there for their flights. I expect that the airport will be very crowded. The trip is coming to an end far too quickly. It will be nice to be home for a while. Our daughter does have a cablemodem and broadband access, so I made the early trip to Staples this morning because they had a Netgear wireless router and firewall on sale. That’s now installed and all of us can now be online at the same time — Nina with her laptop, James with his tablet, and me with my notebook along with Dawnmarie on her regular computer. It’s quite nice. Every home should be set up like this!!