"Hello!" to the couple of people who actually visit my blog and to the hundreds of people who accidentally read it in syndication.

Our family just got back yesterday from southern California. My parents took everyone to Disneyland and we did some other stuff as well. This was my first time to Disneyland since I was five years old and the first time for my wife Christine and our children.

Weather was an issue while we were in California. A tornado warning was in effect on Thursday -- the night we arrived and flood watches were in effect on Saturday evening. We were fortunate to have pretty decent weather on Friday and Saturday, the days we actually spent walking around inside Disneyland. Being that this time of year is about as off-season as Disneyland gets, we were able to visit a seemingly maximum number of attractions within the park due to short or non-existent lines.

The kids got their mouse-ears hats with their names embroidered on them, and got to spend a lot of time with their cousins. On Sunday, we drove down to Long Beach and walked through the aquarium exhibit there and then, between torrential bursts of rain, drove up the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and visited a beach so the kids could see the ocean. Unfortunately, the weather didn't really lend well to actually playing in the water. Oh well. There's always next time.

When we returned to Utah Monday afternoon, our flight was delayed over an hour due to blizzard conditions in Utah. All in all, however, it worked out great and we all had a relatively good time.

A couple weeks ago, my Dad’s home computer had a familiar problem. Every once in a while, his computer — which runs Windows 2000 — would not boot. It would go a few seconds through the boot process and then stop with a blue screen and a message about the boot device not working.

This annoying problem has always been solved by booting off the Windows 2000 install CD, going to the Repair console, typing chkdsk /p, and rebooting. Works every time... or did.

This time, after going through that process, his computer went into a reboot loop, getting to a point in the boot process and then starting over with the computer POST.

I had told my dad before the next time I had to reinstall the operating system on his computer, it would not be Windows I’d be putting on it, unless he wanted to shell out the $100 or so for Windows XP.

Knowing how frugal my dad is, I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

So, it was time to migrate my Dad’s home computer to Linux. Fedora 7, to be exact. I already moved his office computer to Linux a couple years ago and he’s been fairly successful at getting work done on it. Part of the reason for that is that he really only does a few things on his computers:

• Composes documents (OpenOffice)
• Reads e-mail (Mozilla Thunderbird)
• Browses web pages (Mozilla Firefox)
• Plays Freecell... a lot (kpat)

On his home computer, he also does a few more things:

• Scans of photos and documents
• Downloads digital photos from his camera
• Prints digital photos
• Genealogy

Another problem I had to deal with is, running Windows, he’s been using WordPerfect Office as his office suite and has a large collection of files created in WordPerfect and QuatroPro.

In the past, OpenOffice did not handle WordPerfect files at all, but KOffice’s word process (kword) did a decent job of reading .WPD files. Since then, OpenOffice 2.2.x now has the ability to import WordPerfect documents, but not perfectly. For example, embedded graphics seem to be ignored completely. Since my dad doesn’t use very many embedded graphics, this is only a minor issue.

For scanning, I set him up with kooka which aims to be a fairly easy to use and is pretty intuitive. The OCR support is there, but I haven’t played with it very much yet.

For dealing with digital photos, digikam is very nice. When we tried to print digital photos to his HP photo printer, we could not get them to come out right. One frustration was that digikam uses the KIPI printwizard plugin which only offers a couple page sizes to choose from, none of which matched what we were looking for (4x6 photo paper).

I borrowed some 4x6 paper and told my dad I’d experiment and find a program he could use to print photos.

After experimenting with a bunch of programs (ksquirrel, gwenview, showimg, to name a few), I ended up going back to digikam. I discovered along the way that one of the page sizes digikam offered (10cm x 15cm) was actually what we wanted. That’s roughly 4-inches x 6-inches! Works great.

PAF 5, the program my dad used under Windows to do geneaology, is said to work fine under Wine. It installed fine, but I haven’t played with it to see how well it actually works. If the installation experience is any indication, it may work splendidly.

Yesterday, our 8 year-old daughter Maya broke her arm playing on monkey bars... again.

See, she broke the same arm, but it wasn't really all that serious. She thought she had merely sprained it (which she had done before... again, from playing on monkey bars), but it kept hurting. When we took her to the doctor after two weeks of not getting better, he X-rayed it and determined she had a hairline fracture. At that point, the healing had already begun and he said a cast was optional. Considering how active she is, we opted for the cast to be on the safe side.

Well, yesterday she was playing on monkey bars and fell. We're guessing she landed with her hand outstretched. The force of the fall broke her upper-arm bone just above the elbow. The medical term is "type-3 supracondylar humerus fracture." It is apparently a common fracture in kids.

Here's a site I found that explains a lot about it: <http://www.dynomed.com/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/pediatric_orthopedics/Supracondylar_Fracture_of_the_Humerus.html>

Maya went in for surgery around 8. Christine called me right around 9 and the doctor told her the surgery went well, but that Maya's break was pretty bad. He indicated there was a splintering of the bone which they had to use an extra pin to compensate for.

The fracture is a type-3 because it is the worst classification of displacement. If the fracture were only type-1 or possibly type-2, she would not have needed surgery at all.

Before the surgery, the doctors did some tests to make sure Maya's nerves were not affected by the fracture. They did things like touch her fingers while she had her eyes closed to see if she could identify which finger they were touching. They asked her to do different motor actions with each of her fingers as well. She did well on everything except lifting her fingers up from a clenched state. The doctors said this probably means there was a stretching injury to her radial nerve, but that there was a small possibility of some nerve damage due to the fracture. Only time will tell.

You can read about radial nerve dysfunction here: <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000790.htm>.

Finally, over the next 4 days or so, we need to watch closely for swelling in her arm. If it swells too much, a syndrome may develop in which the swelling compresses nerves and/or blood vessels, thereby causing complications.

Maya stayed at the hospital last night for observation. She came home this morning and is feeling pretty good. The doctors said her motion had improved as well.

Maya will not be going back to school on Monday. Next week is her last week of school (year round school) and there's a possibility she will be absent for all of it. If she does go, she will need to keep her arm elevated-- perhaps using a pillow at her desk--and she won't be able to go to recess.

Just uploaded some highlights from our Memorial Day weekend vacation to Bryce Canyon to my Picasa site. Check it out. I think we took some good pictures.

How's that for a record amount of time of not posting anything to my weblog/journal/rantpage?

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving came and went. Christine and I went to her parents' house this year. Adam and Melissa switched their schedule so they'd be going there this year too. Seemed like almost everyone else was there this year too, so next year it will be crickets.

The Colorado tour

The week before Thanksgiving, I accompanied Sons Of Nothing on a four-date tour across the mountain region of Colorado. Stops included Steamboat Springs, Edwards, and Breckenridge.

We were excited about Edwards and Breckendridge because it was the start of the ski season. While the performances were "on," the audiences were thin -- probably due to lackluster promotion.

The two shows in Steamboat Springs were well-attended. The last show of the tour was at Mahogany Ridge in Steamboat Springs. We had never been there before, so we had no idea what to expect. It was, essentially, a bar/restaurant with a raised, carpeted platform at one end of the dining room. They had a faiirly decent sound system, but no lights. Apparently, they expected us to bring our own lights with us, which we didn't understand. Wal-Mart saved the day and we hung three clip-on lights with colored party bulbs in them -- just to get by.

This tour also marked the return of Derek "Goozbach" Carter to the roadie crew. Derek was, as always, great fun to have along and was a hard worker. When we arrived in Breckenridge, we had some extra time, so he hit the slopes to do some snowboarding. It seemed like he had a lot of fun, except for when he hit a patch of ice and caught himself with his left temple. After that, he just looked like an abused, unappreciated roadie.

During this trip, I finally got around to writing some automation for the visual aspect of the show. Up until this trip, I was typing commands into an SSH session by hand to start and stop each visual presentation on the screen(s). For example:

The most automation I'd had prior to this was creating macros for running mplayer and xine (like that vid macro shown above, which runs mplayer fullscreen).

My ultimate goal has always been a system with a database backend that stores cues for each song and a CLI frontend for triggering cues. I figured I could make it extensible enough it could be used for visuals, audio effects, and lighting (via a DMX controller). Because of this grandiose goal, I didn't really make any progress toward it.

On this trip, I got fed up with having to remember all the parameters to the screensavers I was using. So, I whipped up a couple shell and Perl scripts to macro-ize the screen savers so I could sstart them up and stop them with a single command. I also created a shell interface for the system as well. It made things so much easier. The audience at the last show at Mahogany Ridge were privy to the best visuals to ever accompany Sons Of Nothing. It helped there wasn't much light to distract them from the screen. :-)

It is somewhat ironic I also decided I'm removing myself from touring with Sons Of Nothing after this trip to Colorado. It's for a million reasons, it seems, I came to this decision. Some of it has to do with my family missing me when I'm gone. Some of it has to do with my growing tired of being around really drunk people. In the end, I've had a great time doing it and I'm ready to start up a new hobby, probably with my family, to try. Maybe paintball (/me winks at Jayce^). Maybe experimental rocketry. Maybe agility trials with our new dog.

I'm still going to be involved with the band and might still show up to do visuals and effects at a show if they need me, but I plan on concentrating on the band's website and the marketing/promotion side of things. Who knows?! I might continue to record my unique style of spoken word on future SoN recordings. :-D

"RRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrip!"

Recently, a close friend of mine wasqdivorced from his wife of ~15 years. Learning of this and helping my friend deal with the thick stew of emotional upheaval he's found himself in has been a difficult experience. Honestly, I really dislike seeing people -- especially people I care about -- go through something like this. I've been through a handful of divorces as a close bystander and I know it takes time, more than anything else, for someone to get through it and get back to being a stable, productive individual.

I was supposed to be on vacation this last week, but it only kind of, sort of worked out that way.

We did get away on Friday, 15 Sept, and headed to southern Utah for a couple of days. We had a lot of fun in St. George, Zion Park, and other places. I put together a page in the events section of my site with information about where we went and what we did along with lots of photos. You can see that HERE.

By Tuesday, however, I was back to work. Too much stuff to do, I guess. I had to put in long days at work Tuesday and Wednesday and then a couple hours on Thursday. For the rest of Thursday and Friday, I was allowed to really try to vacate. It's been nice and relaxing.

Last Thursday, Christine and I took the family on a "mini-vacation." I've documented this momentous event on my website.

MINI-VACATION: <http://www.fozzilinymoo.org/events/2006-JulyMiniVacation>

Lots of news from my world.

Extraction

At the moment, I'm sitting in the parents' waiting room at Primary Childrens Hospital in Salt Lake City. Our son, Eli, who will be three years old next month, had his tonsils and adenoids removed this morning. They were huge and he was having difficulty breathing and eating food that wasn't soft.

The doctor came back about 30 minutes ago and said everything went well. So, now I'm just waiting to be called back into the recovery area. Christine's already back there -- they only allow one parent back at first.

Pink Floyd News

I've got a bunch of Pink Floyd news...

Syd Barrett dies

Original bandleader of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, has died. More news is over here. It's nice to see the band continues to pay tribute and respect to the guy.

Pink Floyd Pulse finally out on DVD!

The last PF studio album -- The Division Bell -- was released in 1994 and was followed by a worldwide tour of the band. In 1995, the band released a live album from the tour titled "Pulse." In addition to CDs, Pulse was also released on VHS and laserdisc. It would be twelve more years before Pulse was available on DVD. Today, it is available for purchase.

I got my copy last night. I pre-ordered it about six months ago and Buy.com got it to me a day early.

I was so excited to watch it. I've had it on VHS for a long time, but the sound and video quality is SO much better than the VHS, plus there are lots of extras. The sound was remastered for 5.1 surround sound and is available as a 640 kbps stream for even-better-than-usual DVD audio quality if your DVD player supports it (mine does).

Over four hours of Pink Floyd goodness including 145 minutes of actual concert footage.

You can get your copy from Amazon.com.

North By Northwest

This last weekend, Sons Of Nothing presented out FloydShow tribute to Pink Floyd in Spokane, Washington and Longview, Washington.

It was our first time in Spokane and the first time we were booked by a talent agency called Bravo Entertainment, so we were on our best behavior. The show was at The Big Easy Concert House and it rocked!

Erik Young, the lighting engineer at The Big Easy, programmed an excellent show that worked exceptionally well with the music. Kudos to him. He also worked with me to get our video running to all the TVs in the house as well as the two projector screens to each side of the stage in addition to ours behind the stage.

FloydShow in Spokane

We're looking forward to heading back to Spokane, maybe in October or November.

Saturday night, we played in Longview, WA which is about 30 minutes north of Portland. We played at the Cadillac Island Casino two years ago (when it was the Cadillac Ranch Casino), so we already had experience working with the management. The show went off well. My only complaint was that they didn't really prepare any lighting for the show and, as a result, the lighting presets used were a bit silly - being either too much or not enough for the music being played. The crowd seemed to dig it nonetheless.

The family and I went to the Riverton Town Days parade last night (3 July). It seemed longer this year, but that could only be my perception because the parade in Ephraim over Memorial Day weekend was so much shorter (which was nice).

The weather was perfect for the parade with slightly overcast skies and a gentle breeze. The kids snatched up lots of candy and other goodies from parade participants.

Incumbent U.S. senator Orrin Hatch was in the parade. This is the first time I've seen him show up in public at a parade. His campaign was handing out cardboard placards which seemed to be useful for fanning one's self. We declined them as they went by handing them out. Hatch's vehicle was one of the first in the parade and we weren't hot yet.

Later on, though, democratic senatorial candidate Pete Ashdown and his band of geeks (campaign volunteers) came strutting down Redwood Road followed by the infamous Blue Eagle. Could Pete and his volunteers do better than Hatch with their limited campaign budget and grassroots strategy?

You betcha!

Pete won the hearts and stomachs of many in Riverton by giving out delicous Creamie ice cream treats.

Pete and I don't see eye to eye on all the issues, but still I wish him the best of luck in his campaign to unseat Hatch, who does not represent me or my colleagues.