Rod Schmidt

About

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Yoshiko & I

My name is Rod Schmidt. I’m a software developer from Sandy, Utah and the founder of infiniteNIL Software. I am also the founder of CocoaHeads SLC, the Salt Lake City chapter of the international CocoaHeads organization. I was the organizer for over a decade, but have passed on those duties.

My journey into programming started when my Dad brought home an Apple computer, an Apple ][+. I spent the next two days going through the BASIC programming book and I was hooked.

Swish - Clojure-like Lisp for Swift Video Series

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 11:16:15 -0600

Since February of 2026, I’ve been publishing a series of videos on implementing Swish, a Clojure-like Lisp in Swift using Claude Code. You can find it here.

Swish Logo

I used Common Lisp for a solid year in college, and really enjoyed it. I always wanted to use it professionally, but never really had the chance.

Mixing Swift and Clojure in Your iOS App - Scittle

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 18:10:57 -0700

Featured in Clojure Deref on December 30th, 2025

In my previous article, I showed how to embed a S7 Scheme interpreter in an iOS app. This time, I will show you how to embed a ClojureScript interpreter, or at least a dialect of it.

Clojure itself, runs on the JVM, and there’s not really a way to embed the JVM in an iOS app. Maybe once swift-java gets rolling.

There is GraalVM, which lets you compile java code to native code, but it doesn’t support compiling for iOS. Babashka, which is a native Clojure dialect interpreter uses GraalVM.

Mixing Swift and Lisp in Your iOS App - S7 Scheme

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:07:11 -0700

I am a fan of Lisp. I was first attracted to it because it was the original language of artificial intelligence because of its ability to manipulate symbols and its own code. I spent a whole year using Lisp in a series of courses on artificial intelligence in college. I became quite adept at using it and quite enjoyed using it as well.

My Obsession

Lately, I’ve become kind of obsessed with being able to use Lisp in my iOS apps. I want to put a Lisp interpreter in my app and program my business logic in Lisp. Every once in an awhile I get the urge to figure it out, try, and fail. This keeps happening.

Numerology: 17 Years in the App Store (Part 6)

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 11:43:03 -0700

This is part 6 of my blog series on the history of my app Numerology. See Part 5 here.

When we left off, Numerology was chugging along, slowly making less and less each month. First $300, then $200, sometimes as low as $100. Sometimes it would spurt back up to $300.

This continued until fairly recently. In 2024, I noticed a competitor that always showed up first in the App Store search results when you searched for ‘numerology’. I decided to look into them a little more. According to Sensor Tower, their app was making over $5,000/month on the Apple App Store. They had an Android app as well, and it was making $5,000/month as well.

Numerology: 17 Years in the App Store (Part 5)

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 12:30:26 -0700

This is part 5 of my blog series on the history of my app Numerology. See Part 4 here.

I was probably the first numerology app on the App Store. If you searched for numerology, my app would be first in the results. At some point this was no longer true. A competitor came out and my sales started to go down. Today, in 2025, there are possibly over a 100 numerology apps on the store.

Numerology: 17 Years in the App Store (Part 4)

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 11:26:12 -0700

This is part 4 of my blog series on the history of my app Numerology. See Part 3 here.

The First App Store Version

In 2008, Apple announced the App Store and I applied for an Apple Developer membership ($99/year), so I could sell apps on the App Store. Everyone else did the same and Apple was swamped. Despite applying as soon as possible, I didn’t get approved for about 6 months.

Numerology: 17 Years in the App Store (Part 3)

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 10:27:03 -0700

This is part 3 of my blog series on the history of my app Numerology. See Part 2 here.

The Birth of Cocoa

In 2001, Apple released the first version of Mac OS X 10.0, the first desktop version of their new OS based on NEXTStep. All the great APIs from NeXTStep (hence the NS prefixes to all the class names and such) together were called Cocoa.

Now I finally had my chance to use the wonderful platform I’d been wanting to use for almost a decade. My full-time job was still with Java and enterprise world and it was increasingly not fun. I spent my off-time learning Cocoa. My first app was not Numerology though. It was an app called PhoneWord that found all the words you could make from a phone number. For example, from the phone number 555-5299 you could get 555-JAZZ.

Numerology: 17 Years in the App Store (Part 2)

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 15:59:09 -0700

This is part 2 of my blog series on the history of my app Numerology. See Part 1 here.

The First Version

It was the very early 90’s. Steve Jobs was at NeXT. I had some model of Macintosh II running on a 680x0 processor. I also had a compiler for C with object-oriented extensions (basically a subset of C++), called THINK C, with a class library called TCL, or the Think Class Library. For more about THINK C, see this article.

Healthcare for the Self-Employed or Unemployed (and to preserve your sanity)

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 11:50:32 -0600

Problem

Are you self-employed? Are you unemployed? Do you have to purchase your own health insurance?

Are you generally healthy, and rarely need a doctor? Are you into alternative health care, which health insurance never covers anyway?

Do you find “Affordable” health care, unaffordable like you see on healthcare.gov?

Do you find the whole process of finding the right plan and jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops frustrating?

I’m currently in this boat. The least expensive plan on the marketplace for me is over $700. That would make it the 2nd highest item on my monthly expense list. Right now, my monthly income is less than that. I simply can’t afford it.

Numerology: 17 Years in the App Store (Part 1)

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 16:31:32 -0600

Introduction

My app, Numerology, has been in the Apple app store for over 17 years. During that time, it and its variations (lite version, Mac version) have been downloaded over 188,000 times, and made almost $150,000 in profit.

Numerology Icon

It’s ran on just about every Apple iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Before the App Store, it even ran on classic macOS machines.

Case Study: Improving the Effeciency of Software Development Teams Dependent on Another Team

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 10:34:43 -0700

In my last job, I was on a platform team. One of the responsibilities of a platform team is to support all the other software development teams in an organization by writing libraries and tools that can be used by the other teams.

One of the libraries the platform team provided was a library that managed feature flags for the iOS app that our company produced. The primary function of the library was to get the current value of a given feature flag. If you’re not familiar with feature flags see Feature Flags 101: Use Cases, Benefits, and Best Practices. Basically, they are used to turn off and on features of an application at runtime.

Thoughts on Testing

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 15:18:45 -0600

Testing has grown to be a very important part of software development. When I first started my career, I didn’t hear about writing tests until a few years in. Then we started writing tests for all our libraries. When I first got into Cocoa development, testing was not a part of the culture. That slowly changed, and now it is an important part of development on Apple platforms.

In many ways we are still catching up to other development cultures where testing has been much more ingrained in the culture, such as the web development world. Their tools just seem to be more mature, but it is also easier to test something that is based on a stateless protocol like HTTP.

Pittsburgh - The Last One?

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 16:29:12 -0600

On June 6th, I flew out to Pittsburgh to see the Pirates play the Dodgers for the final stop in my lifetime goal to see a home game for every MLB team. What’s interesting is that the very first game I ever saw was the Dodgers vs. the Pirates in Los Angeles in 1976. So a fitting end. I didn’t plan it the way, it just happened. It took 48 years of being in the right city at the right time (due to business trips, vacations, etc.), and some extra effort for the last 10 or so, where I had to actually plan trips just to see some teams.

Pointfree's SyncUps App: A Great Example Architecture for a SwiftUI App

Sat, 11 May 2024 10:41:54 -0600

In comments to my last article on The Composable Architecture readers have asked about examples of how I think an app should be written. In the article, I did mention my previous posts, which have examples for Clean Swift and MVVM, but those were written for UIKit. SwiftUI didn’t exist at the time.

So, this article will talk about what I think is a great example of architecture for a SwiftUI app. Pointfree’s own SyncUps app. The example actually has 2 apps, one showing tree-based navigation, and one showing stack-based navigation. For this article, I will just focus on the stack-based example.

The Composable Architecture: My 3 Year Experience

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 11:35:37 -0600

Introduction

I recently finished a 3 year stint with a company that uses the Composable Architecture (TCA) from PointFree. I wanted to write about my experiences with TCA and some of the problems I see with it.

I think Brandon Williams and Stephen Cellis, the creators of TCA, are absolutely brilliant, and what they have managed to pull off with the creation of TCA is amazing. However, It’s just the two of them, and nobody, or no thing, is perfect.

St. Louis Cardinals, My Penultimate Baseball Stadium?

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 17:48:29 -0600

Busch Stadium

I finally went to another baseball game in my goal to see every MLB team at their home stadium. This time I went to St. Louis to see the Cardinals. I call this my penultimate stadium because just Pittsburgh is left after this one. More on that later.

Here’s the box score:

Box Score

From WordPress to Hugo

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 16:55:00 +0000

If you’ve visited this site in the past, you’ve probably noticed a change. I recently changed my blogging platform from WordPress to Hugo. Hugo is static site generator. I also changed my theme.

Why?

I was never really satisfied with the performance of my WordPress site. Combine that with the fact that my site kept going down every month, I decided that it was time to do something and be more in control.

A Tale of 2 Steve Jobses

Fri, 23 Aug 2019 23:36:43 +0000

Believe or not, I just got around to watching the 2 Steve Jobs movies that came out a few years ago: Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender, and Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher

I’ve held off watching them because I knew there would be a lot of inaccuracies. I grew up with Steve Jobs. I followed him. I didn’t want to see him distorted the way Hollywood does.

Swift UI & App Architecture: A New Approach Required

Sun, 04 Aug 2019 17:47:09 +0000

With SwiftUI, everything has changed. As Brent Simmons said, it’s the end of the NeXT era and the beginning of the Swift era.

With the coming of SwiftUI, most of our app architectures are no longer valid (or at least parts of them). They need to be adjusted. MVC is certainly out. In fact, even controllers seem to be out. From Apple’s content, it seems all we have is models and views, and that’s true. Bindings have seemingly replaced controllers.

Two More Examples of Clean Architecture

Sat, 01 Apr 2017 18:16:00 +0000

I recently found two more examples of Clean Architecture.

The first one is called CosyHome and is an example iOS application for a home heating system developed using Clean Architecture and developed with Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) using Fitnesse. Fitnesse is something I’d like to dive more into and could be a future post. Let me know if you’re interested. You can find CosyHome here.

The other example is CleanNote that applies Clean Architecture to an iOS and Mac application. You can find that one here.

The Clean Architecture: An Example

Sun, 29 Jan 2017 21:33:02 +0000

Today, I’d like to take an example iOS app written with an MVC architecture and show you what the example would be with a Clean Swift architecture. The example I’ve chosen to use is the Quiz app from chapter 1 of the 3rd edition of iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide.

The Quiz is a simple app that is like flash cards. It looks like this:

The Clean Architecture: An Introduction

Fri, 09 Dec 2016 00:33:44 +0000

In the last post, I talked about various architectures used as alternatives to MVC, in a attempt to solve MVCs problems, such as Massive View Controller.

In this post, I would like to introduce you to another architecture, which seems to me to be the best starting point for your app’s architecture: the Clean Architecture.

I think I first ran into the Clean Architecture in one of Uncle Bob’s presentations on YouTube. At first, I kind of wrote it off as a typical Java over-engineered design pattern. It wasn’t until earlier this year, probably years later after my initial discovery, that I ran into it again. I was looking for a better app architecture after an experience working for a large company with a large iOS team (with about 11 developers) and all the issues they had getting the app to work and test it. I kind of became obsessed with figuring out how to make an app easier to test. I searched the internet for app architectures and studied them. It took me awhile to get my head around the Clean Architecture, but once I did, I decided it would be my starting point for an app architecture.

Moving Towards The Clean Architecture for Apple Development

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 18:09:30 +0000

In the last post, I talked about MVC, its problems, and how it could be done right. Various architectures have emerged to try to address the deficiencies of MVC. Before I talk about the Clean architecture, I’d like to talk about some of them.

Alternative Architectures to MVC

Up front, I don’t have a lot of experience with these, but I have studied them and I believe they are a step in the right direction. They all introduce another object to take over some of the responsibilities from the controller, but I don’t think they go far enough because the new object typically has too many responsibilities as well and tends to grow just as the controller in MVC does. They do spread the load though, reducing the issues with MVC and increasing testability.

Model View Controller: Problems and Solutions

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 21:41:19 +0000

Model View Controller or MVC is the application architecture used by default for applications on all Apple platforms. Most of the tools, frameworks, and docs from Apple all talk about it and support it. In MVC, objects are assigned 1 of 3 roles:

Model - objects that encapsulate and manage the data the application works with (this includes persistence). The data typically represents things in the real world like an employee, hardware part, or a picture that is being drawn. More abstract things can also be part of a model such as a hiring process. When data in the model changes it notifies a controller object, typically via delegation or notifications. Model objects should have no knowledge of the user interface and be reusable in other applications in similar problem domains or on other devices.

5 Ways to Avoid Force Unwrapping

Wed, 16 Nov 2016 18:02:53 +0000

Someone on the reddit iOS Programming group asked “What are the mistakes generally done by iOS developers while coding in Swift?”A lot of comments were about using force unwrapping on optionals. Comments such as:

Force unwrapping everything
Using pyramids of if-let as opposed to guard statements
var firstName: String! ugh
Overuse of force unwrapped optionals. I cringe when I see that especially when a simple one-liner guard statement would make the code a ton safer.

So, I thought I would address these concerns and list 5 ways you can avoid force unwrapping.

Do You Find The Whole Planning Process Painful?

Wed, 09 Nov 2016 22:51:27 +0000

A thread in the AskPrograming forum on reddit started with this question and I thought I would share my thoughts on planning and up-front design.

Basically, the originator of the thread is expressing his dislike of planning before coding, but thinks it’s a good idea because they’ve either been told that or seen others do it. They also expresses dislike for planning tools and wonders if there’s a better way. Basically, they want to know how do you plan and how do you break up a project into tasks that you need to do.

Part 4: What Are the Downsides to Putting the Core Data MOC in the App Delegate

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 21:49:48 +0000

In part 3, I talked about why putting the MOC in the app delegate makes any code that uses the MOC will be dependent on the app delegate and why that’s not a good thing.

In part 2, I talked about why putting the MOC in the app delegate is a violation of the Single Responsibility Principle.

In part 1, I talked about why putting the MOC in your app delegate makes you dependent on Core Data for your application’s persistence.

Part 3: What Are The Downsides to Putting the Core Data MOC in the App Delegate

Tue, 25 Oct 2016 21:28:08 +0000

In part 2, I talked about why putting the MOC in the app delegate is a violation of the Single Responsibility Principle.

In part 1, I talked about why putting the MOC in your app delegate makes you dependent on Core Data for your application’s persistence.

Today I like to talk about the 3rd reason I gave in part 1, which is:

Any code you write that uses myManagedObjectContext will be dependent on the App Delegate.

Any code you write in another source file, say a subclass of UITableViewController for example, that uses myManagedObjectContext from the app delegate will be dependent on the app delegate. In Objective-C this would mean you would need a #import "AppDelegate.h statement in your subclass’ source file. Every source file that accesses the app delegate’s MOC would need that import, which would bring in everything else the app delegate uses. In Swift, you don’t need the import statement, but it would increase your compile times, as it would in Objective-C as well. Every time you made a change to the app delegate, any source files that accessed the MOC in the app delegate would have to be recompiled.

Part 2: What Are The Downsides to Putting the Core Data MOC in the App Delegate

Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:33:49 +0000

In my previous post, I gave some reasons why putting the Core Data MOC in your app delegate was a bad idea. Those reasons were:

The app delegate is managing the Core Data stack. Classes should only have one responsibility. The app delegate is already responsible for managing application lifecycle. It shouldn’t be managing the Core Data stack as well.
You are completely dependent on Core Data and using it as your persistence method for your app. What if you decide to switch to Realm or something?
Any code you write that uses myManagedObjectContext will be dependent on the App Delegate.
Any tests you write will be dependent on the App Delegate and Core Data and will be hard to test and slow as a result.

In the previous post, we talked about how putting the Core Data MOC in your app delegate makes your app dependent on Core Data as your persistence mechanism and makes it hard to use something else. In this post, I’d like to talk about reason #1: That your app delegate is already responsible for managing the application life cycle and it shouldn’t be responsible for the Core Data stack as well. This comes from the SOLID principles of good object-oriented design, specifically the Single Responsibility Principle, which states:

Swift Robot Arm

Tue, 11 Oct 2016 22:36:54 +0000

In a previous post, I wrote about controlling my OWI robot arm with Elixir. Well, I decided to port that to Swift!

In that post, there’s a link to some code that does it in Objective-C with IOKit. I first tried to just do a straight port and use IOKit in Swift. That didn’t work to well. The IOKit API is an old Core Foundation library and even has some old COM style APIs. There’s some complex macros as well that do not even get transferred to Swift, so you have to find their definition and and put them in a Swift constant or function. I couldn’t even get it to compile.

3 Ways To Fix Your iOS Testing Woes

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 16:55:28 +0000

Lots of companies have constant problems testing their iOS apps. Here are some ways to fix or ease them.

1. Don’t Make Developers Run or Write UI Tests

UI tests are black box tests and test the app from the perspective of the user. Your developers are the worst choice to test the app from this viewpoint and you need a fresh set of eyes for those tests. The QA engineer’s job is to test the app from the user’s viewpoint. Your QA Engineers should write these tests. Plus, UI tests run entirely too slow for your developers to run them all the time and are much too failure prone. Don’t waste their time by making them write and run these tests.

What are the Downsides to Putting the Core Data MOC in the App Delegate?

Thu, 25 Aug 2016 20:59:37 +0000

I saw this question on the iOSProgramming topic in reddit:

I’ve seen a number of different ways to access the NSManagedObjectContext when working with Core Data, but I was wondering if there are any downsides to the way I’ve been doing it. Basically, I stick a computed variable in the AppDelegate, and grab it when I need it… Please let me know if you see any flaws… If not, feel free to use it!

Elixir Robots

Fri, 22 May 2015 22:11:23 +0000

My robot hobby is picking up steam. After going through the Python examples that came with the GoPiGo, I got inspired by some embedded Erlang videos on YouTube and decided to see if I could control the GoPiGo with Elixir. After watching Elixir Sips, I learned of a project called Elixir/Ale, an Elixir library for embedded programming. With Elixir/Ale, you can talk to the GPIO ports on the Raspberry Pi and some common hardware bus protocols: I2C and SPI. I2C is used by the GoPiGo board, so Elixir/Ale looked like what I needed. So I looked up some Elixir docs, typed mix new exgopigo, and started coding. The result is ExGoPiGo. All it lets you do right now is turn on and off the robot’s two front LEDs, but it does that by writing to the I2c bus. Controlling the motor and such shouldn’t be too hard.

Robots! Robots! Robots!

Thu, 14 May 2015 00:21:25 +0000

I’ve been getting into robots lately. For a long time I was searching for the perfect robot kit to use with my Arduino. Then I decided I’d rather use my Raspberry Pi to control my robots so I could use better programming languages like Clojure, Elixir, Scala, Ruby, etc. So I was looking around for the perfect Raspberry Pi robot kit.

For Christmas, my parents gave me the OWI Robotic Arm Edge. For the longest time, I didn’t like it. I wanted a moving robot and something I could program.

Sticky Footers with UITableView

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 23:49:00 +0000

The Problem

Last week, I had to implement sticky footers in a table view. Sticky footers are where the footer comes at the end of all the table contents, but if the contents are such that the scrollable content height of the table view is less than the height of the view, the footer will still appear at the bottom of the view.

A non-sticky footer

Back to Wordpress

Sat, 14 Feb 2015 00:31:21 +0000

You’ve probably noticed that my blog has changed again. I’ve moved back to Wordpress from Octopress. I could never find a plugin for Octopress that did image captions right. I spent way too much time on it and just decided to use something that just worked. I looked at a lot of static blogging engines and they all had their issues.

With Wordpress, I have to use the web based editor, but it works and their is a lot of plugins and support behind it. I have better things to spend my time on. To make things better, I think I’ll try Desk. I’ve also installed the Markdown plugin, so I can continue to use it.

App: The Human Story - My Prize

Sun, 18 Jan 2015 00:09:53 +0000

A while back I wrote a blog post and entered it in a contest for App: The Human Story. I came in second, and for that I was awarded a custom app token from Matic. It finally came last week and here it is:

My app token

Now, I finally have a sign for my office.

App: The Human Story - My Story

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 22:47:34 +0000

There is a Kickstarter project that was started recently for a film titled App: The Human Story. It “is the story of the cultural phenomenon that touches all our lives.” It is about the people who make apps. Many of them are people I follow on blogs, and listen to on podcasts, and look up to. I simply had to back the project, and I did. The producers of the film, on their blog, have asked that others involved in apps write about their own stories. This is my story.

A New Start

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 22:44:25 +0000

If you haven’t noticed, my weblog has a new design and new content. I have switched from WordPress to Octopress and have used a new theme. So far, I like it. It’s nice to be able to use Markdown instead of some slow web tool to write my posts.

My old blog was mostly political commentary and I’ve decided to remove that. Some of my most popular posts were the posts about my sabbatical that I took in the summer of 2002. Those, I have preserved and ported over to the new system. I enjoyed reading them myself. You can find them in the Sabbatical category.

The Sabbatical is Over

Sun, 08 Sep 2002 22:37:10 +0000

Today is officially the last day of my sabbatical. Friday was my birthday and Monday is the day to begin anew. I had hoped that my sabbatical would bring spectacular changes to my world, but it did not. However I still think it was a good thing. It gave me a lot of time to reflect on what I want to do with my life and it helped me come to peace with how things are. I believe I’ve grown spiritually and am more at peace with myself. I am increasingly interested in Zen Buddhism, which seems to suit me particularly well.

Texas Tour - Lubbock Again

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 22:33:44 +0000

Wednesday, August 14th, 2002

Wednesday morning I got back in the Jeep and started my trip home. My plan was to stay the night in Lubbock, then Albuquerque for a day with my folks and then back home. I got to Lubbock in the afternoon, but Patricia and Robert weren’t there. Instead, I was greeted by their 16 year old daughter, Christine. On my previous visit, Christine had been in Vietnam, where she had been for the last 6 weeks. Her parents had told me a lot about her as most parents do. Patricia had described her as “16 going on 25”.

Texas Tour - JFK

Tue, 13 Aug 2002 22:27:16 +0000

Sunday, August 11th, 2002

Sunday morning, I decided to go downtown and check out the JFK museum. John F. Kennedy was assasinated in Dallas on November 3rd, 1963. I wasn’t alive then, but I can imagine and I believe that it was a day that affected America even more than September 11th. Here was a president that many people admired and looked up to. Shortly after he was assasinated the decade of the 60’s went into full swing and changed America forever. Vietnam, the assasination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, race riots, the drug culture. All these things occurred and much more. America was never the same.

Texas Tour - Arlington

Tue, 13 Aug 2002 22:20:07 +0000

Wednesday, August 13th, 2002

I met my friend Marc at his house and we headed off to the game. This game is kind of a milestone in my quest to visit every major league ball park. It will be my 20th team. Just ten more to go (barring expansion or contraction).

The Ballpark at Arlington

Dallas

Thu, 08 Aug 2002 22:15:11 +0000

August 8th - August 14th, 2002

Thurday morning I drove up to Dallas. It took about 4 hours and I checked into another extended stay motel. Originally, I had planned to stay in Dallas for a week, just like in Austin, but my Austin experience changed my plans. I was going to leave on the 14th, after the baseball game.

Again, the idea was the same. To just be there and experience Dallas. However, there were a few things I wanted to do. There’s an Apple Store in Plano, a town just north of Dallas. Apple has been opening stores all over the country, but none yet in Utah, so I had to go check it out. Also, I wanted to check out downtown and see some JFK stuff, and of course the Texas Rangers are in nearby Arlington.

Austin

Tue, 06 Aug 2002 22:08:26 +0000

August 4th - August 8th, 2002

I spent Sunday through Thursday morning in Austin. Austin was the main reason I came to Texas. I wanted to get a feel for it and see if I might want to live here. Austin has a lot of high technology companies and has a lot of culture and art. Basically a lot of creative people. Fortune has ranked it in the top 10 for the best cities for singles.

Texas Tour - San Antonio

Mon, 05 Aug 2002 22:03:43 +0000

Monday, August 5th, 2002

Today was my first full day in Austin. I decided to take a drive down to San Antonio, which was just about an hour and half south. I wanted to see the Alamo, and my friend Laury had told me about the cool river walk there. So off I went.

The Alamo

For those of you who are not familiar with the Alamo (miss a little school, did we?), here’s the deal. The Alamo was a fort in Texas when Texas declared their independence from Mexico. Santa Ana brought his troops into Texas and the Alamo was the first line of defense for Texas. Texas was not ready to fight Santa Ana yet and the Alamo had to slow down Santa Ana enough so Texas could get ready. Some legendary figures were at the Alamo, including my boyhood favorite, Davy Crockett. Every last man who fought at the Alamo died there, but they slowed Santa Ana down enough and they inspired the rest of Texas, who cried “Remember the Alamo”! Eventually Texas won her independence from Mexico and became an independent nation and of course joined the United States not long after. Some say Texas never officially joined the U.S. and is still an independent nation, but it is not recognized as such.

Texas Tour - Lubbock

Sat, 03 Aug 2002 21:58:07 +0000

Saturday, August 3rd

From Albuquerque, I decided to go half way to Austin, and stay the night with a recent friend of the family and her family. I had just met her when I had been up to Montana this summer and she had offered to let me stay with her and her family when I went to Texas. In the directions she gave me to get to her house she mentioned that there was a steel house that I couldn’t miss. She was right. However, she didn’t mention that it was their house that her husband had been building for 27 years!

Texas Tour - Albuquerque

Tue, 30 Jul 2002 21:54:07 +0000

Tuesday, July 30th - Friday, August 2nd

Today, I left for my trip to Texas. On the way though I stopped in Albuquerque. I was born there and my parents currently live there. I stayed until Saturday. I was a nice relaxing time and it was nice to see my parents. We went out to dinner one night at a New Orleans place and we saw K-19: The WidowMaker and Signs.

Never Say Never (Again)

Tue, 02 Jul 2002 04:59:17 +0000

July 1st, 2002 - Gardiner, Montana

This week I went up to Montana with my parents. Today, my mom and I decided to take a raft trip down the river that flows through Gardiner and down Yankee Jim Canyon. We’ve been on rafting trips before. Nothing tricky, just nice gentle trips with a few small rapids. We asked around and were pointed towards an outfit about a mile down the road. A place called Big Sky Whitewater.

Steve Garvey

Fri, 21 Jun 2002 04:53:20 +0000

I always like to see the Dodger’a AAA team when they come to Salt Lake. Last year, that team, moved from Albuquerque to Las Vegas and became the Las Vegas 51’s (51 being a reference to Area 51). After my trip I checked the Salt Lake Stingers’ schedule and saw that the 51’s were in town. I further noticed that Thursday night was Steve Garvey night!

Steve Garvey was my favorite player when I was a kid. At first it didn’t seem like much of a big deal. I thought I go down and get his autograph and it would be no big thing. But, as the game got closer I got a little more excited. I went to Gart’s Sporting Goods and bought an official major league baseball in a little display case.

West Coast Tour - Home

Wed, 19 Jun 2002 04:48:13 +0000

Tuesday, June 18, 2002

The trip home was uneventful. Got back about 2 pm. Once back, I felt strangely alone and isolated. On the road, I hadn’t felt like this at all, despite the fact that I had been alone most of the time.

But, it also nice to be back in my nice house, with my own bed. Later that night I played softball on DSW’s team. DSW (Dahlin, Smith, and White), was the company I worked before I took my sabbatical.

West Coast Tour - Mission Viejo

Tue, 18 Jun 2002 04:43:13 +0000

Monday, June 17th, 2002

I left early, about 8am. I wanted to get an early start so I could check out Mission Viejo and then make a good start on my way home. I lived in Mission Viejo for about 10 years. I went to grade school and junior high school there. I really loved the California life style there. The athletic programs were excellent and I was a well known baseball and soccer player in the community. Made the all-star little league team and was drafted early into the senior major league, skipping the senior minors. When we left I was about to enter high school and had just made a travelling soccer club.

West Coast Tour - San Diego

Mon, 17 Jun 2002 04:36:11 +0000

Sunday, June 16th, 2002

In the morning, Ron and Roe took me out to breakfast in downtown LA at a cozy little old restaurant surrounded by skyscrapers. It was good standard fare. After we got back I packed up and headed south to San Diego.

About halfway between LA and San Diego is a town called Mission Viejo. I had lived there for 10 years before I moved to Utah. My plan was to stop there and revisit my childhood. I did exit off the freeway, but I couldn’t find anything and I didn’t really have the time. The Padres game started at 2pm. So I got back on the freeway. I would come back to Mission Viejo later.

West Coast Tour - Los Angeles

Sun, 16 Jun 2002 03:05:48 +0000

Saturday, June 15th, 2002

After spending the night in Palo Alto, I started down the freeway to LA the next morning. Nothing really to write about here. Just your standard freeway drive. However, the traffic was horrible. Seemed like every half-hour or so you ran into stop and go traffic. Not fun. Just this alone made me think I didn’t want to live here.

My friend, Laury’s sister and brother-in-law live in LA. Laury let them know I was coming so I called them and got directions to their place. Arrived about 5pm. Ron and Roe were very nice and gracious to let me stay in their place. I convinced Ron to come to game with me (Yea, I didn’t have to drive) and we headed off to the Dodger game.

Zen and the Art of Nothing

Sat, 15 Jun 2002 03:00:41 +0000

I’ve tried everything when it comes to trying to meet women. I’ve tried dating services, personal ads, phone ads, internet dating, blind dates, being set up by friends, going to bars, and even asking out complete strangers. The most I’ve ended up with is a relationship that lasts for 6 months, but feels more like 2. I’ve told myself that I’ve tried everything.

I was thinking about this today when suddenly I had a Zen moment. I’ve been getting a lot of these ever since I really started thinking about my sabbatical and what I want to do. I find these paradoxical and oxymoronic thoughts absolutely delightful. On the surface they seem absurd, but then a light bulb goes off and you somehow understand. But if you try to analyze why its true then your mind gets lost running in circles.

West Coast Tour - San Francisco

Sat, 15 Jun 2002 02:55:40 +0000

Friday, June 14th, 2002

Today started off with a great drive through more evergreen lined roads. That lasted till about midday. Then the road turned into a more freeway like drive with the golden hills of central California as the view, Eventually, I passed through the Golden Gate Bridge (horrible traffic) and settled in Palo Alto.

West Coast Tour - Oregon Coast

Fri, 14 Jun 2002 02:09:13 +0000

Thursday, June 13th, 2002

Today started off well. Found my way to the PCH, flipped the top down, and right away I was on a single lane road with no one in front of or behind me. That didn’t last long however. Kept going through towns where you have to slow down for the traffic. But every so often you hit a stretch of road and its just you and the road. You, and the road, surrounded by a bunch of tall evergreen trees providing shade. Perfect.

West Coast Tour - Seattle

Thu, 13 Jun 2002 00:47:07 +0000

Wednesday, June 12th, 2002

Took my time getting started and probably left Portland around 10am. Dez lent me some audio books (Thanks Dez) and I leisurely drove to Seattle arriving at about 3pm. Had the top down most of the way, but had to put it up about an hour outside of Seattle because I was starting to get sunburned. Its 90 degrees in Seattle today!

Safeco Field

West Coast Tour - Portland

Tue, 11 Jun 2002 23:08:43 +0000

Tuesday, June 11th, 2002

The whole purpose of the west coast tour is too see the west coast baseball teams I haven’t seen yet (Seattle and San Diego) and to drive my Miata down the coast. So to that end I got up early and left at 5am and drove 12 hours with a few stops for lunch and rest.

On the way to Portland

Atlanta

Fri, 07 Jun 2002 20:00:16 +0000

Wednesday, June 7th, 2002

On Wednesday I caught a flight to Atlanta (thanks to my sister’s buddy pass) and arrived at about 2:30 PM EST. Caught the MARTA (Atlanta equivalent of TRAX) right from the airport to downtown. My hotel was only a couple of blocks from my stop. One thing I notice is the humidity. To me, it actually felt good. Keeps your skin moist and when it’s hot you actually sweat. Just the way it should be.