morrowlife

Here are a couple of statues in Mexico, including one about to take my picture.  Kind of creepy if you ask me.  Great Art taken in Puerto Vallarta during our Mexican cruise and part of my famous Statue series.

Short Shrift not required tonight!  Although I really have nothing to say.

I finally got around to buying a year-long iPhone developer license late last night.  I’ve been meaning to do it for weeks.  Now I can compile and install the latest version of the church app without waiting for my friends at the church to send it to me.  Hard to develop and test when you can’t build and install.

Speaking of which, I’m having a funny problem.  Part of the application downloads a bunch of data from the church.  One of the guys on my team reported that it suddenly wasn’t working for him anymore yesterday.  I tried it and it’s not working for me either.  We appear to be the only two people on the team who are having a problem, but the application is dead on both the simulator and my phone.  Apparently, there was a database update yesterday or the day before, and it appears to have broken something, but only for some people, since most of the other people on the team are still fine.  Weird-o-rama.

A bunch of people from our ward when I was bishop have discovered me on Facebook, so I suddenly have a lot of friends there.  I was kind of trying to limit it to only family and a few extremely close friends, but how can I say no to those wonderful people from Denver?  So I have a bunch of friends now.  It’s interesting to hear from old friends and see what they’re up to these days.  It was also cool to see pictures of my niece Vickie’s brand-new baby.  Awww…

Still, I can’t see spending hours every day sitting on Facebook.  A lot of people do, though.

Spent most of the work day today doing yet another iteration of financial planning for next year.  We may have at lest two more plans to make too.  Sigh.  After all these proposals, there had better be a decent program next year!

Went swimming after I got home from work this afternoon.  It was a really hot day today and the pool is incredibly warm.  You could walk right in – just how I like it.  It’s supposed to stay very warm during the day and much warmer than usual at night for at least a couple more days, so I’m planning on spending a bunch of time in the pool while I can.

Of course, there are plans for the weekend.  First and foremost, I need to write my talk for Sunday.  The topic is “preparing for a full-time mission.”  Shouldn’t be hard to come up with something good.  I can just suggest that people consider what I did and then do pretty much the opposite.

Seriously, I think there is way more formal support for missionary preparation these days.  Anybody can buy a copy of Preach My Gospel, for example.  If a prospective missionary will spend the last year before his/her mission working through that book, they’ll be ready.  Of course, that involves plenty of scripture study, contemplation, and prayer, which is what mainly effects the preparation anyway.

I think I’ll also mention the new Duty to God book.  As I’ve mentioned before, I consider that book to be Preach My Gospel Junior.  I think it’ll turn out to be great training for PMG for Aaronic Priesthood-age young men if they’ll take it seriously.

Speaking of Duty to God, I’ve been a tiny bit surprised that some of the young men I’ve spoken to about it are a little disappointed that they don’t earn trinkets as they go through the book.  I’ve pointed out that the trinket always ends up being meaninglessly shoved into a drawer, never to be looked at again, and that the true reward for going through the book is in what you become, but they’re not all convinced just yet.  Besides, one of my close young friends pointed out that there is a handsome plaque available upon completion of the Priest portion of the book, so he’s happy with that.  I’m fine with that too because I think he’ll see later what his true reward will be, when he’s able to enter missionary service with a strong testimony and an ability to study the Gospel and act on it – skills acquired in the Duty to God program.

Gee, I just wrote my talk.  I can just get up the pulpit, open my blog on my iPhone, and read from it.  Perfect.  Of course, maybe I can spice it up a bit as well.

I also hope to get some work done on the Arduino project, of course.  I have known what I want to do for my next step for about a week now and haven’t had the time to do anything about it.  Frustrating!  I also have a TON of work to get the project online. A ton. Starting with rehosting Gardenville on WordPress.  I should have been documenting my progress all along.  And when I finally get the current project working and documented and a new board designed, produced, assembled, and publicized, there’s still the accelerometer project, which is what LRN1 and I set out to do in the first place.

Also need to help LRN2 get a website set up for his current cartooning work.  He’s got something pretty good in the works.  He’s not interested in publishing it on paper – he’s going strictly digital.  I promised to help get a site ready and tomorrow is as good a time as any.

Also need to work on the iPhone project.  I want to finally get the app compiled and installed on my own phone.  Even if it won’t work until the church gets their database fixed for me.

Then there’s the pond.  It’s still disgustingly green.  I’m just continuing to clean the filter every time I get the chance and hope for the best.  We may need to go to a pond store and see if they have better anti-algae chemicals than the ones we’ve been trying.  Our current chemicals appear to encourage algae growth, rather than stop it.  Sigh.  The fellas can’t be enjoying it in there.

And I’ll quit for the night.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife job opportunity: cat burglar!

See you on Monday.

Here’s yet another rather frightening totem pole.  I especially like that bear on the bottom.  I guess I’d be grouchy too if so many animals were standing on my shoulders.  Photo courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Camping and Statue series.

We came home a bit early from the camping trip.  New neighbors moved in and they were fairly obnoxious, so we decided we would rather relax at home in peace than fight the neighbors.  Spent the day today by the pool, which was relaxing and enjoyable.  Probably more of the same, although we probably ought to get some work done too.

Also spent time working on the sdlogger project today.  I’ve been having trouble with making floats and strings transfer across the network.  Been working on the strings today and I’m a bit frustrated.  I can make nine characters transfer just fine, but ten characters just won’t work.  I’ve pretty much given up on getting it to work right and I’m now thinking about workarounds.  I think I may have an idea to get it moving forward again.  I just wish I knew why it won’t work.  Floats – maybe tomorrow.  There’s a lot of diagnostic work to do.

And that’s about it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food crime news:  garlic smuggler!

See you on Monday.

Here’s a welcome bear.  Don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those before.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of both my Statue and Camping series.

Greetings from the campground!  It turns out that they do have wifi here, although they charge five bucks a day for it and the connection speed is atrocious.  The suffering is practically unbearable.  But at least I have it.

We’re having a nice time here.  The weather was absolutely perfect today – neither hot nor cool, still almost all day, and just beautiful.  Couldn’t have asked for it to be better.  It was a bit warmer yesterday – we ran the air conditioner for a while.  It’s supposed to be in the upper 80’s tomorrow, which should be just about right.

Spent a lot of the day working sitting on my comfortable lounge chair in front of the trailer, either reading or playing with a computer.  That sounds ideal!  I’m declaring the sdlogger program done – no more changes until after it’s published.  Still need to write the library and example code, but they ought to go pretty quickly.  I’ll see how much I can get done tonight.  We want to do a bit of exploring around tomorrow.

I installed Dropbox on this computer and my iPhone today.  It works great and is pretty cool.  I have it monitoring a couple of folders on this machine and saving their contents.  I’ll do the same with Buddy, my development machine, and Curly, my Mac Mini, and will be able to work on my projects on any of them at any time.  Cool!  Of course, the fly in the ointment is that I’ve been unable to get Dropbox installed on Buddy so far this afternoon.  The installer gets to 58% of the download and stalls there.  I don’t know if it’s the pathetic connection (that’s my guess) or something more serious, but it’s a bit annoying, I can assure you.  I’ll get it figured out, though.

Not much else to report.  Probably no post tomorrow, as I don’t plan to pay the $5 every day.  We’ll see how it goes.  Plus, I still need to spend some time taking some Great Art, and plenty of it.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: hot dog champ arrested!

See you . . . umm . . . soon.

Here’s a totem pole at scout camp.  I thought I was in Alaska for a minute there.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Statue and Camping series.

The weekend has begun!  The holiday weekend has begun!  The nine-day-long vacation has begun!!  I’m feeling pretty good about things right now.

We’re not leaving until mid-day on Monday, and there are a ton of things to get done by then.  It’s good to be busy.  Of course, there are the filters – my eternal weekend companions.  Fortunately, I enjoy working on them.  Then there are a few things to get done on the iPhone project, stake Young Men stuff to do, a nasty-sounding squeak under the Suburban’s hood to take care of before the campout starts, gas to buy for my car and the truck, my car to wash, software updates to do for the Arduino project, and the trailer to be checked out and washed.  Plus about a million other things.  It’s good to be busy.  As I said.

I made my list of things to take camping last night.  It’s about forty items long, six or seven of which are clothing.  The rest are electronics, books, and a few odds and ends.  Must be prepared.

Honestly, I really have a lot of things planned to do during the campout.  I have four or five books to read, a few magazines to read, and some electronics to design.  Plus geocaching to do, hikes to take, campfires to sit around, dutch oven meals to make, and naps to take.  And probably broken things to fix, if history is any predictor.  I can hardly wait.  The weather is looking good, spirits are high, and we’re not quite ready to go.

I saw a link to an article on the most significant architecture since 1980.  It’s right here.  My only comment: if that’s the best they can do, it’s time to quit trying.  So here’s a special Morrowlife poll: which one of these buildings is the worst of the lot?  It’ll be a tough decision, I can assure you.  Vote early, vote often!

And I think I’ll quit and get ready for bed.  Reminder: no posts next week – we’ll be in the mountains getting lots of Great Art.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: ice cream wars!

See you in a week.

Here’s a statue of a bear.  In a boy scout uniform.  At scout camp.  Picture courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Statue series.  Also part of my famous Camping series.  I was camping.  Sort of.  Okay, I didn’t spend the night, but it was a camp and my decision stands.

Greetings from the train!  I have a very busy evening tonight – scout meeting – so there won’t be much time for blogging.  So I’m doing it now.  You’re welcome.

I held my first meeting with the church iPhone dev group this morning.  It went fairly well and there are some enthusiastic people.  It was great to start a business meeting with prayer – something I haven’t experienced before.  It really set the tone.  Don’t know how I could incorporate that into my day job.

One of the people I’m working with has a very interesting blog.  He’s a very good writer and a well-known Microsoft Exchange expert.  He’s world-famous in church development circles.  He works in Palo Alto and lives south of town.  Maybe we’ll get to meet one of these days.

Anyway.  I expect to get the app installed on my phone tonight or tomorrow, which I really need to do if I’m going to try to manage this program.  I haven’t even been able to get it successfully compiled yet!  Although I think I know how to get that done now.

Nothing much else new today.  Worked without getting much done that I can remember.  There’s a lot of work on my plate right now, and I don’t feel like I’m making a lot of progress on much.  I really need to start doing a five dollar job, and I feel like I’m at about fifty cents.  I know how to do it, though.

Time to pack up.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking toilet crime news: toilet part theft!

See you tomorrow.