A Week In The Life

The radio station I listened to as a kid is back!!! Of course, it's on the AM dial (which is where it was when I was younger - back before FM was the hot spot) and that it's playing the 50's and 60's, except now they're oldies. It's been three weeks and still no commercials. Afternoon drive time DJ started today (from the former Oldies station which is now the 70's and 80's); the morning DJ starts Tuesday (another long time DJ).

So for the rest of the past week, it's been mostly a busy week - a trip to the Church on Monday to make sure the building was locked after the Seminary teacher found youth in the building on Monday morning who were not members & beat a hasty retreat when he arrived; Tuesday was Welfare & Interview; Wed BYC & an assistance check run (couple with 7 wk old special needs baby); Thursday was a seminar at the local victim's center - I'd not been to the rape crisis center before, but considering what I have the opportunity to work with as a Bishop, it was good information. The curious thing is that while they focus on the victim, I'm in a position where I could be counseling a perpetrator as well as a victim. I was thinking that I'd taken Friday night off, but I was out trying to deliver a manual for a parenting class. Tomorrow's the communications group's face-to-face meeting.

Miles: Sunday 8.5; Monday lockup 2; Tuesday 8.5; Wednesday BYC, Welfare 15 mi; Thursday 23 mi; Friday 2 mi. Week total: 59; MTD 428

EFY

The kids from the Ward went to EFY today. We had 4 that cancelled for various reasons - illness, funerals, etc., but we were able to place at least three of the 4 extra tickets. And Samara has been recounting the events of the afternoon / evening since she got back.

I'd say that makes the event worthwhile.
Moving (new family in ward):5 mi EFY: 80 mi

I'll Gladly Pay You Tomorrow for a Hamburger Today

So, when I got to work this morning, there was a message from mom, asking if we were going to ride together "tomorrow" or if I was too enamored of my car to ride with her - when she has a class, it's just down the road from my office. I sent back a reply that it depended on what radio station she wanted to listen to. After a little banter, she wanted to know if I'd take her out to lunch - break time is at 11:45. I told her "sure" and saved the email so that I wouldn't blow her off.

Later that morning the boss wanted to know if I could go out to lunch with him today to review a couple of proposals. Good deal - two lunches out in two days! I never do that, unless I'm traveling.

I get back from lunch with the boss and find a note on my computer screen - something along the lines of "you're going to pay for this!". Not quite sure what crime I'd committed, I called mom - seems I stood her up for lunch "today". Back to the original message labeled "TOMORROW". It was sent yesterday about 5:36 pm - after I'd left the office. So "tomorrow" turned out to be "today"!!! She'd been emailing me from her class. I'd thought she was emailing me from her office!

Wed Bpric Mtg/MIA: 8.5 mi; Thurs Welfare Assist: 20 mi. MTD=289

Maybe You Can Drive My Car

I dropped off the car to get the battery fixed this morning; and got a call on my way to work that the part hadn't arrived (which I thought of as rather typical with an orphaned vehicle). At 4:30, I got another call: the battery had arrived, they had installed it and charged it and all was ready to go!!

Picking up the car, I've put just shy of 50 miles on it. My mileage (around town and freeway at 55-65 MPH) has so far averaged 65 MPG!!! This is an improvement of 15 MPG over the normal average for the car. If this keeps up, I would suggest that the battery should have been replaced about 70,000 miles ago - about the time I bought the car.

Sat: Bp's Retreat: 178 mi; Sun:Church/Choir: 17 mi; Mon: Welfare/Crew Mtg: 47 mi MTD: 261

I love Honda

So, yes the battery is dead. The warranty, according to the service writer is 157,000 (last I'd heard it was 150,000 miles). I have 157,600 miles on the car.

They're going to replace the battery anyway!!!

Life After Disney

So, I came back to the office - my computer was displaying the "blue screen of death", which normally is solved with a reboot; except it really was the blue screen of death. My hard drive was totally toast. I cobbled together a system so that I could get some work done. Spare parts have been ordered and installed; most of the required software has likewise been downloaded and installed; however, some of the software supposedly is too difficult to install remotely, so now the help desk wants me to send my computer to MN to be reimaged. I told them no, at least not until my new lap top computer arrives.

Tuesday night, instead of going on the Ward Temple Night outing, I went to Greeley. Seems that my car has a couple of lights on that shouldn't be on: Check Engine, and IMA. The former is likely caused by the latter; the latter is a fairly sure sign that the hybrid's battery is toast. The car goes in to be checked tomorrow. (The battery replacement, if what I've heard is true, is about $3,000).

Best part about it all: I'm in such a good mood after the Disney trip, that I don't care... and my phone is still working.

Disney Days 3 & 4

Day 3 - EPCOT - The phone dried out and life is good. Dinner in Japan with an EXCELLENT cook.
Day 4 - the park formerly known as MGM and then back to EPCOT to finish off what we didn't do (and an extra trip on Soarin'). Still missed Off Kilter and the British Invasion. You can't do it all, but the best ticket deal seemed to be a 10 day park hopper that doesn't expire, so I've got my ticket in place for 2010, and probably a trip sometime next year.

My Second Day at Disney ... Incommunicado

Yesterday was 1)sleep in, 2)go to Animal Kingdom, 3)go to Magic Kingdom. I spent the first hour in Animal Kingdom on my own - mom was in guest services changing future reservations. They felt so bad for how long it took her that she scored a number of fast passes - - - most of which we didn't use because the lines were so short.

Somewhere between Kali River Rapids and Splash Mountain and something else that gets you wet, my cell phone died. The message is "Check SIM" - - - I did - - - it's there, even if it looks a little gray around the edges. I took it out for the night, and so far this morning, the phone seems to be working ... maybe it's time for a new phone....

My First Day at Disney World...

Since, I was missing a few vital pieces to my CPAP machine, I made a "quick" run to downtown Orlando to pick them up. Since Mom was still snoozing, I even offered to let her sleep in while I ran downtown. She wanted to be dropped off at a park instead.

So after NUMEROUS calls to the doctor's office, and to the various branches of the unnamed national vendor of durable medical equipment, (Florida requires a prescription to get DME; my original chart from home had been sent to Kansas for archival, where it was purged from the records; once retrieved, it turns out they didn't have a copy of the Rx, anyway). Turns out the doctor's office had sent the Rx within five minutes of my asking; the Florida vendor didn't get it. They resent it at 3:30 local and I was successful in getting the required pieces.

Glad I didn't leave mom sleeping in!!! I made it back to the hotel at 4:30.

All was not lost; we did get to eat some Cuban food (not overly remarkable), and see Dark Knight (a somewhat disturbing film), and shop in Downtown Disney.

OOPS I DID IT AGAIN...

Now that I've got that song running through everyone's mind (see how long it takes to really clear your head), I visited Carebear's ward last Sunday - they had a special combined meeting for all the adults with a presentation from Family Services on adoption. They also showed the adoption video from the 1980's.

AND I STILL HAVE THE THEME SONG FROM THE SOUNDTRACK ECHOING IN MY HEAD

"And maybe, you can tell your baby ..."

But I digress. I've brought the CPAP machine to Orlando; I just forgot to bring any of the attachments. I think Orlando has a better selection of spare parts than some small town in Nevada, so don't look for another picture of me with a candy wrapper duct taped to a CPR mask in the near future... then again ....

Flex, Cairngorm, and stupidity

WARNING: TECHNOBABBLE ALERT

So, I've been refactoring a simple Flex project that I did to use Cairngorm. "Best" practices separates the user interface from the business logic. So, I've spent an excessive amount of time over the past week trying to figure out how to communicate from one part of the program (the user interface) to the other (business logic). I finally pinned that down and can follow the event to the command (spelling is a plus here, where "Login" is different from "login" - capitalization counts). I had to talk two of our MN programmers through my project before I could explain to them what I had done wrong.

So since then, I've been trying to find a way to trigger a process in a view that reconfigures the available options from out in the command processor (business.commands.MyCommand did it's work, and now needs to start something in views.MyView). Except there was no way to call a function in "MyView" from "MyCommand" (and here's where I earned my STOOPID award for the day)... "MyCommand" has FULL access to all the variables in the Model - change a variable in the Model and the corresponding view is IMMEDIATELY (if not sooner) updated with the new value. (That's the obvious purpose of the [Bindable] metatag).

So, to execute a function in "MyView", all that needs to happen is to change the reference to the bound variable (eg. "{ __model.Value }") to a function that uses the bound value as a parameter (eg. "{ MyFunction(__model.Value) }"). When __model.Value changes, MyFunction is called to return a new value based on the new input parameter ... even if that parameter is not used in MyFunction.

So, the business logic can do what it needs to without the view needing to be cognizant of any business activities. And when the business logic changes something that is of interest to the viewer, it can update itself without disrupting any business functions.

After pouring through every example I could find for a week, I now see why I couldn't find anything about the topic - it's because the concept was too easy for anyone to document!!!

Cairngorm is growing on me. Something like mold on cheese.

Miles: Tues 11 (church, city hall to help keep someone's utilities turned on), Wed 8.5 (MIA/Bishopric): Sept to date: 19.5 mi and for what it's worth Aug=511 mi; July=618 mi; June=338; June-Aug=1467

Step Away from the Ball

A reminder - - - if you touch that ball, the dog will follow you wherever you go and make sure that you play ball.