HWeen

Bah, we were all sick during Halloween. Good thing we had an early party a week early and went to trunk or treat the night before. Curse viruses!

Vacay

Disneyland was faboo. We also went to the beach, the tar pits, Olvera street. Lots of driving - portable DVD player saves the day for our little pre-reader.

Family photos in this post, additional photos later.

reveal-your-inner-geek

Time for another reveal-your-inner-geek post.

Desktop Modding

• TaskBar Shuffle (http://nerdcave.webs.com/). A free, lightweight app that lets you group, drag, and center-click-close your applications in the task bar. Love it. Fabulous way to make Windows more like a modern browser. I run XP, so I'm not sure if this feature has made it into newer operating systems. Highly recommended. I mostly use it for closing apps by center-clicking, which is delightful.
• StrokeIt (http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/). A free, lightweight mouse gesture interpreter. Ever since I discovered mouse gestures in firefox I've been in love with the idea. For lots of web use, I end up keeping a hand on / near my mouse for scrolling and selecting. Being able to do additional actions that keep your hand on the mouse removes the need to swap back and forth between keyboard and mouse all the time, which is great. I use this frequently to semi-automate my workflow at work. I rely heavily on the type-to-find functionality in firefox, but there are other options as well. Here are some of the ones I use all the time. For each of these, you would hold down the right mouse button during the gesture, then let go.
• >> "right" then "down" = new tab in Firefox or in SciTE. Creates a new email in Outlook.
• >> "C" drawn bottom to top = close a tab in Firefox or in SciTE.
• >> "right" = move to next tab (to the right) or next older email in Outlook
• >> "left" = move to the previous tab (to the left) or the newer email in Outlook
• >> "up" = move to the parent email folder in Outlook
• >> "slash down to the left" = minimize all of your windows. "slash up to the right" = restore them all
• >> "M" from the desktop = start up Outlook, Firefox, SciTE, and iTunes (the list is customizable of course)
• >> "down" then "right" = select next item in the list and go to it (type-to-find "Next >>" then [ENTER] in JIRA). "down" then "left" goes to the previous entry.
• >> "left" then "up" = go to the parent list in JIRA or the Dashboard in Confluence
• >> "C" = email this in the NYTimes (type-to-find "email this link", then [ENTER])
• >> "A" (no need for the crossbar) = fill in my email address and click send (type to find "email to", then [TAB], then type out my email, then [ENTER])
• >> "P" = select the custom "prioritize" workflow in JIRA
• >> "v" = scroll to and select the prioritize button in JIRA
• >> Hold any gesture past the 250 millisecond gesture timeout value and the standard gmail mouse gestures will work. I could probably work around building my own, but it would be a pain since I don't enable keyboard shortcuts.
• Next time I have donation cash, I'm totally donating to these developers.

Firefox modding

• I'm running Firefox 3.5.2
• >> about:config extensions.checkCompatibility = false so a couple of these will work with the latest.
• >> Options > Advanced > check 'Search for text when I start typing'
• Addblock plus (removes most ads from your browsing experience)
• Add-art (replaces adds that get through with contemporary art = love it)
• Auto Dial (visual list of recently visited pages - chrome-ish)
• >> Home page = chrome://autodial/content/autodial.xul
• AutoPager (no need to click "Page 2" or any subsequent page link. I pretty much only use this for NYTimes.com, but there I love it).
• DisableMenu (auto-hides the menu bar. Reveals it when you mouse over it). More screen real-estate!
• Download Statusbar (your files download and display in the statusbar rather than in a separate window. Very chrome-ish).
• Email yourself (gmail myself a link to any webpage with the click of a button). Any selected text from the page gets sent in the email body.
• GoogleGears (for offline gmail only at this point)
• Hide Caption Titlebar (removes the blue bar at the top of firefox, moves the icons down and subtly displays them on the address bar)
• Personas for Firefox (I'm using a Hokusai 'Waves' theme at the moment. Love that picture).
• Risizeable Textarea (drag your input text boxes to any size you want. Lovely when you're writing up a decent sized post or especially when editing a populated text area)
• TabWheel Scroll (whenever your mouse is in the tab area, scrolling the mouse wheel moves through your list of tabs).

Overall, I'm in total geek heaven. Finally, my apps do what I have for so long so desperately want them to do.

Monday Masons

Dinner and games with Kem, Michelle, and West yday at our place.

French fries, onion rings, corn on the cob, raspberries, strawberries, homemade chicken nuggets, apricot cobbler, brownies, and ice-cream. Yum yum! We played Last Word, a game of naming objects in categories based on the first letter. We chatted. C entertained us all. BBQ remix later this week at Kem's place. Doing stuff with people who are cool turns out to be surprisingly life-ful.

Early August 09

I know, such ingenious titles. I've been wanting to get some photos from our camera and upload them as an excuse to add a few entries, but haven't.

Last week: J finished her big WGU editing project!
We went to bear lake, ate raspberry shakes, swam (surprisingly warm for bear lake). C slid on one of the giant 20 foot inflatable slides and absolutely adored it.
Saturday we had a bbq with neighbors in the early afternoon. Then an MPP party in the afternoon.

Who: Stays and Chandlers plus their adorable kids
Food: We had tortilla basil wraps with tasty filling, home-made bread, cheese fondue, chocolate pudding pie with chocolate-dipped cherries, and brownies.
Other: We talked tons and played Taboo for a while. Ainslee and Coriel played together / near each other and seemed to have a good time.

I'm trying to put another party together where more people can come. We'll see.

---

I'm feeling techy. Resurrected my google reader and added it to my iGoogle homepage (which I actually look at). Added some friends and fams blogs. Blogging. Tweeting. Mad modding for firefox. I'll rave about that later.

Mid July II

Some recent updates from my life:

• Last week I gave a presentation to two bigwigs of one branch of a very large federal government organization. I talked about our roadmap and did a demo of our new software. I had spent pretty much a whole week getting ready for it and it went well. I felt pretty blessed and that my prayers for it to go well had definitely been answered. The demo software worked (which is rare this early in the process), I had answers for most of their questions, and managed not to do anything embarrassing.
• Yesterday after church I went and did some visits for EQ that I had been assigned in PEC for new move-ins and people I had never met. First we (me and my first counselor) visited a house where two families lived. The lady who opened the door wanted nothing to do with the church. I'll try to get in contact with the other family sometime later. Then the second house we went to the lady whose name we had wasn't interested, but her sister Angelina was there. We told her where the church was and what time it started and she said she'd definitely come when she wasn't working. That was pretty awesome. I also told her I'd get her some info about the big stake single adult activity that's coming up so she can go to that. Then the last guy we went to visit had already moved out, but his old roommate gave us his cell #, which was awesome since that's usually hard to track down. A successful set of visits.
• We did lots of cooking yesterday. Jeanna made onion rings, which were excellent. I made french fries, which I burnt a bit. That was for lunch. For dinner I made mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, smoothie, and mahi-mahi. No recipes were used in the making of this food. Woo! It even turned out pretty good.
• This morning I worked on preparing our fourth-Sunday talk for next week on "We are doing a very important work, so we can't come down". I love that talk from last conference. I'm going to be putting together a little self-assessment sheet for the Elders to write down what they spent their time doing last week. Then they can compare what they did with what they want to do and assess their demonstrated priorities. This morning I also took out the dishes from the dishwasher and took out the trash.
• Jeanna has been doing a lot of editing work for Western Governor's University this month. That means that most afternoons I get to spend 2-4 hours with Coriel playing while Jeanna does her work. We go to the park. We go to the store. We go on walks. We play with Little People toys. We go to the park some more. It's very fun. She's extra cute!
• I still practice guitar from time to time. I finally was able to play a song I like through well enough to recognize it, which was pretty great.
• I spend a fair amount of time reading. I'm re-reading an old textbook on the history and culture of Brazil. It's pretty interesting and fun. I also read fluffy fiction books as well. A few from the library plus some from our bookshelves so I can decide whether to get rid of them or not. Mostly we're getting rid of them. Thank goodness for libraries.
• On Saturday in addition to playing with Coriel I also helped a lady move into her new house in the ward. It was ~ 100 degrees out, so it was hot work, but fun to do some service.
• Last week I went with the missionaries to visit a local investigator. A long time ago she was a member, but then got her name taken off the roles so she could become Catholic because she liked mass better than sacrament meeting (which she thinks is boring). She eventually left the Catholic church as well. She's mad at God for letting her son get a terminal disease. The Elders were just going to read Book of Mormon with her, but I interrupted and asked her a bunch of questions about why she wasn't getting baptized. Then we spent some time resolving concerns. I testified that she would find peace and happiness in life if she would spend a little time praying and reading scriptures each day and start coming to church. Well, yesterday she was at church, which was awesome. I'll probably give her a call this week to see how she's doing. The great thing about missionaries working with local church members is that the local members have more time to work with people and are around long after the missionaries are gone. If the missionaries and members aren't working together, each might be working hard, but neither is working very smart.

MidJuly

Highlights:

• Visit with Marci and Robb - welcome to Utah!
• Walks and playgrounds with C while J did WGU editing
  
• SLC Twilight Concert Series
• Spoke at a baptism about ... baptism
• Splits with the missionaries
• Cleaning / playing
• BYUPAS opening social
  
• Ultimate Frisbee w/ EQ
• Dinner with J at Q4U (not great) while Sarah B. babysat C (our first non-family babysitting!)
  
• Some more stuff I can't remember atm
• Here are some random pics:
  

C with bangs


Who, me?



Yes, the menu titles are "meat on a platter" and "meat on yummy bread". That's my kind of menu : ) I saw this posted at work - I have not eaten at this particular restaurant.


I use my cuteness magic on you! You are feeling ... bamboozled!


Professor Dan Nielson speaking at the BYUPAS society opener.


C having a great time yanking sheets off the bed. She also loves making and unmaking piles of clothes (you can some of them see in the background)

SLC Arts Festival

Last Friday J, C, and I went to the SLC arts festival. We had a good time wandering around to different art displays and speculating about what we would buy if we had gobs of money. We participated in a 1-minute writing exercise. J did a set of 6 rhymes. I wrote three or four sentences. The pressure was interesting as a way to get writing. We got some food and were eating it when the sky grew dark and the first few fat, cold raindrops fell. We didn't have an umbrella so we decided to go ahead and go back to the car, which was about a block away. Well, we started walking and the rain heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier. All before we even got across the first street. So we're waiting for the light to change and kind of hiding under a tree. The seconds crawl by. I have C on my back in the mai-tai and she's getting wet just like we are, but she's taking it fairly well. The light finally changes and I take off running (J has okayed this already). So I'm sprinting down the block toward the car and the rain's coming down and C and me are getting totally drenched. There are some people hiding under business awnings who all kind of gasp when they see a crazy-man running through the torrential rain with a toddler on his back. I got to the car and bent down real low to climb in with C still strapped on. I worked on untying the mai-tai so I could give her a snuggle. She had started to whimper and be a bit sad, but I got her out pretty quick. I patted her off and sat her in her carseat. About this time J shows up and climbs in - a nice guy with an umbrella let her walk along with him till she reached the car, but she was also dripping. We put a nice fuzzy blankie on C and within a couple minutes she was giggling happily which was totally amazing. J and I were pretty bedraggled, but our daughter was smiling and laughing at the whole experience. I love the resilience of small ones!

Self-motivation

If you happen to be terribly efficient at work and finish your tasks early, what do you do?

My last two years of being in school and working have taught me to get more done at work out of necessity. That means I sometimes find myself with all my tasks done (gasp!) Most recently, I've been thinking about ways to get more info from customers, so today I put together a customer questionnaire that we could send out. I'm waiting to see if my boss likes the idea.
- edit: He liked it, but it looks like the SEs don't think the customers will fill it out, so it's a no-go.

In related news, I am a fan of the the "Results only work environment" methodology (measure productivity rather than just counting hours at work). If/when it gains more traction, it would improve efficiency and lead to more one-offs like this project. Even when they don't work right away, they may work out later. I hope the idea eventually gains ground.

Dentist

Coriel recovered fairly quickly after her trip to the dentist. Now that we're vigilant about toothbrushing (hooray for toothbrushing parties!), there shouldn't be any more problems with unhappy tooth spots. See illustration (thanks to Richard Scarry from the Best Word Book Ever).

Self-discovery.

I've been emailing myself links to particularly interesting NY Times articles for a couple of years now. By looking at the articles I've emailed, I can categorize subjects I'm interested in that NyTimes reports on. I'll see if I can figure out a good way to include the > 500 links somewhere for later browsing.

• Behavioral psychology
• Cyberwarfare, spying, online / data privacy (due in part to job)
• Language
• Non-mainstream paradigms (slow food, conservationist, etc.)
  
• Cultural insights, including tech culture
• Gender equality issues
  
• New tech developments / science breakthroughs
• Food - recipes, exquisite restaurants
  
• Art (extra good or unusual): visual art, architecture, product design, performance, advertising, music
• Big changes that I may want to point back to the beginning of
• Public policy: great ideas, or things I didn't know, or facts to refer back to later
• Policy: Education, Health, Poverty
• Corruption
  
• International relations / politics
  
• Health - reliable or novel info
• Business innovations in products or procedures
  
• Travel - tips, awesome places
• Particularly interesting stories
  

Weh!

Er, postings, eh? Yarrrr. Some info on B:

• Preferred local business finder: Angie's List
• Preferred non-mainstream news: Democracy Now
• Preferred mainstream print news: NYTimes - email headlines and weekly Circuits posts
• Preferred broadcast radio: KRCL, KCPW, KUER, KBYU
• Preferred online music content: Pandora. Did you know you can open two windows and do unintentional mashups? Kind of cool.
  
• Pandora Stations (random order): Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Pixies, Velvet Underground, Yo-Yo Ma, Motorcycle, Metric, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Gorillaz, Post Punk, Orbital, Pierces, Morrissey, Rosebuds, Love Like Fire, Bad Religion, LCD Soundsystem, Trip Hop, Alternative Indie, Easy Star All-stars, Christopher O'Riley, Brazilian Girls, Radiohead, Duke Spirit
  
• Preferred browser: Firefox
• Firefox Addons: AutoDial, DisableMenu, DownloadStatusbar, Email Yourself, FoxTab, Personas, SunCult. Theme: LittleFox.
• Best reasons not to use Chrome, which is otherwise likable: No center-click scroll, no type-to-find, no addons.
• Stuff on my iGoogle page: weather, Hack-a-day, Lifehacker, How-to-of-the-day, Artistaday, Countdown gadget, Google map traffic for the valley, Daily chess puzzle
• Preferred web comic: XKCD
• Preferred food providers: Macey's and Community Food Co-op
• Preferred media providers: Library and Netflix
• Preferred computer parts provider: Newegg
• Gmail labs features enabled: Offline, Tasks, QuickLinks, Superstars, Mouse Gestures (rave!), Default 'Reply to all', Navbar drag and drop, mail goggles, forgotten attachment detector, mark as read button, multiple inboxes (yay!), text messaging in chat, title tweaks. Custom theme colors.
• Mouse gestures is so intuitive it needs its own line. I enabled it and now try to use it everywhere. Awesome advance in computer usability.
  
• Current employment: Raytheon Oakley Systems (4.5 years so far)
• Education: Completed Masters of Public Policy in 2009 from BYU - woo!
• Internship 2008: MCAM in Virginia
• Allergies: 4+ level to tree pollen, weeds, grasses, cats / dogs, dust mites. Allergy desensitizaiton shots seem to be helping.
• TV Series I've enjoyed: X-Files, Good Neighbors, Jeeves and Wooster

C and G'ma

3 Feb 09

Hi us. Hi you. Hi ya!