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

March 22, 2009

Saguaro National Park

I was excited to get down to Tucson so we left the Pinal County Campground a day earlier than we originally planned. On the way to the Gilbert Ray Campground we stopped at the visitor's center for Saguaro National Park to pick up Junior Ranger packets for the kids. I was impressed with a display about water in the visitor's center. It stated that the average house hold uses 100 gallons of water per person per day. Our family has been using 60 gallons per week. With seven people in the family that comes out to 1.22 gallons of water per person per day. I guess that doesn't include laundry which we do at the laundry mat, all the same I think it safe to say we are below the average when it comes to water consumption.

I was pleased that the campground wasn't full, by time we got setup and had dinner it was time to go to sleep. The kids spent Friday (March 6, 2009) working on Junior Ranger packets and school work in the campground. I lost the day reinstalling Vista on my laptop with the hope that I could resolve some of the crumby behavior I was getting from my laptop. I did get some improvement but overall I really think Vista has missed the mark.

The kids working on Junior Ranger packets.

Natalyn measuring a cactus.

I love Arizona sunsets!

There was something eating the prickly pear cacti over night!

Lexie took the kids to see more Petriglyphs.

Petriglyphs in Saguaro National Park.

I find the plants of the Sonora Desert very interesting.

Kitt Peak

When I was somewhere around ten years old we took a family trip with my cousins that included a stop to the Kitt Peak National Observatory. I don't remember much about the trip other than I had a fabulous time and I got in trouble for climbing on the walls. In fact I was confused about the location until I saw an add for Kitt Peak on a web page I was visiting to gather information about the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. I had grown up thinking that the Kitt Peak National Observatory was near Flagstaff. That is part of the beauty of trips as a kid, you just get in the car and go somewhere without sweating the details, sometimes you know where you are sometimes you don't. Well, when I put it that way I realize that not much has really changed.

I was very excited to see that we would be able to fit a visit to Kitt Peak into our vacation plan, I was extra excited when I learned that Myron Anderson, a man I served with as a missionary in Korea about 13 years ago would be able to bring his family and meet me there. He has three kids that are similar in age to my kids. I hadn't seen Myron since Korea so on the way to the observatory in the morning my excitement kept shifting between seeing the observatory and seeing Myron. It was great to be able to do both at the same time.

We did a tour of the helioscope before Myron arrived. I was very impressed with the scale of the telescope and all of the engineering and politics that went into its development. A major problem with getting a large image of the sun through a telescope is that a large image of the sun gathers a lot of sun light, which contains a lot of heat, which will melt telescope components if the telescope isn't large enough. The telescope they have up there of course is gigantic. Another issue that comes up with a telescope that size is that the light path inside the telescope needs to be kept at the same tempurature. The telescope is lined with a network of copper piping for heat regulation. Manufacturing lenses the size they need is its own challenge for several reasons. Anyway, in short the work required to make the telescope requires an amazing amount of expertise and an amazing amount of work. It is very gratifying to see a great human acomplishment like that one. It is one thing to get a great idea in one's mind and another thing to get that many human minds and hands together to achieve a great result.

Myron and his family were waiting for us when we got back from the first tour. I was glad to see that our children seemed to get along well and had fun playing together. We all went on a tour of another telescope. I thought the tour guide and some of the guests were too grouchy about the noise the kids were making, but I decided not to make a scene about it. I don't have much sympathy for people who sit in the back and complain they can't hear, especially when the kids were not being exceptionally noisy. I think the kids exposure to the telescopes is more important than the adults, because for the most parts by the time people are adults, and especially old grumpy ones, most of their life choices are made. Children are the ones who are the most likely to gain a life directing influence from exposure to a tour like the one being presented.

After the second tour we had a picinic at a picinic table next to the parking lot. I had a lot of fun visiting with Myron and his wife, somewhere in the conversation we realized that the third tour of the day was leaving, but by that time I was more interested in visiting than seeing another telescope and was satisfied that the kids were doing just as well to be playing by that point. All in all it was a great day. I would like to go back for one of their night tours sometime, but I don't really know when I'll be able to.

Natalyn and Dallin at Kitt Peak

Some very impressive telescopes

Our kids had fun playing together

It was great to see Myron again and meet his family

Hold on Jacob, it's a wild ride!

Tombstone

We stayed at the Gilbert Ray Campground through the weekend so that we could go to church in Tucson. Finding a church in Tucson proved a bit tricky because in addition to the operating system problems I was having with the computer the internet connection also went bad on both computers. I took the first address I found in the phone book and got us to the church distrabution center about 10 minutes past nine. By 9:30 we had found another building that actually had a meeting in and decided to stay at that one even though we were half an hour late. The rest of Sunday just diappeared the way Sundays seem to. I think a nap and reading "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" to the kids ate the afternoon and evening.

At Kartchner Caverns it is required to get reservations for the Big Room tour and recommend to get reservations for the Rotundra Tour. We made our reservations for Tuesday. We dropped our trailer at the campground and continued on toward Tombstone. We didn't really know what there would be to see in Tombstone, but I had become intrigued with the place as I had been doing a little reading about Wyatt Earp. Our plan was to check town and if there was nothing to do continue on to the border to check out Mexico. It turned out that there was plenty to do in Tombstone albeit it seemed they charged for everything. The reenactment of the OK Corral gun fight was quite interesting to watch. The play emphasied how quickly the events transpired and also how it really wasn't clear who was right and who was wrong in the altercation. While on the subject of quickly traspiring events, just before the play started (in an outdoor theater) as I was working to get kids in their seats I heard a loud crashing sound, that I assumed at first was a stage prop of some sort to get the play started. I looked left over my shoulder (we were on the top row at the request of the kids) and saw that two cars had collided in the intersection. I don't think anyone was hurt. I found myself entertaining the thought of whether or not there was any significance or connection in crashing one's car at the site of the OK Corral gun fight. I'd imagine the connection if any was as simple as a tourist was looking at signs instead of looking at the road, however every now and then it is fun to try to weave a bigger web when connecting events in life. I pity anyone nerdy enough to know what a linear feedback shift register is and I won't bore anyone here with the scant details I can recount from college, but I will share that it is a very simple circuit that can among other things be used to produce "random" numbers. Even though the numbers show up as statistically independent, meaning they don't show any immediately obvious relationship to one another they are in fact generated through a very simple, predicatable and reproducable process. So we can leave the crash at the OK Corral as a couple of distracted tourists or we can view it as a piece of a larger puzzle.

The gift shops in town had a great collection of cap guns. Imagining the outcome of buying some cap guns the kids didn't have a chance, even if they used their own money. Even Natalyn was getting excited about a set of pink cap guns. I was sympathetic to them however. I did leave town wanting a mustache, a long trench coat and a sawed off shot gun. Dan is kind of a tough cowboy name isn't it! I actually see myself as more of a pioneer than a cowboy.

On the way home we stopped, or more acurately were stopped at a border security check point. We asked the border patrol officer what he thought of the safety of a day trip to Nogales, we got a "you're crazy" stare, a small laugh, and an answer of "I wouldn't do it!" We took that as enough to make a full abortion of our plan of seeing Mexico this trip. I was very frustrated to scrap the trip because Nogales is such a neat town. I had been very excited to get the kids into a new country, show them the shops and let them hear people speaking Spanish. I suppose I am going to need to figure out a way to raise some more cash and get them over to Spain or Italy. Pizza in Italy, that sound nice...

Jailed in Tombstone

This historic district in Tombstone is very impressive

In town with Wyatt Earp and company

Get a whip on that horse!

The kids had fun working with some lassos

Natalyn in an 1885 model pickup truck

Boothill, here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a 44, NO LES, NO MORE

Karchner Caverns

We were warned several times that we were taking a lot of kids into the cave, and that kids were often scared in the cave. I don't know a better way to get a kid into a cave than to take a kid into a cave so I really didn't see a viable alternative. I thought it would be much better to take the kids in and let them be scared (they could leave if they needed) than to deny them the opportunity based on what might happen. It turned out the kids had perfect behavior and totally loved the cave. We had a wonderful tour guide who was probably the best balance of personable, educating, and entertaining that I have ever seen in a guide. The limestone formations inside the cave were wonderful to see, of the 30 known cave formations 28 formations are found in the Kartchner Caverns.

Children under 7 were not allowed on the Big Room Tour so I watched Natalyn, David and Jacob while Lexie took Tyrell and Dallin on the Big Room tour. She reported that the Big Room was even more impressive than the Rotunda Room. I was glad she was able to go. I am excited to explore more caves in the future.

Natalyn and David

This visitor's center had some fun mock cave tunnels.

Every now and then Natalyn gets some great photos

 

Pima Air and Space Museam

Having decided that it was not prudent to go to Mexico we had an extra day available to play. Our campground neighbor loaned us a couple of books about day trips in Arizona. After reviewing the books I thought the thing that looked the neatest was the Pima Air and Space Museum. We went to an air and space museum near Seattle when Ty was a toddler and he loved that one, we thought a pretty sure bet he would appriciate this one as well.

The museum is wonderful. The first exibit as one walks in is a reproduction of the Wright Flyer, the aircraft which made the first controlled human flight in 1903, after several wonderful displays including what became David's favorite of the world's smallest air craft, one got to the museum's Black Bird, a stealth jet developed in the early sixties capable of flying at over 2100 mph (mach 3.2) and at altitudes of 85,000 feet, quite a jump from the wood and canvas contraption in the openning display which catalyzed things just 60 years prior. Looking at all of the different air craft left me excited with the idea of designing and flying a jet, it just seems so simple ... motor, wings, controllers, flight! Dallin couldn't get to a paper fast enough after the museum so that he could start drawing airplanes.

Inside my heart I know I want to fly. I also know that I don't want to die any earlier than medically neccessary. I haven't resolved yet just how dangerous flying really is. I know that flying anything I designed would be very dangerous. At some point I think I will find a balace that does have me flying, I might be old enough that I am wearing adult diapers by the time I finally do, but that's all part of the balance.

A great museum!

The kids really enjoyed pretending to pilot some of the planes.

Mmmmm, me want dat!

In the outdoor part of the museum

A plane used by Nasa, for zero gravity training I would imagine, but I don't know.

Ty by one of the Blue Angels

Ty really liked the planes with teeth on the nose art

David's favorite plane was the Bumble Bee.

Arizona Sonora Desert Museum

The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum is another place that I remembered from childhood trips, although I remembered it more clearly because I had been there more times. I had so much fun going with my cousins as a kid, I was delighted that Lexie's sister Jennifer and family would be able to join us there for a day. I really appricate my parents and the great opportunities they gave me as a child. I feel really good when I feel like I am able to share a part of the world with my children. I experience it as a tribute to my parents.

For people who haven't been to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, I would recommend finding a calendar and getting a date marked to go see it. Of course I would lean toward winter or fall weather months for that calendar mark over summer months, a great part of the museum is outdoors. I also recommend the camping at the Gilbert Ray campground, it is only about a 5 minute drive from the museum. There are more places like it now, but at the time the museum was developed it was quite novel in that the museum features several natural displays. We did not have a bit of trouble filling our day as we went between demonstrations and exhibits. I think left on my own I could have spent three or four days there without loosing interest in things. At some point in my life I think I will become a docent at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, or a place like it.

I can't really pick a favorite part of the day, but if I had to, I think it would be a lecture the museum gave in the afternoon about the gila monster and rattle snakes. I was very amused to learn that the statistically most common profile of a rattle snake victim is 1) Male (no surprise) 2) Young 18-35 (no surprise) 3) Drunk (no surprise) 4) Tatooed (suprise!). I guess the mind that generates the idea that a permanent skin picture is a good idea, is also a mind that generates the idea that it might be fun to pick up a potentially fatally posionous snake. I think I would have let the thinking about the tatoos go as funny buy not really significantly realated, but it was the very next day when I was talking to someone about rattlesnakes, they were telling me how they had recently seen one and were throwing rocks at it, but couldn't get it to strike. After that they showed me their tattoo! The presenter said that most rattlesnake bites are preceeded by the words "hey, hold my beer and watch this!" Something I did not realize is that 1 in 20 rattlesnake bites are fatal. A reason more are not fatal is that we have good medical intervention for rattlesnake bites. The catch, which is also something I had no idea of, is the average bill for treatment of a rattlesnake bite at a hospital is $100,000. The presenter also told a story of a person bit by their pet rattlesnake who with a life flight managed a bill of $320,000. Having been to the air and space museum the day before, several ideas for better uses of that kind of money quickly came to mind. Playing with snakes just isn't worth it.

A few interesting things I learned about hawks... A hawk can see a mouse from 1 mile away. Their vision is so sharp that if they were able to read, they would be able to read a newspaper from across a football field. The Kestrel Hawk can see into the ultraviolet spectrum, which enables it to see urine trails of rodents. Finally the Harris's Hawk is a pack hunter. Several hawks will perch around a hunting area. The lowest hawk in the social order makes the first dive when game is spotted. The first hawk likely misses and pushes the prey into a bush. The hawk then uses its talons to flush the animal from the bush. Once the animal is flushed the second lowest hawk in the social order makes its dive and so forth. Pretty cool huh?

Lots of things were in bloom at the desert museum

Happy Jacob!

We got a great view of the Mountain Lions

I forgot what everyone was looking at in this picture.

Isn't that cute?

Ty looking a bit tired

Learning about a bird that can see mouse pee

A western diamondback rattlesnake

Learning about the Harris's hawk

The kids work on some navigating

Kevan, Jennifer, and Natalyn

After the lecture we were so hungry we started lunch in the parking lot

Hotdogs!

I have a weakness for hot dogs and often think their advertising should be regulated much like tabacco or alcohol, it just isn't fair of places to advertise that they are selling something so toxic and enticing at the same time. I can't see a place that advertises hot dogs without wanting to eat a hot dog. In this case it was my own church doing the tempting, so I had a religous obligation to indulge, how convienent!

The morning's schedule and day's travel on Friday (March 14, 2009) centered on making it back to Quartzsite by 4PM for the ward hotdog and hamburger barbeque. I was not disappointed at quarter to four we pulled up next to the pavillion the ward was using and I could see quarter pound hot dogs making their way toward the grill. The parking place doubled as a camp site in as much as it was in the South LaPosa Long Term Visitor Area. It was quite a convienence to be able to take the house to a church function in that it made it simple to put the kids to bed afterward.

There was a brief animal demonstration by a member of the Arizona BLM. The kids got to sit right up front and get a great view of a gopher snake, desert tortoise, screech owl and Harris's hawk. I left the demonstration thinking a gopher snake seemed like a pretty handy critter in that it likes eating mice and loves eating rattlesnakes.

After I had finished my hotdog and had been stealing chips of the kid's plates for a while my friend Alva came by and said he was on his way home to watch the BYU-San Diego game. I don't remember if I was invited or somehow just invited myself, after getting cleared by Lexie to ditch the activity (I had what I came for) Ty and I went off with Alva to watch the game. I was very amused as Ty watched the game he would point out the tatooed players as rattlesnake bait. The game ended wrong if you are a BYU fan, but it was entertaining to watch.

When we got back we learned that people at the church party had gone home before starting the bon fire which they had planned. The BLM ranger told Lexie she could have the wood and was welcome to a fire if she wanted it. As we pulled in Lexie and the younger kids were sitting about 10 feet back from a very impressive pile of coals. The five of them had enjoyed a fire that was big enough for the two or three hundred people it was intended for. Down in Mexico they sell marshmallows almost the size of baseballs. The kids had a lot of fun roasting their oversized marshmallows over the oversized fire. I was impressed with how quickly the fire burned. It didn't seem like it burned much longer than a normal campfire, just hotter. When it came time to put the fire out we decided that we would have to make an early water trip the next day and put most of our containered drinking water onto the fire. It was impressive as we poured the water on the ground it would just stay in a rolling boil. I think the ground was holding a lot of heat from the fire. After we poured over 10 gallons on the fire and everything was underwater we decided it was good for the night.

At the ward party waiting for an animal demonstration

Gopher snakes seem like pretty neat critters

Dallin on the edge of his seat

The kids got a great view of the animals

Ty and I came back from watching the game to find a party!

Monday After Vacation

I titled this section with the word Monday but it really describes the whole week. Be warned it is very whiny so probably much more fun for me to write than for you to read so I won't fault you for not reading it. It is easy to blame the vacation getting everyone worn out, but I think it was just coincedental. I think it would have been a hard week regardless. My last work day before the vacation was fighting Vista. I spent my first two work days back between fighting Vista and then finally giving up and switching laptops with Lexie to go back to XP. Mac lovers need not give me any advice. I am planning on dumping the Windows scene as soon as I have the cash for nice Mac laptop. I had an extention to the spades game I wrote for Global Chat and Games to write which should have taken about two days. With a full week of effort working well into Saturday I finally got it finished. Vista wasn't the only problem during the week. The weather had heated up quite a bit so I needed to figure out a way to configure my portable air conditioner for the suburban (last year's solution was to go to Alaska). Nothing really went wrong with the generators, but it seemed like between giving them oil and gas I was monkeying with them quite a bit, which wasted a lot of time and I would loose time switching my office between the car and trailer as Lexie needed the car for in town items. Natalyn broke out into what we thought was a case of chicken pox, which turned out to be hives, which also added to the general stress in that what ever had gotten her sick I think was also dragging a bit on everybody else. Really just having a sick five year old on its own drags on everybody else. Thursday I actually got a nice day of work done and Friday started out as a very promising day. Lexie was in town running errands and I was working from the trailer and watching Natalyn. After a couple hours of getting some nice progress on the code, Lexie called and explained the trouble she had in town with a dead battery. A couple people tried to help give her a jump start but the efforts failed. One of the people "helping" called a tow truck, which did get the truck started but tagged us with the burden of trying to get $45 back from our insurance. Had we made the call to the insurance company I'm sure there wouldn't have been a problem, but since the other guy called the tow truck directly there might be issues. I hope there won't be issues but anyway it is a pain. A dead battery really shouldn't consume a day, but it did. Lexie got home and we discovered that the car would not start again. An errand she hadn't gotten to before the dead battery was getting gas. This meant that we didn't have gas for the large generator and hence couldn't run the air conditioning. I don't think the heat was dangerous, but it was very uncomfortable. We tried charging the car battery with the small generator but after a couple hours it didn't really seem to be making much progress. With some calling around I found a place in town that sold a battery that would fit the suburban so we decided we would get a neighbor to help us jump the car and then go buy a battery. I took a quarter mile walk over to our nearest neighbor and was pleased to find he was willing to help us. After about an hour of trying several things including using the batteries from the trailer we weren't able to get the car to even pretend to start. I felt bad enough for the time I had taken from the neighbor so I didn't ask him for a ride to town. After some consideration of taking an 8 mile walk with the stroller to go fetch a battery and some encouragment in a more practical direction from Lexie I decided to call Alva and ask for a ride. I felt horrible about interupting the Utah game (or really it should be called the Arizona game given the result) I was sure he would be watching, but I was very greatful to be rescued. After getting to town and back, and getting the battery installed we had just enough time to throw everyone and dinner into the car and rush off to get Tyrell to scouts late. After dropping Ty off we did the grocery shopping, got gas and dropped Lexie off at the laundrymat. The rest of us picked up Ty and then came back to the laundrymat where we waited until about 9PM for the laundry to finish. Saturday we had been talking about doing a hike up the little mountain next to camp, but with the inefficiency of the week I felt a lot of pressure to get more work done. With both the mountian climb and the work seeming like important uses of my time I decided to do the work because it sounded like less fun and thus was most likely more important. I was pleased that with most of Saturday I was able to finish my programming task for Global Chat and Games.

The fall out of the week is that I found the inefficiencies of our current infrastructure so frustrating that I have decided that I am going to purchase a canvas wall tent to use as an office. The economics don't translate directly, but overall I think it will be a good investment. The good work days I have had in my current life style have been so good that I feel very justified in my pursuit of the life style. The bad work days of last week were bad enough to have me wondering if I was stupid and crazy. I have resolved that I am mostly crazy and just a touch stupid. Crazy is pretty much unfixable, but stupid can be overcome or at least counter compensated with perserverance and hard work.

Jacob and David