morrowlife

Here’s a very large tree in Calaveras Big Trees State Park.  Where else would you go to find big trees?  It’s really hard to photograph them in a way that shows their true scale.  This work of Great Art did not achieve that.  Part of my famous Camping series.  Also part of my brand-new famous Vacation series.

I decided I needed a new series because we’ve started taking non-camping vacations, and I think there are more of those to come.  We might just get out of the camping business.  I think we’d still like to visit beautiful nature-filled locales, but we might start staying in cabins, lodges, and other such places.  In the long run, it will probably be less expensive than maintaining, licensing, and storing the trailer, not to mention to cost of hauling it around.  The Suburban certainly never gets into double-digit fuel economy when we’re pulling that thing.  Plus, we think we just want to do other things for now.  Time will tell.

Had a nice time at the Grand Canyon with the extended family.  The train ride was fun.  Sadly, they discontinued the steam locomotives sometime in the past couple of years, so it wasn’t nearly as much fun as it could have been.  They’re being “green” these days.  Pity, that.  The weather was mildly uncooperative – it was sunny and hot the first day in the park and drizzly and cool the second day.  I think we would all have preferred sunny and cool both days, but it was not to be, alas.  Also, LRN4 mentioned that the Grand Canyon is kind of like the coast of Maine – once you’ve seen it from one vantage point, it’s pretty much the same everywhere else.  Still, the most fun was being with family.

Maybe the canyon looks different from the bottom.  It might be fun to find that out one of these days.  We could either ride the donkeys down or go down the river on a raft.  Or maybe even take a helicopter ride.  One of these days.  Maybe.  Or not.

Anyway.  We had a nice time and it’s good to be back home again.

Speaking of the extended family, I have two new Loyal Readers!  Have a look over there on the right, and help me welcome Christy and Candy, Loyal Readers Numbers 28 and 29, respectively.  It’s great to have you with us LRN28 and LRN29!

Put a new battery in the Suburban this afternoon.  I don’t remember whether I already mentioned it, but its battery died just before we left for Arizona.  LRN2 and I jump-started it to get it onto the driveway the morning we left, and he and LRN4 bought a new battery this afternoon.  Installation was pretty simple, of course.  I also took the liberty of unplugging the lights on the sun visors – both of them have suffered broken mirror covers, leaving them susceptible to burning down the battery without us really knowing it.  It was a fairly simple matter to unscrew three screws each and unplug their wires.  I don’t think I’ll replace the visors at this time.  Although I absolutely hate to watch the truck deteriorate.  Which it’s doing – the driver’s seat heater isn’t working and needs an $800 repair and a few of the dashboard lights have burned out (easy to fix – just never have gotten around to it yet).  And a couple of the little knobs on the radio have split.  And now the sun visors.  Sigh.  It’s turning into a junker right before my eyes.

Anyway.  Nothing much else going on around here.  LRN2 and LRN4 went nuclear in our battle with the moths today – they lit off a bug bomb.  We found another moth in the family room this evening, so the effectiveness of the tactic is in question.  Double sigh.  We’ve got to win this battle at all costs.  We will fight them in the family room.  We will fight them in the pantry.  We will never surrender.  All I have to offer is blood, sweat, tears, and insecticide.  This will be our finest hour!

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife employment opportunity: Monkey-annoyance expert!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN2 standing in a tunnel.  Through a tree.  Odd, that.  This particular tree tunnel is in Calaveras Big Trees State Park.  Apparently, the folks who owned the place long before it became a state park got a bit worried when the good people at Yosemite got a tree tunnel of their own.  So they made this one.  You used to be able to drive your Model T through it.  Sadly, I didn’t have a Model T, so I wasn’t able to find out if it’s still okay.  Part of my famous Camping series.

No post yesterday.  I had a church meeting and then got busy.  Sorry about that, Loyal Readers.

Greetings from Palmdale!  We had a good trip down here today.  Left a day early for the vacation.  I needed to deliver an instrument on loan to our folks at the base down here, so I opted to courier it myself.  So my job today was taking the package here.  Got the company squared away and us halfway to the Grand Canyon.  Now we have a six-hour drive tomorrow, rather than the 12 hours we were expecting.  Still have to do twelve hours on Sunday, but some things can’t be helped.

We visited the base museum this afternoon.  Saw a bunch of airplanes and other cool stuff.  They have an SR-71 outside.  Also a B-52.  And an A-10 and an F-4 and a bunch of other planes.  Also an F-22, inside the museum’s hangar.  Looks pretty cool.

Then we checked into the Embassy Suites, where I stayed the last time I was here.  It’s nice and new and very pleasant.  Then we had dinner at Outback, where we all came away totally stuffed.  I’m just now beginning to not feel bloated.  It’s so hard to eat well on the road.

Anyway.  It’s pretty much time for bed, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: yet another burrito attack!  This one hits a bit too close to home.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a picture of my new office furniture.  Actually, I only wish it were.  It’s part of an artistic display in the office of the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Pennsylvania.  Great Art taken during our October 2005 camping trip and part of my famous Camping series.  And what the heck, let’s call it part of my famous Workbench series too.  A desk is sort of a bench.  And work gets done there.  So it’s a workbench.  Sort of.

Anyway.  Extreme short shrift.  I’ve been reading an iPhone developer book and downloading iPhone developer documentation from the Apple website and now it’s late.  I have very short evenings on weeknights.  That’s part of the price I pay for living here in beautiful Lardville.  Which I don’t regret.  But my evenings are still short.

The book I’ve been reading is on a very cool website called books24x7.  It’s a pay site, and I haven’t paid.  However, my employer has paid, and they’ve opened it up to all interested employees.  I have a huge backlog of books I plan to read, and I’ve only scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg.  The one I’ve started reading is called Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK by Dave Mark and Jeff LeMarche.  I’m impressed so far.  Time will tell.

If I end up not liking it, there are several other iPhone development titles there.  Cool.

The iPhone project continues to go well.  I’ve having a great time and really coming the like the people involved.  I believe our app is going to be extremely popular, especially once the for-pay alternative ceases to exist (which will happen, sadly, because it violates the church’s terms of service for their website).  I think it would be extremely popular anyway, as it’s free and is already as good as the alternative (which I have on my iPhone) and will become much better as time goes by.

I’m really impressed with the Church’s software development team.  They are really driven – they certainly don’t mess around.  They work hard, develop a lot of really cool things, and release very frequently.  Very impressive.  It’s really fun to be involved with them.

They’ve recently released their own IDE (integrated development environment, for my non-computer-scientist Loyal Readers).  I haven’t installed it on anything yet, but I’m planning to put it on my development Linux machine this weekend and check it out.  As I understand it, it’s Eclipse-based and focused on Java, which I’m not focused on.  But I might be encouraged.  I’m open for suggestions.  Anyway, check out the Church’s tech website!

LRN2 and I have had a quiet evening together.  We’ve been sitting around the family room playing with our laptops.  Kind of pathetic, but we like it.  LRN2’s working on his web comic and I’ve been working on my iPhone development project and am now blogging, as you might guess.

And that’s about it.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: sandwich down the pants!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a small view of the campground where we stayed last week, showing some of the permanent campsites.  People build their own buildings around their trailers.  Kind of odd, although a few of them seemed nice.  I don’t think I want to do that with my trailer, though.  In one case, there was a beautiful new motorhome stuck inside a permanent structure.  What’s the point?  Part of my famous Camping series.

Yet another Extreme Short Shrift post.  I had a bit of a train problem this evening – we were just a few minutes short of two hours late.  Apparently, there was a defective switch that wouldn’t go where it was supposed to go.  Can’t argue with waiting until that was fixed.  I sure didn’t like getting home that late, though.  Walked through the door at about 9:25.  Sigh.

Really nothing else to report tonight.  I had all kinds of plans for tonight – working on the iPhone project, getting some things done on my to-do list, relaxing, communicating with my family, etc.  All that’s out the window now.  Maybe tomorrow.

Thanks to LRN2 and LRN4 for making some comments lately.  Makes me feel good.  I still need to figure out how to get the comments back on the front page.  I’ll get ‘er done, guys.  There must be a way!

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this disturbing food fraud news: funeral fraud!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s our trailer at the commercial campground in the mountains last week, before the obnoxious neighbors showed up and scared us away.  I had very mixed feelings about that campground – it was prettier than most commercial campgrounds, but the permanent campers lent it the distinctive air of a trailer park.  Not the kind of air you want to have loaned to you.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Camping series.

Extreme short shrift tonight.  It’s late and I have to get up early.  And I stayed up late last night and got up early this morning.  In short, I’m sleepy.

Went to a Very Special Family Home Evening Dinner with our friends Bill and Carol this evening.  Had a nice meal and a very nice visit.  I really like them – they’re fun to be with.  I had a very greasy but otherwise good hamburger.  Ate too much.  As usual, lately.  This is no way to lose weight.  In fact, it’s a pretty darn good way to gain weight.  Which I don’t want to do.

Heard from LRN1, as usual for a Monday.  He’s doing well.  He’s still struggling to learn how to be a junior companion, but I think he’ll get there.  I expect he’ll be a junior companion until he gets to liking it.  Great experience for him.  They have a baptism scheduled for the near future.  Let’s all hope and pray that it happens!

Otherwise, worked, ate, and commuted.

So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food-related violence news: frying pan assault!

See you tomorrow.