Category Archives: General

A New Elder In the Family!

General
Christopher and Ty
Christopher and Ty

Today our oldest grandson Christopher was sustained in Stake Conference to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood and be ordained an Elder. That’s something we don’t want to miss!

So, Nina drove down to North Salt Lake yesterday afternoon to go to conference with Heather’s family. I had some Church assignments, including speaking in a Sacrament Meeting at 12:50 p.m., so I drove down right after my meeting ended. Ty did the deed and gave Christopher a very lovely blessing.

Christopher will now start working on his missionary papers!

Congratulations, Christopher!

Life Is Pretty Dang Good On The Road

General, Travels
Michael "The Shark" Brown
Michael "The Shark" Brown

We’re in Chandler, Arizona at the moment visiting with our daughter Jaelene and her family. Right now, Nina is teaching the three grandkids how to make balloon animals. They are having a very good time and lots of balloons are popping. Making these balloon animals takes a lot of patience during the learning phase for sure.

We’ll be here over the weekend, leaving on Tuesday morning (very early) to drive back north retracing out trip down.

We left Pocatello after Church on Sunday afternoon and drove down to Heather’s in North Salt Lake. It’s always a delightful visit at her house … except Danielle was definitely not feeling good while we were there. It seemed to be more of a cold than the flu, but who knows. So far Nina and I seem not to be infected (another balloon just popped and I jumped!). We did some shopping on Monday, that is after I drove back to Pocatello to pick up some meds I forgot to bring with me. That evening we attended the local high school’s presentation of West Side Story. Grandson Michael was in the chorus and he’s got some very smooth moves. They’re performing every night this week and the final presentation is next Monday evening. I’m sure he’ll be plenty tired when the musical is finally had it’s run!

Early Tuesday morning we headed south on I-15. It was almost a perfect day for driving. Absolutely no weather, partly sunny skies, and reasonably cool temperatures. Twelve and a half hours later we pulled into Jaelene’s driveway.

The Big Event … actually Two Big Events … are Colten’s 11th birthday next Monday (with a family party on Sunday afternoon) and Jaelene is running in a 5K race on Saturday morning. Hence the reason we’re here.

However, Arizona is still HOT. 97° today and warmer forecast for the next several days. Since it had already turned to winter in Pocatello, we’re finding the temperatures to be more than a bit uncomfortable. I think by the time we leave, we’ll find Pocatello to be plenty cold when we get home.

Today we spent a couple of hours at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. The native American exhibits were very interesting and I really enjoyed our time there. It would be worth a return visit for sure. We rode the light rail from Mesa to the museum and back. That was also a pleasant ride and there seemed to be good ridership as well.

Life is pretty dang good down here!

Swimming Is Good For You?

Body Stuff, General

Nina’s been going to the Fitness Center for several years, primarily to do water aerobics. There are two locations in Pocatello, one downtown and another further north (although nothing is very far away in Pocatello). The water aerobics classes have been all consolidated at the north location which has a larger pool.

Nina receives a bunch of guest passes each year when she renews her membership and has regularly invited me to go with her to the aerobics class which is held Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesday and Thursday she would go to the pool to swim laps for about an hour. A couple of weeks ago I decided to go with her for the free swim.

The pool is nice, reasonably warm, and not crowded at 7 a.m. It turns out that I could only go three times on Nina’s guest passes, and I need to do something that resembles exercise, so I added myself to her membership. Yesterday was my first day at the water aerobics class.

The instructor is quite fit, and even that would be an understatement. She’s fun, energetic, and goes non-stop. The class started at 8:45 a.m. and continued without pause for fifty minutes followed by ten minutes of cool-down stretching. My arms felt like jelly when the class finished. Thank goodness there’s a nice hot tub next to the pool.

Tomorrow is a repeat.

I’m sure it’s good for me. I’m just sure of it….

ManageMyHome.Com Works!

General

Good news on the dryer front!

I didn’t have very high expectations about getting any kind of an answer from managemyhome.com. I posted my question and even sent in a comment referring them to my rant from yesterday. Shortly after that I got a tweet from @managemyhomebob asking if he could help. They sent me in email a short note saying,

Dear Mr Smith,

Thank you for contacting us about your dryer. I’m really surprised to hear that you got routed to people in the Philippines when you pressed the click to chat feature on our website. I’ll definitely let our management know about that. Based on the information you posted in your blogs, it sounds like you’re a real do-it-yourself type of person. One thing you may want to check is the wall vent itself that the dryer is connected to. If it’s blocked at all, it could also cause the problem that you’ve described. Now if your vent exits to the side of your home, you can check to see if it’s clogged by starting the dryer in a cycle and then going outside to check the air flow coming out of the vent. If there’s a lot of air flow, the vent is in good shape. If there’s little to know air flow, it means you have a clogged wall vent and it will need to be cleaned out.

Also, even though the dryers element is getting hot, it may not be getting hot enough and this may also be what’s causing your problems. Most dryers hottest temperatures are between 150-155 degrees. If it’s not getting that hot, then your element may need to be replaced.

Even though all of that had been checked previously, it was good information. Then this morning I got a very lengthy and very informative response with a good action plan from them, plus two followup tweets from @managemyhomebob.

The problem is well on the way to being solved. Good on you, @managemyhomebob for being on twitter!!

My only remaining question:

How is anyone to know from the sears.com website to go over to managemyhome.com to get technical questions answered?

Sears Kenmore Dryer Update: Sears FAILS

General

Today I took the dryer apart to see if I could fix it. While there was a lot of lint on places in the dryer, the exhaust was clean. The heater element works and the dryer gets plenty hot. Plenty of air is circulating. The problem is the dryer turns off before the load is dry.

I went looking for a moisture sensor. Some dryers have a sensor in the exhaust air stream that determines how much moisture is in the air and when that gets to a certain point, the dryer control unit decides that the load is dry enough and proceeds to the next stage which, depending on settings, might be a cool-down stage or shut off and buzz.

Other dryers have a couple of metal strips inside the dryer which, if the clothes are still wet, make an electrical contact. If, after a period of time, the electrical contact is not made, the dryer advances to the next stage.

There doesn’t seem to be any metal strips inside the dryer. The parts diagram doesn’t list a moisture sensor. So what to do next?

On the web page for Sears Parts Direct is a button labeled, “Talk to a Parts Specialist”. I clicked on the button.

A window came up and asked for my phone number along with a button that scheduled the phone call now or sometime in the future. I selected “now” and my phone immediately rang and I was connected to a call center. Based on the accent, the call center was probably in the Philippines.

I explained my problem and asked which part needs to be replaced.

“I’m not qualified to give technical advice,” she responded.

“Well, what do you do as a parts specialist?” I asked. She replied, “If you tell me what part number you need, I can order it for you.” Singularly unhelpful as, if I knew the part number, I can order it online from the web page and don’t need to talk to anyone. She offered to connect me to someone for technical support, though, and I said, “Connect me.”

The call transferred somewhere else, but still with the same accent. I explained my problem again. “I’m not qualified to give technical advice,” she responded. After some discussion it was clear that nowhere in the Sears call center customer support operations was technical support available.

She referred me to managemyhome.com. I went there. On the front page was a box with a button: Ask a question. At the bottom of the page it said that managemyhome.com is brought to me by Sears.

So, I typed in my question (limited to about a hundred characters) in the box labeled “Ask us your toughest question. We can handle it”, and pressed the “Ask It” button. The next page displayed asked me to sign in or sign up if not already registered. I went through the registration process which included a captcha as well as an email response process. But, when I finally got logged in, the question disappeared. I had to re-enter the question, limited to 100 characters.

Pressing the button brought up another page with several more boxes to fill in. That submitted the question. I’m supposed to get an answer in 72 hours, not counting weekends and holidays.

Is all this intended to force me to call for an authorized repair person?

It’s time to go put the dryer back together again.

Random Sunday Thoughts

Church, General, TripleT
  1. One of my Church responsibilities as a member of the Stake High Council is to speak in Sacrament Meeting (communion worship service) in one of the Wards (congregations) on an assigned topic. I enjoy the entire speaking process, including the research, figuring out how to approach the subject, assembling the talk, and delivering it. There are always two High Council speakers and, as I am the more junior, I speak first. Quite often there are one or two youth speakers ahead of me (but sometimes not!) so I need to be fairly flexible on how much time I take for my talk. Today was a speaking day and my assigned topic was “Preparing to Worship”. I had a pretty good talk put together, but then the events in the Sacrament Meeting caused me to completely revise my talk in my head. Despite that, it came together and I left sufficient time for my speaking companion, although I could have pontificated for quite a while longer. The last speaker always has to be the most flexible. On a couple of occasions when I was the last speaker, I’ve been left with less than five minutes and once it was time for the meeting to be finished when my turn came (I just stood, bore a 10 second testimony of our Savior, and sat down).
  2. There’s a teapot tempest about religion going on in our area. It seems that a group calling themselves “The Church of the Firstborn and Heaven’s Gate” recently relocated en masse from Magna, Utah to Ft. Hall on the Shoshone – Bannock Indian reservation. The sect’s leaders consider themselves to be the two witnesses spoken of in the New Testament and one of them says that he is the Holy Ghost and the father of Adam incarnate. They made application for a permit to build a dormitory on their land. It would be a three-story building with about 40 rooms. Granting the permit means granting a zoning variance, meaning that a public hearing was required. The hearing got quite animated with people speaking out because of the things they’ve heard about the group and they didn’t want that sort of thing going on around here. What they’re hearing comes from a former leader in the group who left them and since has been crusading against the sect. They’ve been investigated by every Federal and State agency possible with no findings of any wrong doings. The decision on the variance and the permit has been postponed until late next week. All this would just be amusing except for the wild and almost vicious attacks on the sect being made by some Mormons in the community. All too soon we forget what we went through to gain sufficient freedom to exercise our religious beliefs. They’re law abiding citizens. We may think they are misguided and perhaps deluded, but that doesn’t have any bearing. “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may” (Articles of Faith #11). It’s well for us to remember that!
  3. Those previous two thoughts got rather lengthy. One of the youth speakers today remarked that she somehow had gotten onto the Bishop’s short-list of speakers because every couple of months she’s been asked to speak again. She wondered what she needed to do to get off the list and then proceeded to give a very good talk on friendship. I think she’s still on the short-list!
  4. Every six months we have a Priesthood Leadership Meeting at 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. On the Saturday afternoon preceding the meeting all of the Priesthood Leadership are invited to attend a meeting with a member of the Temple Presidency followed by a session at the Idaho Falls Temple (if everyone came, there would be about 140 men). I enjoy the Chapel meetings because I usually get asked to play the organ for the meeting. That means for about a half an hour I get to be in the Temple and play many of my favorite Hymns and everyone there is quiet, reverent, and listening to the music. Yesterday was the Temple meeting and this morning was the Leadership meeting. I was able to play the organ for both meetings. It’s been a very nice weekend.
  5. Even though it’s Random Sunday Thoughts, it doesn’t all have to be about Church things. For instance, I’ve been working for several days on our hot tub. This is the time of the year when I need to drain the tub and put in new water for the winter. That has been complicated by the fact that a hive or more of yellow-jacket wasps have taken up residence inside the panel where the hot tub controls are located. So I’ve needed first to exterminate the wasps. When I got the panels off, I found a number of very large nests. They’ve all been sprayed, but I noticed today wasps are still making their way into another part of the paneling. According to what I’ve read online, as winter approaches, all the wasps in a hive except the queen die, but she lives to start all over again next year. That means not only spraying the nests to kill as many as possible, but also knocking them down, getting them out, and crushing them before putting them into the trash. This is not fun.
  6. Flu season has not yet started, but the “normal” flu vaccine is available. Most places advertising flu shots (and this isn’t the Swine Flu H1N1 vaccine … that’s still coming) were charging about $25. I saw in the newspaper that the Senior Citizen’s Center was having a health fair and any adult could come in and get a shot for $20. I went and had a much better experience than a couple of years ago. I actually felt and saw nothing. I didn’t even know he was done. I want to find the same guy to do the H1N1 vaccine when it becomes available.
  7. I am very unhappy with all the vicious political attacks going on. The bickering and maneuvering for political advantage (happening regardless of what is right or what is true) needs to stop. Our health insurance system is broken. It isn’t the “best in the world” … far from it. I’ve written to all my congressional delegation expressing my wish for the divisiveness to end and for bipartisan work to begin. It can begin with me. It can begin with them.
  8. I have some fairly strong feelings about the responsibility of companies for their employees. Our labor laws and regulations don’t address, and probably shouldn’t have to address the moral integrity that should be the hallmark of leaders. Nevertheless I was stunned to read about what I consider to be a nefarious exploitation of employees here in our town. A local pharmacy built a new building as they had outgrown their previous location and wanted to focus on pharmacology rather than the usual drugstore merchandizing. In their new location they built two businesses. On the ground floor they developed a retail pharmacy business focusing individual customers. Upstairs they built a wholesale pharmacy business to service institutions in the area. Both businesses were thriving. Last week they announced that they had sold the wholesale business to a larger company out east somewhere for a substantial amount of money and then proceeded to LAY OFF THE 14 EMPLOYEES who worked in the wholesale business. The new company only wanted the customers. They’ll service those customers from existing offices in Utah. I consider this a reprehensible action on the part of the owners. It was their idea and their management that got the business going, but it was those 14 employees who made it work. The owners pocket a substantial chunk of money. The employees who made it possible leave with nothing. There’s something very wrong with this picture. I will NEVER do business with that pharmacy, ever.
  9. At my Rotary Club meeting earlier this week the Engineer for this district in the Idaho State Department of Transportation talked to us about the road work going on in our area. Nina and I have been intrigued by the work going on east of McCammon. I think there needs to be some kind of a website that shows what the end results will be, so I talked with him about that. He said all of that information is in the environmental impact statement, including drawings and elevations of the finished project and that the impact statement should be available online. I went to the website, searched, and found that once the project proceeds past the public comment period and the statement is “approved”, it’s removed from the website. It’s in the form of a PDF (which is not very helpful) and a large file, there are many of projects, so to “save money” they’re removed. That seems kind of short sighted! Someone needs to invent an inexpensive way to convert a PDF into a nice website.
  10. I’ve been trying to think of a third “R” to go along with Rambling Random … something that means thoughts or musings, or similar. Suggestions welcome!

And that’s My Story for this Sunday.

Most Maybes Didn’t Make It

General

I had this brilliant post I was going to write back in May. It was a list of things that we might get around to doing this past summer. The post never got written and most of the “maybe” things didn’t happen. Here’s a few of them:

  1. Swimming at Lava Hot Springs. We probably drove past Lava Hot Springs going between home and Soda Springs fifty times this summer, if not more. At least half of them Nina would remark as we went by, “We need to go there this summer” (now when we drive by she says, “We didn’t make it!”).The summer is over, the pool has been drained, and the chance is gone. However, the hot pools will be open all winter. We just maybe will do those some cold winter day….
  2. Swimming at Indian Springs. This recreation area near American Falls has been closed for several years with a number of legal issues and bankruptcies associated with it. For many years it was a going establishment with a delightful (so they say) pool fed with hot spring water, hiking, camping, and a full menu of recreational things like horseshoes. The complex was bought last winter, the legal issues cleared up, and the pool reopened last May. I think the RV park was open by the end of the summer as well. It sounded interesting to take the motor home over there, spend the night, and spend some time in their pool. Maybe next year?
  3. Visiting Craters of the Moon National Monument. The park is less than a half-day’s drive from here and is probably worth an afternoon. I rode my motorcycle through the park on a road trip with my son Trevor in 1989 before he left on his mission. Nina has never been there. Several miles north of the park is a KOA campground, so that could have been another overnight trip. It didn’t happen, though. Maybe next year?
  4. City of Rocks and Castle Rocks State Park. City of Rocks is a National Reserve in southeastern Idaho and Castle Rocks is an adjacent state park. Another great place to take the motor home and spend some time. Maybe next year?
  5. BYU-Idaho Education Week. BYU-Idaho is an hour and twenty minutes away from here. Each fall they have a three-day extravaganza with all kinds of classes and lectures. However, once again we didn’t get there due to Church responsibilities and dad’s declining health. Next year?
  6. Doing a session in all the Utah Temples. This is a bit of a logistical feat as there are thirteen temples in Utah now, each closing at a different time during the summer for two or three weeks. I had a possible schedule worked out, but we went swimming at Hammonasset State Park instead. Well, there were a few other High Priority items on the trip as well. Never-the-less, maybe next year? With our new assignment each week at the Idaho Falls Temple can we work it in?
  7. Camping with my favorite brother. We always have a great time together. He even got his trailer licensed this year! But, When they could go, we were gone somewhere else. Then they were also building a new house, into which they are moving even as I write this. Next year, bro!

Now, that’s not to say we didn’t do some of those maybes that would have been in that brilliant post that never made it from my head to the blog. I’m sure we got quite a few of them into our very busy schedule this summer. Two funerals and a call to serve each Friday at the Idaho Falls Temple took Very High Priority. It was a good summer. Time to start planning for next year! If I’m ever going to see a shuttle launch, it’ll have to happen next year as the space shuttles are supposedly going to be retired next year (with nothing US Made and Flown to replace them for several more years). There are launches scheduled in February, March (on Nina’s birthday), May, July, and September. That’s five opportunities. Maybe….