April 19 2009

Moving, slowly, but moving

Our new campsite.

We decided to stay in Quartzsite until the 27th of April so that Ty could attend day camp and would be able to attend his pack meeting where he will receive his wolf badge. Our permit to stay in the long term visitor area expired on April 15th so we needed to find a new camp. Since Ty's day camp was in Blythe we thought it would be a good idea get an extended permit and camp in the LTVA (Long Term Visitors Area) near Blythe for the day camp. We were disappointed to learn upon arriving at the LTVA in Blythe that one needed to go to Yuma to get the permits. This wasn't practical of course so we simply returned to Quartzsite and setup camp in their two week area and arranged with Ty's leaders to get him a ride to day camp.

I continue to be impressed especially after being in camp for a long time how quickly we can move. I feared adding the wall tent and not really knowing where it would fit would make packing very slow. I was pleased that the tent didn't take very long at all to strike and even though I am eventually planning to get a covered car topper to help protect the tent from rain, for now the tent straps very nicely to the top of the car. Setting up the tent wasn't too bad either. I would like to time myself when I don't have a 20-30 mph wind. Even in those conditions I had the tent up, staked and with the fly on in 50 minutes with Ty, Dallin and Natalyn's help. The kids were cute and looked like little sailors in a storm trying to hold the fly ropes in place against the wind. Natalyn and Dallin doubled up on a rope to have more pulling strength. It is very nice to have kids getting a little older to where their help is becoming much more substantial.

Day Camp

Off to day camp!

The day camp here was held earlier in the year than usual to avoid the extreme heat of the summer. Since the day camp spanned school days the way the organizers arranged things was to have camp split over three days. Thursday and Friday camps went from 4PM to 8PM and the Saturday camp went from 8AM to 4PM. At about noon on Thursday I got a call from a highly stressed scout leader to learn that the parent, we had arranged for Ty to ride with, was stuck in San Diego with car trouble. I volunteered to help give scouts a ride over and help at the camp for the day. Internally I was going through a lot of stress because I really wanted to get the part of the game I was working on finished, but I was also happy my employment is currently flexible enough that I am able to drop things to spend time with the family.

I had a lot of fun at the day camp with Tyrell. The camp leader was very full of energy and encouraged a lot of yelling and cheering, which was very popular with the boys. The camp was arranged into stations at which the scouts spent about half and hour each. On Thursday Ty did leather work, first aid, knot tying and geology. They also listened to a speaker from the BLM, and made a den flag. The next day when we were talking to Tyrell about camp I was very impressed with how much information he had retained from camp.

I didn't go to camp with Ty on Friday, but based on what Ty recounted, I am sure the day was as high quality as the first. He came back with a very nice chart of the Solar System and a lot to say about black holes. He also spoke quite a bit about a relay race game in which he apparently had a lot of fun. Oh yes, and he would not stop talking about BB gun and archery safety. He had a class in that and was very excited to shoot an arrow and a BB gun on Saturday. During the day we had forgotten that Tyrell had an assignment to create a container to protect an egg in an egg drop contest. After picking Tyrell up at around 9PM we were up pretty late with the duct tape and bubble wrap getting a drop container ready.

I dropped a very sleepy, but excited Tyrell of for his ride at 7AM and then returned back to camp. Saturday's day camp invited the parents and family at 2PM to watch the egg drop contest,camp skits and have a barbeque. The rest of us were planning to watch a civil war reenactment during the day and then get to the barbeque. We were disappointed upon arriving at the civil war reenactment to learn that the reenactment would not happen until 1:30PM which would conflict with day camp, so we filled the time running errands, shopping for things not available in Quartzsite.

I know it's stupid, unfortunately even when I am aware thinking is stupid I can't always voluntarily push it out of my mind, I was feeling a lot of pressure about the egg drop contest. Being an engineer it seems that I have a responsibility to know how to make a container for an egg such that the egg won't break, and being a father I have a responsibility to pass that knowledge onto my son so that he doesn't have to feel embarrassed about a broken egg. I had been analyzing and reanalyzing the design we had in my mind. The basic concept I know was nice, but I wasn't sure how well it was implemented. I had about 4 design fixes in my head that I would have liked to implement, but was just able to watch in gripped anticipation as the eggs were dropped. The eggs were dropped off a fire truck ladder. I was feeling even more unsure about our setup when I saw how high the ladder was. What we had done was go for a cone shape,and weight the tip, so that the container would drop like a shuttle cock, hitting nose first and then place the egg high in the center of the cone with just a little padding on the top in case the container bounced and flipped on impact. My thinking was that in as much as the contest included a sized restriction we could get about 50% more padding under the egg by directing the side of the impact. In the end with the way the duct tape pennies and milk jug worked out I think we pretty much broke even, in that we lost most of 2 of our allowed 8 inches to pennies. I was also fretting that we did not have break seams along the outside of the container, which would have been able to dissipate a lot of force and allow the egg a longer path of travel in its deceleration. Anyway, with a heavily flowing stream of ideas of everything that was wrong with our design and implementation and having convinced myself that I wouldn't need to seek a refund in tuition or deem myself and idiot engineer if the egg broke, I watched Ty's container fall and was very pleased that the egg was perfectly in tact. If anyone feels the need to remind me that this was Ty's egg drop contest, I'll invite them to reread the first two sentences of the paragraph. At some point I hope the stupid parts of my brain will cease to generate thought, but I imagine that day is a ways off. If Dallin ever has an egg drop contest with similar rules I think the answer will to put about a dozen eggs in the box with a bunch of nitro-tri-iodide (a mild contact explosive) and watch everyone get sprayed when the box drops. See I told those parts of my brain were still firing with all too much power and frequency.

With all of that said I guess I will hold a little to my bad thinking in that Ty was very happy his egg didn't break and seemed pleased with the level of input he had into the project. I remember when I was in the fourth grade my dad had a very high level of input into a science fair project that I did. I won the science fair and looking back sometimes wonder if that little telegraph project didn't start a career as an engineer. At any rate I do think of it as a time that I knew my dad loved me and was paying special attention to me. Even if I was a bit overbearing about the egg drop project, what I want Ty and all of my children to know is that I love more than I can say or understand and want to do everything that I can to bring them happiness and success.

Getting ready to watch eggs drop.

After the egg drop, the firemen were nice enough to spray the boys.

A very wet and happy Tyrell.

A great barbeque to end day camp.

Ty with his egg protection.

An extra drop for fun.

Quick note about the birds and bees

Really this is more about the bees, it was just fun to include birds in the title. Although as long as they are there I will say I have been impressed with the number of raptors we have been able to see here. I am very bad at my birds, I keep going back and forth between thinking our big birds are hawks and vultures. They don't seem to circle like vultures or have a lot of that fleshy material around their head but are very large and seem to fly with their heads dropped. Back to bees... in the desert water seems to be very important. We were very surprised the other day in camp when we looked at our water bottle. It has a small hole in the top. The hole attracted a swarm of bees. The bees in the picture are only a few of the bees that were around the water container. I put a cup of water out away from the trailer. I haven't noticed any bees by it or by our water jug since. It was quite something to see that many bees just show up like that.

Bees by our water jug.

Happy Easter!

Natalyn works on dying some eggs.

Our days around here have been having highs around 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 C). Lexie and I agreed that it wasn't weather to be putting boiled eggs outside. We had the kids hunt for plastic eggs stuffed with coins and candy. Another constraint we don't usually have added to an Easter egg hunt is that we told the kids that eggs would not be hidden in holes, in as much as we don't know which holes might be homes to gila monsters or rattlesnakes (we haven't seen any snakes here, but have heard they are around). It was fun to watch the excitement of the children as they searched for the eggs.

Conquest of Mt. Molehill

Ty and Dallin on top of the Mountain

There is a little mountain near camp that I climbed earlier this year and decided was a bit to steep for the three youngest kids, but that Ty and Dallin might enjoy climbing. I don't know the mountain's name, it is near Quartzsite so it could be Quartzsite mountain. The mountain is bigger than it looks so I have taken to thinking of it as Mt. Molehill.

Much to my pleasure after introducing the idea of doing a climb with Ty, Dallin and myself, several weeks ago, the two oldest boys had been very consistent in reminding me of the idea. It still remains a bit of a mystery to me how busy we are sitting out here in the middle of the desert. For the past several weeks every weekend we had intended to make the climb something had come up that took the place of the climb. With our time in Quartzsite quickly drawing to a close we realized this was one of our last two opportunities to get the climb done on a weekend and it did not seem wise to wait for the last Saturday before leaving as a climb date if we intended to be successful on the climb.

After having made the resolve to go, it looked like we might once again get our plans sidelined to outside forces. Friday brought a brief although powerful lightning storm, and we were we listening to strong wind through the whole night. The morning was cold and windy, I woke up thinking that we might not be going after all. I am very skittish about lightening and decided that if the weather forecast included any predictions of thunderstorms we would be staying home. I was pleased to see that the forecast was clear of electrical storms and we were indeed finally able to set out on our little journey.

We have been reading the Prydain Chronicles as a family. On the way up the mountain we saw a few vultures. We had fun pretending they were Gythaints. I took the roll of Prince Don, Tyrell was Taren and Dallin was Gurgi. We pretended we were marching toward Annuvin. That's about as far as we took the roll playing, but it made it fun all the same. The mountain is very bare and raw. There is little soil and the sparse vegetation that is there all seems to be prickled with thorns. I am very weak in my geology so I won't make a guess at the type of rock on the mountain. The rock and landscape (minus the cacti and shrubs) reminds me of pictures of Mars sent back from the rover.

One part of the hike required going up a very steep slope of loose rock. I didn't take the GPS and I am bad with distance, but I would guess the slope to gain about 250 feet of elevation. There wasn't any danger of a bad fall, but the boys found this part of the climb quite unnerving. Once we made it past that part of the climb I was excited because I knew the boys would be able to finish the mountain. It wasn't too much later that we were indeed at the summit. I exclaimed, "Wow, boys! I should have found a taller mountain for you. You don't seem to even know you have a mountain under you." The boys wouldn't agree with me and thought they had climbed plenty of mountain. Up on the summit the weather was quite nice, it was a bit breezy, but the breeze kept it from being too hot. Tyrell curled up a while and tried to take a nap. We all had a piece of chocolate cake and a piece of bubble gum to celebrate the summit.

The boys were a bit nervous about going down the steep slope with the loose rock, but were brave enough about doing it once they got there. Since there really wasn't a great way down the slope without kicking rocks on each other I pointed out a carin to Tyrell and told him to go first and wait for us there. Dallin followed and I went last. At that point we were very happy to be through the hardest part of the hike.

Lexie and I were both surprised when we arrived back that the trailer at half passed noon, having allocated the entire day to the hike. The boys really had made great time. I was very pleased with how well they did on the hike. For all of the food we packed it turned out that had we simply taken the chocolate cake and bubble gum we would have been just fine. Something to keep in mind for the next hike I suppose, or not ...

We pretended the vultures were "gwythaints".

Ty and Dallin work up to the summit ridge.

Ty and Dallin strike a celebration pose on the summit.

Dallin enjoys a piece of chocolate cake on the summit.

Ty tries to catch a quick nap on the summit.

Dallin and Ty work down part of the mountain. (Not the steep part)

The steep part of the climb. (It doesn't look steep because the camera is pointed down hill) The sort of big rock just right of center is Ty.

Work, life and stuff

Other odds and ends to mention about the week. Even though the tent is sorely lacking a floor (I am counting days until I can get somewhere that sells good outdoor carpet) the tent is serving very well as an office. Lexie was nice enough to handle the weekly water and sewer chores. She was a bit nervous about the job in that she doesn't drive with the trailer attached very often. It didn't do much for her confidence that she managed to get stuck within 100 yards of departing. Fortunately getting unstuck was a simple matter of switching to 4 wheel drive. I'm sure she would have been able to get out just fine, but there is too much little boy in me to miss a chance at driving the Suburban in four wheel drive. After the initial minor mishap Lexie managed just fine and I enjoyed the first uninterrupted Monday of work I have had in quite a while.

I am almost ready to make a beta release of my game. Finishing this project emotionally has felt very similar to finishing college. My emotions have been running between extremes of excitement and frustration. One minute I feel like a great success, the next moment I feel very shallow and empty, wondering if I have squandered my time and money in a vain pursuit. Without much pause after that my thoughts and feelings will roller coaster back to seeing a very clear vision of what I am doing and realize my proximity to a key mile stone in my goals. I know there is a part of me that wants the game to fail. That sounds ridiculous and is, but all the same it seems to be the way my inner wiring works. Failing makes things simple and give a shield behind which to hide. In a very strange way failure is less scary than success. With that out, there is of course also a part of me that desperately hopes and lives for the game to come to success. I am sure a lot of my internal emotional ride lately is the struggle between these parts of my mind working their way.

In many ways I call the game a success already even though I have only sold one copy so far to a friend. Starting projects is about one billion times easier than finishing projects. I am very pleased to have found within myself the fortitude to stick to a project of the size of the Spelling Castle and get it as close to fruition as it currently is. In the metaphor of a mountain climb I am on the summit ridge and can see the top. I don't believe there is a force short of death that will be able to keep me from finishing a market worthy version of the game. That's the happy news, keeping with the mountain climbing analogy although I am almost to the summit, I realize that I still need to get down, and much like the summit of a great peak, although physically less strenuous than the ascent the path down posses some of the greatest danger. My work in The Spelling Castle isn't going to get anywhere without getting a proper business structure around it. So after I finish the code development over the next couple of weeks it is time for another plunge into the darkness and I get to try to become a business person in short order.

I know everything in my venture does not depend on the immediate success of the spelling game and even though I have taken more than a year to develop it, it really does not represent a full year's work, in that much of my time has been involved in learning new programming languages and some contract work that I took in the fall. I really hate accounting and because of that I do not have a count of how many man hours I have put into the spelling castle, so I really don't have a good way to measure how financially successful the game is. At this point my standards are that if I can feed the family and keep gas in the tank, the game is a huge success. Also as I mentioned before, the simple fact that I will have an albeit simple, fully developed game is a huge personal success in itself.

People all end their lives as food for worms. I believe the best people are the people who can find their dreams and visions before they do. I feel a great sense of inner pride that at this point in my life I honestly feel that every bit of my capacity chases the dream and vision that lies within my heart. As much I would like to see those dreams and visions materialize, I am satisfied that as long as I can keep my eyes looking toward the vision and my feet moving toward the dream, that is enough, regardless the count of my remaining years or days.

The person I am and the person I want to be are vastly different. I picture a person with much more skill, patience, strength and discipline than I currently have. It is hard not to be frustrated with myself as I see these differences in nature and capacity have negative consequences on the pursuit of my goals. With that said, in the words of Popeye, I am what I am and that's all that I am. Right now I am OK with that, as long as little by little I can become less of what I am and more of what I want to be.

Thinking of the inevitable flood of criticism that will come with the release of the game, that with any measure of success will be seen by thousands or hopefully even millions, I think it would be easier to disrobe and run through a super market naked than to face the flood of negative feedback which is certain to come. Come to think of it, a quick little grocery store run might make good marketing, just kidding, mostly. My pictured person doesn't streak in public, it is the scared little man that I am that would think of doing something like that, bad Dan, bad Dan, NO!

Now that I have said that I am afraid of negative feedback I want you to know if I involve you in the beta testing I need negative feedback (If you are not involved in my beta testing but want to be, please let me know). Having fewer things screwed up than my competitors is vital to my success. I guess mostly I am trying to let you know I'm going through quite a bit inside and it really kills me that my efforts haven't amounted to more. I have no desire to spend thousands of dollars printing discs containing a game with bugs that are going to prevent the game's success.

OK, off work, and very disturbing images, I'll get back to life for a little bit. We did a bit of story book cooking this week. I'm not sure how many of my four readers are familiar with the story of Stone Soup. In case you aren't, I'll spoil it for you by telling you it is a story about some travelers that trick a village into fixing a delicious meal for them by telling them they will cook Stone Soup. The soup starts by boiling stones in water which gets all of the townsfolk interested and the travelers tell them little by little ways to make the stone soup even better by adding little things like herbs, vegetables and meat. The kids love to have Lexie make stone soup. She is very careful to scrub and boil the rocks she uses and has come up with a great soup recipe to put around it. We had an added treat by an experiment with adding ham and swiss cheese to a bread recipe. That was very good with soup. The other storybook cooking which was done was the chocolate cake mentioned earlier as the summit snack. I didn't hear the story, actually I think I did, but wasn't paying attention, at any rate, the gist of it is something called thunder cake. When you hear thunder you need to have the cake finished and in the oven before the rain falls to have a real thunder cake. To Dallin's disappointment we wound up with a chocolate cake, in that the thunder and rain came at almost the same time. Of course there are worse things in life than to be stuck with a chocolate cake and the need to try again for a thunder cake.

April 7, 2009

Happy Birthday Tyrell!

Blowing out candles

Opening presents

Frosting the cake (he has a white spoon)

Tyrell turned nine today! It is hard to believe he is already that old. With my encouragement we bought him a pocket knife, one of those swiss army types with lots of gadgets. It was fun to watch him as I showed him all of the knives' features.

Our Doings and Happenings

The Saturday before conference Tyrell had a scout activity to which the entire family was invited. The activity was a sort of mini day camp. The kids had a lot of fun playing on the puddle jumpers, which are simple little stilts created by attaching pieces of rope to number ten cans. After the activity the boy scout troop, who had camped out behind the church, invited us over to roast hot dogs. I forget what the called the biscuit things they did but they were very good. You basically take a biscuit and roast it with a special roasting stick with a dowel at the end. When you are done the hot dog fits in like a pig in a blanket. We enjoyed them so much that we had them for dinner again on Monday night as a lead in to family home evening, however we skipped roasting the biscuit and hot dog separately and simply wrapped the hot dogs in the biscuits.

Work wise I have been making good progress on the spelling game. I decided to purchase a canvas tent to use as an office. When the tent came one of the angle pieces had a defect that made it unusable so until I got a replacement I simply duct taped one of the joints together. The new tent has been working great with a couple of problems I still need to work out. I am sure I can solve them, it will just take some more time, money and effort. One problem is the sun light. A white tent without any shade is very bright inside during the day, this makes the lap top difficult to see. Putting the fly on the tent helps a little, so far I am getting by well enough I don't think I am going to do anything until I see if there is any issue in the forest. The other problem which is a bit more sticky is the dust. Especially last week when we were getting 30mph gusts of wind, everything in the tent would get covered in dust. I am going to buy an outdoor carpet, but so far don't know where to buy one in town. In January you couldn't go anywhere in town without seeing it for sale, but now that the vendors have left I am not sure where to shop for it. I think I'll just grab some in a few weeks when I pass by a Home Depot.

My new office

I really enjoyed listening to conference over the weekend. The children were terrific. When I went to the Priesthood session I took notes so I could give the family highlights of what I heard from the talks. The next day Dallin decided he would take notes. He wrote down four pages before he declared his hand hurt too much to write anymore. I was very impressed with him.

Lexie made Jacob some new booties

Close up of the booties