Net weight 16 oz.
Posted: 5 January 2005 at 01:04:35
Well, Jennie posted a new entry in her jennalog after about 12 days. I figured I better hurry and say some stuff before it’s been 12 days for me!
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks at our house with me not going to work at Guru Labs. Christine’s been freaking out from time to time thinking we’re going to spend 2005 living in poverty like we did during parts of 2003 and 2004. But, in the end, we’ve communicated — much better than before — and we’re on the same page now.
Iodynamics is doing much better now than it was in 2003. It’s good positive growth, but it’s still somewhat slow. But, based on the growth curves, it should be capable of paying me and Mike decent salaries sometime this year. Just not in January. Not yet.
So, Christine and I have both been looking for work. We both have interviews this week too. We’ll have to see what happens.
We could get away with one of us working a part-time job right now. That would probably bring in enough money we could pay the bills and everything... but we’ve got some debt that’s piled up over the last couple of years that we need to pay down. And we need a new vehicle soon. So, the plan is to get some work — even if it’s temporary — to take care of that.
New Years
Christine and I debated about what we were going to do for New Years Eve. When we lived in Cache Valley, it was tradition to go to Chadd’s party. We went to a neighbor’s party last year and that was okay... but we wanted to do something different this year. We talked about going to Hollywood Connection in West Valley. We also considered going to a movie. Christine wanted to invite some people over to our house.
In the end, we just hung out at home, had pizza and shrimp, played some poker using the poker game set I gave Christine for Christmas, and watched LOTR: The Two Towers.
Eli and Lucy couldn’t last, but Maya stayed up until just after midnight. We watched the TV coverage of Times Square and also KUTV’s coverage of festivities in Salt Lake City. One of our neighbors set off some (illegal) fireworks and we watched them out our north windows.
So, it was fun.
Laptop Gone to Mill Pitas
Last week, I spent some time in Logan working on some servers at a client’s office. While I was there, I was using my laptop, and a couple motherboard manuals (real thin things) fell off a shelf and hit my laptop keyboard just right so that a small plastic lever clip thing under the space bar cracked and broke. The space bar still worked, but it required extra effort at times. It was flakey if you used the right side of it (where the broken clip/lever was) instead of the middle or the left side. So, I e-mailed Hewlett Packard support and asked them if they could send a new clip/lever thing.
HP support replied and said the clip/lever thingie isn’t available as a separate product; I’d have to replace the keyboard. They recommended I send it in for repair. I asked if they could send the keyboard to me so I could make the repair. They said the keyboard wasn’t available as a orderable item or something... which was wrong because I found it in their part finder utility on their website with a price tag of $90.00.
Well, to make the story short, my laptop is in Milpitas (how do you say that, anyway?!), California for repair. FedEx came Monday to pick it up and HP e-mailed me today saying they got it. Now we wait and see how long it takes one of their monkeys to replace the keyboard and stick it back in the mail.
I wonder if they’re going to complain about all the sunflower seed shells they find.
I’ll Tile til I’m tiled
With a little more extra time on my hands, I decided to try to get some progress made on some home improvement projects. I decided to tile our master bathroom and finish painting it. We had a professional who is a friend of the family do the tile in our kitchen. He told me what to order to get enough materials to tile the kitchen, both bathrooms, and the laundry room. My brother did the tile in our main bathroom and I was hoping I could watch and learn as he did it, but my brother doesn’t often have the patience to teach someone how to do stuff. If you try to help or observe, he’ll finally just say something like, “Just go get a burger or something. Go walk your dog.” I think he actually did the tile in that bathroom when I wasn’t home.
This time, however, I wasn’t going to just have him do stuff... I wanted to do it myself. It’s kind of an uphill battle, though. When you ask Tom for help, he usually just tries to do it all himself because he figures you’re an idiot and couldn’t possibly do anyting as well as he can; Why bother trying?
I read some sites online about how to lay tile, but all the sites and all the howto books I’ve read all recommend using a cement board (wonderboard) as a base for your tile. Our professional didn’t have me get that. He had me buy wire mesh and white thinset mortar. Apparently, the mesh and mortar is a staple of custom tile jobs.
So, I asked Tom to come out and show me how to do that. Of course, he did everything, but I paid close attention. He was going to come back in a couple days to cut and lay the tile on top of that, but I beat him to it. I borrowed my father-in-law’s tile saw and got all the tile layed down.
Tom came out tonight and grouted the tile. I mopped it up afterwards. We’ll put the toilet back on tomorrow morning and have two bathrooms again. Wahoo!
Scriptural reflection
People who know me know I’m somewhat passively religious. I realize I should be more actively spiritual- especially now that I’m a family man, but it’s difficult to remember to study my scriptures, pray, ponder, etc. when it’s not something I was trained to do early in life.
But, I got my scriptures loaded up on my Handspring Prism recently and this morning I read the first couple of chapters of The Book Of Mosiah which I recall was one of my favorite parts of The Book of Mormon.
It really struck a chord as I read it.
In the first couple of chapters, King Benjamin is getting old and is getting ready to turn over the throne to his son Mosiah. As a final act as the king, he speaks to the people and gives them counsel.
He tells them about serving their fellow men and says, “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.” (Mosiah 2:17)
And then King Benjamin talks about people who fall away from spirituality and how their lives will not be as enriched as those who keep God’s commandments and teachings.
This really made me think about the rabid secular movement underway today. So many people feel no importance for God or that there is any relevance in spirituality.
Even among traditionally christian nations, secularists are taking up more and more of the population. Only a very small percentage of people in the UK go to church anymore. One reason so much of Europe is reported to hold negative feelings toward the U.S. is because there is widespread belief that the U.S. is deluded by its christian fervor.
Is the U.S. the last great christian nation?