I got a letter from the Pocatello Mayor’s office a couple of days ago informing me that I didn’t make the “short list” for consideration to be appointed to City Council. I was one of 26 applicants. I’m satisfied with the short-listed folks and pleased about several who were not on the short list. That all bodes well for the City Council. I’m not well enough known in town to be able to compete with some of the folks that are on the short list. The final selection will be presented to the City Council for ratification on June 17th.

The website I’ve been struggling with took a major step forward today. I met with the client and showed him the issues with proceeding the way we were headed. We had a great discussion … that is, a discussion that resulted in a very good alternative that will be much simpler to implement and accomplish the same goal. I did some testing this afternoon and verified that the new approach will work. That was a big relief!

I posted a picture the other day of a car with a couple of canoes on the top along with other stuff atop the canoe. I saw the same car today in a parking lot and stopped to get some more pictures. They’re along the left side of this blog entry. Click on the pictures for some more detail and then click again for a full-sized view.

Mother had an appointment with an allergist here in Pocatello. We’d prefer that she not drive herself over here and back (we’d be devastated if something happened while she was driving and we could have driven her ourselves). So, Nina went over to Soda Springs and brought her in to see the doctor. Afterwards they had lunch together and did some shopping which resulted in a fun afternoon for

the two of them. Afterwards I drove mother back to Soda Springs so Nina could get some other things done here at the house … which resulted in a blog post and picture of one of the birds frequenting her bird feeders on the back deck.

Our weather continues to be more like winter than spring. Driving over and back to Soda Springs, not only did I safely get through two speed traps, but drove through two hail storms on the way over and two more on the way back. These were pretty intense storms for the few minutes it took to drive through them.

Two years ago today Nina and I were driving across Idaho to Boise for a Big Event where my cousin Cheryl was to be sealed to her husband and family. On the way I learned by way of Twitter that a Utah friend had taken his 2-year-old daughter to the emergency room, that she was transported to Primary Children’s Hospital, and there diagnosed with leukemia. The prognosis at the time was grim. We were literally glued to the iPhone and Twitter updates as we made our way across the Interstate. It’s nice to be able to report two years later that she’s doing well, is in remission, and growing up to be quite the young lady. I still love Twitter!

Finally, I simply don’t understand the big hubbub over Arizona’s new law to codify into state law what is the Federal Law of the Land (but not being enforced). I applaud their efforts to curb illegal immigrants and hope that other states will follow to make up for a Federal Government doing worse than ignoring Federal Law by condoning illegal immigration.

I have Church meetings usually starting about 7 am on Sunday mornings going until late afternoon, depending which Sunday of the month it is. Consequently, I usually don’t have the opportunity or the inclination to be involved in the digital world until after all my meetings and commitments are done.

There is an exception, however. I fairly often have the opportunity to substitute for a teacher in a Sunday School class in the Ward that I’m assigned to as a High Councilor. I really enjoy spending some time with these teenagers and getting to know them a little bit better. So, usually sometime during the week I read the upcoming Sunday School lesson and think through how I would present it. Then, if the opportunity arises, I can use my iPhone to call up the lesson manual for use in the classroom.

Today I had the opportunity to substitute for the 14-15 year old class. Normally there are 5 students in the class but today there were only 3. They were fun, attentive, and engaged with the material. I think they may have even gone away knowing a couple of things they didn’t know before and feeling good about that. The lesson material was about Joshua becoming the Israelite leader, the charge to be of good courage, and how he and the people of Israel responded. I think I also picked up some new insight as well.

TTFN!

The Pocatello 50 super marathon is on the 29th of May and the local ham radio operators are going to provide the communication services for the race. The race is considered the hardest mountain super marathon in the United States and teams from all across the country come to run the race. This year two teams from Japan have entered the race. It’s 51.8 miles long with several big climbs of 1,500 feet or more along the course.

Several of the aid stations are located where there is no cell phone coverage and most of the course has no cell phone coverage at all. Consequently, communications are an issue. The local ham radio emergency services club has volunteered to provide communications from the aid stations to the start / finish line.

The Saturday before the race was the day to check out the communications for all but one of the aid stations. The idea was to verify that we can reliably get a signal into the start / finish line from each of the aid stations. The radio communications are intended to be able to get help should a runner have an emergency as well as to communicate runner status and times information.

There race will start with 150 runners. Not all of them will be able to finish the race. As each runner comes into one of the six aid stations, they are logged into the station. Food, water, places to rest, and some first aid are available at the station for the runners. The runner is then logged out of the station when they leave to proceed to the next station. We will transmit back to the start / finish line the runner identification and the time leaving the aid station as well as the runner identification for any runners who have decided not to continue on the course. The race starts at 6 am and the last runners will be coming across the finish line about 10:30 pm. That’s a pretty long day! Some runners will finish the race in the mid-afternoon, around 2:30 pm or so.

The motto of the amateur radio emergency services is that when all else fails, amateur radio gets through. So, we spent the morning under quite stormy conditions checking out the primary communications plan (Plan A) as well as Plan B and Plan C. All three plans worked well during our testing. The proof will be next Saturday when we will be actually doing the job.

One of the aid stations is located in a very remote area and the trails into that station haven’t been opened yet by the Forest Service. That should happen sometime this week for at least foot traffic. That aid station is literally down in a ravine with steep canyon walls on either side. Radio traffic out of there requires a relay to be setup on top of a nearby knoll. Hopefully the radio relay will work well. Otherwise the relay will have to be a human relay … receive the message, write it down, and then send it along to the start / finish line.

I’m really looking forward to working this race. It should be a lot of fun and we’ll learn a lot about handling message traffic and communicating out of difficult circumstances. Besides that, Number One Son James will be here to be my assistant … and perhaps to get some good pictures of the operation.

As usual, click on the pictures to get information about each photo. Then click on the picture again to get a full-sized view.

TTFN!

My entire afternoon was spent working on some modifications for a website. The work isn’t going very well at all. I’m also certain that the outcome isn’t going to be what the client is looking for. Time to meet again with him and show what the issues are.

We had a fairly busy day at the Idaho Falls Temple Friday morning. The Temple attendance seems to vary with the weather … the worse the weather (within reason), the better the attendance. It’s been quite cold with lots of rain and snow showers the past few days. The gardens at the Temple are very pretty with hundreds of tulips in full bloom. And the attendance has been up as well. For the past several weeks after our shift has ended (usually about 11:45 am) we’ve gone to the cafeteria to get lunch before driving home. I rather like the practice. I eat breakfast around 4:15 am and by 11:45 I’m ready to eat! The cafeteria at the Idaho Falls Temple is pretty good and we usually come away from there having eaten our fill (and perhaps a bit more).

TTFN!

At our monthly Portneuf ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Services) meeting on Thursday evening we spent most of the meeting discussing the Pocatello 50 race which will be held on Saturday, May 29th in the hills west and south of Pocatello. The club will be providing the radio communications between the six aid stations and the start/finish line of the 51.8 mile race.

The weather has been very much wintery in the entire northwest. We’ve had lots of rain, some pretty heavy snow squalls, and even some snow-thunder storms around. I think it’s the same way every year … but we still wish it would be spring for more than a couple of days in a row.

TTFN!

A few weeks ago I invited Glenn D. Thackray, an Idaho State University professor, to our Portneuf Rotary Club to do a presentation on where we get our drinking water and the quality of the water. He’s been doing a study on this for a number of years. He gave a very compelling presentation. While our water meets or exceeds the federal standards, it is a fairly fragile system.

Tonight he was presenting at the Pocatello City Council chambers. Nina and I went over and he gave us an excellent overview with some newer information. A pretty good crowd were in attendance.

A couple of people were there with definite agendas. On fellow challenged Dr. Thackray several times even though there was nothing to challenge. Towards the end, the crowd was pretty unhappy with him and wanted him to be quiet so the presentation could be completed.

Dr. Thackray’s presentation simply showed what the data says about our very unique aquifer about 30 feet underneath the city’s streets. There are a number of threats to our drinking water supply, including that we’re pulling about 7.8 billion gallons a year out of the aquifer and only about 7.1 billion gallons, on average, is going into the system. While the water meets and generally exceeds Federal standards as set by the EPA, a couple of the measurements are creeping uncomfortably close to the limits.

However, this fellow was sure that we are not taking more out than is being replenished from the snowpack in the mountains and that any contamination is in the past and our water is better than ever. Unfortunately, he’s pretty much wrong. Why do people with no data feel it so important to challenge at every front someone who does have the peer-reviewed data, the analysis, and the floor? I’m sure we were there a half-hour longer than necessary.

It was good to hear the information again. Problem prevention is certainly much cheaper than problem correction.

TTFN!

In the Ham Radio world, I’m pretty much not having a lot of luck with HF equipment. My newest unit was sent back to the company for repair. The other, older transceiver is up for sale. I’ve had a couple of bites, but no serious takers just yet. I had an antenna tuner for it that I also listed for sale and it sold very quickly. So, now I have an HF transceiver but need a tuned, resonant antenna for it.

A while ago I bought a portable setup that can be tuned to work in the 20 meter band. It can either be a mobile antenna on the car, or it can be set up as a normal antenna. The other day I set it up in the front yard and got it tuned. It worked pretty well, but was rather obvious in front of our covenant-regulated house.

This afternoon I began the process of moving it to the northeast corner of the backyard. In the process I would be putting it another 8 feet higher in the air. I got about halfway done when a wind and rain storm came over the hill and pretty much drove me back inside. I’ll finish it tomorrow … maybe that’ll be the picture of the day??

Nina and I both had some errands to run, and she needed a new chair for her desk in the computer room. So we went to OfficeMax and found her a nice chair on sale. After that we decided to have our Mothers Day dinner by eating lunch at Costa Vida. We ran into some friends there who had just returned from a two-week cruise through the Panama Canal (me: very envious). We’ll need to go over soon to see them and their pictures.

The new chair is now assembled and Nina is certainly much more comfortable as she works on Family History and on indexing (she’s become quite addicted to the indexing process). Tomorrow we’ll be back to sunshine after a cloudy with occasional showers day today. The lawn needs desperately to be mowed. Dang! That’s a lot of walking.

TTFN!

The current project I’m working on requires an Adobe Flash process. Over my career I’ve actively avoided anything to do with Flash. For the non-geeks of the world, Flash is a language for doing lots of pizzazzy stuff on a website, including moving things, playing movies, and such. There’s a lot of technical reasons why I don’t particularly like Flash. However, today I’ve spent much of the day learning the programming language for generating Flash content to be put on a website. The language is called ActionScript. I bought a couple of books on ActionScript at the Barnes and Noble store in Idaho Falls last Friday. One book is 900 pages long, the other is 560 pages long.

Adobe has a number of tutorial videos available (also Flash content) and I spent quite a bit of time working through a couple of them. I’m getting close to where I can actually do the work I’ve been contracted to do. It is fun learning something new, although I don’t think I’ll use this very much.

It was warm enough today (the warmest day of the year so far) that I actually considered turning on the air conditioning. I didn’t. It’d sure be nice to have about a month between turning off the furnace and turning on the air conditioning. I’m not murmuring, mind you, just observing….

TTFN!