Blain Nelson's Blog (not!)

Today is Payday, which is very nice. But it was also a payday of another kind, which was very nice.  I don’t know when, but I decided at some point in the weekend that I would be going by the Seattle Temple this morning after work. I knew it would be closed (being Monday), but I thought I’d check out the Distribution Center next door if it was open or the Deseret Bookstore down in the mall below it. The Distribution Center, it turns out, is also closed Monday, so I took a walk around the Temple, and got some pictures with my phone.

Then, I went down to Deseret Book. By this time, it was about 9:20, and the sign on the door said DB opens at 10:00. Great! I’d really like to head home and get some sleep, but I also wanted a chance to see if they had what I came to look for (a little empty bottle with an eye-dropper top, useful for filling a key-chain vial of consecrated oil) (I want to use it for vanilla extract in my kitchen). So I parked, and went around the corner of the little mall to the Tullys. I’ve learned my way around a Starbucks, but this was my first time at a Tullys. I like Starbucks better — more non-coffee options — but Tullys had enough options to get my take-my-meds breakfast taken care of (not-too-hot hot chocolate and a white chocolate macadamia cookie bar). I tried their free wifi, but couldn’t get it to connect right, so I used the cellular modem to get online and check my FB until it was 10:00.  I packed up and headed over.

I looked around the store at what was there, and got an idea of what they had and what I might want to get at some time.  They didn’t have the little bottles I wanted, and I wasn’t really ready to get a new set of scriptures at the price they had.  I was just getting ready to walk out the door, disappointed that I had spent that time and had nothing to show for it, with my hand on the door, when I gave one last look back, and noticed the word “WARD” on the cover of a book on a shelf I hadn’t looked at.  It was the “Bestsellers” section.  So I thought I’d look at that shelf, and found that the book that got my attention was the Worldwide Ward Cookbook:  Mom’s Best Recipes. The name meant something to me.  Some months ago, I had been pointed to a website for the Worldwide Ward Cookbook that was accepting recipes for this particular volume.  I’d submitted my mom’s fruit cobbler recipe to it, altering the recipe as she’d written it to make it more like a cook book recipe, and then I’d heard nothing more about it.  I’d been thinking about that, not too long ago, in fact, since the rhubarb is up and it’s getting to be cobbler season. I was pretty certain that I would have heard something if it was going to be included, so I doubted it was in there, but thought it wouldn’t hurt to look.

So I grabbed the book, and looked to the index, finding a recipe for fruit cobbler listed.  I flipped to the page (243), and that particular page was a little bit stuck together, so it took a little doing to get it to come open.  And there was my picture, and the recipe I’d submitted, complete with the little note I’d written for it!  They spelled my name right, even!  The recipe was altered just a little bit from what I’d submitted, but it was essentially what I put down, so that was cool.  The best part was having this little remembrance of Mom in print.  Here’s the blurb I wrote:

This recipe is named for my mother, Della Carnefix Nelson, who adapted it from a recipe given to her by her sister.  Mom almost always cooked from scratch, and usually by “touch,” rather than from a recipe; she never felt comfortable preparing a meal out of a bix with instructions to “add water and stir.”  She liked this recipe because it’s so easy and because the batter starts out underneath the fruit and cooks through it, picking up flavor from the fruit on the way through.  It was one of two recipes we had her dictate while she was in hospice care, shortly before her death from cancer in July 2006.

And so now I knew what I was there for.  I bought the book, showing the clerk that this was me, but not because it was me, but because it was about Mom.  And it was payday again.

I’ve been finding people online that I haven’t seen or spoken to in several decades.  I don’t know of a real way to catch up from all of that other than lengthy conversations in-person, but those aren’t practical in the short-term, so I adapted this from something I put together for my high school reunion last Summer to be better than nothing. (more…)

Just a stray thought that struck me the other day, and I wanted to bring it up to see if anybody happens to know how to answer this:

Much of the current focus on addressing climate change has to do with reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.  However, burning fossil fuels also involves the release of hydrogen compounds, most particularly, of water.  Water vapor, aka steam, to be more precise.  Iirc, water vapor is a greenhouse gas, and its release raises humidity in the locations it has been released.  It contributes to more cloud cover, and could reasonably be expected to result in increased rainfall/snowfall and raising ocean levels (although, admittedly, a lot of tons can be added to oceans without raising sea level by a millimeter).

Now, it’s good to have water, because we are mostly water, but I’m just wondering aloud in print if this has received sufficient attention.  Anybody?

So this is the morning after doing more knee push-ups in a day than I’ve done in a very long time, and I have no (as in “none”) muscle soreness or even noticeable weakness.  This is a good thing.  Now I have to get ready to be out the door in the next hour for my big driving day, but that was a happy.

Not eternally happy, nor blissfully happy, but happy enough.  I just found out that I can access my spiffy new mp3 player under linux through Amarok.  That makes loading podpackets a lot (lot) easier, since I don’t need to copy them to the thumbdrive, then to the laptop, then to the player.  I just copy them to the player. 

That’ll be handy tomorrow.  I’ve got a big big driving day — biggest work-related trip I’ve had in over three years. 

And I’ve gotten through my push-up work for today (four of five sets), although I’ve been giving myself more time between the sets than the one minute the program allows.  I’m going to start again on Monday with Week Three.  One more set and then to bed.  The goal is 15 (these are knee push-ups — I’m not nearly ready for that many regular pushups).  Thus far, I’ve done more push-ups than on Monday, and, while my arms and shoulders are tired, it’s not nearly as much as Monday (I was sore until Thursday).  Then I’m off until Monday.

Gnight.

Update: My last set is to be as many as I can do, with the minimum of 15. I did 25. This is good. I might even start next week with regular pushups using the Week One program.

I recognize that my podcast isn’t for everybody here, so I’ve created a LJ for it, and that’s where I’m going to talk about it.  As you might guess, the name of the journal is .  I have a couple of posts there about where I’m going with it, and feedback there would be much appreciated. 

I’ve got a fair amount of time on my hands these days, so I decided to take another shot at podcasting.  This time, rather than focusing on one topic, I’ve decided to work with whatever topics are of interest to me at the time.  Thus far, I’ve got one recorded and roughly edited.  I’m not going to set up an rss feed for it until I’ve got a few more of them done and have a better idea of how this is going to work.

So you’re invited and welcome to give it a listen and then provide some feedback if you would.  My original idea was to keep these under an hour, and this one was under 9 minutes, so it’s not requiring a huge footprint in your life at this juncture.  It just introduces the idea of what I’m going to do.  I’ve exported it in both .mp3 and .ogg formats (WinAmp will support .ogg format, and it’s smaller than .mp3, fwiw).  I’m looking for feedback about the content, the production quality, and whether or not you think adding pod-safe music would be a good or bad idea.  Also, any questions about any of the topic areas I’m going to be covering would be good.  Also, if this is something you’d pass along to people who you don’t think know me would also be good, since folks here are my beginning audience.

If the links there don’t work right yet, check back — I’m using a different interface to get them uploaded, and I’m not sure how it’ll work.

Update: Okay, I looked around and found a podcast host that makes sense for me to use — Podcast Spot. It will work just fine for free with the volume I expect to put out for a while, and it’s inexpensive should I go for something heavier. A nice feature of the place is that it will convert the file to a number of different audio formats, and creates feeds under a variety of tags, so it’s easy to create a customized rss link for adding to a podcatcher. I’m very pleased with it, particularly since it can handle the .ogg version, which is smaller than the .mp3, while creating .mp3 for those who need it (and .wma). The place to go is http://blaincast.podcastspot.com/.

I thought this was cool.  You might too.

Back in the 80s, there was a brief resurrection of the old Smothers Brothers show.  As usual, Dick was kinda making fun of Tom, this time for being irresponsible.  Tom replied that he was very responsible by saying “I’m wearing a condom right now.”

Well, I’ve seen at least a hundred times that running a computer without anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software is irresponsible.  I’ve been running computers for almost eighteen years now and have never ever had a malware outbreak of any kind, but the implication is that I’m still irresponsible for not running anti-malware software.  I tend to think that my care in not engaging in at-risk behaviors that open the door to malware has a track record of protecting me, but I’m not deaf to these complaints.

When I bought the laptop I’m using now, it came with a trial of Nortan Internet Protection, and I’ve used it without any problems showing up anywhere (it got a little anal about some cookies I had, but I use the Cookie Culler extension in FF to clear those out periodically, so I wasn’t worry about that).  The past few days it started bugging me to pay for a subscription to keep using it — since I’m clearly getting so much value out of it. 

So I uninstalled it last night.  I’d heard Kim Komando talk about free anti-malware programs that she considered adequate, so I went to her website immediately after that and downloaded an anti-virus package (AVG), an anti-adware package (ad-aware) and a firewall package (Zone-Alarm).  And, just now, I’ve finished installing them, and have ZA correctly allowing most of my internet-using software to use the internet. 

And now I feel like Tom Smothers, standing here wearing a condom.  I’m so, so responsible.

This one right here..

Just don’t.