Keeping time, time, time

Moving sites....

2007-03-30T13:02:00.000-05:00

I am no longer using Blogger for my blog. I have relocated my blog to http://www.scottsbaldwin.com and converted to WordPress. Sorry Google. Please update your RSS subscriptions to my new feed URL: http://www.scottsbaldwin.com/?feed=rss2. And, please update your bookmarks to point to my new site!

Living in Mr. Friedman's Flat World

2007-03-06T10:00:00.000-06:00

We're finishing up the testing phases for a project at work right now. The other day I would looking at a list of bugs and the names and locations of who those bugs are assigned to. Here is a list of the locations:

Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
China
Denmark
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Malaysia
Mexico
Poland
Spain
United Kingdom
United States

Wow! I hadn't counted them before now. One of my roles on the team was to take a number of translation defects and make sure they are fixed and accounted for. That has been a big challenge for me. Finally, I was able to figure out how to switch my operating system to do Japanese input. Then, it took me until this morning to get it back to just plain old English.

Of course, Mr. Friedman is a reference to Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat.

Winter in Austin

2007-03-02T14:10:00.000-06:00

Jeana's sister, Danielle, sent over some pictures of a recent winter storm in Omaha. I have to admit that I don't miss shoveling snow, or driving in the extreme conditions. In fact, I quite enjoy the winter we've had to endure in Austin. Here are some pictures from one evening last week.

Kate can finally wear pig-tails in her hair. As soon as Jeana put them in it seems like Kate got a lot older. She looks a lot like Audrey when Audrey was that age.

Okay, I concede that brown grass is in nowhere near as breathtaking as fresh snow. It's a definite trade-off. I'd rather wear shorts than have the inside of my nose frozen from the cold winter.

Fire in the Sky

2007-02-27T13:31:00.000-06:00

A couple of blokes wrote a pretty cool tune about 7 years ago, called Fire in the Sky. Here are the lyrics:

So you tell me that there's nothing to do.
I'll show you. Wait a moment or two.
We've got the sweetest combination
And we've got some smashing rhythm.

The people all around
See a fire in the sky.
I set myself on fire
And the people see me burn.

Split apart and out in the cold.
Indiana, Brandon, and the Queen.
We're still the sweetest combination
Back again and we're doing fine.

The people all around see a fire in the sky.
The people all around see a fire in the sky.
I look to the sun and see a fire in the sky.

The people all around
See a fire in the sky.
I set myself on fire
And the people see me burn.

I thought I would add some background into the meaning of some of these lines.

Andrew Black and I were sitting on the sidewalk leaning against a brick column at the Rexburg, Idaho Hollywood Video store one evening. We were just jamming on an E and A chord.

Drew and T (Travis) had established a bench (on the corner by the Austin buildling) on the campus of Ricks College prior to my returning from my mission. The bench was a place where friends gathered while they played their guitars. As were jamming the E/A chords, I thought of a line from a book on my mission. The line was talking about how John Wesley attracted such a following. He said something to the effect of "I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn." That became the theme of our new ditty.

When I got back from England, people complained that there was nothing happening in little Rexburg, Idaho. We disagreed, people could come listen to us! Okay, it's a bit arrogant, but that's what we thought.

Drew, T, and I served our LDS missions about the same time. T went to Winnipeg, Canada. Drew went to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. I went to Bristol, England. We wanted to include in our song a piece of our missions. In the second verse, we make a reference to each place. Indiana is a place where Drew served in Pennsylvania. Brandon was a place T served in. I couldn't thing of a good place that fit in the "smashing" rhythm of our song and decided to settle with the Queen.

We always used this tune as an opener for people because it's a fun up-tempo song. It's one of my favorites because the middle section featured all three of us singing a cool round of "The people all around".

Worshipping the Stars

2007-02-26T10:24:00.000-06:00

No, I'm not talking about astrology. I'm annoyed by how much we as a society worship celebrities. For the last couple weeks, one could scarcely avoid seeing extended news segments about Anna Nicole Smith. This last weekend was the Oscar awards night. I heard on the Today Show this morning that someone was wearing a pair of shoes valued at $1MM. Another person was wearing a dress with a brooch on the back which cost $4MM. $4MM is more than the GDP of some nations of the world! While there are countries starving and struggling with poverty, fashion designers are balking about who's wearing this or that. This world is in desperate need of balancing.

I tire of hearing about celebrities and their fine-twined linens and costly apparel.

Weather via RSS

2007-02-23T10:38:00.000-06:00

I just found a web site that provides weather forecasts using RSS feeds. The site's URL is http://www.rssweather.com. I figured that I would give it a couple days to see if it's any good. I really wish that Google provided an RSS feed to its weather widget found on your personalized search page.

Words for 2006-12-27

2006-12-27T18:29:00.000-06:00

Bob Sutor does a daily post of links he finds useful or interesting to him. I have started reading a new book, and in the first few pages I have discovered words which I was not familiar with. I figured that I would do something similar to Bob Sutor and list words which I am learning.

Here are the words for today:

intransigent (adj) - refusal to compromise or to abandon an extreme position
procurator (noun) - an agent, or one of the Roman empire entrusted with management of provincial financial affairs
legates (noun) - official emissaries, or agents

'Tis the Season

2006-12-17T19:37:00.000-06:00

December has been a fun month for us so far. We put the Christmas tree up early in the month, I don't remember which day, but it was sometime in the first week.

Audrey was given the honor of placing the star on top of the tree.

I love our tree decorations. Jeana got the wood ornaments when she was in Jerusalem (1998). Each one is something to do with the nativity, carved from olive wood. Jeana also bought a olive wood nativity set carved by a man named Omar.

Jeana added the picture frame idea to our tree this year. The idea is to frame a picture from each previous Christmas to hang on the tree as a reminder of what our family was like each year.

Kate and Audrey like playing behind the Christmas tree. Now that there are presents under the tree they are big into climbing on the presents.

Some neighbors organized a neighborhood party (paid for by the HOA) over by our pool. The HOA bought a Christmas tree, which was decorated with lights. Each family was asked to take an ornament to contribute to the community tree. The organizers arranged for cookies, hot chocolate, apple cider, a caroling choir, and of course, a special visit from Santa Claus.

As you can see, Kate was not a big fan of Santa Claus. Audrey wasn't either her first Christmas (at a Seattle ward party when Randal Thatcher dressed up as Santa). Jeana told me to keep Kate facing me up until the last second when Jeana was ready to take the picture. That was a good idea, but Kate was too smart for our tricks.

For family home evening last Monday night (December 11th) we went down to Zilker Park with some friends, Ben and Suzanne Harman, to see the Trail of Lights. The park trees were decorated and different companies placed lighted scenes along a walking path. Because we took a few pictures at the beginning of the trail, Audrey felt like it was necessary that we stop at each scene to take a picture of her.

We forgot to take the stroller, so I carried Kate a lot of the way. My back was tired. Audrey did a pretty good job keeping up with us. And the rest of us did a good job too trying to keep up with Mr. Long Legs, Ben.

December is such a fun time of the year for me! Historically, I have been horrible at keeping secrets, but this year I've done well. Jeana and I are really impressed that Audrey hasn't blown our secrets. She and Kate have only started opening one present so far - Audrey's present to Kate.

Only one week left until Christmas Eve! We'll mix traditions from each of our families. On Christmas Eve we'll have a big dinner (Jeana's family tradition). Before bed we'll read the Christmas story from Luke 2 in the Bible (standard tradition from both families). Last year we acted out the story. I played the donkey that Mary (played by Audrey) rode on. We'll finish the evening by me giving spiritual gifts to each member of the family (a tradition from my Dad). I have a small hymn book still from Christmas Eve 1986, when I was 8 years old.

This year Jeana's brother Brad is spending Christmas with us. It is so fun to have him here. We golfed yesterday - it was almost 80 degrees in the middle of December!

Kate's Birthday

2006-12-03T21:13:00.000-06:00

Kate had her birthday on Wednesday this past week. We decided not to go overboard on the birthday party because Kate really isn't going to know the difference, neither will she care. I did take the night off from going to scouts so we could spend the night as a family.

There is a show on PBS called Arthur, and on the show Arthur has a baby sister named Kate. Jeana made a cake of that character's face (as you can see in the picture above). Jeana wisely frosted this cake with a non-black frosting. When Audrey was a year old, her cake had lots of black frosting on it, which did not taste the greatest and was a pain to clean up.

Didn't Jeana do a great job on the cake!

I thought Kate would have been more aggressive with her cake, but instead she was pretty mild. I'm guessing that was because we had just eaten one of Kate's favorite dinners, grilled cheese sandwiches.

Aunt Michelle sent these new pajamas. I was trying to take a picture to show how Kate is able to stand and "cruise" around, but Audrey decided the lime-light was too precious to share with her younger sister, even if it was her birthday. Audrey didn't quite understand that all the presents were for Kate. Audrey monopolized Kate's presents throughout the day, especially the Backyardigans book and the Cabbage Patch baby. At least she left the pajamas for Kate to play with on her own.

Audrey got a new car seat and Kate inherited the old one. Jeana washed the cover and it's just like new. We're so excited to have Kate facing forward in the car. At Kate's 1 year check-up at Dr. Cavanagh, she weighed in at 22 pounds and Audrey was 32 pounds.

Kate is becoming really cute these days. She started taking some risks and taking a few steps between furniture. The picture above is an attempt to get her to walk from Jeana to me. Kate does much better if she's maneuvering between couches or other furniture rather than her parents. I guess my bald noggen isn't enough incentive to take a few steps toward.

If you look closely in the picture above you'll see Audrey enjoying Kate's Backyardigans book. It's one of those sing-along books that you press the button to play the song. We found it at Toys R Us at 5.30am during the black Friday shopping.

Log in

2006-11-20T10:50:00.000-06:00

I learned something new today about the proper use of the verb-adverb combination "log in". Quite often, programmers use this incorrectly. Click here for an explanation.

In short, we should say: "Before accessing your financial records, you must log in." Login, therefore, is incorrect and not a noun meaning the ID with which you combine with a password to log in.

Further vs. Farther

2006-11-17T09:36:00.000-06:00

I am drafting an email containing the word further. I questioned whether further or farther was more correct, and consulted a dictionary Web site to find out which word was correct to use. The dictionary listed both words together having the same definition.

Not content with my finding, I opened the Common English Errors site to see if Mr. had put an entry for this topic. I was delighted to find this explanation:

Some authorities (like the Associated Press) insist on “farther” to refer to physical distance and on “further” to refer to an extent of time or degree, but others treat the two words as interchangeable except for insisting on “further” for “in addition,” and “moreover.” You’ll always be safe in making the distinction; some people get really testy about this.

There you have it. I have created an RSS feed to get a random "error of the day" at http://www.scottsbaldwin.com/eod.php?feed=rss. Enjoy.

A Whole Nother Story

2006-11-06T11:27:00.000-06:00

After that last post, I couldn't resist the urge to Google for the phrase: a whole 'nother. I found some great results!

My favorite: http://www.awholenother.com/. Enough said. I did a WHOIS lookup to see who owns that domain, just so I could say a public thank you to the owner. Sadly, the actual name wasn't list to receive my proper respect, so I'll just say a big kudos to DreamHost Web Hosting.

I also discovered an awesome site documenting a number of common errors in English. I think I'll be screen-scraping this content to provide it as an "Error of the Day" feed.

The official term for this "whole 'nother" situation is: tmesis. Tmesis, Greek for cutting, is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is inserted into another word, often for humorous effect. Click here for a pronunciation of tmesis.

Plural Form Mistakes

2006-11-06T11:02:00.000-06:00

Quite often, we mistakingly pluralize nouns incorrectly. Here are some that I come across frequently.

First, consider the singular form: Proof of Concept. The most common pluralization of this is Proof of Concepts. An alternative form, and perhaps the more accurate form for the common use, is Proofs of Concept. The phrase itself contains two nouns, proof and concept. When we speak, particularly in software development, of creating more than one proof of concept artifact, we should use the Proofs of Concept form. This suggests more than one proof. If however, you are trying to prove the validity of more than one concept using one proof, you should use the Proof of Concepts form. Arguably, these forms could be used to mean the same thing. I suggest otherwise.

Second, consider the singular form: Book of Mormon. This is a popular term used in the LDS church to denote a significant book of scripture. The phrase is short for the full title of the book which is The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Many people pluralize the shortened title to Book of Mormons. That clearly is not a plural form of the book itself, but suggests that there is a book about Mormons. This is ambiguous and may mean a book about the religion nick-named Mormon, or about people who belong to the religion.

Another plural form for the shortened title is Books of Mormon. This seems natural given the explanation about proofs of concept above. I, thinking myself clever, used this form for years. However, consider the implications. This plural form suggests that the man named Mormon authored multiple books, which he did (his own book-first person-within the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, the Words of Mormon, the entire abridgement known as the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ). You can quickly see that this sounds logical, yet this form is nevertheless incorrect.

Using the title in its full form forces one to find the correct pluralization. In speaking of one book with its full title, we would say The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Simply adding an "s" to any of the words in the title is not sufficient. We must add the phrase "copies of". Hence, in speaking of multiples, we use: copies of The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, or copies of The Book of Mormon.

Having said all this, I know that the reader will be scouring every future word I say or write. I invite the discoverer of any grammatical, spelling, or other error to bring it to my attention that I may improve. As I mentioned above, I used an incorrect plural form for years.

Another topic I could, and probably will, write about sometime, is the use of the phrase, "a whole 'nother". That just makes me laugh every time I hear it.

I'll end with the "in-law" series, and I'll use brother-in-law as the singular form example. Everyone, and I mean at least 97% of people, probably use the form brother-in-laws. Obviously, when you stop to think about it, that form is incorrect. The correct plural form should be brothers-in-law.

New layout, again.

2006-10-14T10:34:00.000-05:00

After the posts I made last night, Jeana and were reading through them and my previous layout was unbearable to read. I decided to go back to a layout provided by Blogger. I like it better.

What Matters Most

2006-10-13T22:04:00.000-05:00

Elder M. Russell Ballard made this statement in a recent talk in General Conference: "What matters most is what lasts the longest, and families are for eternity." He could not have said it any better.

Honestly, have you seen anything in life that makes you happier than Kate, a.k.a the "gench" (we pronounce that one jench)!

Or, how about those cute little cowgirl boots? Thanks Aunt Karen!

Now that we have our couches delivered, we were able to hang up some pictures in the play room upstairs to make it feel a little more inviting. Jeana's goal is to just keep getting as many pictures of the girls as we can to hang in their play area. This will do one of two things, or both: 1) make them egotistical and feel even more like princesses, or 2) show them how much we love them.

Here is a picture of our house as of last week. If you look closely under the window on the bottom floor, you'll be able to see the retaining wall bricks that we worked so hard to put in. We also transplanted a patch of grass on the corner where the sidewalk meets the driveway back when we planted the gardens. In just over a month, you can barely tell that it was a transplant. The tree in the picture died while we were in Utah for the Edwards family reunion. However, thanks to Audrey's diligence in trying to "save" the tree, the tree returned to life and sprouted some green leaves.

Maybe in a future post I'll take some pictures of edging around the grass - Texas style. It's not the normal way we did things growing up in Idaho.

We Love Visitors!

2006-10-13T21:33:00.000-05:00

As I said in my last post, the Parkers came to visit us last week. They got here on Tuesday evening and I attempted to cook something for everyone. I think it tasted good in the end. I won't say what we ate, because then anyone who reads this would think, "What! You didn't know how to make that?"

Our new couches arrived just hours after the Parkers. Sadly the couches should have been here earlier that day before Jodi and Stephen's family arrived. I think they look great!

It was really fun to see Kate playing with someone near her age. I think my favorite thing was watching Olivia slapping Kate in the face while they were exploring each other a bit.

The night before the Parkers flew back to Idaho, we went out to eat at Rudy's to give Stephen another chance to have Texas BBQ. Stephen sure loves his brisket.

I had to work all week while they were here and I missed out on some of the fun things everyone got to do. I guess this is Mount Bonnell (pronounced buh-NELL, this was a topic of conversation at the end of the day).

We really loved having the Parkers at our house. Jeana and I stayed up just chatting with Stephen and Jodi late each night. I wish we could see them more.

Thanks ya'll for coming!

The Playground by Our House

2006-10-13T21:22:00.000-05:00

Jeana took the girls over to the playground by our house last night while I was finishing up some conference calls for work. I was working from home and when I went downstairs after my last call, they weren't around, so I figured they went for a walk somewhere. I found them walking back from the playground, and Jeana asked Audrey if she wanted to show me her trick.

I was pretty impressed when I saw Audrey would jump up to grab on to the monkey bars.

The temperatures in Texas this week have really cooled down. In fact, tonight we went out in the back yard after dinner to put away the badminton set and when we walked back inside I commented about how that was the first time I've walked into our house when it was warmer inside than outside.

Tomorrow, Danielle, Peter, and Ivy are coming to visit for 10 days. Audrey is so excited to have cousins to play with again. Last week, Jodi and Stephen brought their family and spent a few days with us. Audrey absolutely loved playing with Lily.

I'll post some pictures from the visit from the Parkers.

My Half

2006-10-13T21:11:00.000-05:00

I won't say much about this. Just wanted to post it.

Blogger versus WordPress

2006-09-19T10:21:00.000-05:00

I'm considering a switch to using WordPress for my blog instead of Google's Blogger. The main reason for this is to get all of my blogs stored in a database rather than in a bunch of flat HTML files. Also, I'd like to add the ability to use tags as a sort of indexing system.

If anyone has an opinion about WordPress I'd love to hear your comments.

New look and feel

2006-09-19T10:18:00.000-05:00

I thought I would finally make an attempt to get my blog to look like my Web site. I know it could be more polished, but at least it looks like it kind of fits in. Let me know if you like or dislike the new format.

Can you believe the rain?

2006-09-18T23:16:00.000-05:00

Yesterday on our way home from church, it started pouring so hard that the windshield wipers were on their highest setting, but even that wasn't enough! Today I found out that in Omaha on Saturday night, a tornado touched down right by Bryan and Danielle's house. When we were pulling into our driveway I said to Audrey that we should hurry inside, change our clothes, and then go play in the rain. So we did.

Here's a nice shot that shows the progress of our gardens. In the near garden, the obvious row is our first row of peas. This garden also has onions, carrots, lettuce, [non E-coli] spinach, and basil. The garden just behind me has tomatoes, more peas, summer sqaush, and cucumbers. The farthest garden in the corner of our yard is corn.

This picture shows the tomatoes really good. Jeana bought the tomatoes as plants, so we can't take a lot of credit for how big they are right now. We just need to build some attachments to help the squash, cucumbers, and tomatoes grow vertically.

I love being a dad!

Sometimes those of us who are bald forget how much protection and warmth comes from a head of hair!

My eyes, my eyes!

It is so much fun to finally have a yard to run and play in. Plus, having the rain really cooled down the temperatures this week and made it very enjoyable. The rain yesterday actually lasted for a while, but after three hours it was completely dry again. I went home teaching at 5pm and the people I visited (who live over by IBM) said that it only sprinkled by their house. I figured with the amount of rain we were getting that the whole state of Texas was going to be flooded.

SMART Goals

2006-09-18T10:24:00.000-05:00

Anyone that has ever written a goal probably knows that it must be SMART. SMART is an acronym/mnemonic for writing goals to make sure that your goal is not some far-fetched dream that you'll never accomplish. The reason for writing a post about goals is that different people/organizations have different definitions for what a SMART goal is. Shouldn't there be some goal consortium somewhere which comes up with a standard of what a SMART goal is! Maybe OASIS or IEEE will pick this one up! :-)

I thought SMART was: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

Today I leared a new version: Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Timely.

New furniture for the play room

2006-09-15T10:19:00.000-05:00

We purchased some furniture for the playroom last night. After considering getting a sectional, we decided against those because you're so limited on placement with them. Our final decision (after a long deliberation in the store) was to get a sofa, love seat, and ottoman. They are mocha leather, so they've got a touch of red in the brown. Mostly though, as you can see in the picture below, they're brown. The sad part is that the store cannot deliver them until October 3. That is the day (or the day after) Jodi and Stephen arrive in town. Hopefully the furniture will arrive first!

Photosynth: PPE (or PRESTO), get ready for this

2006-09-14T16:48:00.000-05:00

I don't even know where I first found the link to this but I just discovered what Microsoft is doing with piecing together the world using 3D planes using every day digital imagery. This idea is closely akin to what we dreamed about at Neumont when we (Marlow, Bernd, Chris, Jeremy, and me) were working on the PPE scene (people, places, and events).

Microsoft is working on a product called Photosynth, which takes every day images and makes them navigable (from what I can tell) in a fat client. The technology looks extremely cool. The research team has started a blog (there are only 3 entries as of today) to communicate their progress. See a video demonstration here: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/video.html.

Tyler Young created this weird green blog image during our time at Neumont which was dubbed "the wormhole". Well, that word somehow reappeared on the Photosynth blog:

"What if your photo collection was an entry point into the world, like a wormhole that you could jump through and explore… "- Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Live Labs

[Edit on September 26, 2006] Tyler just sent over "the" wormhole from the days of the Magnificent Seven and Genos. Here it is in all its glory! Tyler's disclaimer is that: "I only had 10 minutes on a tablet."

Exceeding Hatred for Fire Ants

2006-09-03T23:14:00.000-05:00

I can tell this is going to be the first of potentially many posts about fire ants. Let it be said first of all that Jeana feels like she is going to die because of the pain from being stung, NOT bitten, by fire ants. They have really gotten under our skin, pun intended, this week -- so much that both last night and tonight we each have spent more time than we wanted Googling about them. I thought I would include some of my research here for humor, venting, and expression of enmity.

Figure 1. Some fire ants.

Bite versus Sting

So, these vicious creatures don't bite, they sting. Before they sting you, however, they use their mandibles to attach and anchor themselves to their victim's flesh. Then, with all the hatred for the human species they can muster up, they arch their backs, double under their abdomens, and force their spear-like (I don't know if they're spear-like, I took a little literary liberty there) stinger into your skin to inject their venom. Yes, it is called venom by the experts. That is not all! These blood-thirsty heathens may then remove the stinger and pivot around their heads to cause additional stings in a circular pattern.

$140M of Damage Each Year in Texas

"They are somehow attracted to electrical fields and crawl into air conditioning units and the electrical wiring of stoplights, shorting them out. This is the leading cause of traffic light shorts in Texas, where the ants cause more than US$140 million in damage each year.

"The FDA estimates that more than US$5 billion is spent annually on medical treatment, damage, and control in RIFA-infested areas. Further, the ants cause approximately US$750 million in damage to agricultural assets, including vet bills and livestock loss as well as crop loss."
(Source: Wikipedia: Red imported fire ant.)

What is to be done? Enter the Phorid.

The Phorid is a fly that is found in the ants' native habitat of South America. These flies paraticize the ants. The female flies lay eggs on the ants at the junction of the thorax and head which prompts a "jerky dance maneuver" in the ants. The larva then consumes the insides of the ant's head, decapitating the ant in the process (see figure 3 below)! Ah, I can't tell you how much satisfaction I get thinking about this information! I'll order a year's supply of phorids.

Figure 2. A phorid.

Figure 3. A decapitated fire ant.

Our Strategy

I'm sure there will be more on this topic later. Tomorrow, we'll head to Lowe's to purchase some Amdro Yard Treatment.

Testimonials

Jeana found a forum of people describing the pain they were experiencing as a result of fire ant stings. Here are a couple that we thought were funny:

"When I first moved to South Georgia, they warned me to watch for snakes. I was so busy looking for snakes, I stood in fire ants. Adding fire ants to my list of things for which to watch, I walked into a single strand electric fence, watching for moving creatures."

"I Just got bit by a queen ant that was huuuuuuge!!! Am i going to die? SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME AND LET ME KNOW IF IM GOING TO LIVE!!!"