'Tis the season......

Pictures

My house, in the snow today. Went for a walk to take pictures and this is as far as I got - it's cold out there.

This is in the summer a few years ago.

And this is before the big remodel of aught-4.

Finally, the Subaru all covered with snow.

Hope you made it home safe too....

I was down in the Daybreak subdivision (115000 So 5000 W) around 7:30 when the storm hit. They had already been hit pretty bad from the first storm, the one that came in from the south. It was raining up here in Sugarhouse when I left, and they had already had about 6" of snow. That one completely missed the north end of the valley, I couldn't even tell it snowed until I hit around 90th South.

.

Well, the second storm came in from the north, and it hit hard. The roads were all snowpacked, including the freeway. At the 7200 South/I-215/I-15 interchange area traffic was slowed down to 20 MPH (for those of you unfamiliar with SLC, let's just say it's a confusing area when the weather is good). It took me over an hour to make a 30 minute drive. But it was worth it, I'd had a lot of fun. I was visiting with an old friend, Carol, from my early Free Wheeler days, back when I was about 19. I wrote about her earlier on here when I went to her 60th birthday this summer. I hadn't seen her or her family for over 10 years, and a mutual friend called me out of the blue for the birthday party. We promised to keep in touch, and since I'm at the same house I was in 10 years ago, she sent me a Christmas card and invited me out to her son's house on Christmas.

.

Her daughter wasn't at the birthday party because she lives in Ohio, but she was there tonight. I remember her as a 14 year old, when she would answer phones at Free Wheeler (she's 40 now, it's been a lot longer since I saw her). I walk in and say HI to all the people I remembered from the birthday party and she looks at me and asks "Do you remember me?" I stutter, stall and probably have a blank look on my face when she says "I pulled your pants down on 21st South." - "Sheri, holy crap!"

-> Screen starts to go all rippley as we fade into flashback <-

-> The edges of the screen remain foggy <-

It's the summer of '83, I'm managing the Free Wheeler Pizza in Sugarhouse, Sheri is answering the phones that night as her mother, Carol, the aforementioned friend, is delivering pizzas. Carol's sister-in-law Jan, Sheri's aunt, is going along with Carol for the entertainment. It's hot, even hotter in the store right by the ovens, where I'll be spending most of the evening, so all I'm wearing is a pair of those light lycra swimming trunks for pants. (Yes, I have a shirt, shoes and even a hat on too). It's rush hour, so traffic is backed up right in front of the store. I go outside to talk to Carol about who knows what, she and Jan are sitting in the car, just about to leave on a delivery. I'm leaning over the car talking in the window when, whoosh!, all of a sudden my pants are down below my knees. Sheri didn't expect them to go down so easily. Shocked, I stand up quickly, the window of the car with the two faces of the women I was talking to right at crotch level. They get an eyefull, literally. Hell, a bunch of commuters got an eyefull.

-> Rippley effect as we return from the flashback <-

I didn't talk to Sheri for the rest of the night. I got over the embarassment, got a few compliments from Carol and Jan, and eventually forgave Sheri.

Happy-Merry Christmahannukwanzastice.

Heartwarming email stories, gotta love them. (Uh, not really).

In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University.

.

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee, inspected the elephants foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.

.

The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

.

Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

.
.
Probably wasn't the same elephant.
.

This is for everyone who sends me those heart-warming bullshit stories.

More computer issues. *FIXED, YES!*

Ok, below is the post I started, until I got a brainstorm.  Yes, it happens to me a lot, and once in a while it's even useful.  I just looked into the new data folder, picked out a name of one of the files and did a search for it.  First try, all I came up with was the new files.  But there was an option on the advanced search that would search non-indexed folders, although it warned this may take longer.  So, I figured since I couldn't find the folder the help file said should exist, maybe it was one of these 'non-indexed' folders.  Whoa - there it was.  So, I just right-clicked, chose 'open location' and copied the folders over to the new, backed up location.  And when I opened up Thunderbird again, there they were, all my lost emails.  WHEW!

If you ever change the path of any data file, be sure to write down the old path before you do.  On my old computer I used Microsoft Outlook to access my myriad of email addresses, but with the new computer I got the watered down version of Office 2007 - no Outlook.  So, I installed Mozilla Thunderbird, a free Outlook type email program.  I've know a lot of people who have used it, and they all liked it, and so far I've had no problems with it.  Well, except for one.  I wanted to change the data file to a folder that I have automatically backed up - trying to learn from past mistakes.  It all worked fine and dandy, except it didn't move over all the old data - I lost all my old emails.  So I tried to set it back to the default, and even tried to find the old data file so I could move it to the new location.  Yeah, uh, not so much.  It didn't exist where the help file told me it should.

A Hero Among Us.

In a final thumbing of his nose at the American public President Bush put up 360,000 acres of land in Southern Utah for bidding, to lease to oil companies for drilling.  Due to political pressure it was trimmed down to 149,000 acres.

.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune today, Tim DeChristopher, a 27 year old Sugarhouse resident, went to the auction this week to join a protest.  Instead he went in to the offices and signed up to join the auction itself.  He won bids on 10 out of the 116 parcels that were auctioned off, for a total of about $1.8 million, which he doesn't have.  They also say he upped the bidding on other parcels he didn't win by as much as $500,000.  DeChristopher said, about the possibility of going to jail for his actions, "If that's what it takes."

.

They will reauction the parcels he won and anyone who wants to argue that their bid was illegally upped can petition for a rebidding.  Here's the beautiful part; rebidding will not take place until February - AFTER Obama takes office.  Legally, they say, Obama can't disolve legally signed leases, but he can cancel the rebidding after taking office.  DeChristopher effectively prevent the leasing of those 10 parcels of land, and caused other winners to pay more or give up their lease; to argue your bid was illegally increased is to put it back on the chopping block where Obama can cancel it.  Ha!

.

Our forefathers firmly beleived in Civil Disobedience in the face of an amoral tyrant.  Adams, Hancock, Jefferson and Franklin will be smiling as Tim DeChristopher is lead off to jail.

Flashback.....

It's the winter of 1982, it's cold out and it's snowing.  I just shut down Free Wheeler for the night and stopped at the bank to make the night's deposit.  I get out of my 1978 Buick Regal, leaving the car running, with the heater, radio, wipers and rear window defroster on.  I hit the door lock button, shut the door and, just as the door clicks shut, realize I've just locked my keys in the car.  It's 2 in the morning and I'm standing in the center of Sugarhouse holding a bag full of cash, so the first thing I do is make the deposit.  Then I search my pocket for a dime and head off to the nearest pay phone. (It's '82, cell phones were still that thing Captain Kirk used to get Scotty to beam him up).  I call home and my little brother (1/2 of the Gearheads here) and ask him to grab my mother's spare key and come down, in the middle of a snow storm, and unlock the car for me and save my ass.  Lucky for me, he doesn't just head back to bed.

.

Back to 2008.  It's around 6:30 in the evening and I'm heading out to Best Buy to get some DVD's for the break from school.  There's already 5 or more inches of snow on the ground, and it's still snowing. I start my 2004 Subaru, turn on the radio, heater, wipers and rear window defogger.  I hit the lock button to unlock the back so I can get the scraper out, slam the door and go to the back hatch.  The handle comes up without a click, just air.  Crap!  I hit the wrong side of the lock button and locked the car instead of unlocking it. So, I'm standing out in a snow storm with a car that is running, with all the accessories turned on, thinking "Where have I seen this before?"  Luckily it's not '82 any more and I happen to have a cell phone in my pocket, and even though the house is locked, I am at home.  I call - guess who - c'mon, you can figure it out.  Yup, my little brother, who has had a key to almost all my cars since 1982.  My sister-in-law answers the phone (the other half of the Gearheads) and says that they will come save my ass again (my wording, not hers), but that it will take a few minutes because they are hosting a party and one of them will have to be dropped off at the place first.  And before my toes have time to go completely numb, my brother shows with the key.

.

Thank you Gearheads for pulling my butt out of the freezer once again.  I promise it won't happen again until 2032.

Whew!

The week is over.  And I survived, barely.  I told 3rd period that because of them I was going to spend the break in a small room with padding, wearing a nice jacket with wrap around sleeves.  Wednesday I had a student crawl out the window and yesterday I almost had a fight in my classroom after school.

.

Wed, 3rd period.  We're working on the graphing worksheet I gave them when some kids, who were sluffing, came by my room.  Patrick got up out of his seat and just headed out the door, I intercepted him and reminded him that if he left the room it would count as a sluff.  Then I go out into the hall to harass these kids for not being in class.  I shoo them off to class (yeah, like that's where they're going to go), head back into the classroom and immediately notice that Patrick is missing.  Assuming he's hiding under a desk or in some other crevice, I start looking around when someone tells me he jumped out the window.  Yeah, right. (I am on the first floor).  I look out the window and lo and behold, there are foot prints heading away from it.  So I walk out into the hall and there he is, strutting down the hall heading back to class.  In his seat I look at him and ask "You jumped out the window?"  No, of course he didn't.  Those are someone else's footprints.  I go over and grab a shoe off his foot, take it over to the window and say "Hmmm, same tread print, looks like the same size show.  It was you."

.

The next day (Thu) right after 4th period, a kid that has hardly ever talked to me comes into my room and starts a conversation.  As we're talking I notice a whold group of kids coming in and surrounding a student of mine that has stayed after to finish her assignment.  I see her looking down at her paper, obviously trying to ignore the group, working on the assignment listening to her iPod.  Yeah, something's up.  I inform the group that they are cordially invited to get out of my room, close the door behind them and look at my student.  She's shaking, like someone trying to hold back intense fear and anger.  I'm not going into details, it's the basic teenage crap, except to say that another girl was trying to get her to throw the first punch, and I'm proud to say she didn't take the bait.  "I don't want to get expelled" was the first thing she said when she calmed down.  Contacted the counselor, contacted the Vice Principal, student's mom came in and gave her an extra day of vacation and the instigators got reamed by the VP this morning.  Seems he's had trouble with them before.  Hopefully it all blows over by the time we come back, or maybe the VP made it clear whose butt was going to be in a sling if it happened again.

.

Oh, and a Subaru with new snow tires rocks!  It didn't even slip a bit coming up my driveway with 4+" of snow on the ground.

A beautiful winter poem....

' WINTER '

by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

Shit It's Cold
The End

Thank you Nikita

Funny comments and funny Christmas gift.

Day 1 of the last 5 days before Christmas break.  You all probably know by now that, as STS*, I'm one of the two people who get called first when people have problems with their computers.  Everyone is supposed to send in a work order, yet I am often greeted with "I have a quick problem..." whenever I walk into a room, regardless of how busy I am at the time.  I've gotten good at deflecting these interruptions, but they still happen.  So, today, one of the teachers I eat lunch with, someone who has perfected the work order system, gave me a t-shirt that reads "No, I will not fix your computer."
Then in 4th period, I said something about how everytime I buy more than one bottle of NyQuil, they ask for my I.D.  One of my (male) students comes back with "What a deal.  You mean I can buy rubbers no problem, but I can't buy cold medicine?"  I got halfway through "How" when I realized; I didn't want the answer.

*School Technology Specialist

A beautiful day.

The really nice thing about a big storm coming through is that it cleans out the valley, and if the sun comes out the next day it is beautiful. So, I went over to Sugarhouse Park this evening to get some pictures. I ran into a couple of students who were snowboarding over there and commented on how clear it was. One of them said, (giving me a New York flashback, sorry Jannx) "I don't trust air that I can't see." Yeah, well, I prefer air I can't taste. So, here are the pictures:

Looking west over the Salt Lake Valley.

Hidden Hollow, a little park surrounded by commercial area, that the local Elementary students petitioned and saved.
Just some funky lit up clouds.
Sunset behind the trees at Sugarhouse Park.
Mt. Olympus - looking south-east from the park.

A good day.

1. 
   
   I got the BattleCruiser back, front end fixed and new tires.  The old ones were worn, but also too bulky for the front end - made it wander too much.  The new tires are great.  It feels surefooted (for a car that size) now, and I even had it out in the snow, and it got up the driveway and into the carport, with a couple inches of snow, without any problem.
2. 
   
   Got the Subaru registered no problem also (expired the end of October).  It only took 15 minutes at JUST Emissions, and I spent that time at Albertsons shopping.  I saw them pulling the car out as I was walking back.  I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to get the sticker, since I misplaced the new registration documents when setting up the new computer, but alas, they did the whole thing right there.  **She did suggest that once I got the sticker put on the license plate, that I put two diagonal cuts into it, since people seem to be desperate enough to steal them these days.  So I did it on all the cars.**
3. 
   
   And the biggest "Thank You, God!" item: I retreived all the payroll information from the crash.  I went out and bought the Vista version of the old payroll program I was using, installed it and decided to try finding the payroll data.  I didn't find the data, but I did find the backup data, and after a few hundred clicks it updated it and imported it!  Which means I don't have to spend the Holiday vacation recreating the information so I can print the W-2 forms next month.  That was a major cause of stress for me the last couple of weeks.

So, a good day.  Even the snow helped it.

Reality here, ................G.W.Bush way the hell over there ------------------------>

I know I said I was done with Bush quotes, but this is a brand new and it's beautiful.  I wept.  Yesterday he gave a commencement speech at Texas A&M that was very somber, reflective and psychotic.  These quotes come directly from the Salt Lake Tribune article today (Dec 13, 2008), the last one is my favorite. 

• 
  
  "Remember that popularity is fleeting as the Texas wind.  Character and conscience are as sturdy as the oaks on this campus."  Yeah, how windy is it in your world G.W.?
• 
  
  If you go home at night, look in the mirror and be satisfied that you have done what is right, you will pass the only test that matters." Got any mirrors left?
• 
  
  And the best : "To those of you with jobs lined up, congratulations.  To those of you not exactly sure what comes next, I know how you feel." Yeah, just like every college graduate with $200,000 pension, Secret Service protection and paid travel expenses.

Gangsta-teen dating game goes mobile on Trax, details at 11.

I'm done. Presentation complete, ate food, said our goodbyes and left for the semester. Only one more semester left for my Master's degree. Yippee!

There may be a low pressure full of precipitation heading toward the state, but a psycho front hit the valley yesterday afternoon. One of the most eventful commutes up to the U yet. I can't even remember all the specific events, but the best one was the Teen-mom bachelorettes.

4 boys got on the train at the 21st South station, obvious gang wannabes, 15 maybe 16 years old. I just look over at my fellow teacher and say "Awww, how cute, a gaggle of little baby gangstas." The head larva has one of those hoodies that zip up and and has a creepy face on the hood, with cutouts for the eyes. He looks around for a while trying desperately to get a reaction from somebody, to no avail. Just a couple minutes after taking it off, this skinny little girl (we think) walks by and goes up to king larva and tells him that her friend thinks he's cute and wants his phone number. "Things ain't so down lately, got no cell." he tells her. She walks back past and goes to where a couple of teen-moms are rocking their babies at the front of the train and talks to the blond teen-mom. My friend looks over at me and says, as if talking to larvae boy, "She's got a kid, run, man, run!" Girlfriend goes back and forth a few more times trying to talk the boy into being interested in blond teen mom. Somewhere around the 9th South station, when teen-mom sees this is going nowhere she gets desperate and yells to him, across the full length of the Trax train "and I'm a Jugallette". Jump on it my friend, gangsta teen mom. What more could you ask for. Fortunately our stop was the next stop, because we were at the point that we were bound to say something, loud enough to get us shanked. I would have loved to be there for the last segment of the show. "Ok larvae-boy, time to choose. Will it be gangsta teen-mom #1, gangsta teen-mom #2 or the gender unspecific friend gangsta non-mom #3?" "Well, Wink, I think I'll choose........"

This is it folks.

Next week is the last week of the semester for me at the U. I've just submitted the paper for my Leadership class and our group has everything done for our Instructional Design class. All that is left is to show up for class, do the presentations for the project in each class and then sit back and listen to everyone else's presentations. Yippee!

This means ONLY ONE MORE SEMESTER LEFT! It also means a pay raise. Yup, I'll have 24 more semester credits under my belt since I made the Bachelor's+20 pay scale, and that'll push me up to the Bachelor's+40 level. And if all goes well, by the end of April I'll have my Master's degree. Whew! 80% of the way through.

One point twenty one gigawatts?

I left the house at 11:00 this morning to buy my new computer. It's now 10:00 in the evening. The computer is running, and I have it all networked and the old drives from the dead computer accessable, but still I'm not done. It's going to have to wait for another day. Why don't I have it done, you may ask, since I just said I have everything working? Well, I figured I didn't want another disaster like this last one, so I bought a 1 terrabyte networking harddrive. Actually I bought two. The first one I got all hooked up and was in the middle of installing the software when it informed me that it would work with Windows XP or the 32 bit version of Vista, but not the 64 bit version of Vista. And guess which version I ended up with? Give yourself a $20 bill! I had a couple good leads on a good XP machine (thank you my California friend) but I ended up just going for the Vista. Anyway, I go back to Best Buy with the first server and trade it in for another one that is supposed to work with the 64 bit Vista. Yeah, it does. Sort of. Everything installed right, but you have to jump through about 1,236.97 hoops to get it to work, and somewhere I messed up. This took the bulk of the 11 hours. So, at 9:30 this evening I gave up, packed the thing up and plan on returning it. Now, I haven't given up on the terrabyte harddrive, I'm just going to get an external USB version and give up on the server aspect. I'll still be able to access it from all the computers on my little home network, but I won't have web based access. I was kind of looking forward to that, being able to get to my files from anywhere. But, alas, it's not worth the ulcer I'm working on.

So there it is, I'm back in business, on the net and blogging again. And so far, other than the server issue I gave up on, Vista hasn't been too bad to me. (knock, knock).

Oh, and by the way, the computer I use for my web site got a lot faster when I quadrupled the RAM with pieces of the dead computer. 256 MB bad, 1 Gig good!

Ohhh, I'm SCARED! Wal-Mart is making money!

Ok, you all know (or at least most of you do) that I'm not a big fan of forwarded propaganda emails. And this is no exception, other than the fact that it may be true. But so what? Wal-Mart makes money. Because Wal-Mart makes money, Wal-Mart grows. Same with McDonalds, Starbucks and Barnes & Noble. But for some reason when Wal-Mart does it's some sort of communist plot to overthrow the American way of life. Yeah, right. Wal-Mart is making tons of cash BECAUSE of the American way of life.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm NOT a fan of Wal-Mart. Mainly because it's not worth wading through hoardes of unwashed Americans in sweat pants, down their narrow, dirty isles (eisles? eyeslieyes? I dunno) to stand in their 30 minute lines just so I can save a buck or two on a canned ham. But anyway, here's the gloom and doom-all I gotta do is hit 'forward' and send it on email that I got the other day. Didn't make me hate Wal-Mart any more or less, but did make me wonder if people actually think before they send these on their merry way to gum up my inbox.

For some reason when anyone talks about things like this I think
that the next villain for James Bond will be the CEO of WalMart...

--HOW BIG IS WAL-MART? This should boggle your mind (and scare you
too)!

• 1. At Wal-Mart, Americans spend $36,000,000 every hour of every
  day.
• 2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!
• 3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day
  (March 17th) than Target sells all year.
• 4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears
  + Costco + K-Mart combined.
• 5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest
  private employer. And most can't speak English
• 6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the
  World.
• 7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway
  combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years.
• 8. During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought
  bankruptcy (including Winn-Dixie).
• 9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the
  world.
• 10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906
  are S uperCenters; this is 1,000 more than it had 5 years ago.
• 11. This year, 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will
  occur at a Wal-Mart store. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5
  billion.)
• 12. 90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a
  Wal-Mart
• 13. Let Wal-Mart bail out Wall Street!
  

Update : still no computer

Well, I didn't have to take down the rest of the site, I tried hooking up the old harddrive in the web site computer, and it didn't work.  when I was going through it looking for the data for payroll, I discovered that something had happened to the operating system.  It wasn't there.  My "Windows" folder is empty.  Niiiice.  I also couldn't locate the data for payroll, so I had to do it all by hand.  That part was actually not to bad, but getting the printer to work on this computer was, well, let's just say - a lot of fun.  See, the CD drive on here is broken, which is why I've used it as the server instead of as a computer, so I couldn't install the printer driver from the enclosed CD.  Any why, oh why, does the automatic installation always ask you if you want it to search the internet for the driver, yet is NEVER able to find it?  Yeah, that's a useful little tool.  So I went to Panasonic's website to download the driver myself and found one of the most un-user friendly sites I've ever seen.  If it was a car it would be a 1972 AMC Gremlin.  It took me 45 minutes and several ulcers to actually find the driver and get it downloaded.  But it finally came through, payroll is done and I've got a week and a half to get a new computer and a payroll program for it.  So right now I'm working on a computer with no CD drive, low memory, old processor that is postitioned in a way that it is awkward to work on.  Ok, I'm done complaining.

Things could be worse.  On the way up to class today we stopped off at Chili's for dinner and saw a couple cop cars, fire engine and ambulance at the Staples right next door.  At least I'm not the owner of the Buick that was parked in the front door of that store.  Completely inside, the back bumper was right where the door used to be.  And fortunately the Trax train up by the U that got derailed and was kinda sideways on the track was all cleaned up by the time we got done with dinner.  Of course the friend I ride to class with had the heels on her boots go all skewampus and had to throw them away and walk to Trax in her socks.  We just barely missed the Sandy train at the Galivan center, and I gave her one of my shoes to stand on, so there we were each perched on one foot, leaning up against one another.  A guy, who let's say had a little bit to drink, started talking to us and after a bit mistook our holding each other up for something more carnal, apologized (in a somewhat crude way) for interrupting and walked away.  But, again, at least it wasn't my Buick parked inside the Staples.

And I did get a good laugh today.  The teacher next to me had a substitute and she had to kick a couple of freshmen into my classroom.  I have a small class with all seniors and juniors in it, so it wasn't a problem.  The 9th graders this year are a pretty rowdy group overall, and I guess that the reputation of these freshmen were well known; at one point one of the juniors said "I hope puberty hits these 9th graders before I have to."  Yeah, somedays I like teaching high school.

Technical Difficulties.

Tried buying a PC that still runs on Windows XP lately? Not so easy. Vista has taken over, which would be all fine and dandy, except a lot of XP programs will not work on Vista. So I tried to get a new computer at Best Buy with XP. They had only one, and lo and behold, they were sold out of them. I'm going to have to order it special order and who knows when it will get here. The bad news is that I have stuff to do on my old computer, so I'm going to have to gut the computer I'm using and try to get the other hard drive to work here. And that means that http://www.srossi.net/ is going to be down for a while.

The good news is that since http://www.srossi.net/ is a blend of my own website and a blog, you will still be able to get to the important stuff. You will still be able to access:

• all my posts since April of 2007
• all my important links, including
• the link to srossi e-mail.

so, if you generally access my site from http://www.srossi.net/, you will need to bookmark this link instead:

http://ladunata.blogspot.com/

you will still be able to access your srossi.net email through here.

http://www.srossi.net/ will be going offline sometime in the evening on Tuesday, December 2, 2008.

see ya around and I'll keep you updated.

Down to the wire at the "U", payroll due, lesson plans needed and...

KABOOM!

...my computer at home froze up, fried and in at least 3.14159 other distinct ways died. Which means that my assignment didn't get turned in and the employees at Free Wheeler are going to have to wait a couple days to get paid (the owner is going to front them any money they absolutely need before I can get the checks done, so nobody's going to starve or get evicted).

It also means that, since I can only blog when I'm in class at the U (blogs blocked at work) that although I'll be able to post your comments, I probably won't take the time right now to respond to them. Sorry. I do plan to go out and get a new computer tomorrow, but I'll still have to set it up and get caught up on payroll and classwork before I get to catch up on blogging.

Ain't it the truth.....

Scenes from FrontRunner

I rode the FrontRunner up to Ogden today, I give it a 2 thumbs up.  I wish I'd actually timed it, but I'd bet it doesn't take as much time as driving, especially if it were during rush hour.  And it rides a lot smoother than Trax, I didn't realize how fast we were going until I noticed the freeway right next to me and we were keeping pace with some of the faster cars.  Clean, comfortable, smooth ride and an onboard bathroom to boot.  All in all, if I lived in Davis or Weber counties and worked downtown, or somewhere close to a Trax line, I'd take it rather than fight rush hour traffic.  Hands down. 

For those of you unfamiliar with Utah, over half the population of the state lives in a straight line up and down the Wasatch Front (the green area on the map), about 70 miles from Ogden to Provo.  For years people have argued that we are perfectly set up for a single commuter rail line straight up and down the front, from Provo to Ogden (the 2 large population centers at the top and bottom of the front).  Last year the Utah Transit Authority finally opened the north line from Saly Lake to Ogden.  Good timing too, because it caught the high gas prices and ridership exceeded expectations.  I don't know if it remains higher than expected, but from what I saw it was getting used (and I was home by 5:30). 

Things you might see on your FrontRunner ride