My Macbook has been fixed and is back home. The new keyboard and top case make it look like it’s almost new! The dining table is about the only place to set up our computers and they usually stay set up on the very small table all the time, even when we’re eating. I’m going to have to get a lot more coordinated or start moving my computer off the table when it’s mealtime! I don’t need to go through this problem again.

We drove down to Honolulu on Wednesday to do some shopping and picked up the Macbook on the way followed by a stop at Costco, Walmart, and Radio Shack. Yup, there are still some Radio Shack stores open, although I read yesterday that someone has offered to buy the “Radio Shack” name. I wonder if the remaining stores go with it? I needed a specific, not generally stocked USB cable to go between my Nikon Point-n-Shoot and the computer. I apparently left the cable back in the US. I haven’t been able to find it anywhere until I went into the Radio Shack store at the (very upscale) Ala Moana Mall in Waikiki. I’m certain I paid twice the regular price (1) because we’re in Hawaii and everything (except pineapples and papaya) is more expensive and (2) this is a mall that caters to folks with LOTS and OODLES of money. The cable works, it’s (hopefully) a one-time purchase, so life continues.

One the way to Honolulu we stopped at the Kualoa Regional Park, a large, beautiful park on the ocean, so that Nina could pick up a piece of coral to send to daughter-in-law Maureen back in Connecticut. While there I noticed the trees along the beach and the steep mountains behind and took the picture (top right). It’s clear that this is the “windward” side of the island! I don’t remember ever seeing the wind blowing to the east. It’s always coming from somewhere in the east, some days much stronger than others.

There is a steep mountain range that essentially bisects the island of Oahu from south to north. For many years the only way out of Honolulu to the north shore were a couple of arduous roads up and over mountain passes. Then in the 1960’s plans were made to build three tunnels and associated highways through the mountains. The plans met with every obstacle and protest imaginable, with the H-3 Interstate not completed until 1997 after the Hawaiian Senator Inouye got the highway exempted from environmental laws as a rider to a Department of Defense funding bill.

This picture was taken just before entering the almost-mile-long tunnel through the mountain. I love the mountains around here. They are sharp, steep, high, jagged, and delightful. As an aside, it kind of seems that every project to build anything around here meets significant opposition and protest. Construction of a thirty-meter telescope is the current target. A news report is here and a discussion of the project is here.

Our shift at the Visitors’ Center for today and the next six days is the morning shift. Missionary transfers are next Tuesday so we swap work schedules with Elder and Sister Jensen, the other senior missionary couple serving with us. Transfers happen every six weeks and that’s when we swap schedules. On the new schedule we’ll be on the morning shift Monday through Wednesday, have Thursday off, and the afternoon shift on Friday and Saturday. Our Sunday schedule (9:00 – 11:30 am) will not change for the remainder of this year. We had a large tour group from mainland China (mostly from the Shanghai area) at the Center this morning. These are days when I wish I remembered more Chinese, although the Chinese visitors always seem to be surprised that I know even a few words. I’m agan in several more Chinese photo galleries….

Life is pleasantly tired….

Nina and I both spoke in Sacrament Meeting in our assigned Ward this afternoon. She gave a great talk. Mine went OK (I never know how my talks really go). An hour later I taught the lesson in Priesthood Meeting in the High Priest Group. I also felt that went pretty well. This is a good ward and we’re starting to get to know a few people in the Ward.

The Center wasn’t particularly busy today. I’m pretty sure it was because today is Mother’s Day and people were attending to that rather than sight seeing. On Sunday mornings we’re only there two and a half hours from 9am to 11:30am. The Center usually gets busier on Sunday afternoons.

Because the young missionaries are allowed to call home on Mother’s Day, Nina and I have been taking our computers over to the Center so the sister missionaries can use Skype to make a video call back home. They are all so excited to see their family and talk about their mission. We take the laptops over for them to use so they can walk around the Center showing their family back home where they spend their time. It has been delightful watching them talk with their mothers over the past couple of days.

Our Mother’s Day was also very nice. Thanks to all who called to talk with your mother. I can’d say enough about how nice that is.

So, the dishes are done, I’ve only got one small mess to clean up and put away, and we’re ready to call it a night. We’ve got the weekly Visitors’ Center Training Meeting tomorrow morning at 7:30 am and with that, another great week in this little corner of paradise starts up!

Live is sanguine!

The most often asked question that I get at the Visitors’ Center is something like, “How did you get such a cush assignment?” or “Who did you know?” Today I had, for the first time, a variation of that question: “What do I need to do to be able to serve here?”

There are some 35 senior missionary couples and about 10 senior single sister missionaries here. As I’ve gotten to know them, very few requested this assignment and most didn’t request any specific assignment, but did just what we did: say that we’d be willing to serve anywhere and that we were willing to serve for 18 or 23 months. There are only one or two vacancies a month here and I’ve heard that Hawaii is a highly requested assignment. All that means is that I have no answer for what someone needs to do to be able to serve here in Laie!

Nina and I are speaking in Sacrament meeting tomorrow. I’ve been fretting over this for several days … and Nina has been in a real tizzy. It’s now about 9:30 pm and she’s still trying to figure out how to start the talk … which will be delivered tomorrow at about 12:30 pm. Since it’s Mother’s Day, we’ve been asked to talk on themes related to that topic. Nina will also do a bit of introduction since most of the Ward do not know anything about us. We’ve been told we’ll have about ten minutes each.

It’s a very true theory that if I’m to talk on a subject for an hour, it’ll take about two hours to prepare. But if I’m to speak on a topic for ten minutes, it’ll that two days to prepare. Ten minutes is seemingly over in a heartbeat, so the preparation is all about getting succinct enough to cover the topic in the short amount of time. So, I’ve rewritten my talk at least four times and each time it has gotten marginally better. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be rewriting it in my sleep tonight.

As if speaking in Sacrament meeting wasn’t enough, the High Priest Group Leader asked me to take the Priesthood lesson tomorrow. Originally that was planned to happen next week, but schedules change. Fortunately, the topic (the value of the Book of Mormon) is a comfortable topic.

However, since my real computer is in the shop, I’ve been using a Dell Windows 7 laptop. That laptop was specifically for my ham radio hobby since all of the good software for ham radios is Windows based. Some of the things I wanted to do for the lesson are very easy to accomplish on the Mac, but are more difficult on the Dell laptop. There is a lot of “built-in” software on the Mac that has to be found, installed, and configured for the Dell machine. An example: There’s a conference talk from which I’d like to use some excerpts. There are MP4 video and MP3 audio versions available on the LDS.org website. On the Mac I can use iMovie to slice out the excerpts I want, shove them off to my Apple TV and show them using my LCD projector. Maybe a half-hour of work to assemble all of the excerpts.

No such software exists on Windows as installed (Windows Movie Maker used to be available, it was a great program, and probably for that reason, it’s no longer available). I’d have to buy a program to do that. Further, I’m limited to VGA resolution when connected to the LCD projector. So, I downloaded the MP3 audio version, downloaded and installed Audacity to do the sound editing, and downloaded and installed Lame to be able to export an MP3 after the excerpts were prepared in Audacity. In order not to have to take the Dell laptop to the meeting tomorrow, I pushed the MP3’s to Dropbox so I can load them onto my iPhone to play during the class time tomorrow. It was a lot more work and the result is audio and not video. How do people who aren’t computer geeks do this stuff on a Windows machine?

I also downloaded and installed OpenOffice so I could build a PowerPoint-like presentation to help guide the discussion during the lesson. Then I had to download and install CutePDF so I could print the presentation as a PDF file, push it to Dropbox, so I can make the presentation from my iPhone. If I were able to make the video excerpts, then I would have used PowerPoint for the iPad (or Apple’s Presentations software which works a bit better than PowerPoint), and imbedded the video clips in the presentation. As it is, I’ll be switching between applications rather than having something much more seamless.

And, of course, I’m whining. It’s all my own fault, actually. I’m the one who spilled the milk on the keyboard which put the Macbook in the repair shop to start with. I suspect that if I were using the Dell notebook as my main computer that over time I’d already have found and installed all of the needed software sometime ago. So, I’ll now stop whining. Everything is in readiness. I can stop fretting and fussing. It’s bedtime, anyway!

Life continues….

Nina and I were assigned to the Hale Ohana Luau to take tickets at the Polynesian Cultural Center this evening. That meant arriving at about 4:15pm and being there until 6:20pm when we could then go over to the Prime Dining venue to have a free dinner.

I’ve been experimenting a bit with Periscope, a new video broadcasting offering from Twitter. Periscope is only available for IOS devices (iPhone or iPad) at the moment, but Android versions are said to be available Real Soon Now. One feature of Periscope is that I can save the video to my photo library and then later upload it to YouTube. So, I took a short Periscope video tonight and this is the result:

I’ll probably do more of this in the future. It’s an easy way to keep a video record of things as well as put it on my blog. I’ve got to get a lot better at it, though. Periscope only takes video in the portrait mode. It also doesn’t have any anti-shake capability, so the video can get quite shaky. But, ease of use trumps a lot of other things on the wish list!

We’ll be taking tickets again next week on Saturday at the Prime Dining venue. We then won’t be assigned until June.

The place where I took my Macbook for repair called this evening. The keyboard has to be replaced, otherwise all is well with the computer. Further, (a very tender mercy) the repair will be covered under the warranty. When I bought the computer in 2012 I purchased AppleCare which extended the normal warranty for an additional year. The part has to be ordered which will take 3-4 business days and then one day to repair. I’ll be very happy to have the machine back again. Now I just have to keep it away from my glass of milk with my breakfast….

A couple of people at the Visitors’ Center in the past week have asked about the technology that we’re using. It isn’t anything spectacular, actually, but it works generally well. Right now two systems are down and we’re waiting for parts to be shipped from Salt Lake City. That’s the only downside.

We have two theaters. One seats about 130 people and the other seats about 90 people. There’s a media server for each theater which is driven by a Shuttle PC with a redundant disk system holding the media. The input device is a touch screen monitor on the wall with the high definition video projector as the second monitor. We have more than a hundred videos available ranging from 2 minutes long to feature length movies such as “Meet the Mormons”.

The larger theater also has another Dell computer attached to the Internet where we can play videos from the various LDS Church websites such as LDS.org and mormon.org. We also use this setup to get training from Salt Lake City using Skype.

There are seven other Shuttle PC’s set up with a touchscreen monitor and a second HD monitor with a small selection of videos topical to that display. For instance, one is about temples and has videos as well as a couple of interactive games. Another has vignettes from the Book of Mormon. Others have a selection of Mormon ads, questions and answers for adults and for children, and selections from speeches. There is a corner for family history, again with a touch screen monitor and a video screen for watching videos about family history and genealogy (this touch screen is broken at the moment). There is also a Dell PC connected to the Church’s Family Tree website for people to do some basic family history research.

There is a Shuttle PC and touchscreen monitor for the Christus statue in the front area of the Center. This media server has all of the background music that plays in the Center during the day as well as the “Words of Christ” in fifteen languages that the missionaries can select and play for visitors. These “Words of Christ” are taken from the King James Version of the Bible and are quotations from Jesus Christ in the Bible, such as “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another (John 13:34)” and “If ye love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15),” and several more.

Another area in the Center is called Prophets Corner. Another Shuttle PC, touch screen monitor and HD display unit has biographical information on the members of the Church’s First Presidency and the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.

The most complex system is in the area called “God’s Plan for Families”. This is a multimedia presentation where the small audience (ten to twelve people maximum) move from room to room where a story is told about birth, growing up, marrying, raising a family, and dying, a very moving recount of the Lord’s Plan of Salvation. There are seven parts to this system, each with it’s own high definition TV monitor and setup. The presentation takes about fifteen minutes and is a very popular part of the Center.

In the back room is a camera and surveillance system, also driven by a Shuttle PC that records and archives the video from the nine video cameras inside the Center, out in the courtyard, and in the parking lot. Occasionally people will rifle through unlocked cars in the parking lot stealing anything that might have some value. The county police use the video system to try and figure out who the perpetrators are (usually unsuccessfully). Hawaii is a good place to be homeless and live on the beach (some of the beaches down around Waikiki and Honolulu have lockers set up on the beach for the beach bums to use) and these folks need to get drug and food money somehow….

All of this technology is based around Shuttle PC media servers, touch screen monitors, video screens or projectors, and Dell PC’s. All of the systems are networked into Salt Lake City. Every evening control systems in Salt Lake update the media, reboot and archive the information, and run diagnostics.

Sometime later this year the Center’s technology is scheduled to be upgraded to Windows Server technology where dual redundant servers will drive all of the systems and all of the individual Shuttle PC’s will be removed. Many of the VGA systems will then be upgraded to HD displays along with a lot of new media. That will be a welcome upgrade.

About the same time we’re supposed to get an upgraded Book of Mormon display which will include a lot of additional technology (it’d be nice if it included the ability to plug in your smart phone and download the Book of Mormon! … but I don’t think it does, yet).

It’s been a nice day, long and tiring, but nice. A couple came into the Center this morning who have been called to go to the Kirtland Ohio Visitors’ Center in the Fall for a year. They had lots of questions and it was fun to show them around and answer as many questions as we could. It was quite reminiscent of last October when we were in Kirtland visiting Nina’s sister Pamela. We went down to the Kirtland Visitors’ Center and had lots of questions for the senior missionaries working there. What goes around comes around!

Life is pleasant.

The Macbook is now at a repair shop in Kailua. They’re an authorized repair shop (that means expensive) and seem to be a pretty professional operation. I should hear from them on Friday. Hopefully it’s fixable at a price less than half what a new one would cost….

The “magic” I used to get a photo on the blog last night isn’t working today. To do that I turned on a sharing option on both the iPhone and the iPad and, because I have over 34,000 pictures in the photo library, both devices have no more memory left. With no Macbook, I can’t back them up, either. Every time there’s a little space that opens up on either device, they download another picture from the library. Meanwhile, the background picture process eats up the computer cycles and the battery. So, I have to turn it off somehow. According to the Internet, the solution (until Apple finally figures out the cloud thing) is to have multiple photo libraries. I think that’s not much of a solution.

Every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday there is a huge flea market at the Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. The flea market is in the parking lot and goes all the way around the stadium. I stopped by there for about an hour on my way back home and walked around about a fourth of the way. It’s kind of like ten different kinds of stores repeated fifty or more times. “Handmade” crafts, Hawaiian shirts and muumuus, hats, phone accessories (particularly selfie sticks), Hawaiian fruit and nuts, jewelry, posters, etc. There are so many of the same kinds of shops that there isn’t much room for bargaining. I bought three ties and that was the extent of my spending. Sometime Nina and I will go down together.

While I was off wandering around, Nina spent the day cleaning and working on her muumuu for the Polynesian Cultural Center. It needed shortened (done) and fixed in the back (not solvable). We’ll probably have to buy another matching pair sometime. Tomorrow we’re back to work at the Center from 9:00 to 2:30, then taking tickets at the PCC from 4:30 to 6:30 pm. We’ll be pretty tired by the end of the day tomorrow, for sure!

Life is good.

My Macbook is still on the fritz. There was a local guy advertised in the paper, but first we couldn’t get it worked out how to meet and then for some reason he stopped returning my phone calls. So tomorrow I’m headed into Honolulu to an authorized Apple repair shop to hand over my computer. Meanwhile, I have a Dell Windows notebook. That computer is usually for my ham radio activities as what little software is available for ham radios, is only available for Windows systems. It is a pretty good laptop computer, but the whole layout is strange. I keep hitting the “home” key rather than the backspace, for instance, and that key does very unusual things which I don’t really understand. By the time I get my Macbook back, I’ll be used to this computer and perhaps the Macbook will feel strange (but I doubt it).

I figured out a way from my iPad to upload a picture to the picture gallery so I could include it in a blog post. It’s fairly convoluted, but it works. The picture is of the Christus Statue prominently displayed in the Visitors’ Center. The original was carved by Bertel Thorvaldsen in 1838 and is in the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark. The LDS Church commissioned a replica for the 1964 Worlds Trade Fair in New York City. That was popular enough that another was commissioned to be put in the Visitors’ Center in Salt Lake City. Since then, additional replicas have been commissioned to be put in the various Visitors’ Centers around the world. The purpose of the statue is to remind us that Jesus Christ is the center of our religion and provides a way for us to talk to our visitors about the Mormon religious beliefs. It’s kind of fun when the kids come in and say to their parents, “Look! There’s Jesus!” and then want to have their picture taken in front of the statue.

We had an couple of very interesting visitors today. One of the BYU-Hawaii professors brought two Japanese gentlemen in who were priests at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, Japan. One of them was, until recently, the personal secretary to the Japanese Emperor. We have three sister missionaries who come from Japan and two of them came into the Center (they weren’t scheduled to be there) just as these two gentlemen came in. They had quite a spirited discussion in Japanese!

The Meiji Shrine is very famous and quite revered in Japan. This is the shrine where the Emperor and his family go to worship and where literally millions of Japanese go on New Year’s Day. Nina and I have gone once to be there at midnight. While it wasn’t very impressive to us, the fact that we’ve been there at midnight on New Year’s is very impressive to the Japanese and was to these two men as well. They are here to deliver a lecture on the Shinto culture and belief system at BYU-Hawaii this week. Unfortunately, it’s at a time when we can’t be there.

We’ve been on the afternoon shift yesterday and today. Tomorrow is our Preparation Day. I’ll be going to Honolulu while Nina will be staying here to do some baking. Then Thursday through Saturday we’re on the morning shift plus we’ll be taking tickets at the Polynesian Culture Center for the second time on Thursday afternoon.

Nina posted a blog entry this evening as well and was kind of giggling as she was writing. I haven’t read it yet, so I don’t know what might have been tickling her funny bone. Time to sign off and go read it!

Life is mellow!

I’m still divorced from my cloud-stored photos on this iPad. I don’t like this very much, at all. There are some great photos (I’m sure of it!) on my iPhone and in the cloud but invisible to my iPad. Dang!

We had two different activities out of the normal routine today. We had lunch together with the Visitors’ Center Director and his wife and the other senior couple working with us. We had a great time visiting and getting to know each other a little bit. They are all great people and really fun to work with. I couldn’t ask for better people to be working with on a mission.

This afternoon we had our first volunteer assignment at the Polynesian Cultural Center. The PCC has several dinner venus, a couple that have a short program and others that just have food. When someone buys a ticket to the PCC, one of the choices (which also affects the price) is the dinner venu. The largest venu is the Halle Aloha (halle means house or home in Hawaiian). This used to be the theater for the evening show up until a couple of years ago when the new, much larger theater was completed. The Halle Aloha is the most popular dinner location as well. We were assigned to be ticket takers at the Halle Aloha this evening. 

Dinner starts about 4:45 pm and people will be served until about 6:30 pm. The short program (a kind of preview of the night show) starts about 5:30 for 45 minutes. The meal is cafeteria style with lots and lots of choices, including vegetarian, sugar free, and gluten free options. Prior arrangements can be made for just about any diet, including kosher and hallal. At 6;30 we’re finished taking tickets and can then go into the venu and have a meal. That’s actually a nice benefit because by the time we’ve spent the morning and early afternoon at the Visitors’ Center and then two hours standing and taking tickets, we’re in no mood to come home and have to prepare something to eat.

Life is cozy!

My Macbook is definitely on the fritz. The repair guy will get his hands on it tomorrow and perhaps on Monday or so I’ll get a read on how bad the damage is. Hopefully minor…. I’m not in the mood for having to buy another computer! On the plus side, however, I have a full and complete up-to-the-minute backup so nothing will be lost. That’s one of the beauties of TimeMachine on the Apple computers.

I don’t have access to the pictures, either, when blogging from my iPad. So, this post will be picture-less. All of my photos are in the cloud, but the WordPress app on the iPad doesn’t know about the cloud.; the photos have to be physically present in the Photo Library. Perhaps that’ll get fixed sometime as cloud storage is no longer someting of the future.

We had the morning shift at the Center. One of the sister missionary companionships called last night to see if I had anything to help with ants. I do, so we stopped by their apartment on our way to the Center, sprayed around the areas where the ants are probably coming in, and put out some ant bait. Then off for a very pleasant shift at the Center. We were fairly busy all morning long with very few lulls. I was able to visit with quite a few people, take lots of photos, and do a couple of tours. The visitors today included several people from France (not as a group, just folks at different times of the morning) and a couple from Brazil. Along with those we had the pretty normal contingent of people from the US, Canada, and Japan.

We got back to our home about 3 pm. Nina made a quick trip to the store for a couple of items and then suggested that we stop by Subway, grab a couple of sandwiches, and go over to the west side of the island to watch the sunset. We had a very nice time sitting on the beach watching the sun go down. We met another couple there who had stopped briefly on their way to the Honolulu Airport to fly back to the US. They were here on a vacation as part of their thirteenth wedding anniversary celebration. They saw our name badges and came over to visit. He was from Mexico, she was from Korea, they met at BYU in Provo, and have three children. Of course we exchanged pictures and had a nice visit until they had to leave to make their check-in time for their flight.

One thing I’ve noticed about where we live: It is a very family friendly place. We see lots of people out walking on the streets in Laie. Every day several mothers pushing baby carriages or strollers come over to the Visitors’ Center to stroll around the grounds. It’s a very laid-back, comfortable small town. On the other hand, we have to remind people to lock their cars in the Center’s parking lot as we’ve had some things stolen in the past couple of weeks from unlocked cars while people were at the Center, or the Distribution Center, or at the Family History Library, or at the Temple. 

The police suggest that it’s the homeless folks who make their “home” on the beaches who are responsible. According to an article in the paper I read recently, Hawaii has a significant number of homeless people, the fourth or fifth largest homeless population in the US. I’ve no idea how these folks get here, but once here the weather and climate make it quite possible to live without a real place to live. Some locals have told me that the police are currently rousting the beach bums out. There are apparently laws about how long someone can camp on the beach. Only problem is, the only place they have to go is just further down the beach!

So, we’ve had a very pleasant day. And, we get to do it all again tomoorrow, but with differences. Tomorrow at noon the three senior couples working at the Center are getting together for lunch. That will be fun and a nice change. Then tomorrow evening we’ll have our first assignment taking tickets at the Polynesian Cultural Center and then having our dinner there afterwards. We need to be at our assigned spot by 4:30 pm and stay until 6:30 pm. After that we can go into the luau dining area and have dinner. All of the luaus at the PCC are buffet style, which I understand is the norm at all of the resorts. More on that experience tomorrow.

Tomorrow is also May Day, and of course “rabbit rabbit” day.

Life is comfortable.