Yesterday was Third Advent, something that most Mormons don’t understand and perhaps haven’t even heard the term. Advent starts the Christian year and First Advent is the Sunday nearest to November 30th (Saint Andrews Day). Second Advent is a week later, Third Advent is two weeks later, and Fourth Advent is the Sunday before Christmas Day. Each of the Advent Sundays further represents a phase in the Reign of the Savior and is commemorated by the lighting of an Advent Candle on an Advent Wreath. The Wreath generally has five candles. Three are purple signifying the royalty of the Savior as well as our need for penance and also are symbolic of the attributes of hope, peace, and love. One is white and is usually in the center of the wreath signifying Christ. The white candle (if present) is lit on Christmas Day. The remaining candle is rose colored, symbolic of joy, and is lit on Third Advent. This is a long explanation, but interesting for this entry.

Third Advent is a celebration Sunday. Most traditional Christian churches schedule lots of music on this Sunday. For some reason, probably completely unrelated, the LDS Church often schedules choir festivals, carol sing-ins, or Messiah concerts on this same Sunday.

Last night Nina and I attended the twentieth annual Handle’s Messiah sing-in held at the Highland Stake Center on the east side of Pocatello. This beautiful building hosts a pipe organ! That is indeed a very rare feature in a Morman church building. The event featured a small orchestra, very prominent soloists, and the audience as the choir. The Colorado Springs North Stake sponsored a Messiah Sing for a few years, but about four years ago that changed to be a stake choral festival. While the festival was quite nice, I really missed the chance to sing the Messiah choruses. I had an absolutely wonderful time last evening. The program was planned to last about an hour and a half and I could have easily spent another half hour or more to get more of this inspiring piece of music actually sung.

The program started at 7:30. We arrived just before 7 and were able to find seats in the chapel. At the end of the event the chapel and cultural hall were filled with people. This was a well-attended event. I’m sure that consistency makes a significant difference. Twenty years of a tradition is a great beginning. This is an event that will be on our calendars for the future.

Nina got a new church calling yesterday. It’s a new idea being piloted in our area and I’m not even sure what the correct title is! It’s something like "Kitchen Trainer" and there is one person called per building. It’s somehow tied to the Bishop’s Storehouse in downtown Pocatello where a very nice new demonstration kitchen has been built and put into operation. After we sat down in the chapel yesterday evening for the Messiah Sing-in, the lady who sat down next to Nina turned out to be a counselor in our Stake Relief Society Presidency and knew quite a lot about the program. I’ve heard the word "coincidence" defined as "appointments made by God and kept by man." This was certainly true last evening. Nina and her had a great conversation and she’s off and running in her new church calling. Mind you, she didn’t give any church callings up, she just got another one. Life is starting to get busier again.

So, how long should a post be on this weblog? Since I’m primarily writing for me and letting anyone who wishes listen in, I guess it doesn’t make any difference how long the post is. You can simply stop reading whenever you become sufficiently bored!

Heather called last night to see if Nina can go down to Orem and watch the grandkids for a couple of days. This is something that we’re always ready to do. Thanks, Heather, for asking. It’s a good thing as Nina really enjoys spending time with the grandkids and she doesn’t have a lot of opportunity.

Jim now has a new web log running on my server. You can find it at james.rnsmith.com. I’m looking forward to reading his postings. Nina has also said she’d like to try out this process as well. When that gets going, I’ll include that link. I’ve also found a plugin that allows people to subscribe to these posts and get notified when something hs been added. I’ll be testing out that capability and it’ll be implemented as soon as that testing is completed. Of course, in order to test, I have to build up a development server. I also need to move my desk in the office about a foot closer to the door and that needs to happen before I build up the development server. So, any testing on additional capability will probably not happen before the end of the week. I’m still enjoying the remnants of a lovely Sunday evening singing The Messiah!

Bradica (the dog) has developed a new habit that had to be changed. She absolutely hates getting her feet wet. She decidedly doesn’t like snow. She also doesn’t really like walking on grass! Last week we received some very wet snow. It wasn’t a lot, perhaps four inches. During the storm she discovered that there wasn’t any snow under the deck! So when we’d let her out to do her “business”, she promptly headed under the deck and made her deposits. “Do something about it” was my instruction from Nina. So, off to Home Depot I went to see about fixing the problem.

My first thought was to buy some lattice and nail it up to the right and left of the stairs. However, there was no lattice to be found at Home Depot. That’s obviously a summer item and we are no longer enjoying summer. Finally I settled on putting up some wire fencing which I could attach underneath the deck and it wouldn’t be all that noticeable. Then, of course, I needed staples to attach the wire mesh. I know I’ve got a staple gun somewhere, but I could spend a couple of days looking and still not find it. The solution was a new tool: an electric staple gun! So I came out of Home Depot with about $80 worth of stuff to block off the way under the deck to the right and left of the stairs. Bradica dislikes the snow enough that she won’t go any further than that, so I don’t need to block off the long part of the deck. What’s a Saturday without a trip to Home Depot, anyway?

I made up a shopping list before leaving. The list had several items on it:

• Shoe polish for my cordovan shoes
• Lattice
• Stuff to attach the lattice
• Snow shovel (for the back deck because the other shovel is always in the garage)
• Gas for the Toyota
• Music for The Messiah
• Windshield washer fluid with de-icer
• Windshield ice scraper

I made it back home with everything except the snow shovel. Even with a list I still forgot something! Tomorrow night is the annual Messiah sing-in at the Pocatello East Stake Center. I knew where my score was, but Nina wasn’t about ready to plow through boxes in the basement to find her score. She suggested that I stop at the used book store downtown and see if they had any music. I would never have thought of checking here, and viola, they did indeed have a copy. This book store is quite amazing and very eclectic. Books are piled everywhere, but the proprietor knows where everything is! There isn’t much rhyme or reason to how things are organized in the store making browsing in the store a lot of fun. So, we now have three scores to Handel’s Messiah but only one snow shovel. I’m sure that’ll require another trip to Home Depot.

Bradica (the dog) loves to stand under things that rub on her back. One of the Christmas trees is set up in the great room and Bradica will often stand under the tree. I’ve been trying to capture that picture and so far this is one of the better images. I’ve no idea why she does this. She’ll stand under bed covers that are hanging down, any plants that have low-hanging branches, and under table cloths that reach down to the floor. Everyone needs to have a pet with a little strangeness!

We’ve had a couple of minor snowstorms during the past week with abundant COLD temperatures. The new snowblower got a workout a couple of nights ago when I finally got rid of the snow. The machine worked very well, but I learned the machine requires a lot of manhandling, particularly getting it to turn corners. My upper body was pretty sore after the work was finished. So, obviously this was good for me! The forecast says we’re to get more snow on Sunday and Tuesday. That would be very good. We can use the moisture. I’m sure glad we got the outside lights up before the weather turned cold and the area got blanketed with snow. The house actually looks somewhat festive — particularly since it’s the only house in the neighborhood with any Christmas lights set up outside. Christmas is fast approaching and according to Nina, this is the earliest she’s ever been finished decorating the house. However, perhaps we aren’t quite finished!

I’d like to invite my staff and their spouses over for a Christmas potluck. The company will allow me to spend up to five dollars per staff member on a Holiday Party. If everyone came and brought spouses (or significant others), we would have about 80 people for the event. Realistically we could expect between 40 and 50 people. That’s too many for just the upstairs. We’d have to use the family room downstairs as well for the event. Nina says that means setting up one more Christmas tree and decorating it! Sure, why not? What’s Christmas without all the trimmings??

Everyone has gone home. Jared called a few minutes ago to let us know he’d arrived safely and uneventfully in Denver. The coeds, Ashlyn and Maren (a now correct spelling of her name), are back in Rexburg at BYU-Idaho. They all helped put up a couple of Christmas Trees yesterday and get them decorated. Their good work deserved a picture and immortalization on my blog! It’s now just Nina, Bradica (the dog), and me at home. It is very quiet in the house! Even though none of the kids make very much noise, their presence is missed.

I drove Jared down to Salt Lake to the airport. The roads on the way down were wet with some slick spots in the passing lane. By the time I came back, the roads were mostly dry with just a few wet spots. Moving at the speed limit was not problem. Jared was at the gate in plenty of time, particularly since his flight was delayed by about a half hour. Nina drove the girls the opposite direction to Rexburg. She left about an hour and a half after Jared and I left and we both got back home within a half hour of each other. It sure was nice to have the kids around the house for a few days.

Coming back I listened to a couple of podcasts. The first, titled Core Values from BloggerCon III was interesting for the first 45 minutes before the session lost its focus. Dave Winer, one of the luminaries and responsible for the Scripting News blog, talked for a couple of minutes about web logs and links in these blogs. He was pretty adamant that whenever anything from any other source on the web is referenced, it must be linked. I haven’t been very good about that, so I’ll try to repent and make sure that anyone reading this can go to the source to find out if there is anything else interesting there.

The second podcast was also from itconversations.com and is part of a regular series called The Gillmore Gang. Steve Gillmor gets a group of folks together, either in person or on the phone, and they talk about current information technology topics. This particular podcast focused mainly on Sun, the impending open sourcing of Solaris 10, and Sun’s future direction. It was an interesting discussion and I’ll be watching to see what really happens over the next couple of years. Sun, in my opinion, has been impacted the most severely by the Linux revolution. They definitely have to resurrect themselves Phoenix fashion and become a new company. The discussion featured Jonathan Schwarts from Sun Microsystems who was certainly an able representative of the company. One other regular participant on The Gillmor Gang is Doc Searls, a Senior Editor at Linux Journal (and also runs the IT Garage blog). I’ve been fortunate to have been acquainted with Doc Searls for a couple of years. I met him on a Linux Lunacy cruise put on by Neil Bauman at Geek Cruises and have had a couple of conversations since then with him. He’s definitely worth listening to in the Linux world.

So, the ride home from the airport was time well spent as I caught up on a few interesting things in my work-a-day and play-away world. Besides that, it gives me ample opportunity to put those all-important "links" in my blog!

I’ve started building a new web server that will eventually replace my current web server. That box will become the development server, and I’ll be able to retire two computers from the home network. I’ve decided to build the new server using SuSE Linux. It’s a whole lot more stable than Red Hat’s Fedora distribution and much easier to install and configure. I’m hoping that everything will be ready to migrate into production by the end of the year. It’s time to revamp the whole web server process. This time I’ll put up a couple of virtual web servers so that I can serve up more than one web page and eventually segue into podcasting as well. Updates on the progress to follow. Meanwhile, the evening is about finished and I’ve got a couple of work items to catch up on before heading to bed. It’s back to work tomorrow….

I took the earlier picture a little before noon. This picture was taken about four hours later. It has continued to snow lightly all afternoon and the National Weather Service has extended its snow advisory alert:

The National Weather Service In Pocatello Has Issued A Snow Advisory For The Eastern Magic Valley And The Lower Snake River Plain Until 12am Tonight. A Winter Storm Moving Through The Region Today Is Generating Widespread Snow Over The Intermountain Region. So Far Today… Most Areas In The Snake River Plain And Southeast Highlands Have Received 1 To 2 Inches Of Snow. Widespread Snow Showers Will Continue This Evening… Becoming Scattered After Midnight In The Snake River Plain. Additional Snowfall Of 1 To 3 Inches Is Expected Over The Snake River Plain This Evening With Total Accumulations Of 3 To 5 Inches… Mainly South Of A Line From Blackfoot To Burley. Scattered Snow Showers Will Continue Through Sunday With Local Accumulations Up To An Additional 2 Inches.

The storm shows on radar as a fairly long line across this region and is moving slowly to the east. There appears to be another wave of the storm behind it. All in all, this is very good news. We would like to get a lot of snow so that the drought around here can abate somewhat. This picture was taken of the back deck showing the inch or so of snow that has accumulated during the afternoon. According to the weather service report, we’re right on schedule with the rest of the region for snowfall accumulation.

I’ve been designated as the driver to take Jared to the airport tomorrow afternoon. His airplane leaves around 4:30 p.m. so we’ll leave directly after church — or if it is still snowing, we may leave a little bit earlier. About forty-five minutes south of here is the infamous Malad Pass which is just enough higher and situated in just the right position to get a lot of miserable weather. I’ll take the Tracker and Nina will drive the Toyota up the Rexburg, giving me the four wheel drive vehicle to take over Malad Pass. By the time we go through there tomorrow, I expect that the road will be plowed to the bare pavement.

I may also need to go buy some gas and oil for the snow blower!! Who knows — I may have to get some snow out of the way before we can leave in the morning! The "investment" may yet prove its worth. I’ve put the machine together, but haven’t put any fuel or oil into it or read the directions. I’ll go out to the garage in a few minutes to get the book and figure out what I need to do in case using the machine turns out to be worthwhile. Keep it up, snowstorm!

I’m trying a new method of including pictures with the web log. There’s a category of web logs called "picture blogs" where the image is the most important part of the entry. Often there aren’t any words associated with the picture, banking on the premise that a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures do add to a posting, but in my case the pictures are seldom worth a few hundred words, let alone a thousand!

It is finally snowing today. Not anything substantial, just a very light, steady snow. If it keeps up we may have some real accumulation later this evening. The current weather is 27 degrees with a light 5mph wind out of the northeast. The radar shows a light snow in the area of Pocatello but nothing anywhere else in the southeast corner of the state. Chances are that this is a local storm and will soon blow away to the west.

It was enough snow that the framers working on a new house just north of us (on the left in the picture) stopped working about an hour ago and headed for home. It’s got to be miserable trying to do framing work in this weather as everything would be very slippery making conditions dangerous. There are three houses being built in our immediate neighborhood. The view in the picture above is looking to the north-northeast. There is a house being built behind us to the south and another house being built just outside of the picture to the left. There are seventeen lots to the south of us, four of which are reputed to have been sold. Within a few years we’ll be surrounded by homes and will be in a real neighborhood. It will be interesting to watch.

Yesterday’s weather was good enough that we put the lights up along the front of the house. Jared climbed up on the roof and did most of the work to string the lights. Daryl, Ashlyn, and her roommate (I need to ask her how she spells her name. It’s something like Marrin) helped get the lights ready to be put up on the house. Jared bought some clips that made attaching the lights to the house much easier to do. We got all finished, plugged them in, and … nothing. It turns out each string of lights is fused with a three-amp fuse. Six strings had gone up pulling a total of about 4.5 amps. The fuses had blown in the first string. Jared pulled up some additional extension cord, broke the string of lights in the middle, and after changing out the fuses in the first string, everything is now working and are on a timer. I think I’ll look around for some more stuff to put in the yard to make things a bit more festive. Since the weather is inducement to staying inside today, the artificial trees will come out and decorating will start. It’ll be looking a lot more like Christmas by the end of the day. Daryl drove back home last night (good thing given today’s weather). One of us will drive Jared to the airport in Salt Lake tomorrow afternoon and the other one will drive the two girls the opposite direction back to Rexburg. This lovely holiday weekend will then come to a close. It’s been a very nice Thanksgiving. Let it SNOW!

We’ve finished the meal, cleaned up, and most folks are now right bored. The evening is yet young and everyone is on their own for food the rest of the day and night. We had a total of eight souls for the feast this afternoon. My mom and dad came over from Soda Springs. Daryl drove up from Salt Lake and Jared flew in from Denver last Saturday. Our niece Ashlyn along with one of her roommates came down from Rexburg to round out the group. We had far, far too much food. It’s a good thing that we have another fridge out in the garage! Much of the leftover food is now stored out there while we hope the young folks will graze until their hearts are content and the food is gone. Fat chance — pun intended.

We have much to be thankful for. We are living in a nice place, have a wonderful house, a great job, and are living very comfortably. We are close to family and enjoy their company often. We have good health and access to all of the best health care necessary. Life continues to be very good. I’m sure that we’re far better off than much of the rest of the world and I’m also thankful for that as well.

Tomorrow is one of the biggest shopping days of the year. We will be minor participants. Dad wants to go over to Harbor Freight and I’ll go with him. I don’t think I need to buy anything there, but it’s an interesting store and worth looking through. Most of the Christmas shopping is done, so we don’t need to battle the holiday shopping crowds. I think we’ll spend some part of the day putting up Christmas lights on the front of the house — Daryl and Jared will do the putting up, I’ll do the supervising. The holiday season is hard upon us. Happy holidays!