We arrived home about six p.m. on Wednesday, January 8th, 2008. We had a very good trip and I really enjoyed the time we spent with James, LeeAnn, their family, and LeeAnn’s parents. It was a full house! LeeAnn’s parents were put up in Shaundra’s bedroom. Nina and I were put up in James and LeeAnn’s bedroom. James, LeeAnn, and all the kids bedded down in the boys bedroom (I’m not sure how that worked … I’m also sure that James and LeeAnn were right ready to get back into their own bedroom!!). Somehow we all managed to get through the four nights with no major catastrophes. That in itself is goodness!

The primary purpose for being there was Shaundra’s baptism … which I’ve already written about on the blog. That was quite successful, although the water for the baptism was ice code. Shaundra walked in, was thoroughly dunked, and walked out without complaint. She’s was determined to be baptised! Fortunately, James did the ordinance very well and Shaundra only had to be immersed once.

The weather turned quite warm while we were there with temperatures approaching 70 degrees on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. When a cold front combined with unstable moist air from the Gulf of Mexico moved through on Monday evening and night, we got a very good dose of what it’s like to live in tornado country. I wouldn’t want to live there anyway, but if it happened, I’d definitely want a house with a basement … and with bedding and beds or cots down there because nights get very long when the severe weather sirens are going all night long. We left on Tuesday morning and James and family got to do it all again on Tuesday night.

We drove the fastest route possible out and back. That would be going east from Pocatello through Kemmerer, Wyoming to Green River, Wyoming, then I-80 east to Lincoln, Nebraska, cut across to I-29 just east of Lincoln in Iowa, then south to Kansas City, Route 71, then Route 7, and finally Route 13 to Springfield. It’s a full twenty-hour drive given good roads. Going out the roads (other than in western Wyoming) were dry and problem free. Coming back we had very messy roads through Kansas City up to the Iowa border. Nebraska’s roads were very good, but the drive from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Laramie (where we spent Tuesday night) took us through very high winds and severe drifting snow. On Wednesday we had several places on I-80 where high winds and drifting snow made travel difficult. West of Green River and on US-30 through Kemmerer to Montpelier, Idaho was extremely slick and dangerous. We were very happy that we had gotten as far as Laramie on Tuesday!

The drive on Wednesday was also pleasantly interrupted in Green River for about an hour when we stopped at my favorite brother’s place. Then we stopped later in Soda Springs to spend about an hour and a half with dad and mother. Dad has been working (somewhat unsuccessfully) on fixing an air compressor and had tipped it over to work on it. He couldn’t get it back upright, so Nina and I helped him do that. I also did a couple more things to their new computer to finish that installation. Then we drove the rest of the way to Pocatello, picked Bradica (the dog) up from the kennel, and finally arrived back home after a lot of driving and a lot of fun. I think we’ll be here in Pocatello for the next couple of months!

I’ve been working on the picture album software and have the new version working pretty well. I used that version to put up a set of pictures from the trip to Missouri, so visit the picture album to see these pictures. That’ll also show some of the work that I’ve been doing. The two big changes are the addition of a picture gallery for pictures that don’t really fit into a picture album sequence, and to add tagging to pictures. The main menu shows the pictures albums on the left, a link to the gallery on the top right, and a list of all the tags on the right. I’ve got about half of my pictures tagged and will get the rest tagged in the next few days (I hope). In putting up these pictures from Shaundra’s baptism I did notice a couple of issues with the new version that I’ll need to fix before making up some instructional video and making the new version available to the other folks that are using the software.

Nina has been cold. Several times a day she’ll ask me, “Aren’t you cold?” I haven’t been cold, though and she’ll go put on a sweatshirt or wrap up in a blanket. Last night I came into the computer room to find the blanket draped over her and her laptop while she was talking on the phone. She was definitely cold!

Today is a football day. The Michigan : Florida State game was outstanding. Nina has been cheering for the past fifteen minutes and that has been fun as well.

I have also been updating the blog software. A new release of WordPress fixes a couple of potential security issues. This was an easy release to install so all of the blogs have been updated.

I’ve wanted to have a way to put in side comments. Normally, I have to put them in parentheses which sometimes causes the meaning of the main sentence to be muddied up. So, I’m experimenting with a new method (*) which might work a little better. The idea is to put the parenthetical comment behind the asterisk. If someone clicks on the asterisk, then the aside will show up in another window. Clicking on “OK” will dismiss the window. Don’t know how much I’ll use the capability, but it is now there and working. Happy New Year!

It’s snowing … big flakes … and accumulating. The birds are really enjoying the snow, however. Some can be seen flying and swooping. A couple dozen are in a tree near the back fence. Others are flocking around the bird feeders (Nina feeds lots of critters, including many who come up out of the ground for the seeds the birds flick over the side). It’s snowed enough that the satellite dishes are covered and we’re not getting a signal (and it’s not being missed, either). Let it snow!

I’ve been working the past few days on the picture album capability. The first deliverable will be the picture gallery concept (pictures not associated with any particular topic). As I’m working on this, I’m also cleaning up the code, fixing some potential security holes, and making the whole process look a bit spiffier. That means doing a lot of work between XHTML (extensible hyper-text markup language) and CSS (cascading style sheets). They didn’t make this easy! Right now getting a page to work properly with a header, two columns, and then a footer is proving to be very problematic. However, I will prevail…. There has to be a way! Good thing it’s snowing because that means I can stay inside and puzzle out this little problem.

The promised storm kind of arrived overnight. It’s been sprinkling off and on this morning with temperatures in the mid-40’s, far too warm for the snow that we were supposed to be getting. Rain is good, however, and it can keep up as long as possible. I’ve finished preparations for my priesthood lesson that I’m teaching this afternoon and then spent a few minutes recording another Seesmic video. I’m not sure what kind of a player is required to show these videos, but I think they are played in Flash.

Last night I upgraded most of the blogs on my server to the latest version of WordPress. Most of the upgrades worked very well, but Nina and Erin both have problems. The new software changed some of the table structures and as long as the blog theme used standard WordPress database calls, everything would work. However, the theme being used by both Nina and Erin does direct calls to database tables that have changed and some of the sidebar items are not displaying correctly. I won’t get that fixed tonight as we need to go to Soda Springs after Church this afternoon. Dad is having some trouble with his TV and I’ll see what needs to be fixed while Nina is putting dinner on the table over there. It is a nice Sunday!