I finally broke down and purchased a kindle. I worked out how much I've spent on real books and what the difference would be if I had purchased a kindle and ebooks instead. I was about 1/2 way to the cheapest kindle they sell, so I decided to go for it (and not carry any more 1200 page books around in my backpack to and from work).

I got the $79 deal. I've had it for a couple of weeks and have read a couple of hundred (real) pages on it (maybe it's just the book I got, but there aren't any page numbers... it just tells me I'm 20% through it). With a little work I was able to get the Standard Works on it. The Church has done a great job for phones and tablets, but I think there is work to be done in the ereader world. On that note, I wouldn't recommend it for Church use, as it seems very hard to quickly jump around to different books and chapters.

Overall I'd give it 4/5 stars. The only negative I have is that it's hard to jump around. I've started using book marks so that might make it a little better. For example, I'm reading a book about a programming language, and I often find myself reading some code thinking, "what does that symbol do again?" I know that area of the book that talked about it, so I head to the table of contents to follow the link to the right chapter and section. Then I flip through a bunch of pages (each real page takes a couple of epages) until I find it. There is a 'search' option, but I haven't had much luck with it. It seemed a little easier to do with a real book, especially once you train the binding on which pages are really important.

I don't mind the advertising (you get ads with the $79 version), you don't see any ads while you've got a book open so it's not like their in your face all the time.

Jacob: why do you always make us clean before we can play the wii?
Me: why do you always make the house so messy?
Jacob: why do you always ruin my life?
Me: why do you always make the house so messy?
Jacob: I'll clean it tomorrow if I can play now
Me: you made it a mess today
Jacob: it's no fair, why do we always have to clean?
Me: is it fair that you get to make a mess and then play games without cleaning up your mess?
silence...
Jacob: how come you always ruin my life, but when I try to ruin your life it never works!
Me: laughing... and laughing some more...

Maybe he'll get his chance when he's a teenager.

Rachel and I were asked to start teaching the 4 year-olds in primary (Sunday school for kids between ages 3 and 11). That is, teach as a team. This lasted almost a week, but before we could teach our first lesson the primary president asked us to split up! now I'm team teaching the 8 year-olds and Rachel is going to teach the 4 year-olds on her own (it's kind of a big class, so they're going to try and find her a partner). Just when we thought we had our dream callings...

Today I needed to delete hundreds of Picasa web albums. I tried using the web interface, but it makes you click into each album, then click delete, which takes about 30 seconds in total. Next I tried the Picasa desktop app, but it also makes you click on each album and then click on delete.

After a couple of Google attempts, I found a command line tool for Google data api's (including Picasa's api)! it's great! I was able to delete all my albums with a few commands of the form "picasa delete --title 2" (this deleted all my albums that started with a "2" namely all the albums that started with the date, like 20xx-xx-xx). A few other commands and I was down to only the couple I needed to keep (like the one that holds the pictures for this blog - yes, there are some pictures on this thing... somewhere).

Anyway, thanks Google!

(after looking at the pictures for this blog, I decided I need to blog more often)

Sam commented about having the last post on my last post so I'm posting again.

Nothing too exciting going on right now. I've been working a lot on a project this last month, and have decided that I really like the work I do. Good thing I've got Rachel to remind me that I need to have a life too.

Yesterday we wen't over to Miriam, Brenda, and Judy's house for a BBQ and croquet - it was great!

I've been fortunate enough to do some pair programming (basically two people working on one computer) at work; it's pretty awesome. The guy I've been working with has about 15 years of professional experience and is a genius (and super nice and humble). The first few hours I worked with him he doubled (maybe tripled) my Linux script writing knowledge. Basically it's sweet.

Still alive (if you were wondering). I've almost been at Amazon for two months so that is kind of crazy. There is so much work to do all the time I don't think it's possible to ever catch up. I've already had to interview a couple of people too.

Ok, I just wanted to write something so that I can try and get back in the habit.