Archive for the ‘guatemala’ Category

Another baptism

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Here’s LRN1 with his companion, a recently-baptized new member of the church, and a relative of that recently-baptized new member.  Not that I can’t remember any of their names, of course.  That’s LRN1 over there on the left, next to the relative.  Congratulations to all involved!  Part of my famous Guatemala series.

Wow.  It’s been quite a long time since I’ve written.  And there’s actually not that much new to talk about.  Let me think a minute here.  Nope, nothing comes to mind.  Been working, sleeping, eating, commuting, and doing a bit of iPhone programming.  That about covers it.

We have our tickets for the trip to Michigan during the Memorial Day holiday week.  We leave the Thursday before Memorial Day and return home the Thursday after.  Got a pretty good deal on the flights.  LRN4 did all the work, which I appreciate.

Oh, my Suburban was broken into sometime during this past weekend.  All they did was throw four rocks through the driver’s door window.  Didn’t get into the truck, didn’t open anything, didn’t steal anything.  Not that there was anything to steal, of course.  I don’t leave junk in my cars.  I don’t leave good stuff in my cars either, come to think of it.  Anyway, I had the window replaced on Monday morning, which was good, since it rained a bit on Monday afternoon.  There was glass everywhere inside that truck!  The window guy vacuumed up as much of it as he could, but there are still tiny shards of the stuff everywhere.  Our insurance company has authorized me to have the interior detailed to try to get it back into its previous glass-free condition.  They vandals also broke the power mirror switch on the driver’s door – presumably, a rock fell on it – so I need to take it somewhere to have that replaced as well.  Sometime in the near future, hopefully.  Very sad experience.  But it’s just a thing anyway.

Speaking of which, we have numerous friends and neighbors who have had their houses broken into lately.  I wonder if it’s related to the appalling economic conditions here in Lardville or just a sign of the times.  Either way, we’re feeling very fortunate that they only vandalism target we’ve had is the Suburban and not the house.

Today’s my brother Chris’s birthday.  Happy birthday, Chris!  He’s fifty years old now.  He told me he’s taking the same Mexico cruise in May that we took last year.  I expect he’ll have a great time, as we did.

My sister Julie’s birthday was the 12th.  Happy birthday, Julie!  I haven’t gotten to talk with her, sadly.  It’s already too late to talk to people on Eastern Time when I get home from work, and it’s tough to call her during the day.  I need to call for a very belated birthday greeting this weekend.

Speaking of the weekend, we’re scheduled to go see Madame Butterfly on Friday the 29th.  Should be fun, in spite of past less-than-stellar performances by our local opera company.  At least they’re still operating, which is a whole lot more than you can say for some pretty well-known orchestras and opera folks.  Also, they’re quite cheap.  So there’s that too.

LRN2 has finished his first semester at BYU!  He did quite well, by all accounts, and I think he’s enjoying himself as well.  We’re really proud of him and his accomplishments.  He mentioned the other day that he finally actually misses playing the organ.  I knew it would happen.

I guess there were a few things to talk about after all.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife employment opportunity:  biting, scratching monkey!

See you tomorrow.

White clothes

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Here are LRN1 and his companion in front of the local chapel with a father and his daughter who were being baptized last Saturday. How exciting! LRN1 is the tall one there in the back. Duh. LRN1 baptized the dad. It’s his first!  Looks to me like a good man.  LRN1 says he is.

But what’s up with the kid with the two hats flashing gang sign?  At a baptism?  Must be a good boy’s gang.  Love the flip-flops, LRN1.  I guess it beats getting athlete’s foot or jungle fever or whatever you get from running around barefoot down there.

Anyway, congratulations to LRN1 and his companion.  But most importantly, welcome to our new Guatemalan brother and sister in the Gospel.  No more strangers and foreigners, etc.

Greetings from the train. I’m trying out the WordPress iPhone app. We’ll see if it works.

My. It’s been a few days since I last wrote. Had a busy weekend, if not exactly the way I had envisioned it beforehand. Spent most of Friday cleaning out the pantry with LRN4. We had a moth infestation (for the second or third time) and went through everything. I hope we got ’em all this time. We threw away a ton of contaminated food. Disgusting. I really mean it.

Spent a lot of Saturday working on computers. Larry, my upstairs media center and household media server, had its Windows installation crap out. I tried everything to fix it, sadly without success. So I pulled off all its files (took about 24 hours), reformatted its hard drives, and installed Linux. It’s now in my office serving as the media file server and a nice development machine for me. I moved Cooper, my old G4 Mac Mini into the loft to assume Larry’s media center duties. It does everything well, except that Netflix won’t run on a G4 machine. So I ordered a Roku box for it today. It shipped already, so it just might get here before our vacation starts on Wednesday. Also ordered a Front Row remote for it on Thursday or Friday, since G4 Minis don’t have an infrared receiver of their own. It’s a pretty nice setup at this point.

Took a lot of time and work, though, so I didn’t get much else done over the weekend. Had fun, though.

I have a piece of equipment that needs to be couriered down to our airplane this week, so I’ve volunteered to take it down on Wednesday. That’s good for the program and good for us, since it leaves us only about six hours away from our Thursday vacation destination. Makes Thursday’s travel time much easier to do and makes Wednesday evening some vacation time as well. Looking forward to it.

That’s right, this week is Grand Canyon week! We’ll be spending our first and third nights in Williams, Arizona and our second night in the National Park. Taking a two-hour train trip each way which, as I sit on my three-hours-a-day train ride, makes it seem like a bit of a busman’s holiday for me. But I love trains, so it’s not a problem. I’m looking forward to an entertaining ride.

Nothing much else going on, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: pork rind attack!

See you tomorrow.

Soaked elders

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Here are LRN1 and his companion, standing in the rain.  Apparently, it’s been raining like crazy lately.  Love them boots.  Part of my famous Guatemala series.

Another short shrift night, I’m afraid.  It was Massive Meeting Tuesday.  Fortunately, the sisters were adamantly opposed to staying late – Young Women Camp starts next Monday and they’re in full panic mode.  So we got done in plenty of time.

Had a good iPhone project telecon this morning.  I feel like I’m back in touch with the project’s status and working well again after last week’s vacation.  We have a new version that ought to be ready to release at the end of this week.  Although the initial version hasn’t even been submitted to Apple yet, due to various issues.  We’ll get out there sooner or later.  In the meantime, I have to admit that it’s kind of fun having something on my iPhone that nobody else can get yet.

Otherwise, a normal day.  Pleasant and uneventful.

So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this updated Morrowlife employment opportunity:  pole-sitting monkey.

See you tomorrow.

Foot soup

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Here’s a nice steaming pot of cow foot soup, AKA caldo de pata.  Looks yummy.  Apparently, it’s pretty popular stuff down in Central America.  Part of my famous Guatemala series.

It’s Monday evening and home evening is over.  Tonight’s activity was swimming and jacuzzifying.  It was another extremely hot day today, so the pool’s temperature was pretty nice.  Not quite ready to just walk into, but almost.  It’s supposed to be warmer than usual tonight and hot again tomorrow, so it ought to be good then too.  I’ll be at a scouting meeting, though, so no swimming for me.  Sure wish I could enjoy my house a bit more.

Nothing much happened over the weekend.  In fact, I really can’t remember much of anything other than stake conference on Saturday and Sunday.  The Sunday session was very nice – I came away uplifted.  Worked more on the Arduino project.  The hardware has been declared done once again, after I messed around with the card holder’s power supply, trying to get its voltage within specs.  When I did, it stopped working.  Raised it up above specs again and it’s working fine.  Leave well enough alone, even if I can’t explain it.

Got a start on the software too.  Didn’t get way far, but it’s well under way.  I think I can have it working right with about another hour’s worth of work, and have it cleaned up and ready to publish with another hour after that.  Should be able to get it done and published on the weekend.  Then I’m really struggling with whether to design a PCB or leave that until later and start working on the navigator, which promises to be quite a software challenge itself.  It occurred to me this evening that it would be really cool as a low-cost but less-accurate direct replacement for a GPS receiver.  I don’t know if that’s really feasible, though.

LRN2 has a couple of interesting projects he’s started working on.  First, he got out our Casio keyboard and has started composing something.  I’ve only heard the random note or two, but I’ll be very interested in hearing the completed project.  I ordered a Midi cable this evening so he can tie the keyboard in to Garage Band on his Mac, greatly expanding the creative possibilities.  The cable was quite reasonably priced – about five bucks, including shipping.  I’m sorry I haven’t gotten one before.

LRN2’s second project is a web comic.  He’s still pretty much learning the computer-based tools he wants to use, so he hasn’t even started drawing yet.  I don’t really think he has his idea for the comic yet either, but there may be something working its way to the surface.  I think he really has a gift for that sort of thing.  He’s still trying to figure out where to publish it.  I suggested actually creating a Zine, but I think he has his heart set on web-only publishing.  We looked briefly at Google Sites, but he has the impression those sites are limited to fairly static pages, aimed at things like clubs and organizations.  He wants something more like Drupal, WordPress, or Blogger for ease of publishing.  I’ve started leaning pretty heavily towards WordPress myself, and I think they have free hosting (a must at this point), so I’ll probably encourage him to set up a site with them.  We could always use spinfo.info for that, or even buy a new domain and host it on my service.  Still, why not use a free site instead?  Decisions, decisions.

Nothing much else to report.  LRN1’s letter came this afternoon.  He’s doing well and learning to be humble.  He sent pictures of cow foot soup their landlady made for them, including the above shot.  Doesn’t look too appetizing, frankly, but the natives love the stuff.  LRN1 says he could only eat about three spoonfuls before he was done.

And I’ll leave you with this exciting new job opportunity from the Morrowlife employment agency: Metallica-listening monkey!  LRN3 might be especially interested in this one.

See you tomorrow.

Dinner

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Here’s LRN1’s dinner.  Now that looks like good eatin’.  Part of my famous Guatemala series.

No posts the last couple of days.  I was at scout camp last night – didn’t get home until about 11:00.  No excuse the previous night that I can remember.  Pretty much just hung around the house.

I’ve been working on the Arduino project again this evening.  I finally got the soldering done correctly and did a bit of testing.  Had to make the two boards’ grounds common.  Having accomplished that, it’s working perfectly.  I need to make a cable that carries the signal lines and the aforementioned ground, get another pin soldered onto the board, test it one more time, and start updating the software.  Finally!  Also need to think about designing an actual board for the thing now.

Tomorrow’s my off Friday.  Plans include the stake temple night in the evening and . . . umm . . . nothing else.  I definitely need to do a few hours’ worth of work on the church iPhone project.  Probably ought to work on some filters and maybe a car wash or two.  I also want to keep working on my Qt learning project.  The possibilities are endless.

And it’s already late.  I’ll try to write an actual post tomorrow.  In the meantime, I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: potato chip assault!

See you tomorrow.