A Fun Discovery

So the other day I'm helping my Mom clean out her basement so my sister has a place to put her stuff when she moves on to graduate school.  When out of the blue I discover a box of some of my old stuff, as it turns out I had kept some old lazer-tag toys back when Star War Episode I came out.  I loved these things and my friends and I would play for hours with these things.  Turns out I had at least five of these things, I imagine I had six since the packages came in sets of two, but five seem to have made it to my adult years in good working order.

I pulled these out the other day and since there are four members of the family we all got one gun and we reenacted the battle of Naboo.  Good times.

Scraping to get a few extra cents.

As our government gears up to hand out $700,000,000,000 to people who just couldn't seem to live within their means, there are those of us that are doing what we can in order to make every last cent count and finding new and interesting ways to find a couple of extra cents.

Long ago I discovered that I couldn't just raid the couch for change anymore.  Couches just don't seem to attract change like they used to, or it could be that we just don't have many people stopping by to chat, or maybe because most people just don't carry around change anymore.  Either way hidden stores of change and cash are still there but just not as noticeable.

One thing that we started doing is keeping track of the loose change that we end up with.  This little do-dad shouldn't cost you more than about $10 as takes up all the time you'd spend counting all the change in your jar at home and doesn't rob you blind like that coin-counting machine down at the local market.  Also we like this little thingy because it lets us know how much is in that jar at any one time.  So if we are feeling tired and the kids are asking for pizza we can look over at the jar and see that our loose change can give us the night off.  The one drawback to this jar is the fact that you have to put each coin in one at a time and not too quickly, what do you expect for $10?

I like to tinker, but as a father of two young children and not much money to speak of, well, I just can't get around to it.  Because of my desire to tinker over the years I've offered to take junk off the hands of my parents or people I know.  I have a pretty big garage (used to be a small barn) so I've been storing this junk in it.  For the most part this junk that I had acquired had amounted to a couple of washing machines and a dryer.  At first I thought it was going to be great to pull the motor out of those things, make an adapter so that they would run with a car battery and built a little electric car out of the whole mess.  It was sure nice to think about, but as you can all imagine, it didn't really work out that way.

So the other day I said to myself "I'm going to get rid of some of that crap in my garage!"  Usually I would call the DI, they would come and pick this stuff up and from what my wife would tell me (she used to work at the DI) they would bring in appliance repair students to practice on the machines and if they could get them working then the appliances would go to needy families.  Well the DI doesn't do pick up anymore, they would take them if I brought them in.  As my family and I have continued our search for more money we've been taking aluminum cans to a local metal recycling center so I thought that it might be fun to call them and see if we could get any money out of this crap in the back of my garage.  Turns out they pay $.03 a pound for misc metal garbage, and in the end I got about $12.60 for crap taking up space in my garage.  Hurray!

Bike Repair

Ah, my little bike shop.  Just like most Americans with the rising price of gas I've decided to start taking my bike to work.  Truth be told I've been biking to work for over a year now and luckily enough I haven't had a bike problem for the better part of this year, not even a flat tire.

Well, the other day I'm riding home from work and I hear this 'TWANG!' and my rear brake partially engages.  I was only a couple of blocks from my house so I just unhooked my rear brake and rode the rest of the way home at a slow pace while depending only on my front brake.  Once home I set my bike aside and since the next two days were my days off I simply forgot about it, until the night before I had to go to work.  I opened up my rear brake thinking that my rear brakes just dropped out of alignment and when I got on my bike to go to work I discovered that the problem was more than my brakes.

As it turns out that TWANG! I heard was one of my spokes, and when you loose a spoke your wheel warps thereby causing your wheel to hit the brake on certain parts of the wheel.  I learned that by visiting a bike shop website.  I didn't have even the faintest clue on how to replace a broken spoke so I took it to a bike shop that I trusted.  I would have taken it to the same place that the website recommends but the last time I was there they screwed up my derailleurs and wanted to charge me to put them back.  So I took them to Mad Dog Cycle where they charged me $25 to replace the spoke and true the tire.  I thought it was a steal since they originally told me it was going to be about $35.  Hopefully later on today I will be able to take a ride just to make sure everything is okay.

Canning

Every year since I can remember my family canned.  I always wondered why we called it canning when there were not cans involved.  It's more like bottle-ing.  The main event was and is always the tomatoes.  

As a rule I don't like tomatoes.  My family has always grown them in the garden and almost everyone in the family loves them but I don't, although I love everything that comes from tomatoes.  I love tomato soup, ketchup, tomato paste and tomato sauce, but I don't like tomatoes.

Anyway the big draw for the canning season is the tomato sauce that my Mom makes and every years since kids have been moving out of the house my Mom makes an effort to go around to every one's home and can what we all hope will be the yearly supply of tomato sauce.  This tomato sauce is a family recipe that my Mom keeps close to her heart and she doesn't share it with anyone.  Without this tomato sauce spaghetti just isn't spaghetti.  Meat loaf ceases to be meat loaf.  Our family with rather fast then face a meal that called for tomato sauce and didn't have this sauce in it.  Sometimes when my Mom would run low on the stuff she would add half store bought and half of the real stuff.  Even then it was bearly tolerable.

So Happy Canning!

On the dull edge of technology

I love technology and all the things that surround it, but ever since my wife and I made the decision that it was better for the kids that she become a full-time-mother then I haven't been able to enjoy the fullness of technology like I used to.  Nevertheless over the years as my kids have grown I've been enjoying the cheaper things and I am amazed by all the stuff that isn't new to most but is new to me.  I want to share a couple.

Open Office

Once upon a time I used to go to the local software store and drool over the new office suite, but as someone that can't justify buying the latest office suite instead of 4 new boxes of diapers I never got it.  Over time I discovered Open Office.  It's open source and does all the things I got to love about Office 2003.  The best part is that it's free and I haven't had a problem with it the whole time I've had it, it's been able to open all my old Word files without a problem and save my documents in a way that Word can read them.

Woot

Woot is the place were I get my latest tech.  So far I've bought a 2 gig sansa mp3/photo/recorder for $20, a 4 gig sansa mp3/photo/video/recorder for $40, 2 SDmini 2 gig cards for $5 a piece.  I always want to spend more there but again my budget doesn't stretch that far.  From Woot you can access Shirt.Woot, Wine.Woot (I don't drink, but if I did I would go here) and Sellout.Woot.

Pandora

Free Internet radio that only plays the stuff I like.  You can't really beat that.  In fact that's what I'm listening to now.  It works with some cell phones so everyone should give this a glance.

Twitter

This wonderful little program allows me to blog on the go (as you can see on the right) and if my friends are hooked up they can get the same updates.  I like this little program because it wants you to be brief (140 characters), it makes an interesting challenge but can be a lot of fun, kind of like a commercial.  Not to long ago this little program saved a guy's life, or at the very least, got him out of jail.

Diner Dash

This game has been out for a while but my wife (who doesn't like video games as a rule) loves this game and as it turns out we are about the same skill level so it makes for interesting competitions between us.  Don't pay the $20 that the manufacturers are asking, go to Best Buy and get it for $10.  Supposedly you can play it online for free but I don't trust those kind of things.

The Tracphone

Who lives in today's world without a cell phone?  We did for the longest time, until we discovered Tracphone.  For $10 bucks we got the cheapest phone on the market, and when I say 'cheap phone' I mean CHEAP.  This phone's ring tone reminds me of the time when the only sound to come from a computer was from the PC speaker.  It's that cheap.  Nevertheless if you work your minutes right you can end up paying less then $5 a month for phone service.  I spent $30 on minutes back in May and still have plenty left to use.  Texting costs .3 minutes so it's kind of economical although I call people and spend the one minute and I can communicate all I need to.

Ubuntu

So my parents gave me a computer that was on it's last legs, so I had to format the hard drive in order to have some hope of getting to work for any length of time.  Once I did that I had to put a new operating system on it.  I couldn't find an old copy of Windows 98 and sure wasn't willing to pay very much to get this dinosaur up and running so I found Ubuntu.  It's a operating system brought to you from Africa and it comes built with all the open source software you could want, from Firefox to OpenOffice.  I had no problem getting it connected to the Internet, I didn't even try to get it to work with my home network.  So as far as being able to get this computer to access the Internet and do basic tasks it worked great.  The only thing you have to be aware of it that it's Linux based to if you want a printer to work with the thing you are going to have to find the right drivers.

Blogish Laments

I've stated before that I have been blogging for a while.  In the past my blogs have more or less been just ramblings.  I've drifted from topic to topic, sharing my opinion as I went along.  The main reason I created this new blog is because I wanted a blog that had a specific purpose.  That purpose being one that I plan to spend my time in reflection on myself and spirituality.  I'll hit and I'll miss but at least I have a target and perhaps with time I may actually get it right most of the time.

On one of my other blogs, the random one if you look at my list to the right, I've been blogging for almost a year.  I've never been popular among the community primarily because the community does not appreciate a religious point of view, let alone one that comes from a member of the LDS faith.  I've never let that bother me, until the other day.  For the most part I would ignore the trolls that would frequent my posts, but from time to time I felt compelled to respond.  Often when I would respond a kind on online argument would ensue and eventually they would make personal attacks against me.  I would end the discussion when this would happen by ceasing to respond, because I felt that any further response would be useless.  Nevertheless I posted an entry that brought a troll that would misrepresent my point entirely, of course I tried to clarify myself and as history would indicate eventually the discussion degraded into him insulting my character.  At that point I decided that these comments and discussions were taking up more of my time then I liked and I really would like to take the time to create a post as one would a work of art and know that no one could defile it as I had placed it.  So I disabled my comments and posted an entry explaining myself and apologizing to those that enjoyed my blog and to those that would make intelligent comments.

Suffice it to say this created a whirlwind of hatred toward my blog and incited several posts defaming me.  In turn I reported every one as being abusive and defamatory.  I do not know if I did the right thing or not.  I despise how often good bloggers are run off that site because of these trolls and I've decided myself not to be one of them.  I reported them in the hope that blogging on that site might be a place of real discussion instead of trolls.  Perhaps I should have let it be.  I guess I will have to live with the consequences.

The Need for Sleep 2: The Ornery and the Stupid

So the other day I was asleep and my kids started running around and having a good time and just being kids.  Needless to say, they woke me up and that is never a good thing.  I couldn't get back to sleep and I was very ornery.  I've told my wife that when I'm like that she needs to let me burn off the anger so the tiredness can set in, but I shouldn't rely on that to stop me from being ornery even though I'm tired.  So I yelled, made a big deal out of nothing and eventually it was time for me to go to work.  There was no excuse for my actions and in my ranting and carrying on I hurt my wife's feelings.

So there I was at work on only 1 hour of sleep in about 32 hours and I don't really remember most of it.  I only remember that I couldn't think straight and I would start to rant and rave about anything if someone got me started.

There are two things that really suck about fighting with your wife when you've been married for a while.  First, she remembers every time you've screwed up in the same way so there is no easy way to brush it to the side as a one time thing and the more you do it the harder it is to convince her to forgive you.  Luckily my wife understands that when you've been up for 24 hours and someone wakes you up the no one is going to be in a good mood, but that doesn't keep her feelings from getting hurt, or me from hurting them.

The second thing that sucks about fighting with your wife when you've been married for a while is just the fact that there just isn't the incentive to make up like there used to be.

Everyone has challenges that they have to overcome, one of mine is not to be a jerk when I'm tired.

More than animals

I read an article as I was preparing an entry about being more than animals and I accidentally came across this article if there is no God and it inspired most, if not all of this entry.

I've supposed that as human beings we are not like the animals, and this got me thinking, well, I can't say so much as to thinking as to watching my dog. The palindrome made me smile as I thought about God as I looked toward my dog.

When my dog is hungry he searches for food and he eats, when he is tired he rests or sleeps, when he is (darn my christen upbringing) "In the mood for love" he finds a mate or a nearby leg.
As human beings I am under the impression that we are, or at least should be above that. To believe that we are merely animals is to subject ourselves to the most cruel form of slavery, slavery to our own desires. If we believe that this life is the only one that we have and that there is nothing beyond then there is nothing that would inspire us to desire the well-being of those around us, because logically if I do not look to my own happiness then I will never be happy. Our short lives would be taken up in the pursuit of worldly joys and because our lives are short why would a person think twice about doing whatever it takes to acquire said joys?

As human beings we are capable of the most horrendous atrocities and those atrocities are not fueled by a man's belief in God but a man desire, ambition and short-sightedness. Those things do not come from God as any God-fearing man knows. Those qualities come from men, take away God, what will remain?

Belief in God challenges us (or at least should) to be better people. There are those that take a belief in God and twist it, just like a person can take any cause, tool or thought and twist it. Nevertheless for those that really pursue God they find that God wants us to be better people, to be better people to everyone. God wants us to be free of our desires and not do as our bodies push us to do. We all know that our bodies can lie, they can tell us to eat junk when we should eat vegetables. We should play with our kids even though we are tired. We should restrain ourselves from anger, etc...

Belief in God has done more good than it has ever done evil.

The New Curse of Adam

Oh, sure in the early days of the earth Adam and Eve got kicked out of the garden of Eden. Eve got cursed with having to bear children in sorrow while Adam had to work to earn his living by the sweat of his brow. Well, here we are some time later and I think that the curse of the sexes are merging. Women are unfortunately forced to work more and more then ever before making it a woman's job to not only bear children in sorrow but to earn a living by the sweat of their brow. While men are still exempt from bearing children in sorrow we are now cursed with something new.

I don't know if every man feels this way but it seems to me that I am under constant suspicion of being someone capable of doing something terrible with women and children in general. As a missionary the rule came down that as male missionaries we were no longer able to put children on our laps. Today, I am never asked to babysit, even if I'm sitting my own kids at the same time, and my wife has expressed that she will never leave my daughter alone with any man (other than me, and I think she still holds some reservations) no matter how well she thinks she knows him.

I think the new curse of Adam is that as men we can no longer be trusted completely with women and children. It hurts my feelings sometimes.  Oh, and just in case you are wondering, no I'm not guilty of any previous sex crimes or on the sex offender registry list, shame on you if you thought I was.  Shame!

Adiscerning of spirits

Some people I know have these superpowers. My mom has a type of spider sense. She can sense danger before it happens, well, she doesn't really sense it, she dreams about it. Very close to every time something bad happens to someone in our family my Mom has dreamt about it first. There was a day my Mom woke up one morning having dreamt that my brother was in a car accident (He was on a mission at the time). Later that day we got a call from my brother's mission president letting us know that my brother was in a car accident but everything was okay. He even got a contact out of the whole thing. The only time my Mom has been wrong was when she dreamt about me getting hurt while on my mission. I never had a problem so I hope that Lord decided not to put me in that situation for my Mother's sake.

My wife on the other hand has this uncanny ability to judge people's character. A couple of years ago a friend of hers got a new boyfriend. He seemed nice enough to me, but my wife didn't like him at all. Months past and I never picked up on anything, but my wife hated him all the more. Soon enough the guy shows up one night asking if my wife could lend him some money. She thankfully refused. Soon after he disappeared leaving my wife's friend pregnant, broke and with a bunch of maxed out credit cards. Then there was that issue about how my wife picked up on that her aunt's best-friend of twenty years was a lesbian after only spending about an hour with her.

I figure that I have the gift of speaking tongues. Since I do speak two.

House guests and fish

I've heard it said that house guests are like fish. They get rotten after three days.

I don't agree, in the past year we've had four people living with us for a period of time. The most recent was my aunt-in-law and her daughter and they lived with us for about a week. I didn't mind them at all mostly because they only slept at our house, most of the day they spent getting the daughter ready to attend BYU. Also having my aunt-in-law in town gave me a front row seat to when she found out that her best friend of almost 20 years was a lesbian and my aunt-in-law was the last to know. My wife only spent an hour with this best friend and picked up on the fact that she was a lesbian. The husband thought the fact that since her best friend slept in the same room in a two bedroom apartment a tip-off. Still my aunt-in-law only just found out because her best friend needed some consoling because her partner just left her. Is it just me or do pronouns become a lot more cumbersome when you are dealing with a homosexual person?

My mother-in-law lived with us for almost three months this year. She stayed with us for six months a couple of years ago, this time went a little better. I had some concerns the last time around because my mother-in-law didn't like to go upstairs in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, so she kept a little bucket in her room to pee. Then there was a problem with a questionable person calling her from Peru that my wife suspected to be a gentlemen caller. My mother-in-law is married so you can see my problem.

Now we currently have living with us a friend of my wife from Peru that is attending a specialized ESL (English as a Second Language) school nearby, and she will be staying with us until the second week in October. She is a really nice girl and my wife really likes having her around. There is just something that my wife gets from having people around that she's known from Peru. Just yesterday some friends of my wife came to visit because they had a performance in a nearby town. They all started talking and looking at pictures, soon enough they were all laughing and screaming as girls in large groups will often do. I haven't seen my wife like that in a long time. I love to see her like that.

Good Friends

Since my wife has come to this country she has been plagued with a very distinct lack of friends and the few friends that she does have aren't in the 'good friend' category. I've done everything I can and could so she could make more friends but to no avail, until recently.

Recently a family of three (mom, dad, 6-year-old daughter) were baptized into our ward. (Did I mention that we go the the Spanish ward?) Since the family started investigating the church our daughter and their daughter have gotten along really well and since most of the time our friends are extensions of the friends of our kids then it seemed only natural that my wife and the mother of our daughter's friend. I know that this doesn't always work, but it always sounds good when you write it down.

In the past my wife's best friend has been a little wanting at least in my eyes. My big problem with my wife's friend is two fold, but in the interest of not criticizing too much I will only mention the one problem that angers me the most and that is the fact she tells my wife that my wife is fat. I'll take a deep breath before I write this so I can avoid a long rant (in, out), okay, you are only allowed to tell a person that they are fat when you are a very close friend and when your overall goal is to help them. Oh yeah and you can only tell a person they are fat when they really are. My wife is NOT fat. She is larger then she was when I married her but since she was a size 0 when we got married I'm pleased that she has filled out a little, but she certainly hasn't reached "fat" proportions. It really irritates me when my wife's friend lowers my wife's self esteem. My wife already misses her pre-marriage body but she doesn't need anyone to tell her she's fat.

Now this new friend that my wife has begun hanging out with has been wanting to get back to her pre-baby weight but hasn't found the strength of will to do it. My wife has had the same desire for a while too. I've tried to help, but when it comes to exercises men and women have some big differences. My wife doesn't like to work the weights and I feel like a real dink going to an aerobics class of women. So lately this new friend of my wife has been going to the gym with my wife in the evenings while I'm asleep and my wife has been enjoying Yoga and some class called Somba.

I cannot express how happy I am that my wife has found a friend that she can hang out with that builds her up instead of tearing her down. Now I don't have to come up with excuses on why I can't go to Yoga.