morrowlife

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen outside the Las Vegas temple on their sealing day. What a great day.

It’ll have to be a short post today. It’s already really late and we haven’t even started Home Evening yet. At least the formal portion – we are at home and it’s evening, so you could say it’s been going on for hours already. Anyway, we’re going to watch (part of) the First Presidency Christmas broadcast that we had to miss when we were traveling home from Las Vegas, we’re jacuzzifying, and then we’re eating newly-baked sugar cookies for treat. Sounds like fun.

Busy day at work, as usual. Mondays are especially packed because of all the things that go on over the weekend. They’re testing on the airplane pretty much every day, including weekends, so we always have a bunch of things to check out on Monday. No huge emergencies today, but plenty to look at.

I had a little surprise on the way home tonight. When I was just a few minutes away from home, a pickup truck in front of me had a blowout and sprayed rubber bits all over me. I think there may have been something in the road he hit, because there was a pretty loud bang from my wheels too, right around the time I started getting pelted with tire bits. I have no idea what it could have been, though. I certainly didn’t see anything. I checked the car out as well as I could in the dim light of the garage when I got home and couldn’t see any damage, but I’m kind of surprised at that. I’ll look more carefully tomorrow in the light of day. Anyway, it certainly got my attention.

– Later –

Just got out of the jacuzzi so Loyal Reader Number Four could give me the baby and get in herself. Did I mention how lovable Loyal Reader Number Twelve is? Well, she is. She’s just the sweetest thing.

It turned out we didn’t have time to watch any of the broadcast (link warning – First Presidency broadcast sounds). Need to find the time to watch it soon. We did everything else on the agenda, though, except for eating sugar cookies, which will take place very shortly. And then it’s off to bed – the perfect way to end the day, if you ask me.

I found the ultimate gaming system online today. Forget Xbox, forget Playstation, even forget the Wii. This is what you want for the truly realistic gaming experience. I’m planning on asking for two.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve showing off her neat little stocking cap. She looks a little pensive there. Also very cute.

There was no Thursday post. I got too busy playing with my new Arduino. When it got here the other day, I thought I couldn’t use it until I found/bought a 9-volt DC power supply. It turns out that it can get its power either from an external power supply or directly from the USB connector. After I got home from work, I plugged it in, uploaded the “blinking LED” program, and watched its glorious blinkishness. Very cool. I’m hoping to try some of the more advanced tutorials this weekend.

Which promises to be extremely busy. We’re going to decorate the house tomorrow, and I personally need to put away a bunch of stuff before that happens. I also need to check my library books for overdueness, do a little car cleaning (the Suburban’s floor mats are disgusting and the Sable is too dirty for words) (although it will probably rain tomorrow, thus getting me out of both the car cleaning and any lawn mowing that needs to be done), check the pool water, prepare a Sunday School lesson, and do a multitude of other things that I can’t remember right now but that are detailed in my gadget’s to-do list.

I unpacked and installed my new Logitech S530 cordless keyboard and mouse tonight. As my more astute Loyal Readers know already, my very cool Apple keyboard wasn’t working any more – the keys would stick at random, which is not conducive to Serious Writing. That just might explain my blog, huh? Anyway, the new one is very comfortable, has great key action, and has a bunch of little configurable buttons that open the web browser, open email, open iTunes, open iPhoto, open Spotlight, turn the sound up and down, navigate back and forth on web pages, and power down the system. The mouse has three buttons, a scroll wheel that goes up, down, and sideways, web page forward and back buttons, and volume controls. It feels pretty comfortable in the hand. They’re both white and brushed aluminum (well, brushed aluminum-looking plastic anyway) and go perfectly with my Mac Mini. And the cordlessness is totally cool. I really like them. Highly recommended for the Mac-loving Loyal Readers. I’m sure there’s a Windows version as well for my PC-loving Loyal Readers. If you’re in the market, check it out.

Well, it’s late, so I’ll quit. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you on Monday.

Here’s the view of Loyal Reader Number Twelve most often seen these days. That girl can eat! She’s a little bit bigger and a little bit cuter every day.

I don’t think anybody will notice I’ve had to use the Wonders of Blogger to get this posted on Wednesday – no comments for a couple of days hints at less than the usual level of Loyal Readership. I had my normal Wednesday evening correlation meeting, which means I was home pretty late tonight. Couple that with the arrival of my Arduino and it was a busy afternoon/evening.

So, there will be actual content on Thursday. In the meantime, I’m soliciting suggestions for interesting (and achievable) applications for a microcontroller for my first real Arduino project (after the tutorials are done). What would be cool?

Some of my ideas:
– Build a line-following robot and then add computer control to it
– Port the FreeRTOS to the Arduino platform
– Umm, I’m thinking

Okay, I think it’s clear I need ideas. Help me, Loyal Readers! You’re my only hope.

See you on Thursday.

Here’s a shot of some random ride in Tomorrowland, courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One. Very futuristic. Loyal Reader Number Two tells me LRN1 liked the ride because it reminded him of Myst. I can see why.

For my guitar-loving Loyal Readers, here’s an interesting video I found out there on the interweb:

Now that’s some good pickin’.

No time for a long post today. My Loyal Readers are invited to tell about the Christmas traditions they’re looking forward to, as mentioned in yesterday’s post.

Otherwise, it’s already late and I need to go to bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s an old church we visited when we took a tour of Valley Forge a few months back. Sorry about the fuzziness – it was pretty dark in there and I wanted to get the effect of the stained glass. Also, I didn’t have a tripod with me. Also, I don’t plan to start carrying a tripod. So I guess my Loyal Readers will just have to accept the occasional fuzziness.

No post on Friday – we were incredibly busy with the family in Las Vegas. It doesn’t look like any of the Loyal Readers really missed it, though. We’re back in the Secret Undisclosed Location now, so posting will get back to its normal high quality and frequency.

What a great weekend! We went to the Las Vegas temple for Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen’s sealing. It went very well and was definitely worth the wait (although I personally could have waited a much shorter time!). Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve came to Las Vegas too, along with LRN15’s mom, sister, and grandparents. We had a great time together.

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two and I finally got to go to the Pinball Hall of Fame on Friday night. It was a lot of fun! As advertised, it was absolutely crammed with pinball machines new and old, and (essentially) all of them worked perfectly. I got to meet the owner of the place and mentioned that I had read about it in Make Magazine. He hadn’t seen the article yet, so I told him it said the machines were kept in great condition and when one even so much as had a lightbulb burn out, one of his numerous volunteers would rush out and fix it. He told me he’s the one who fixes everything, and when he does manage to get a volunteer, they spend all their time sitting around doing nothing. So much for Accuracy in Journalism. I still love Make, though.

We got home pretty late last night and started our normal lives back up. We had been away from home long enough to be glad to be back. A small correction, though – LRN2 stayed in Sugarloaf with LRN4. LRN5, LRN12, and he got here this evening. LRN4’s going a little stir crazy there in the mountains, so she’s here for the holidays. We’re delighted to have both she and my sweet little LRN12 for a few weeks.

They had a little bit of excitement on their trip. They had a blowout somewhere in the middle of nowhere a few hours south of here. They changed the tire themselves and then went about a quarter mile further and located a tire store at the next exit. They bought a new tire there and pushed on further north.

We made our Traditional Annual Christmas Season Calendar at Home Evening tonight. There are lots of things on the calendar, including our standards like putting up Christmas decorations, sending Christmas cards, watching Christmas movies, looking at Christmas lights, baking Christmas cookies, and going to a museum on Christmas Eve (actually, it’ll be the 23rd this year, since Christmas Eve is on Sunday). We’ve added a couple of changes this year – we’re going to have a Firefly marathon on the 26th and go to Chinatown and other strategic points in San Francisco on the 27th.

What Christmas traditions are my Loyal Readers looking forward to this year?

Well, that’s enough blathering for one day. See you tomorrow.