My father once gave me some advice. He said, "You should always be good to your secretary." I've always tried to live that, and was thinking about other people we should always be good to, and came up with the following list:
-- Your secretary or administrative assistant: they can make your work life miserable if they are not happy.
-- Your garbage man: supply your own reason, but it's just good advice.
-- Troubled teens: they have enough drama in their lives without angry words from an adult.
-- Anybody who can give you money: for obvious reasons.
-- Widows: nobody can reap an eternal reward without caring for the widows.
-- Children younger than 10: before they learn to be little punks, you have an opportunity to teach them to not be little punks.
-- Policemen, firemen, and nurses: when trouble comes, you'll be glad they're on your side.
-- Local bands: though they may be unrealistic, there's something wonderful about simple and extravagant dreams.
-- Cashiers: anybody who can treat me as if I'm buying a bag of pretzels while they scan a box of tampons is all right in my book.
There's probably more, but I had some opinions on those to whom we don't necessarily need to be kind:
-- Doctors: in my opinion, people who get paid exorbitant fees to take care of you deserve only the respect they give out.
-- Banktellers and the bankers behind them: they're overgrown cashiers who often act like we owe them a favor for taking our money off our hands -- and then give us really bad interest rates.
-- Elected officials: they have their job because of us, but they so rarely do anything good with it.
Again, the list could probably be longer, but I'll leave it there.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Bad Dad Moment
I had a "Bad Dad" moment last Saturday. My wife and daughter were gone for a few hours, so I decided to take some time to try to install some software on my new computer. Okay, it was a game -- SimCity 4. My oldest son was sitting next to me, enthralled by the whole procedure, and my youngest son was just playing around us on the floor.
Well, I proceeded to install the software, and went to execute it, but it didn't work. I knew the software was somewhat old (built for Windows 98/NT), so I tried adjusting the compatibility parameters of the software to see if it would work with the current operating system (Windows XP, which I adore, by the way).
There's an icon on the desktop. My son kept pointing at it. I tried something different. He said, "Just click the icon, Dad!" I clicked it to show him it didn't work. "Click it, Dad!" I did again (nothing happens). I tried something different. "Click it!" Click (nothing happens). I go to check online at the website for help. "Click on it, Dad!" I read a couple of forum posts on why the program won't start. "Come on, Dad. Just click it!" Click (nothing happens). I find out there's a patch available, so I start to download it. "Click the icon!" The patch is downloading. "Click, Dad. It's right there!" Click (nothing happens).
You can see where this is going. He went on and on like that every few seconds. Soon, I snapped at him, raising my voice, and told him that I had clicked it over and over again and nothing had changed since the last time I clicked it, so why would it work?! "But just click it, Dad!" "I did!" I yell.
At this point, my younger son comes over, wedges himself between me and my older son, looks him in the face, and starts screaming at him in the same tone of voice I had just used with him. Instant guilt.
It was a "Bad Dad" moment.
Why can't little kids learn from and model the patient, quiet moments in life? Why do they so easily pick up on the moments of weakness?
------
P.S. -- I did eventually get the game to load, and started playing it, but it eventually winked off about twenty minutes into a game. I'm still scratching my head about that one. At that point, I decided to call it quits; I shut down the computer and he and I went downstairs. My toddler followed us, happily humming along.
Well, I proceeded to install the software, and went to execute it, but it didn't work. I knew the software was somewhat old (built for Windows 98/NT), so I tried adjusting the compatibility parameters of the software to see if it would work with the current operating system (Windows XP, which I adore, by the way).
There's an icon on the desktop. My son kept pointing at it. I tried something different. He said, "Just click the icon, Dad!" I clicked it to show him it didn't work. "Click it, Dad!" I did again (nothing happens). I tried something different. "Click it!" Click (nothing happens). I go to check online at the website for help. "Click on it, Dad!" I read a couple of forum posts on why the program won't start. "Come on, Dad. Just click it!" Click (nothing happens). I find out there's a patch available, so I start to download it. "Click the icon!" The patch is downloading. "Click, Dad. It's right there!" Click (nothing happens).
You can see where this is going. He went on and on like that every few seconds. Soon, I snapped at him, raising my voice, and told him that I had clicked it over and over again and nothing had changed since the last time I clicked it, so why would it work?! "But just click it, Dad!" "I did!" I yell.
At this point, my younger son comes over, wedges himself between me and my older son, looks him in the face, and starts screaming at him in the same tone of voice I had just used with him. Instant guilt.
It was a "Bad Dad" moment.
Why can't little kids learn from and model the patient, quiet moments in life? Why do they so easily pick up on the moments of weakness?
P.S. -- I did eventually get the game to load, and started playing it, but it eventually winked off about twenty minutes into a game. I'm still scratching my head about that one. At that point, I decided to call it quits; I shut down the computer and he and I went downstairs. My toddler followed us, happily humming along.
Birthday Weekend
So it was my birthday yesterday. And the weekend has been a very good one. Let me run down some of the highlights.
Friday afternoon my daughter had her first soccer practice of the fall season. Being not-quite-six, the little girls all were pretty obedient to the coach (who is a friend of mine). It was really cute seeing them running across the field, clumped all together, attempting to "steal" the ball from the coach. She played soccer last spring, but it was more of a "practice and scrimmage" environment than a "practice and compete" environment. I'm looking forward to watching her this fall, as she does have a competitive streak that might serve her well. On the flip side, last spring she was also prone to lying flat on her back in the middle of the field, proclaiming she was too tired to go on while everybody else played around her. It should be interesting.
Friday night my wife and I went out on a date to a local theater. There we were able to watch a night of "improv" -- improvisational comedy -- performed by a few members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). There were four actors, three of whom I've seen in LDS movies before: Kirby Heyborne ("The RM", "The Singles Ward"), Lincoln Hoppe (ditto), Corbin Allred ("Saints and Soldiers"), and Kelly Lohman (um ...). It was actually quite funny, and since they are members of the church, they guaranteed that it would be clean and family friendly. Of the four, I think Corbin Allred was the best actor of the bunch, but all of them were quite funny and quick-witted.
In hindsight, we probably could've taken our two oldest children, but that would defeat the purpose of date night. We've never been to "the improv" before, though we had previously been fans of the television show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" (but we were often annoyed by the sexual tone that the show would often take for a cheap laugh). We did have a wonderful time, and look forward to going again sometime soon.
Saturday morning was one of hard labor. I woke up early and soon got started in the yard. I mowed, weeded, spread bark on our front hill (in a few places that were unfinished), thinned the garden, sprayed for weeds, and generally did a marathon gardening session. It was a good morning.
That afternoon, my wife took my daughter out to see "Beauty and the Beast" at the local community college. By all reports, they had a wonderful time, with the following two exceptions: 1) my wife had to constantly remind herself that it wasn't a Broadway production - and it showed, and 2) they advertised the sale of cheaply-made, expensive, glowing roses (to go along with the play) that would be on sale in the lobby during the intermission. My daughter immediately went into "gotta-have-it" mode, and spent the latter half of the play driving my wife crazy asking for one. On the way home, she was still begging and pleading, and pushed my wife to the edge, who wouldn't tolerate that, especially since they had left the play, and couldn't buy one anymore. We do our best not to spoil our children by not giving them everything they want, but sometimes that doesn't show.
Saturday evening, my wife and I again got the babysitter and went out to the adult session of our local "stake" conference. In our church, local congregations are called "wards", while small groups of wards are called "stakes". Every six months, we have a conference with all the wards in the stake gathered together -- it's basically a long, two-hour service filled with various speakers providing five to twenty minute sermons intermixed with singing performed variably by a choir and/or the congregation. On the night before there is always a session intended for the adults. The big topic was about preparing ourselves for the coming of Jesus Christ by performing service, keeping the commandments, and teaching our children properly. It was a very nice experience, and we enjoyed the quiet time without the children.
Sunday morning I woke up early to go to a "priesthood leadership" meeting, also part of stake conference. This meeting is intended for those who hold leadership positions in the church. Since there is no paid ministry, everybody tends to be asked to do something to help make things go smoothly -- teach classes, direct choirs, staff the library, deal with the finances, or manage the various youth organizations in the church, for example. For me, I'm the executive secretary to the bishop of the ward, who is the leader of our local congregation -- I basically set up interviews and manage meeting agendas.
During the meeting there were four speakers who spoke about the following topics:
-- Family Home Evening (FHE) is not Family Home Hour. In the church it is strongly encouraged that families take Monday nights as family night, and make it a priority to be together, discuss the gospel, and have a little fun. The intent is to strengthen families, and sometimes it's easy to find other things that distract us from holding a meaningful FHE.
-- Service in the temple brings blessings to the lives of those who attend. There was one very old man who joined the church at 82, and at 90 years old said something like, "The temple has added years to my life, and life to those years."
-- "Do you know a young man who needs help?" was the topic of the third speaker, who was a very moving speaker. As it happens, he was a young man who came from a broken home and could have easily been "lost" to religion were it not for the attention of conscientious church leaders, young men leaders, scout leaders, seminary teachers, and other adults in his life who helped him through the really tough times.
-- "Focus on Five" was a message from the president of the stake. One of the greatest things about the church is that we take care of our own, even if our own don't really want to be cared for. We do our best to extend welcoming hands to encourage people who have "fallen away" from the church to return and be a part of it. In this task, the stake president encouraged each of the wards to focus on five families at a time -- rather than getting overwhelmed by the dozens or hundreds of people who have "wandered away" -- and to actively try to find ways to bring them back into the church. It was a very good meeting.
Afterwards, we attended the regular session of stake conference. It was a two-hour meeting with everybody packed in together. My wife directs the stake choir, so she was up on the stand the entire time, which left me to wrestle with our three children. In an effort to help them behave themselves, we brought some "Color Wonder" books for them to color in. During normal church services, where the main meeting only goes about an hour, we don't provide anything for the children to do because we've found that they have a hard time being reverent. They need to eventually learn to be reverent and to listen to the speakers.
During stake conference, since it's a two-hour meeting, we usually do bring something for them to do, and I broke it out when the first speaker started talking. However, things went badly from the very first minute. It seems that while they are focused on coloring in the books, they forget where they are and are incapable of whispering to communicate. Not only that, but they fight over who gets what color and which book and where to sit and how to lean and, incidentally, our youngest wants all the pencils, crayons, and markers. Then my daughter announced she had to go to the bathroom, and I didn't want to march all three of my children out, so I sent my oldest to shepherd her -- they did wonderfully and came back in a timely fashion. Then my youngest starting throwing a tantrum because the older kids wouldn't let him have all the crayons. I ended up leaving the older kids on the bench and taking him out to the foyer to have a little time-out. After I returned my daughter started complaining that her chest hurt -- with no explanation -- so started crying and whimpering. All the while I'm trying to keep them all happy and quiet and keep things from being thrown around.
About an hour in, I'd had enough and I took it all away. Interestingly enough, they were suddenly quiet, and they didn't complain. I think they recognized how they were misbehaving. I gave my youngest a few cars, and the older kids sat there bored out of their minds. But at least they were quiet. While my wife sat up on the stage and had a wonderful time hearing the messages as delivered by the speakers, all I could think about was the scripture from Genesis 2:18: "It is not good that the man should be alone ..." Really. I was glad when the meeting was over.
So then we went home, had lunch, and opened my birthday presents. Since we had just bought a new computer, there were only a few things for me, but that's plenty fine by me. My in-laws gave me a movie called "Work and the Glory III" (one I've been wanting for a while), and my wife and kids gave me a computer game called "Star Wars: Empire at war". Since I love strategy games, I'm looking forward to spending some time with it. We also spent an hour napping (cut short by my impatient oldest son), had a wonderful dinner with the kids, and played a little bit on my new computer game. My wife made a very nice cake for me -- three layers of it! It was my favorite kind: chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting, with chocolate ice cream on the side. She dazzled it up a bit with some fillings, and put it atop a silly stand that has purple feet below it. Since she professionally makes cakes, it wasn't much to look at, but I had previously told her that I would sacrifice a fancy and decadent cake if she would just make me one that I could have a lot of. You seen, when it comes to my birthday, I like to eat chocolate cake with ice cream, and a lot of it! She was dismayed, but satisfied me! Yes, indeed, she does love me.
Later that night, I called my parents to visit with them a little. My birthday snuck up on them so apparently there's a card on the way. My mother said that my birthday was the only good thing to happen to her family in August. I'm not quite sure what she meant by that, but then we started tabulating all the birthdays therein, and she was surprised a bit by the results.
Anyway, after the kids were down for the night, two of my siblings called me. One thing to understand about me and my siblings is that each of the seven of us are very, very different people. To that end, we don't get together as much as I'd like, and since I live a few states away from the rest of them, it's even rarer that I get the chance to see or talk with them. So, I was genuinely touched when two of my siblings called me to wish me a happy birthday. In my entire life, that was the first time that has happened. I've had years where one of them will call, usually not the same one, but this year I had two! Figuratively speaking, that was the icing on the cake.
------
P.S. -- My parents did send a check to me for my birthday. It was worth far more than they should have spent, and I chastised them for that in the same moment I expressed my gratitude. Funny how we are sometimes. In any case, I used the money to buy a bicycle rack so that we can more easily take our bicycles with us when we go camping or to the park. It's something we've wanted for a long time. Thanks Mom and Dad!
Friday afternoon my daughter had her first soccer practice of the fall season. Being not-quite-six, the little girls all were pretty obedient to the coach (who is a friend of mine). It was really cute seeing them running across the field, clumped all together, attempting to "steal" the ball from the coach. She played soccer last spring, but it was more of a "practice and scrimmage" environment than a "practice and compete" environment. I'm looking forward to watching her this fall, as she does have a competitive streak that might serve her well. On the flip side, last spring she was also prone to lying flat on her back in the middle of the field, proclaiming she was too tired to go on while everybody else played around her. It should be interesting.
Friday night my wife and I went out on a date to a local theater. There we were able to watch a night of "improv" -- improvisational comedy -- performed by a few members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). There were four actors, three of whom I've seen in LDS movies before: Kirby Heyborne ("The RM", "The Singles Ward"), Lincoln Hoppe (ditto), Corbin Allred ("Saints and Soldiers"), and Kelly Lohman (um ...). It was actually quite funny, and since they are members of the church, they guaranteed that it would be clean and family friendly. Of the four, I think Corbin Allred was the best actor of the bunch, but all of them were quite funny and quick-witted.
In hindsight, we probably could've taken our two oldest children, but that would defeat the purpose of date night. We've never been to "the improv" before, though we had previously been fans of the television show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" (but we were often annoyed by the sexual tone that the show would often take for a cheap laugh). We did have a wonderful time, and look forward to going again sometime soon.
Saturday morning was one of hard labor. I woke up early and soon got started in the yard. I mowed, weeded, spread bark on our front hill (in a few places that were unfinished), thinned the garden, sprayed for weeds, and generally did a marathon gardening session. It was a good morning.
That afternoon, my wife took my daughter out to see "Beauty and the Beast" at the local community college. By all reports, they had a wonderful time, with the following two exceptions: 1) my wife had to constantly remind herself that it wasn't a Broadway production - and it showed, and 2) they advertised the sale of cheaply-made, expensive, glowing roses (to go along with the play) that would be on sale in the lobby during the intermission. My daughter immediately went into "gotta-have-it" mode, and spent the latter half of the play driving my wife crazy asking for one. On the way home, she was still begging and pleading, and pushed my wife to the edge, who wouldn't tolerate that, especially since they had left the play, and couldn't buy one anymore. We do our best not to spoil our children by not giving them everything they want, but sometimes that doesn't show.
Saturday evening, my wife and I again got the babysitter and went out to the adult session of our local "stake" conference. In our church, local congregations are called "wards", while small groups of wards are called "stakes". Every six months, we have a conference with all the wards in the stake gathered together -- it's basically a long, two-hour service filled with various speakers providing five to twenty minute sermons intermixed with singing performed variably by a choir and/or the congregation. On the night before there is always a session intended for the adults. The big topic was about preparing ourselves for the coming of Jesus Christ by performing service, keeping the commandments, and teaching our children properly. It was a very nice experience, and we enjoyed the quiet time without the children.
Sunday morning I woke up early to go to a "priesthood leadership" meeting, also part of stake conference. This meeting is intended for those who hold leadership positions in the church. Since there is no paid ministry, everybody tends to be asked to do something to help make things go smoothly -- teach classes, direct choirs, staff the library, deal with the finances, or manage the various youth organizations in the church, for example. For me, I'm the executive secretary to the bishop of the ward, who is the leader of our local congregation -- I basically set up interviews and manage meeting agendas.
During the meeting there were four speakers who spoke about the following topics:
-- Family Home Evening (FHE) is not Family Home Hour. In the church it is strongly encouraged that families take Monday nights as family night, and make it a priority to be together, discuss the gospel, and have a little fun. The intent is to strengthen families, and sometimes it's easy to find other things that distract us from holding a meaningful FHE.
-- Service in the temple brings blessings to the lives of those who attend. There was one very old man who joined the church at 82, and at 90 years old said something like, "The temple has added years to my life, and life to those years."
-- "Do you know a young man who needs help?" was the topic of the third speaker, who was a very moving speaker. As it happens, he was a young man who came from a broken home and could have easily been "lost" to religion were it not for the attention of conscientious church leaders, young men leaders, scout leaders, seminary teachers, and other adults in his life who helped him through the really tough times.
-- "Focus on Five" was a message from the president of the stake. One of the greatest things about the church is that we take care of our own, even if our own don't really want to be cared for. We do our best to extend welcoming hands to encourage people who have "fallen away" from the church to return and be a part of it. In this task, the stake president encouraged each of the wards to focus on five families at a time -- rather than getting overwhelmed by the dozens or hundreds of people who have "wandered away" -- and to actively try to find ways to bring them back into the church. It was a very good meeting.
Afterwards, we attended the regular session of stake conference. It was a two-hour meeting with everybody packed in together. My wife directs the stake choir, so she was up on the stand the entire time, which left me to wrestle with our three children. In an effort to help them behave themselves, we brought some "Color Wonder" books for them to color in. During normal church services, where the main meeting only goes about an hour, we don't provide anything for the children to do because we've found that they have a hard time being reverent. They need to eventually learn to be reverent and to listen to the speakers.
During stake conference, since it's a two-hour meeting, we usually do bring something for them to do, and I broke it out when the first speaker started talking. However, things went badly from the very first minute. It seems that while they are focused on coloring in the books, they forget where they are and are incapable of whispering to communicate. Not only that, but they fight over who gets what color and which book and where to sit and how to lean and, incidentally, our youngest wants all the pencils, crayons, and markers. Then my daughter announced she had to go to the bathroom, and I didn't want to march all three of my children out, so I sent my oldest to shepherd her -- they did wonderfully and came back in a timely fashion. Then my youngest starting throwing a tantrum because the older kids wouldn't let him have all the crayons. I ended up leaving the older kids on the bench and taking him out to the foyer to have a little time-out. After I returned my daughter started complaining that her chest hurt -- with no explanation -- so started crying and whimpering. All the while I'm trying to keep them all happy and quiet and keep things from being thrown around.
About an hour in, I'd had enough and I took it all away. Interestingly enough, they were suddenly quiet, and they didn't complain. I think they recognized how they were misbehaving. I gave my youngest a few cars, and the older kids sat there bored out of their minds. But at least they were quiet. While my wife sat up on the stage and had a wonderful time hearing the messages as delivered by the speakers, all I could think about was the scripture from Genesis 2:18: "It is not good that the man should be alone ..." Really. I was glad when the meeting was over.
So then we went home, had lunch, and opened my birthday presents. Since we had just bought a new computer, there were only a few things for me, but that's plenty fine by me. My in-laws gave me a movie called "Work and the Glory III" (one I've been wanting for a while), and my wife and kids gave me a computer game called "Star Wars: Empire at war". Since I love strategy games, I'm looking forward to spending some time with it. We also spent an hour napping (cut short by my impatient oldest son), had a wonderful dinner with the kids, and played a little bit on my new computer game. My wife made a very nice cake for me -- three layers of it! It was my favorite kind: chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting, with chocolate ice cream on the side. She dazzled it up a bit with some fillings, and put it atop a silly stand that has purple feet below it. Since she professionally makes cakes, it wasn't much to look at, but I had previously told her that I would sacrifice a fancy and decadent cake if she would just make me one that I could have a lot of. You seen, when it comes to my birthday, I like to eat chocolate cake with ice cream, and a lot of it! She was dismayed, but satisfied me! Yes, indeed, she does love me.
Later that night, I called my parents to visit with them a little. My birthday snuck up on them so apparently there's a card on the way. My mother said that my birthday was the only good thing to happen to her family in August. I'm not quite sure what she meant by that, but then we started tabulating all the birthdays therein, and she was surprised a bit by the results.
Anyway, after the kids were down for the night, two of my siblings called me. One thing to understand about me and my siblings is that each of the seven of us are very, very different people. To that end, we don't get together as much as I'd like, and since I live a few states away from the rest of them, it's even rarer that I get the chance to see or talk with them. So, I was genuinely touched when two of my siblings called me to wish me a happy birthday. In my entire life, that was the first time that has happened. I've had years where one of them will call, usually not the same one, but this year I had two! Figuratively speaking, that was the icing on the cake.
P.S. -- My parents did send a check to me for my birthday. It was worth far more than they should have spent, and I chastised them for that in the same moment I expressed my gratitude. Funny how we are sometimes. In any case, I used the money to buy a bicycle rack so that we can more easily take our bicycles with us when we go camping or to the park. It's something we've wanted for a long time. Thanks Mom and Dad!
Friday, August 10, 2007
Pink Box
Oy. I'm a dog. A slobbering dog. A slobbering dog who loves donuts. Somebody just walked by with a pink box, and I know there's donuts inside it. I don't even have to smell them, but I know they're there. There's probably a chocolate cake donut with chocolate frosting and peanuts sprinkled on top. I want it. Right now. Oy.
So I work in a place with cubicles. Most of us are engineers who spend far more time in meetings than we do actually doing engineering. Since we also work on a federal facility, people aren't allowed to bring donuts and coffee (which I don't drink) to meetings -- it's considered "bribery" and "unethical" (hey, I don't make the rules). But we're also human (mostly), and so occasionally somebody will bring a box of donuts to take the edge off an early morning meeting.
And here's where the pink box comes in. I'm obsessive about them -- or rather their contents. I don't know how or why most donut boxes came to be pink and so very common amongst the makers of donuts, but they seem to be a standard now. Whenever I see somebody carrying one in, I ask myself the following series of questions:
"Who is carrying the box?"
"Is it somebody I work with?"
"Where are they going?"
"Is it for a meeting to which I'm invited?"
"Can I get myself invited to the meeting?"
"Is it possible I could gently insert myself into the meeting, steal a donut, and then excuse myself?"
"Could I just sneak into the meeting room, steal a donut, then sneak back out without being noticed?"
"Should I follow the donut box carrier, then when they set the box down somewhere before the meeting, I could steal a donut and make a quick getaway?"
"Maybe I should just tackle them, take the box, and run away ..."
Well, that last one's not a question, but usually my train of thought goes in that direction. I try to fight these base tendencies. I know I don't really need the donut, as I do try very hard to watch my weight (with mixed success), but I most certainly do want the donut. I'm no better than Pavlov's dog, who slobbered whenever the bell was rung -- except for me, it's not a bell ringing, but rather the blissful vision of a beautiful pink box.
So I work in a place with cubicles. Most of us are engineers who spend far more time in meetings than we do actually doing engineering. Since we also work on a federal facility, people aren't allowed to bring donuts and coffee (which I don't drink) to meetings -- it's considered "bribery" and "unethical" (hey, I don't make the rules). But we're also human (mostly), and so occasionally somebody will bring a box of donuts to take the edge off an early morning meeting.
And here's where the pink box comes in. I'm obsessive about them -- or rather their contents. I don't know how or why most donut boxes came to be pink and so very common amongst the makers of donuts, but they seem to be a standard now. Whenever I see somebody carrying one in, I ask myself the following series of questions:
"Who is carrying the box?"
"Is it somebody I work with?"
"Where are they going?"
"Is it for a meeting to which I'm invited?"
"Can I get myself invited to the meeting?"
"Is it possible I could gently insert myself into the meeting, steal a donut, and then excuse myself?"
"Could I just sneak into the meeting room, steal a donut, then sneak back out without being noticed?"
"Should I follow the donut box carrier, then when they set the box down somewhere before the meeting, I could steal a donut and make a quick getaway?"
"Maybe I should just tackle them, take the box, and run away ..."
Well, that last one's not a question, but usually my train of thought goes in that direction. I try to fight these base tendencies. I know I don't really need the donut, as I do try very hard to watch my weight (with mixed success), but I most certainly do want the donut. I'm no better than Pavlov's dog, who slobbered whenever the bell was rung -- except for me, it's not a bell ringing, but rather the blissful vision of a beautiful pink box.
4.6 Earthquake in Chatsworth
According to the U.S. Geological Service (USGS), there was a magnitude 4.6 earthquake on August 9th, 2007, at 12:58:49 am. The epicenter is recorded at 34.3 N 118.62 W (just north of Chatsworth, CA) at a depth of 7.5 kilometers. Since I live at roughly 34.46 N 123.17 W, this put the epicenter roughly 14 1/2 miles away from my house (surface point to subsurface epicenter).
Now I'm a pretty heavy sleeper, but this one did wake me up. My wife is a pretty light sleeper, but it barely woke her up -- she must have been really tired. The last time we were awoken with an earthquake in the middle of the night, my wife was in a state of near-panic and was awake for the rest of the night. This time, however, we both woke up and went right back to sleep. I recall that my first impression upon waking was that there was either a large truck rumbling down the street, the kids had dropped something large, or there was a bomb that had gone off somewhere in the distance.
In any case, my wife says she suggested it was an earthquake at the time and I just grunted and went back to sleep. What I remember was waking up and asking, "What was that?" then grunting and rolling back to sleep. At least the latter half of the story matches between us.
In any case, I don't get too disturbed about earthquakes. They're just not a big fear of mine. My take is that unless it's big enough to start knocking stuff off shelves, it's not worth getting excited over. And if it is big like that, my philosophy is simple, but maddening to my wife: try not to die and move on with your life.
At this point, you might be scratching your head about the "bomb" part from the second paragraph, and how I could possibly go back to sleep so easily if that was a possibility that had run through my head. You see, I grew up in Tooele, UT, where there's a big munitions dump nearby. While I was growing up, there would regularly be big explosions that would rock the town -- rattling windows, causing car alarms to begin to blare, and the like. In the mid-80s, the U.S. Army had to detonate these old bombs and such as a means of safely disposing of them in response to the disarmament agreements with the Soviet Union. So, weirdly enough, explosions in the distance don't even phase me. And if they don't bother me, then why would I get all uptight about a little shaking caused by a little earthquake?
Now I'm a pretty heavy sleeper, but this one did wake me up. My wife is a pretty light sleeper, but it barely woke her up -- she must have been really tired. The last time we were awoken with an earthquake in the middle of the night, my wife was in a state of near-panic and was awake for the rest of the night. This time, however, we both woke up and went right back to sleep. I recall that my first impression upon waking was that there was either a large truck rumbling down the street, the kids had dropped something large, or there was a bomb that had gone off somewhere in the distance.
In any case, my wife says she suggested it was an earthquake at the time and I just grunted and went back to sleep. What I remember was waking up and asking, "What was that?" then grunting and rolling back to sleep. At least the latter half of the story matches between us.
In any case, I don't get too disturbed about earthquakes. They're just not a big fear of mine. My take is that unless it's big enough to start knocking stuff off shelves, it's not worth getting excited over. And if it is big like that, my philosophy is simple, but maddening to my wife: try not to die and move on with your life.
At this point, you might be scratching your head about the "bomb" part from the second paragraph, and how I could possibly go back to sleep so easily if that was a possibility that had run through my head. You see, I grew up in Tooele, UT, where there's a big munitions dump nearby. While I was growing up, there would regularly be big explosions that would rock the town -- rattling windows, causing car alarms to begin to blare, and the like. In the mid-80s, the U.S. Army had to detonate these old bombs and such as a means of safely disposing of them in response to the disarmament agreements with the Soviet Union. So, weirdly enough, explosions in the distance don't even phase me. And if they don't bother me, then why would I get all uptight about a little shaking caused by a little earthquake?
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Acceptance
Last night I had the chance to visit with a family where one of the teenage daughters frequently struggles with depression, migraines, and other various medical problems. For example, late last Sunday night, the daughter had literally crawled down the hallway from her bedroom towards her mother's door, her head throbbing with magnificent pain, where she scratched at the door, sobbing and begging for help to make the pain go away.
The mother was greatly disturbed by this (who wouldn't be?!), and last night we had a difficult discussion about faith and hope and a willingness to accept things that we are powerless to change. The mother had been struggling with maintaining hope when it seems that nothing ever seems to get better for her daughter.
In the course of the discussion, I was reminded that we do not always have the power to overcome our difficulties. Sometimes things simply don't ever get better. When that happens, are we to lose faith, forget hope, and abandon ourselves to misery and sorrow? Or are we to strengthen our resolve and press forward? I was reminded at the time of a scripture from the New Testament's Gospel of Matthew (11:28-30), where Jesus Christ said:
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
You see, this good woman had been feeling that this burden was hers alone to bear. She had forgotten that she is not alone, that she is not solely responsible to help her daughter, to attempt to "fix" things. Sometimes when things are particularly difficult, we often feel very much alone, and forget that we have family and friends who can help us. This particular woman is surrounded by people who do their best to practice the following words from a prophet named Alma, as recorded in The Book of Mormon's Book of Mosiah (18:8-9):
... as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death ...
Her good family was standing by, literally feet away from her, as she expressed her sorrow and her frustration to me at her inability to make things better for her daughter. Why did she not look to them for comfort? Why did she not seek support from them? She clearly needed to speak to somebody, but she had felt this burden was hers alone to bear, and that her family could not help her. What faulty thinking! What a sad moment it was for me to see the looks on her family's face as I reminded her that this isn't her challenge alone. They nodded with empathy and clearly were grateful that I was saying what they somehow had not been able to express.
I reminded her of a scripture from the Doctrine and Covenants (122:8) -- a revelation received by the prophet Joseph Smith when he was feeling particularly down that reminded him to be humble and recognize our place:
The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
We are children of our Heavenly Father. Jesus Christ is our Savior. He has suffered beyond all to take upon Him our transgressions, if we will but repent and look to him for forgiveness. Any measure of pain and suffering we can experience in this life pales in comparison to that which the Savior experienced to bring us to Him again. Let us remember the words from the Old Testament's 23rd Psalm:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
A beautiful psalm which reminds us of the promises set before us. Regardless of what happens in this life, what troubles or afflictions we must bear, we have been promised that we can return to live with our Father in Heaven again.
We do not understand the plan that God has for each of us. We do not know all it's details; our ignorance is an integral part of that plan, required to properly test us and to enable us to exercise our free will. What will we do with that blessing and that burden?
Perhaps this woman's daughter will never get better. Perhaps it is our Father's plan that she suffer her entire life so that those around her can be blessed with the opportunity to comfort her, to learn patience, and to be a witness to her willingness to endure suffering. Perhaps Father will take her Home early -- there is no evidence of that, yet if it were so, that would be all right, too, in the end. Or perhaps, hopefully (please let it be so!), the Lord will have mercy on this young girl and her mother, and heal her from her infirmities. One never knows.
But what I do know is that regardless of what may happen in this life, we have been given some counsel which we should not forget. It comes from the prophet Nephi, as recorded in the 2nd Book of Nephi (31:20) in the Book of Mormon, which reads:
Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.
The mother was greatly disturbed by this (who wouldn't be?!), and last night we had a difficult discussion about faith and hope and a willingness to accept things that we are powerless to change. The mother had been struggling with maintaining hope when it seems that nothing ever seems to get better for her daughter.
In the course of the discussion, I was reminded that we do not always have the power to overcome our difficulties. Sometimes things simply don't ever get better. When that happens, are we to lose faith, forget hope, and abandon ourselves to misery and sorrow? Or are we to strengthen our resolve and press forward? I was reminded at the time of a scripture from the New Testament's Gospel of Matthew (11:28-30), where Jesus Christ said:
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
You see, this good woman had been feeling that this burden was hers alone to bear. She had forgotten that she is not alone, that she is not solely responsible to help her daughter, to attempt to "fix" things. Sometimes when things are particularly difficult, we often feel very much alone, and forget that we have family and friends who can help us. This particular woman is surrounded by people who do their best to practice the following words from a prophet named Alma, as recorded in The Book of Mormon's Book of Mosiah (18:8-9):
... as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death ...
Her good family was standing by, literally feet away from her, as she expressed her sorrow and her frustration to me at her inability to make things better for her daughter. Why did she not look to them for comfort? Why did she not seek support from them? She clearly needed to speak to somebody, but she had felt this burden was hers alone to bear, and that her family could not help her. What faulty thinking! What a sad moment it was for me to see the looks on her family's face as I reminded her that this isn't her challenge alone. They nodded with empathy and clearly were grateful that I was saying what they somehow had not been able to express.
I reminded her of a scripture from the Doctrine and Covenants (122:8) -- a revelation received by the prophet Joseph Smith when he was feeling particularly down that reminded him to be humble and recognize our place:
The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
We are children of our Heavenly Father. Jesus Christ is our Savior. He has suffered beyond all to take upon Him our transgressions, if we will but repent and look to him for forgiveness. Any measure of pain and suffering we can experience in this life pales in comparison to that which the Savior experienced to bring us to Him again. Let us remember the words from the Old Testament's 23rd Psalm:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
A beautiful psalm which reminds us of the promises set before us. Regardless of what happens in this life, what troubles or afflictions we must bear, we have been promised that we can return to live with our Father in Heaven again.
We do not understand the plan that God has for each of us. We do not know all it's details; our ignorance is an integral part of that plan, required to properly test us and to enable us to exercise our free will. What will we do with that blessing and that burden?
Perhaps this woman's daughter will never get better. Perhaps it is our Father's plan that she suffer her entire life so that those around her can be blessed with the opportunity to comfort her, to learn patience, and to be a witness to her willingness to endure suffering. Perhaps Father will take her Home early -- there is no evidence of that, yet if it were so, that would be all right, too, in the end. Or perhaps, hopefully (please let it be so!), the Lord will have mercy on this young girl and her mother, and heal her from her infirmities. One never knows.
But what I do know is that regardless of what may happen in this life, we have been given some counsel which we should not forget. It comes from the prophet Nephi, as recorded in the 2nd Book of Nephi (31:20) in the Book of Mormon, which reads:
Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Time
I've concluded that time is not my friend. Oh, it flows well enough. It is steady and reliable, but it is also unrelenting. Some say that time is a mechanism to prevent everything from happening at once. This is very convenient, and I appreciate that, but at the same time, it also prevents one from enjoying anything for any significant amount of time.
The theory of relativity says that if you were to travel really fast, then everything else around you would appear to speed up. This would be a good way to skip commercials on TV, or to pass the time while waiting for the next Harry Potter book to come out, but it is a one-way trip. If you forgot to take your spouse with you while you were waiting out the next few presidential elections, you'd come home to an older, lonelier, and probably very grumpier spouse.
Some people consider time to be the fourth-dimension. I think this is faulty thinking. We have three dimensions in our everyday life -- we can go up and down, forwards and backwards, and left and right -- through which we can all travel with relative ease. However, time, the so-called fourth dimension, isn't so simple to navigate.
In the world of science fiction, it is an interesting theoretical study that one could create a time machine to move around in time. It makes for good reading to wonder what would happen if you killed one of your own grandparents before they had any children, or if you stepped on a butterfly twenty million years ago, or if you went forward in time and brought home some advanced technologies. Usually, such alterations in the events of history past or history future have severe consequences, and it is generally thought that messing with time is undesirable.
But sometimes, I do really want to be a master over time. For example, some days I want to keep my children in their young age so I can enjoy their youthful enthusiasm, their ease of laughter, and their delight at learning new things. Other days, I want them to be much older, so I could actually stop changing diapers, or take my children out on more adult excursions than just to Chuck-E-Cheese's. Some days, I just want to lie in bed with my wife for untold hours, cuddling beneath the blankets and enjoying the warmth. Other times, I just want to add hours more to the day, for I never seem to be able to get things done in the time I have available. Or just to have enough time to actually get enough sleep! And wouldn't it be great to be able to go back in time to make changes (make corrections AND make mistakes?) to what we've done so that we could see how things would have worked out had we done something different? (Then back track to our "baseline" lives ... but only if we wanted to?)
But none of this is possible to us right now. I don't think it ever will be. God has created this universe to run only forward, no doubt for very good reasons. One of these days, I intend to ask him about that.
The theory of relativity says that if you were to travel really fast, then everything else around you would appear to speed up. This would be a good way to skip commercials on TV, or to pass the time while waiting for the next Harry Potter book to come out, but it is a one-way trip. If you forgot to take your spouse with you while you were waiting out the next few presidential elections, you'd come home to an older, lonelier, and probably very grumpier spouse.
Some people consider time to be the fourth-dimension. I think this is faulty thinking. We have three dimensions in our everyday life -- we can go up and down, forwards and backwards, and left and right -- through which we can all travel with relative ease. However, time, the so-called fourth dimension, isn't so simple to navigate.
In the world of science fiction, it is an interesting theoretical study that one could create a time machine to move around in time. It makes for good reading to wonder what would happen if you killed one of your own grandparents before they had any children, or if you stepped on a butterfly twenty million years ago, or if you went forward in time and brought home some advanced technologies. Usually, such alterations in the events of history past or history future have severe consequences, and it is generally thought that messing with time is undesirable.
But sometimes, I do really want to be a master over time. For example, some days I want to keep my children in their young age so I can enjoy their youthful enthusiasm, their ease of laughter, and their delight at learning new things. Other days, I want them to be much older, so I could actually stop changing diapers, or take my children out on more adult excursions than just to Chuck-E-Cheese's. Some days, I just want to lie in bed with my wife for untold hours, cuddling beneath the blankets and enjoying the warmth. Other times, I just want to add hours more to the day, for I never seem to be able to get things done in the time I have available. Or just to have enough time to actually get enough sleep! And wouldn't it be great to be able to go back in time to make changes (make corrections AND make mistakes?) to what we've done so that we could see how things would have worked out had we done something different? (Then back track to our "baseline" lives ... but only if we wanted to?)
But none of this is possible to us right now. I don't think it ever will be. God has created this universe to run only forward, no doubt for very good reasons. One of these days, I intend to ask him about that.
Movie Review: Transformers
Last Friday, my wife and I went out on a date to see the Transformers live-action movie. It was our semi-regular date night, which we don't get as often as we'd like. In addition, we don't usually get out to many movies -- there's just not that many that seem worth the time and money (around $10 per ticket, $5 per hour for the babysitter, plus any money we spend on dinner ... it adds up). But my wife knew I really wanted to see it, so she humored me and off we went!
As it turns out, this movie was everything I expected it to be: a good romp with plenty of action that allowed me to reminisce on my memories of watching the cartoon while satisfying some of my baser teenage instincts. Huh?, you may say? Well, read on.
As a kid, I loved the Transformers. Not just liked, but absolutely loved them. My parents didn't have a lot of resources, so I often would beg and plead and whine for a Transformer for the usual gift-receiving holidays. Only a few times did I actually get one, and there's one in particular that I still love and adore to this day (The G1 Jetfire, which design was blatantly stolen from the Robotech Veritech Fighter). I don't even allow my kids to play with it and it sits reverently on a shelf in my closet. One of these days I'll probably bronze it and mount it above my fireplace.
Anyway, back to the movie. It was pretty silly in a lot of good ways. The storyline wasn't unique or unusual (from a science fiction standpoint), and contained the usual plot devices one would expect to see, as follows:
-- Nerdy boy inherits important artifact from grandfather
-- Nerdy boy lusts after very attractive girl (VAG, for short) who doesn't know he exists and is way out of his league.
-- Nerdy boy and VAG get caught in the crossfire of very large robots (VLRs, for short) that somehow don't end up pasting the two of them to the sidewalk.
-- Nerdy boy and VAG end up as part of a government plot to keep the existence of VLRs under wraps, in the process discovering something using the aforementioned artifact that will allow them to later save the world.
-- Nerdy boy and VAG end up in the middle of even more crossfire between many VLRs, again somehow not getting pasted to the sidewalk.
-- Nerdy boy is able to escape the biggest, baddest VLR in a footrace.
-- Nerdy boy dispatches the biggest, baddest VLR using the aforementioned discovery, thereby saving the world.
-- Nerdy boy and VAG get together.
Along the way, there were plenty of things that annoyed, such as a mother whose every utterance was cringe-inducing, slow pans across the fenders of various automobiles, and even more slow pans across the fenders of the VAG intermixed with shots of the nerdy boy biting his knuckles in sexual frustration. There is no doubt, however, that these things appeal to the two primary target audiences for this movie, namely teenage boys and early middle-aged boys who grew up watching Transformers (that'd be me).
But there were also plenty of things that I loved, too. Each and every time a Transformer did it's thing, I wanted to put it on super-slow-motion and zoom in on every frame. The action scenes were well done (not overdone, as is often the case with this type of movie) and the story didn't even have that many plot holes.
I did have to suspend my disbelief whenever the Transformers changed because, apparently, there's no such thing as conservation of mass (or volume, as far as constant-temperature solids are concerned), and I was a little perplexed about why the main plot device, which creates new Transformers, would always create mean and nasty little buggers (which were quite humorous, in many cases, though).
Nevertheless, I did quite enjoy the movie. It's not one I'll buy to put on my shelf, as it's got plenty of morally ambiguous content that I don't want to keep in my home, but I'll probably rent it someday so I can do the super-slow-motion/zooming that I was desperate to do in the theater.
My rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars. Well worth watching twice.
As it turns out, this movie was everything I expected it to be: a good romp with plenty of action that allowed me to reminisce on my memories of watching the cartoon while satisfying some of my baser teenage instincts. Huh?, you may say? Well, read on.
As a kid, I loved the Transformers. Not just liked, but absolutely loved them. My parents didn't have a lot of resources, so I often would beg and plead and whine for a Transformer for the usual gift-receiving holidays. Only a few times did I actually get one, and there's one in particular that I still love and adore to this day (The G1 Jetfire, which design was blatantly stolen from the Robotech Veritech Fighter). I don't even allow my kids to play with it and it sits reverently on a shelf in my closet. One of these days I'll probably bronze it and mount it above my fireplace.
Anyway, back to the movie. It was pretty silly in a lot of good ways. The storyline wasn't unique or unusual (from a science fiction standpoint), and contained the usual plot devices one would expect to see, as follows:-- Nerdy boy inherits important artifact from grandfather
-- Nerdy boy lusts after very attractive girl (VAG, for short) who doesn't know he exists and is way out of his league.
-- Nerdy boy and VAG get caught in the crossfire of very large robots (VLRs, for short) that somehow don't end up pasting the two of them to the sidewalk.
-- Nerdy boy and VAG end up as part of a government plot to keep the existence of VLRs under wraps, in the process discovering something using the aforementioned artifact that will allow them to later save the world.
-- Nerdy boy and VAG end up in the middle of even more crossfire between many VLRs, again somehow not getting pasted to the sidewalk.
-- Nerdy boy is able to escape the biggest, baddest VLR in a footrace.
-- Nerdy boy dispatches the biggest, baddest VLR using the aforementioned discovery, thereby saving the world.
-- Nerdy boy and VAG get together.
Along the way, there were plenty of things that annoyed, such as a mother whose every utterance was cringe-inducing, slow pans across the fenders of various automobiles, and even more slow pans across the fenders of the VAG intermixed with shots of the nerdy boy biting his knuckles in sexual frustration. There is no doubt, however, that these things appeal to the two primary target audiences for this movie, namely teenage boys and early middle-aged boys who grew up watching Transformers (that'd be me).
But there were also plenty of things that I loved, too. Each and every time a Transformer did it's thing, I wanted to put it on super-slow-motion and zoom in on every frame. The action scenes were well done (not overdone, as is often the case with this type of movie) and the story didn't even have that many plot holes.
I did have to suspend my disbelief whenever the Transformers changed because, apparently, there's no such thing as conservation of mass (or volume, as far as constant-temperature solids are concerned), and I was a little perplexed about why the main plot device, which creates new Transformers, would always create mean and nasty little buggers (which were quite humorous, in many cases, though).
Nevertheless, I did quite enjoy the movie. It's not one I'll buy to put on my shelf, as it's got plenty of morally ambiguous content that I don't want to keep in my home, but I'll probably rent it someday so I can do the super-slow-motion/zooming that I was desperate to do in the theater.
My rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars. Well worth watching twice.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
The Genesis Impact
Back in 2004 I was witness to one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. NASA JPL had sent a spacecraft, called Genesis, to sit at the Lagrange point between the Earth and the sun to collect particles from the solar wind. The spacecraft behaved beautifully and returned to Earth in September of 2004. I was able to go to Dugway, UT, and take my father with me, to go sit in the hangar at Michael's Air Field when the spacecraft returned to Earth. The original plan was to have the spacecraft enter the atmosphere and pop out some parachutes, which a helicopter would hook in order to slowly lower the spacecraft to the ground.
Things didn't exactly go as planned. I sat in the hangar that September day with my father, who had retired from Dugway Proving Grounds, and explained to him how it was to work. With all the dignitaries around us, we watched as the capture helicopter (with the Hollywood-based chase helicopter, which was taking awesome footage) took off and headed out over the desert to the entry zone. Retreating into the hangar, we watched on several big screens as the video was transmitted back from the helicopters. There were also plenty of cameras watching the spacecraft re-enter Earth's atmosphere, and we got the first look of the dot in the sky while it was still over Washington state (from western Utah -- those were pretty good optics!). As the cameras continued to track the vehicle through the sky, it seemed to pulse bright then dark then bright again. This was expected because the vehicle was slightly spinning at the time.
As the object got closer and we could resolve it a little better, my father leaned over and asked, "Is that thing tumbling?" In my infinite wisdom, I replied, "No, it can't be." Uh huh. It was tumbling, and it shouldn't have been.
The funny thing was that the commentator, a big cheese from JPL, was also telling people that it was normal to see the coloration flickering like it was. Even after it was time for the parachutes to deploy, the commentator was wrongly assuring everybody, "You wouldn't expect to see it, yet." Clearly something was wrong.
So we watched it come in. It was extraordinary footage to watch as this UFO looking thing tumbled through the sky. And it moved so very quickly that we were shocked when it impacted. Even the mission operators were surprised, as one of the managers asked (after impact had been reported), "Do we have an altitude?" Came the reply, "That's impact, sir. Ground level." The reply was delivered quite deadpan, but you could hear the lilting "You idiot. Didn't you hear me the first time?" tone in the man's voice.
We were stunned. In muted silence we watched as bomb specialists were delivered to the spacecraft to defuse the explosive bolts that hadn't blown to release the parachutes. Their every move around the little capsule, which was firmly embedded in the muddy, cracked sand of the desert, was careful and coordinated -- downright mechanical. Soon after, the party-that-wasn't was over, and we left the base to go home.
It turns out that the builders of the spacecraft had mounted a device upside-down -- the device that was to detect the deceleration of the spacecraft in the atmosphere and determine when to deploy the parachutes. It was one of those mistakes that happen when people are overworked, underfunded, and over-confident. With no parachutes deployed, the vehicle came screaming in and crash-landed. It had been assumed that in order for the scientists to properly analyze the samples, the samples needed to be kept isolated from Earth's environment, and the project had spent an enormous amount of money to set up a sample handling chain to get the samples out of the spacecraft's canister and into the isolated facility where they would be analyzed. Seeing the spacecraft splattered in the sand with the sample capsule cracked open, the samples shattered and mud seeping in, was nothing short of devastating to the scientists.
Luckily, the scientists were still able to get good results from the samples. Ironically, this called into question the need to have spent all that money building the sample handling chain in the first place.
In any case, seeing that tumbling spacecraft and the final impact was a poignant moment in my life. We were all stunned and saddened by the event, and we left with a terrible sinking feeling in our stomaches.
But me -- it's just the kind of guy that I am -- I also secretly harbored some other feeling that I didn't voice for quite a while. It was a feeling that simply said, "Wow, that was pretty cool." I mean, really, how often do you see that kind of thing?!
Things didn't exactly go as planned. I sat in the hangar that September day with my father, who had retired from Dugway Proving Grounds, and explained to him how it was to work. With all the dignitaries around us, we watched as the capture helicopter (with the Hollywood-based chase helicopter, which was taking awesome footage) took off and headed out over the desert to the entry zone. Retreating into the hangar, we watched on several big screens as the video was transmitted back from the helicopters. There were also plenty of cameras watching the spacecraft re-enter Earth's atmosphere, and we got the first look of the dot in the sky while it was still over Washington state (from western Utah -- those were pretty good optics!). As the cameras continued to track the vehicle through the sky, it seemed to pulse bright then dark then bright again. This was expected because the vehicle was slightly spinning at the time.
As the object got closer and we could resolve it a little better, my father leaned over and asked, "Is that thing tumbling?" In my infinite wisdom, I replied, "No, it can't be." Uh huh. It was tumbling, and it shouldn't have been.The funny thing was that the commentator, a big cheese from JPL, was also telling people that it was normal to see the coloration flickering like it was. Even after it was time for the parachutes to deploy, the commentator was wrongly assuring everybody, "You wouldn't expect to see it, yet." Clearly something was wrong.
So we watched it come in. It was extraordinary footage to watch as this UFO looking thing tumbled through the sky. And it moved so very quickly that we were shocked when it impacted. Even the mission operators were surprised, as one of the managers asked (after impact had been reported), "Do we have an altitude?" Came the reply, "That's impact, sir. Ground level." The reply was delivered quite deadpan, but you could hear the lilting "You idiot. Didn't you hear me the first time?" tone in the man's voice.
We were stunned. In muted silence we watched as bomb specialists were delivered to the spacecraft to defuse the explosive bolts that hadn't blown to release the parachutes. Their every move around the little capsule, which was firmly embedded in the muddy, cracked sand of the desert, was careful and coordinated -- downright mechanical. Soon after, the party-that-wasn't was over, and we left the base to go home.It turns out that the builders of the spacecraft had mounted a device upside-down -- the device that was to detect the deceleration of the spacecraft in the atmosphere and determine when to deploy the parachutes. It was one of those mistakes that happen when people are overworked, underfunded, and over-confident. With no parachutes deployed, the vehicle came screaming in and crash-landed. It had been assumed that in order for the scientists to properly analyze the samples, the samples needed to be kept isolated from Earth's environment, and the project had spent an enormous amount of money to set up a sample handling chain to get the samples out of the spacecraft's canister and into the isolated facility where they would be analyzed. Seeing the spacecraft splattered in the sand with the sample capsule cracked open, the samples shattered and mud seeping in, was nothing short of devastating to the scientists.
Luckily, the scientists were still able to get good results from the samples. Ironically, this called into question the need to have spent all that money building the sample handling chain in the first place.
In any case, seeing that tumbling spacecraft and the final impact was a poignant moment in my life. We were all stunned and saddened by the event, and we left with a terrible sinking feeling in our stomaches.
But me -- it's just the kind of guy that I am -- I also secretly harbored some other feeling that I didn't voice for quite a while. It was a feeling that simply said, "Wow, that was pretty cool." I mean, really, how often do you see that kind of thing?!
Tagged Results
So my wife "tagged" me, meaning that she sent me a list of things to which I'm supposed to answer 4 items and then ask 4 other people to do the same. I usually detest this sort of stuff as a phenomenal waste of time, but since she's my wife, I'll do it this time -- but I won't ask 4 others to do it! Here goes, in no particular order ...
Favorite four jobs I've held:
-- Where I work now for the space industry in southern CA
-- Utah State University in the computer lab in Logan, UT
-- Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space in Sunnyvale, CA
-- Holiday Inn Reservations Center in Salt Lake City, UT
Four movies I can watch over and over again:
-- 2010
-- Anything Star Wars
-- I, Robot
-- The Day After Tomorrow
Four places I have lived:
-- Arcadia, CA
-- Sunnyvale, CA
-- Logan, UT
-- Tooele, UT
Four TV shows I watch:
-- LOST
-- Survivor
-- Amazing Race
-- The 4400
Four places I've been on vacation:
-- London, England
-- Cruise to Catalina Island, CA; and Ensenada, Mexico
-- Lake Powell, UT
-- Big Sur and Monterrey, CA
Four favorite foods:
-- Macaroni and Cheese
-- Meatlovers Pizza
-- A good salad (believe it or not)
-- Anything chocolate
Four websites I visit:
-- my.yahoo.com
-- www.cnn.com
-- www.space.com/news
-- www.desnews.com
Four people I'm tagging now:
-- Nope, ain't gonna do it.
Favorite four jobs I've held:
-- Where I work now for the space industry in southern CA
-- Utah State University in the computer lab in Logan, UT
-- Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space in Sunnyvale, CA
-- Holiday Inn Reservations Center in Salt Lake City, UT
Four movies I can watch over and over again:
-- 2010
-- Anything Star Wars
-- I, Robot
-- The Day After Tomorrow
Four places I have lived:
-- Arcadia, CA
-- Sunnyvale, CA
-- Logan, UT
-- Tooele, UT
Four TV shows I watch:
-- LOST
-- Survivor
-- Amazing Race
-- The 4400
Four places I've been on vacation:
-- London, England
-- Cruise to Catalina Island, CA; and Ensenada, Mexico
-- Lake Powell, UT
-- Big Sur and Monterrey, CA
Four favorite foods:
-- Macaroni and Cheese
-- Meatlovers Pizza
-- A good salad (believe it or not)
-- Anything chocolate
Four websites I visit:
-- my.yahoo.com
-- www.cnn.com
-- www.space.com/news
-- www.desnews.com
Four people I'm tagging now:
-- Nope, ain't gonna do it.
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