When we moved in and told the manager we wanted to put grass in our backyard (it was all bark), she said that we could, but we need to take it out and put bark back in. So we knew this day was coming... today I tore out our backyard and put in a couple of yards of bark. To get to our backyard you need to go through our house, so now our house smells like bark (Rachel doesn't like it). We also picked up some wood (for another project in which we took a hide-a-bed out of our couch), so our house also smells like fresh cut lumber. I think it smells great.

One of my counselors and I had the chance to go and meet a new family in our ward too. They haven't been very active but are thinking about coming back. I was amazed again by the testimony of my counselor and his ability to relate to peoples' situations. I think the Lord knew who to send.

I also cleaned out my office at school. It was really weird - considering that it's been my office longer than we've lived in this apartment, it might be more weird for me moving out of the office than moving out of our apartment... am I really done with school?

Yesterday morning we were taking Jacob to preschool and Rachel said something about it being my last day of school.

Ethan:
That means we're going to have a birthday party!

Jacob:
Ethan! we're not supposed to say that!

Needless to say I had a surprise early birthday and graduation party. Hopefully I passed all my classes.

School is half over! The only problem is that the first half is the easy half... But I've decided that I can live with two B-'s and two C's, so that takes some pressure off. I am learning some cool stuff and am a little sad that I won't get to take some of the follow up classes. Rachel says that that feeling should fade when I'm finally graduated.

School has been going on for a few weeks now... and it's not any fun. I'm not working this term as I'm taking a heavy load so that I can graduate this term (so that I can start at Amazon in January).

We are starting the process of renting a house for December! A couple of (some say big) coincidences came together while we were in Seattle last month, and we ended up taking a look at a very nice house that was for sale (and about to become available for lease too).

We really liked the house, but it was a little on the extreme of what we wanted to spend on rent. Over the last few days, we've talked to the owners several times, and they lowered the rent to the point that we couldn't say no!

I signed my papers for Amazon a couple of days ago!

On a more depressing note, between Jacob, Ethan, and Makaylin, there have been 8 pukings in our house and one in the van over the last two days. I gave Ethan a bucket to puke into and told him that if he gets all of his puke in there next time, he'll get 10 pennies (they love pennies). And today I felt so sick I haven't eaten anything except a couple of grapes.

In other news: Rachel has been looking for places for us to live (hard to do when you want to work downtown, have less than a 45 minute commute, and be as cheap as you can on rent).

I had a great interview with a local company, but they told me that they couldn't make any commitments as far out as January. I really like the people there. The University called be back for a second interview too!

I also had my interview with Amazon:

First interview was ok, but there was a problem involving some geometry that I didn't know.

The second interview was lunch, with someone who may be my future manager. It was great talking to him, but our lunch was really slow so we had to have them box it up (and all of my interviews were thereafter running 15 minutes late.

Third interview was the "bar raiser." The bar raiser is someone from another team that has special interview training and is supposed to insure that the hire is high quality. This was probably my best interview.

The next interview was a little rocky. On the ride home I was thinking about how foolish I was for not giving a really simple solution.

The fifth interview was pretty good, but we were cut off about fifteen minutes short (because all my interviews were running late and we were supposed to meet my recruiter in a different room. He ended up giving me some homework and told me to turn it in by the next morning.

The homework was pretty fun and since I only had my netbook, I did it in Javascript.

Before my recruiter meet with me, the manager of the managers of the teams I was interviewing with stopped by to chat for a few minutes. He wasn't scheduled to, but he said that he happened to be around, so he wanted to tell me more about the company. It was nice talking to him, and just like everyone else, he was really nice.

Then I met with my recruiter, who told me that they usually meet with the people before the interviews to tell people what to expect... She made sure she had the facts straight about when I was graduating and what degree I was earning. She also told me to expect to hear from them in one week.

Then I spent my time in airports working on my homework.

We got a call yesterday (two days after my interviews) saying that they were going to make an offer. I almost didn't believe her; I was just expecting a "it was close, but not at this time." I'm so glad I interviewed with Google as the format was the same and this time I knew what to prepare for (I basically studied the wrong material for the Google interviews).

We'll be moving in December (after I graduate) to Seattle. I'll be working on a product called Webstore (http://webstore.amazon.com/) with some pretty awesome people!

Today I asked Ethan what he was doing on the potty chair and he said that he was going #2. I asked him why and he said:

"Because I get chocolate milk... and ten pennies... and licorice."

I'm guessing that that list is going to keep getting longer and longer until he actually goes.


I had an interview with the University today. It went ok, but I really wasn't prepared for it. They asked me questions like "tell me about a time you and a co-worker had a disagreement." Not that I was expecting the Google/Amazon type of questions, but still. I'd give myself a C+ and would be surprised if they called me back.

I've got two other interviews set up for this next week, so that's good. One is with a local company that I think would be awesome to work for and the other is the onsite with Amazon. Hopefully I can convince someone to take a risky bet...

On the ride home yesterday, Rachel was telling me something Ethan had done and I said:

"Ethan, you're cute"

And he said:

"Yep, I am cute, and funny too!"

Ethan is kind of trying to get potty trained. After a big accident (and I mean really big...), Rachel put a diaper on him (after a long shower). He started freaking out saying that he wanted to go potty (the only reason he wanted to go potty was because he wanted licorice) and Rachel kept saying that he couldn't, he had to wear a diaper because of his accident. Then Jacob said:

"If the kid wants to go potty, then let the kid go potty."

(we think he must have gotten "the kid" from his grandpa)

Things have been going well. I've had a second phone interview with Amazon and they are scheduling an onsite interview for me. I also have an interview with the UO and am trying to get one with a local company. Hopefully I'll be able to get a job lined up ;).

Jacob said that he wants me to be done with school so that I'll play my guitar again... he's not the only one!

Just got off the phone with with Amazon (for my first phone interview). I feel like I did well enough to get a second phone interview - we'll find out in about a week!

For the Mormons: The stake president called me last week and asked if I could meet with our area authority and ten other SPs... They wanted to ask me (and two other EQPs) about our service and how they can support their EQPs in general. We were only there for the first hour, but it was a pretty awesome meeting. They started with a hymn and a kneeling prayer, and then we read and studied the scriptures for about 30 minutes. They then asked us a lot of questions about our service and how they could support us. All in all it was a very spiritual meeting.

Google didn't take me :(. But I've got a friend at Amazon (in Seattle) who would be awesome to work with - he recommended me to his boss so I think I'll have a phone interview pretty soon! I'm also excited about a couple of local opportunities, so hopefully we'll have a job lined up by January.

We cooked some trout on our bbq last night and I remember why I'm not much of a fisherman - cleaning and prepping fish is no fun (not that a cow would be any better, but I don't want to go hunting for cows either). The whole time, all I could think of was Gollum from Lord of the Rings biting into live fish.

Yesterday we were driving home and Jacob said:

"Dad, I have bad news, Ethan smashed my hand in the door, and I have good news, my hand doesn't hurt anymore."

Then Ethan and Jacob had this dialog (starting with Ethan):

"Dad, I have bad news, Jacob smashed my hand in the door."

"No I didn't"

"Jacob, did you smash my hand in the door?"

"No!"

"Did mom or did dad?"

"No!"

"Did Makaylee?"

"No!"

"Jacob, who smashed my hand in the door?"

"No!"

(and then it all repeated, not as cute the second time around)

When we put the kids in bed I gave Ethan a kiss and he yelled: "Don't step on my flowers any more sir!"

I really don't know where they get it from.

Still no news from Google ;)

Still no news from Google... but in other news, some former classmates emailed me yesterday about a job. I don't think that they could have any idea that I'm starting to look, so I was pretty shocked when he said:

"Hey! I was talking with (x) at lunch today, and we were talking about how we should get you on at Concentric Sky. You in the mood for a java programming job?"

I wouldn't doubt that this is in answer to all the prayers (and fasts) being done in our behalf. I'm meeting with them on Wednesday to find out more!

Also: added a few 4th pics from Bill: http://witski.com/

Had my Google interviews (5 of them) yesterday. The first and last were a little rocky (each had a technical question I struggled with). The middle three were pretty good. Over all I'd give my self a B (but I don't know how we'll most of their candidates do, so I don't know if it was good enough). If they don't hire me, I'm going to reapply in 6 months ;).

Jacob is becoming much more independent with getting himself cereal in the morning. The other day he wanted some instant oatmeal, so he got a chair from the table and moved it over to where the cereal cabinet is and got the box down. Then he asked me if the dishes in the dishwasher were clean, and since I didn't know, I just told him to get one out of the cupboard. So he moved another chair over to get his bowl. Next he moved another chair over to the sink so that he could put some water in the bowl.

Since the microwave is right under the cereal cabinet, he just used his first chair to put his cereal in the microwave. Ethan, always excited to watch things in the microwave, grabbed the last chair from the table and slid it over so that he could see.

When the cereal was done, Jacob walked over to the table and yelled "Dad! there's no chair for me to sit in!"

FYI: Google asked me for more availability, so it doesn't look like I'll have my interviews this week.

We've been trying (just a little) to potty train Ethan (the boy is almost three for crying out loud...). Anyway, I put him in some underwear and set a timer so that I'd remind him to go every 10 minutes (I really didn't want to deal with an accident). The first two times he went, but the third time Jacob informed me:

"Dad, somethings wrong with Ethan, nothings coming out of him!"

The rest of the night, out of the blue, Ethan would say:

"Dad, somethings wrong with me."

We had an awesome week up in Washington visiting friends and family. One funny story: Jacob was sitting next to one of his cousins while watching fireworks. The two had become good friends over the last couple of days. I said something to Rachel about her (Rachel) being cute and gave her (Rachel) a kiss (we were sitting right behind Jacob). Jacob's cousin then gave Jacob a kiss on the cheek!

A little while latter she called one of her friends over to watch the fireworks with them (he was a boy). When he came over, he just stared at her and Jacob (with his back to the fireworks). She offered him some pop corn, and without taking his eyes off of Jacob, he popped one in his mouth (in a very cute, intimidating way). For the remainder of the fireworks: she kept saying: "look at the fireworks"; he kept staring at Jacob; Jacob was oblivious to what was going on; Rachel and I were laughing our heads off.

Here is a picture of Jacob sharing the rocket launcher we built:

Hopefully we'll get some more images up on witski.com.

I wasn't telling anyone because I didn't want to crash and burn too badly, but I had a first round of phone interviews with Google (Seattle)! I think that they went really well. In 5-10 days I'll know if I made it to a second round, which consists of five interviews in person up in Seattle.

A couple of days ago I was getting Jacob up to go to preschool (while everyone else was sleeping) when I noticed a sippy cup of juice in his bed (which is a no-no). So I asked him about it and he gave me a pretty detailed story about Ethan coughing and Rachel giving Ethan a cough drop and Jacob his juice. I assumed that this happened the night before as I was taking a shower, but Rachel informed me that "you were the only person in this house that was sleeping at 3am." I guess Ethan's coughing woke everyone else up, and Rachel had to deal with them all (I blame the early morning basketball on my deep sleep). What a nice wife I have!

Last night, at 3am Ethan was again coughing, but I was the only one who was woken up by it. I gave him a blessing and asked him if he needed anything; he said "yeah... sleep."

Another day of basketball... about half-way through, when I had yet to make a basket, I reminded the guys that I had a wife and kids, and that they depended on me to score...

I did actually make one, but only one ;), luckily for my team I had a couple of rebounds.

After about a nine month break, I played basketball this morning. The good news: I'm not much worse than I was. The bad news: I wasn't very good to begin with, so it wasn't difficult to be not much worse.

Ok, this is a really awesome hack that scares me... You go to a website in a tab, then you click on one of your other tabs or walk away from the computer. The website in the first tab realizes that you aren't looking at it anymore, and changes its title and appearance to match a website you've recently used (it can find this out by looking in some of the data your browser saves to make loading the page faster the next time you look at it). You put in your log in info with out looking closely at the url, and they just stole your log in information.

This website demos it (it works in Internet Explorer and FireFox, but didn't work in Chrome - which doesn't mean that Chrome is any safer):
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/a-new-type-of-phishing-attack

Ever since Rachel's parents gave us their old gas barbecue we've have pork chops a couple of times and burgers about three times a week - it's awesome.

Also: I've talked to the director of technology for the business school a couple of times about a job over the last a year or so (whenever I've thought that I might not have a job in the near future). During my second chat (a month ago), he mentioned that one of their developers wasn't performing very well and causing a lot of grief, but that because it's a university employee, it's a long process to fire someone and he didn't think they were ready to head down that road. During this last week he contacted me and said that they were going to start the process of firing him, and that he'd keep me posted about when they start the official hiring process for a replacement.

There are a few pluses, like job security, almost free classes ($15 a credit), insurance for the family, etc. But the pay is a little on the low side - we'll see what I think about that after I've applied to a few places ;). The other major minus is the work environment; they only have a couple of developers, and that's basically the same environment I've been in. I think I'm ready and want the experience of working in a large development team. We'll see what happens.

I'm up to the speed I was in middle school (and about at the same height).

In middle school, we all had to run a timed mile; I think that we did it at the beginning and end of each year. Anyway, I think my best was around 6:15 or so.

My 10 minute jogs have been at a pace of about 9 miles per hour (which takes me about 1.5 miles) for a while, so I decided to up it a little for the last couple of weeks. Now I'm running at 9.6 miles per hour, which happens to put me at a mile in 6:15... so I'm back to where I was. But, I would much rather be playing basketball, and think I might try waking up early this Friday (good luck to me).

Today Jacob, Ethan, Makaylin and I went for a walk while Rachel was at institute. Ethan had been sleeping, so he decided to ride in the wagon with Makaylin while Jacob rode his bike. When we got to the basketball courts, Jacob road around while I pushed and pulled the wagon around.

Eventually Jacob tried to pull the wagon while riding his bike, but he couldn't hold on and ride at the same time. I put the wagon handle around his bike seat and he rode around with the wagon for the rest of the walk. All of the kids loved it, and I liked the fact that Jacob was all out of energy by the time we got back home.

I've just finished another take home midterm, and I am sick of them! I used to think that a take home test was awesome, but why? I must not of had the same type of teachers I have now.

Please, just give me the 50-80 minute class period to do what I can - and when it's over, it's over!

In other news, I met the guy who I replaced in Steve's research group on Saturday. I asked him about the place he worked at and if they were hiring. He told me if I wanted it, there is a job in Vietnam I could have (apparently they have a software team over there that he trains in person once a year). I don't know... I've been thinking about it...

Some of the work I've been doing for the private company I work for (I work part time for a private company and part time for the University), has been making demos of some of the software we work on. Rachel has even helped me out, here is our latest one:

I don't think I ever blogged about this, so I will now that Winter term is over. All of my complaints about homework and take home midterms/finals this last term came from the most dreaded CS (computer science) class for graduates at the UO, 621: Algorithms, especially when taught by Andrzej (which it was). He thinks that if a problem takes him 10 minutes to think about, then it shouldn't take us any longer than an hour or two...

The take home midterm had a due date of Monday (at noon), and was probably going to be given on Wednesday, but after a couple of delays, it was finally given out Friday afternoon. He had mentioned that he was making extension deals with people who had things going on over the weekend, so I tried this:

Hello Andrzej,

I'm not sure if my situation merits an extension or not, but here it is:

Due to work/other group meetings, I can work on the midterm today, tomorrow afternoon, and Monday before class. Sunday is sacred to me, and I do not do any work on it (for which I've been very blessed).

From what you said, I should have enough time, but from former students I hear that I will need more... So if you think Tuesday at noon is an acceptable extension, I'll take it.

Thanks,
Anthony


and I got this back:

Sure, you can get a religious exemption -- as long as you keep your Sabbath and do not work on Sunday.

Andrzej


In another class, I was working in a group and one of my friends (who was also in my algorithms class) kept bugging me about how I couldn't meet with them on Sunday to work on the project. So I forwarded Andrzej's email to him saying "now you wish you were Mormon!"

So, in closing, I think I've said this before, but I really have been blessed since I stopped doing any homework on Sunday - I've only received one grade lower than an A, an A- (though I have taken classes pass/fail - as you can take a few of your classes as such - and one of my physics classes would have been scary!).

There is a chance that I won't have a job at the end of Summer (the grants I've been working on are finishing up - and unless more are approved, I won't have any work). So I've been applying to a few places, we'll see what happens. But Rachel hopes I don't find anything, as that would force me down the path of graduating in the Fall (as opposed to Winter or Spring). It would have to be a job that either paid well or gave me the experience I need to get a job that does in order to make it worth dragging school out. Anyway, if we save our tax refund, we could live off of it while I finish up in the Fall (though we would need to take out loans for tuition, which will run us 5K - and I'm a resident!).

Only 11 or so Mondays and it'll be Summer! In other news: it was the first day of Spring term today - this term might be worse than last...

Jacob did a great job giving his first talk in primary (because Rachel prepared him so well). Rachel gave him one picture at a time, which he held up and said a sentence on; it went something like this:

(holding a picture of president Monson)

This is president Monson, he's our prophet

(holding a picture of Joseph Smith's first vision)

He talks to Heavenly Father

(holding a picture of an ear)

If we listen to him, we can know

(holding a picture of Jesus)

that Jesus Christ is our Savior

(holding a picture of a family)

how to help our family

(holding a picture of the Earth)

how to help the Earth

(not holding any picture)

I know that this is true, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

He did awesome (which means that Rachel did awesome). When we were doing FHE this evening, I was showing some pictures with my lesson. One of the pages I wasn't using had an Earth on it, when Ethan saw it, he said "how to help the Earth... that's what Jacob says" - which is another testament of how much Rachel practiced with Jacob.

And just to end my random nonsense: we started FHE singing "Families can be Together Forever" and ended by eating some crepes. When we were eating the crepes, Jacob was singing the line "I have a family here on Earth, they are so good to me" - but with "family" replaced with "crepes". It was pretty funny, but maybe you had to be there.

And as one final note, I'm starting to abandon the period inside the quotation; i.e., "crapes". in favor of "crapes." - even though I'm not sure I want to fully embrace the Queen's English. What do you think? (Maybe I'm too tired and should go to bed before this drags out any further.)

It's Spring break! but it really isn't that exciting as I need to work a ton this week to make up for the last couple of weeks (in the which I've been finishing up a final project and two take home finals). I really just want to play Warcraft III... speaking of which, I see that beta testers are releasing videos of Starcraft II on youtube.

Ethan and Jacob have been in their beds for about 10 minutes. About 5 minutes ago Ethan started saying "mmoooomm" over and over again. Rachel told him to go to bed (as she was feeding Makaylin and I figured I'd just let him give up). After Rachel told him to stop, he did. So I went up to check on them, and he gave me his sad story about how he wanted mommy and I told him that I know he does, but that she isn't coming up as it's night-night time. I gave the boys kisses and as I was leaving Ethan said, in his little grumpy voice: "you're giving me a headache."

The other day Rachel, Jacob, and Makaylin went to a primary activity, so Ethan and I spent a few hours together. We had a lot of fun.

One of the things we did was go and visit some friends who are like grandparents to the boys. They have four dogs, so I asked Ethan if he wanted to go and see if the dogs were home and he got pretty excited.

They have this little model car that Ethan always wants to play with (but it's not a toy), so he always goes looking for it, same thing with a motorcycle they have. We were talking about how much Ethan likes cars and pretend driving. A little while later they were asking him how old he is. He was saying some non-sense like 5, so I asked him how old he needs to be to drive (this is much more important to him than his current age), and he replied 16, as he's been told many times.

When we were getting ready to go, the woman asked Ethan if she could have a hug; he gave her one, and then proceeded to give all four dogs kisses. She remarked something to the effect of "I guess we know who matters most!" It was pretty funny.

It's been a bad couple of weeks between excessive homework, a killer take home midterm, and being called as the Elders Quorum president... but I had to tell:

Jacob and Ethan were watching the movie Cars; I went up stairs and was bobbing my head a little to the music. Jacob said "no dancing" so I got a little more into it and he said "no dancing... I'm getting mad... ah!" So then Rachel started dancing and got the same reaction, but with an added, "do you see how we aren't dancing?!" (exactly mimicking us when we say things like "do you see how our feet aren't on the table?").

Though we really need it, we are really bad at exercising. But we do like buying things! So we decided that since common sense wasn't enough motivation, we could pay ourselves for doing what we know we need to do. We've never had a "his" and "hers" money division, and don't like the idea, but we each want a couple of things more than the other person, and have a hard time justifying why the family should purchase the item(s).

For instance, I really want a new motherboard and cpu for our main computer. Our computer works for what we use it for, but there are certain software development things that I only do on my work computer (located at the school), as our computer slows to an unbearable crawl when I try to use a few of my favorite tools. So I'd like to spend about $400 upgrading our computer. Rachel wants to get some games for a wii.

We don't have a wii, and we can't reuse all of our old computer parts (like the graphics card and RAM). So we've decided that if we pay ourselves $5 per time we exercise (which goes in our savings account), when we get enough money for the things we want, the family will help pay for the accompanying parts (like the wii and RAM).

I would much rather play basketball as my exercise, but our apartment makes the drive time as long as I'd be able to play, I've just been jogging in the complex workout room. We've been at it for a couple of weeks, and I'm at about 10% of the way there, and Rachel is probably around 25%.

Anyway, I thought I'd let you all know the details since it's helped us go from exercising 1 time a week to 3-4 (hopefully it sticks), and you may find a similar method of motivation for yourself (if you lack discipline, as we do).

Today I read a couple of chapters in Acts (4 and 5 http://scriptures.lds.org/en/acts/4). It seems that the body of the church was very close knit, and I wonder how much persecution contributed to this. I guess that the scriptures are full of examples of God's people being humbled in one way or another, which tends to draw them together.

One point of interest in these chapters is the story of Ananias and his wife. I don't quite understand what Peter means when he says:

"Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not ^alied unto men, but unto ^bGod."

Does it mean that his mistake was saying that he was giving all the money, or in retaining part? I suppose if he had covenanted to live the law of consecration (to have all things common), then he was guilt for retaining, but I feel like an extra sentence in this verse would be nice. I tried looking up other translations, but was left with the same question. I guess the moral of the story is don't lie.

Sometimes the boys like to take chairs and line them up to make trains and cars.

Here's one of them in a car with their backpacks driving to grandmas house (Ethan is putting the keys in the ignition):

Here is an older one of a train they made. I think it was a night train and every seat was taken:

a dorky eye-fi demo:

As a follow up to my last post: last night the boys and I were throwing balls at each other (it started out as "catch" but turned into dodge ball). At one point Jacob threw a couple at me and when I returned fire I was just a little to the left with my aim. Rachel and Makaylin happened to be on the couch, which was a little to the left of Jacob, so Rachel had to deflect the incoming missiles. She then said something like "boys!" and Ethan ran over to her and said "sorry mommy." I guess he's the official apologizer for me!

I was just reading D&C 67 (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/dc/67) and was again impressed at how often people (including Joseph Smith) are chastened in the D&C. Although, now that I say that, I'm reminded of the clearest revelation I've ever received, and it too was a strong reminder of what I already knew I should be doing.

A few minutes ago Rachel was downstairs chatting with me. Jacob came down and I asked him if we was all done picking up the cereal (he spilt a bunch on the floor). He said yes, but in a way that made us feel like we needed to go and check. So we all started up the stairs but Rachel was kind of blocking the way and going slow so that I'd push her up the stairs. But instead, I went between her legs and lifted her up on my shoulders. She started freaking out, grabbing onto the railing and saying that I needed to put her down right now. So I didn't, and took her up the stairs, which calmed her a little once we were off the stairs, but she continued to insist that I put her down. So I started spinning around (like I do with the kids) and she started freaking out again. It was great. Then I let her down and Ethan said: "sorry mommy." We really need to get a bunch of cameras in our house so that we can relive some of these moments!

I might try something for a while. I usually read a chapter in the mornings, so maybe I'll try and say something I noticed. So in Isaiah 5:25 (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/isa/5/25#25), we read

"25 Therefore is the ^aanger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath ^bstretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still."

Which I always read the last part ("but his hand is stretched out still") as saying that His mercy is extended, if they will reach for it. But is it saying that His hand is still stretched out in anger? The "but" could go either way, it could be "and yet He is ready to redeem" or it could be "even though He's smitten them, He'll continue to do so." A quick search reveals that newer translations point to the latter, not that I don't believe that He'd redeem them (or us) when they turn to Him.

Jacob made it to 4 ;P

I already talked about Ethan this morning, so I might as well talk about him tonight. I just put him in bed and I said:

"night night, I love you"

"yeah"

"did you see grandma and papa today?"

"yeah"

"did you have fun at Chuck e Cheeses?"

"yeah"

"your such a good boy"

"yeah"

"I love you"

"yeah... I, I, I, I pick, my nose"

I was just talking to Ethan:

"do you want some cereal?"

"um, yeah"

"what kind?"

"um, the dinosaur said"

"oh, what kind did the dinosaur say?"

"rahh"

About a week ago a few nerds from school sent out an email saying something about a starcraft (the computer game) tournament. Then I read the email a little closer and it said that they were going to get together to watch a match (online) in a starcraft tournament. When I got home I told Rachel that these guys have way too much time on their hands, and that if I had some time to burn, I'd much rather play than watch.

As I was working last Saturday I heard some noise down the hall, upon investigating, I discovered a few students watching a commontarried game of starcraft on the large projection screen. So I watched a bit and thought that they were big dorks. After writing a few lines of code, I found myself saying, "I really need... some water! yes I do, boy am I thirsty" and out the door I went to go and get some water (from the same room that had the starcraft game going). So I watched a bit more and the game ended. What dorks I thought, as I went back to work.

When I got home I some how talked Rachel into watching a commontarried game of starcraft as we ate dinner (we almost always have a laptop hooked up to the tv)....

Now I find myself sympathizing with sports fans. I've never been a big follower myself, but I can see why someone would want to spend all their time watching. I think I've watched at least an hour a day since Saturday and it's really starting to cut into my sleep time...

While I was at school today, Rachel had a power outage. I guess the lights kind of flickered, then went out, then back on, then off. She thought it was really weird. Then she thought she heard some clicking sounds, so she peeked her head into the garage and found two little boys on a table switching the breakers on and off.

When we were talking on the phone she told me that the stove and fireplace (electric fireplace) wouldn't turn on. I asked her if all the breakers had been switched on, and that the on position is usually towards the center of the breaker box. She said that there were some bigger ones (the dual ones) that probably weren't on. I told her just to switch them on and she told me "no way."

"Why not"
"There's a sticker on it saying 'Danger, 4 inch lock shackle required' "
"4 inch lock shackle??" as I'm starting to laugh
"No, 1/4 inch"
"1/4 inch lock shackle? I don't even know what that means. Just turn it on"
"It says 'Danger' "
"It's ok, just turn it on"
"I'm not going to turn it on when it says 'Danger'- how come it says danger"
"I don't know, probably because it's a bigger fuse..."
(silence)
"Fine, if you can live with out the stove and fireplace, I'll look at it when I get home."
"ok, but don't expect a gourmet dinner"

When I got home I took a look; there is a really small, almost microscopic, sticker that says in fine print "Danger." I guess this is why men usually work with electricity, we'd never bother reading the directions or any fine print. On this same note, the control for our blender went out. How do I know it was the controller? I wired it up directly to the wall current and it worked, so we just used a surge protector as the power switch until we got a new one (a few days later). No women would be dumb enough to do such a thing (a few sparks flew during the testing phase).

Jacob went to primary for the first time today. Rachel was really excited, really really excited (I can't wait until he goes to college or on a mission). I had to take a couple of pictures (since Rachel teaches a class and couldn't be there to witness it). If you ask him if he knows something, he'll usually say yes, but when you ask him for the answer, he'll say he doesn't know. During sharing time the question was asked if anyone knew who our elder brother in the pre-mortal existence was. Jacob raised his hand, she called on him, and he said "um, I don't know" (maybe you had to be there...).

While we were at the coast a couple of weeks ago, I kept worrying about someone breaking into our house and stealing our computers. They would have been disappointed (as our newest computer is three years old), all of my stuff for work would have been ok (as it's saved on a couple of servers at the university), but all of our digital photos/videos would have been gone.

My sister had very unfortunate experience in which a hard drive partially failed, and she lost all of her photos. When that happened to her, I wrote a program that continuously backs up our documents on two computers to an extra hard drive that lives in one of them. This is ok if I'm only worried about a hard drive failure, but does nothing in the case of fire or theft (as all the data lives in the same physical space). So after worrying while on vacation, I decided that we needed to look into something else. Online backup was the solution that made the most sense to me.

I looked into a few online backup services that are not that expensive (compared to what they might save - just ask my sister...), $50 - $150 per year for 5 to 500 GB of storage. These backup services work for all types of files (documents, pictures, etc). I ended up going with a service that only does images and videos (since all my important documents are on other servers), the service: Picasa.

Picasa is google's photo service. If you have gmail, you have a picasa account. With picasa you get 1 GB of storage. Google likes to make money (some people don't know this, but you really do pay to use google/msn/yahoo/etc search), so you can upgrade your google storage (the extra storage is shared between gmail and picasa). The $20 a year upgrade would have worked for us, but since they throw in a an Eye-Fi card with the $50, we went with it (for 200 GB of storage).

One of the nice features of picasa, is that you can select folders that you want picasa to sync with. When you make a change to an image in that folder, or add or remove images, picasa is supposed to copy your changes to your "web folder." You can also set the folders to private (so that the whole world doesn't have access to you pictures).

The one feature that is really lacking, is that you can't just say "please sync up this folder, and all its sub-folders." So I had to click on over a hundred folders individually, even though they are well organized into sub-folders.

I don't know if picasa is the best service for all of this or not, but if you think that this might work for you, or you have questions, feel free to call me.

Our 8,153 images/videos have been uploading for the last 24 hours, and I think that it's almost done ;).

After only one day of classes (yesterday), and a few hours of homework (today), I can tell, it's going to be a bleak winter.

I did have fun with Jacob setting up his computer in his toy box (it's been packed up since we moved). He didn't get a high score, but he did shoot down some airplanes while getting ready for preschool this morning.

We had a great week in Redmond and Newport this last week. One of the funnest things we did was go swimming. Jacob even built up the courage to swim on his own (with a life jacket). He kept swimming to one end of the pool, ask what time it is, say, "oh, I've got a lot of things to do, I better go home," swim to the other end, then start the whole thing over again.

When we got home last night, Rachel and Ethan were cuddling on the couch and Jacob was sitting on the arm of the other end of the couch. Jacob asked Ethan to go and get something for him (I can't remember what), Rachel said that he couldn't as he was cuddling her right now. Then Jacob said "it's ok, he'll be right back" and gave Ethan a nod (indicating that it was ok for him to leave his mom and go get whatever it was), and Ethan did. It was pretty funny, but maybe you had to be there...