Today is a mixed rain and snow day, just right for staying indoors as much as possible.

1. On April 9th dad had his 88th birthday. The folks at the nursing home helped make it a good day for him, including the Pink Ladies dressing him up in a purple hat! We celebrated his birthday on Saturday with all my siblings. In the midst of the party, just before cake and ice cream, bingo started at the nursing home, so festivities were postponed until that was over and he came back with his stash of candy.
2. The new car is being undented as this is being written. It would be nice if all mistakes were that easily erased! This one just cost money.
3. The Area Single Adult Fireside on Sunday Evening featured Nina as one of two speakers. She’s the Relief Society President at the Kinport Branch which serves the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center. The other speaker was the Kinport Branch President. Nina gave a very moving talk about the women at PWCC including reading from some letters she’s received from some of the women. I about wore out a handkerchief while she was speaking. The attendance was poor because of a competing fireside twenty miles south of Pocatello featuring a very famous Mormon songwriter and because of Easter.
4. It takes a lot of time and effort to write a user manual for someone who hasn’t used a piece of software before. It’s quite difficult to see the software system through the eyes of someone experiencing the system for the first time.
5. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be very wet with a foot or more of snow forecast for elevations about 5,000 feet. Yellowstone Park has been advising that they’ll have the road from West Yellowstone to Canyon, to Mamouth, and to Old Faithful open on Friday, April 17th. Were planning to drive there for the day. Hopefully the road will be open even with this storm.
6. One of my currently favorite programs is Pandora Internet Radio. It’s playing right now on my laptop and it’s my most used application on my iPhone. This morning while taking a stroll on the treadmill listening to Pandora I thought about my first transistor radio back in 1957. Transistor radios were only a year or two old when I got one for a birthday present. The wonder of these radios were that they operated on batteries and could be taken anywhere. I spent many hours riding on a tractor in the fields that summer listening to music on that AM radio. Forty years has seen an enormous change in our ability to consume music.
7. Having music ubiquitously available is making a significant upheaval in the music business. The business model is completely disrupted and I’m very interested in what the new business model(s) will become. The same thing is happening to newspapers. I’ve been very disappointed in the local newspaper’s reaction to their failing business methods. Unless something happens soon, within the next two years we won’t have a local newspaper. They’re listening to the wrong people giving them advice and can’t hear anything else. I wonder if the buggy whip people had the same experience?
8. I used both H&R Block’s Tax Cut and Intuit’s Turbo Tax programs to do my federal taxes this year. They both came up with the same number (that was goodness). Tax Cut was easier for me to use, though, as it seemed a bit more logical going through the interview questions. Turbo Tax had the better help when I had questions about a 1099-B barter form. Both worked well on my MacBook with no noticeable glitches.
9. For some reason the number of page views my blog is getting has gone up significantly in the past month. Who’s doing all this looking at my blog? The number of comments hasn’t changed, though. On the other hand, my writeup about my Garmin GPS system on a different blog continues to get comments. Lots of people seem to have heartburn with Garmin GPS units!
10. I’m very happy with how social media (Twitter and Facebook in particular) is helping me to stay connected with far-flung family members. The Internet definitely removes the feeling of distance.