Baby Jared born on Sunday. He's such a cute, sleepy, hunchy, hungry little muncha muncha dude! [More details to come.] Photo:



A recent dinner conversation and a current television ad have both made me wonder what the difference is between black pepper and white pepper. Apparently, black pepper, Piper nigrum, which originates from Madagascar, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, has many uses, ranging from culinary (obviously) to medicinal, and from currency to perfurmery. Opinions seem to vary on how white pepper is made, but it's either picked at a different time (ripeness), or simply the inside of a black peppercorn. Also interesting to note, is that many commercial containers of black ground pepper do not have to list their ingredients on their packaging the way other foods do (even when, like unsalted peanuts, they only contain one ingredient). Interesting (there's a commercial about another food that doesn't have to list ingredients, but I'll have to see it again to remember what food that was).

Enjoyed a most exquisite box of Triscuit Roasted Garlic. And although they contain MSG (tsk tsk), they still rock - the best Triscuits ever created, in my opinion.   =)

Jared has now polished off his first 40-pack of White Cloud newborn diapers (featuring artwork from John Lennon's 'Real Love' collection).

I'm one day overdue now and still no baby Jared. I have had very mild contractions but nothing that warrants a run to the hospital. So, we're still waiting.

Richard, Becky, and I went geocaching some more today - found a couple more caches ('STOP AND GO,GO,GO, 3' and 'Teed Off In Reno') and enjoyed a beautiful day outside. The fall leaves were very pretty along one of the paths we walked. Becky enjoyed throwing rocks and sticks in a small stream and running on the grass.

Tried one of Weinerschnitzel's new Bacon Ranch Chicken Sandwich (the #4 combo meal). Mmmmm. During a recent cache visit, we found a cool camouflaged leaf. See if you can find it in this photo (beware, it's camouflaged):



McDonald's Monopoly is the best, won a free lunch burger and a free breakfast sandwich so far. My Groundspeak travel bug finally came in the mail, but now we've got some work to do to prepare it for it's journeyings.   =)

There are apparently three (3) geodetic benchmarks at the corner of Stanford and Prater in Sparks, only about 20 ft away from one another (I've found two of the three ['KR1328' and 'KR1329'], but not the other that apparently is in the direct center of the intersection ['KR1749'], so it's a little hard to look for with cars whizzing through there 24/7). Strange - what would prompt them to do that (originally)? Usually they're far in between.

Mist's had good luck with Ranitidine tablets (75 mg) lately for heartburn/acid reflux. It's the generic equivalent of Zantac 75.

As near as I can tell, there are twelve (12) different types of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives) configurations in practice: RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5+Hot Spare, 6, 7, 10, and 53. Almost enough to drive you silly. Here's a good site that describes most of these differing RAID configurations, plus each of their advantages and disadvantages.

On Sunday, we went to church (yes, I'm playing piano in Primary again), and then came back home and took a nice nap. Before going over to my folks place for a wonderful dinner, we stopped and retrieved the last couple of caching clues that we need to find the 'Reno View' multicache (although we're saving that for another day).

Dinner was excellent, we had rotisserie BBQ chicken, green beans in Campbell's Cream of Mushroom condensed soup, whipped potatoes, grape-raspberry juice, and B&M canned Brown Bread with Raisins. Checked out Mike's Prospector vs. Great Pumpkin site. Pretty creative. I'll be interested to see how it progresses.

I had the weirdest dream last night. I was flying one of the Blue Angels' fighter jets during their 'public fly day', with Misti as my co-pilot, and Becca was in the back in her carseat. I was following somebody else who was flying ahead of me, and everything was great at first. The speeds were mild (around 200 to 300 m.p.h.), no problem. We flew to Salt Lake City and hovered in front of the temple (the plane could hover like a Harrier jet), waved to the people there (it was a beautiful winter night, and the temple was all lit up in Christmas fashion with brilliant colors), then made a U-turn, and flew back. We were flying around, above (but parallel to) the freeway, when suddenly I noticed that the plane in front of me "opened it up" and was rapidly disappearing, so I floored it, and quickly accelerated to more than 1,000 m.p.h. and caught up. As I did so, they slowed way down to merge onto an on-ramp, so I had to try and slow down, too, but I didn't have enough room, so we had to eject and self-destruct the plane in order to not cause a huge accident. The Blue Angels weren't happy.   =(

Today, Betty brought in a nasty bug she found in her house, and after she took it to the State Entomologist for identification, it turned out to be a 'Jerusalem cricket', which are apparently quite common in this area, but since they're a subterranean bug, no one ever sees them. It looked like a mutant between an ant, a bumblebee (it had a stinger on it's butt), a regular cricket, and a stinkbug (it was quite stinky). Weird.

Lemonade Snapple contains less then 1% juice. Hmmm. At least you can save their bottle caps and spend them at their online 'yard sale'.

Symantec's daily antivirus definition update file finally hit the 7 MB mark. It's been hovering at about the 6.99 MB mark for several days. Woohoo! By the way, most people don't know that you can also download beta definitions from Symantec, too, so you can be protected from new virii hours ahead of everyone else!

Been playing around with IM encryption lately, including both the free certificate from AIMencrypt.com, and Zone Lab's new offering, IMSecure. The certificate approach works well, and it's a no brainer to set up. IMSecure, however, royally sucks and won't even install correctly. Once you do get it installed, it doesn't seem to work. What was Zone Labs thinking?? (It's no wonder that you can't even *find* IMSecure on their website, unless you specifically do a search for it - they're too embarrassed about it!)

It takes my computer almost exactly as long to boot as it does for me to get a bowl of cereal in the morning from a new, unopened box. We went caching again today, and found three more caches and another travel bug. We found the 'It's a Jungle In Here', 'Summer stash cache', and 'Truckee River Stash, revisited' caches, as well as the 'Kermit Key' travel bug. We now have both clues for the 'Where Kermit Met Piggy' cache. In addition, we also went and found one of the three clues needed for the 'Reno View' multicache.

Well, still no baby yet. This is always the hardest time - the last week! It seems to drag on forever. But, I'd rather he be here when he's supposed to be than to be early and have problems. I can't wait to see his little face and hold him. I have had some very mild contractions but nothing serious yet. He is extremely low, though, and causing strain on the muscles at times - which can be somewhat painful - but he is healthy and doing well. He still kicks and plays in there all the time. It is reassuring to know that he is ok. I can't wait to see him! Becky is quite anxious also! She asks me often if it is time for Mommy to go to the "hopital" to "push, push baby Jedid right out". It will be nice when the day comes that I can say - yes, it's time! We are anxiously awaiting his arrival.

Found the 'Cache of the Century', 'Tiny-NV', and 'Street Vibrations Riverwalk Cache' caches last night in the dark. Lots of black widow spiders at the riverwalk site. Becky liked the short playground equipment at Pah Rah Park - first set that I'd seen of that height.

REMSA/Point of Impact car seat checkpoint (two of them) - had to wait for 3 hours with Becca in the sun in a long line of cars (we ended up washing the windows, cleaning the car, and playing every imaginable game we could think of), and then it took 2 more hours to install both seats correctly. It turns out that the new Graco car seat we bought a couple of months ago was defective, so REMSA replaced it for free. I was amazed that it took a team of 6 people an hour to *correctly* install each car seat. I also didn't know that you can only use seatbelts or the latch system, but not both simultaneously.

Becky says "purple eggplant" in a very cute way. Misti's baby shower - Ronda made some tasty food. Gene reroofing their house. Spencer going to be a killer whale for Halloween. Moriah's funny because she insists that I do "the bull thing" everytime she see's me (we clash foreheads). Experimenting with Kool-Aid: surprisingly, only using between 1/3 and 1/2 cup of sugar is tasty and refreshing.

Brad and Emilie came over to visit, and we ended up going geocaching with them, but alas, 'Rusty's Revenge (Don't take any wooden Nickels.)' stumped us. Not only did it turn out to be a very difficult cache to try and find (we couldn't find it), but the terrain was a bit more than I thought it would be. The hills were a little too steep for what I thought Misti should be climbing (since she's nine months pregnant), but she made it, and she actually enjoyed the trek! She's a trooper!

Found the "Ice Station Zebra" cache today, and nabbed the 'Piggy Key' travel bug while I was at it. Tried a Honey Roasted PayDay candy bar the other day, but I honestly couldn't tell the difference compared with a normal PayDay. I guess Botox injections cure migraine headaches.

In the first movie of Charlie's Angels, I found it very funny that the creepy thin man, who has quite a large part in the movie, never speaks throughout the whole thing. He makes sounds and noises as he's fighting and such but he never says a word. He's the same guy who played McFly in Back to the Future and he played the wimpy guy then. So, maybe they thought he didn't have a manly enough voice for the part or something. Who knows. I just thought it was interesting that he never says anything to make you dislike him, in the movie, yet he makes a great bad guy.

Found "grumpys cache" (N 39° 31.530', W 119° 52.944') this morning on the way to work (after Misti's doctor's appt) - Arnold Schwarzenegger elected to become new California governor - had to throw away Becca's pink binky today (she has a habit of biting clean through them) - enjoyed Napster's flash animations - Found the "Track Your Fortune" (N 39° 31.012', W 119° 48.419') and "Wide Open Space" (N 39° 34.085', W 119° 46.317') caches today at lunch.

Finally found out the story behind the Sierra Spirit RTC buses. Dismayed to find out that the wooden train whistle I nabbed from "Wide Open Space" is defective. It sounds more like a bird than a train.   =(

I'm further dismayed that no one has written an updated document on how to create a custom DTD for XHTML. All the docs out there are geared toward HTML 4. Misti discovered that Target will give away their popcorn for free if you ask them for some just as they're cleaning up for the night (around 8:30 p.m.).   =)

Misti just got done refinishing our coffee table. She sanded it, stained it, and water-proofed it, and now it looks 200% better than before.   =)

Visited 'Oxbow' again (for a travel bug), found the 'NLCN (No Library Card Needed)' cache, cancelled Netflix, website's still a little broken, but I'm working on it, visited the 'KR1365' benchmark (again) for photos, found the 'Dry Creek Map' and 'Miss Reno Rodeo 1937' caches (Esther Bennett was the very first Miss Reno Rodeo), had my very first geocache placement attempt (a webcam cache) rejected by the powers that be at Geocaching.com. Dorks. Back to the drawing board.   =(

Only got in six (6) movies during our free Netflix trial period (Die Another Day, Daddy Day Care, Bear in the Big Blue House: Tide Time, Piglet's Big Movie, Men in Black II, and Shanghai Knights) - the 14 days is a joke, since it takes like 5 days just to get your account set up and the first one mailed off to you. And then you waste several days because they send you your first three all at once, and you start sending them back, but you've already watched all of the first three and sent them all back before you get the 4th one, and then with the snail mail delay and everything, there's no way someone could watch 14 movies in 14 days.

On 10/2/2003, I ate a Puntini Menta Fresca (made in Italy - 2.5 calories) that I've had sitting in a box for a decade (no joke). It was actually quite refreshing.

Geocaching has been causing me allergies. I'm normally not allergic to anything, but I think that might be changing. There are some really stinky weeds out there amongst the sagebrush. Tried the Wal-Mart generic brand (Great Value) version of Grape Nuts. Not as good as the original, but still not too bad.

Ben (the Chinese guy) gave me some White Stevia Powder (an herbal sweetener) to try. It's alright, but makes Kool-Aid taste a little funny - my pink lemonade kinda tasted like a plant. It's supposed to be a sugar replacement, but I think it's a little too expensive to compete, much like Splenda, Xylitol, and Erythritol (all four of which are Aspartame-free, zero calories, and safe for diabetics).

Lisa Hodes and J.P. Tanner's wedding reception. [photos coming soon]

General Conference via Internet. Good stuff.