We found the "I Lost My Marbles" cache yesterday near the Sparks Marina dog park, and then attended the "Get to Know Geocaching and Your GPS-r Better" event at the Old Little Waldorf Saloon Restaurant near UNR, and also picked up the "Jose's Keyring" travel bug there while chatting for awhile with Brad and Emilie. Earlier yesterday morning, we got our taxes done, and found out we're getting a fairly nice-sized refund this year. Excellent.

Last night, we visited Twyla and her family and met their brand-new baby boy. Her husband doesn't like Hot Dog Chowder. Becky recently enjoyed playing the new Energy Hog games online. We got our 60,000 mile tune-up on our car on Friday. Watched Osamu Tezuka's "Metropolis" (2002) anime film on VHS yesterday. Ben and Deanne came over tonight for dinner, and we not only enjoyed some 'Chocolate Ribbon Pie' (Walmart Family Cookbook 2005, page 87) for dessert, but also some rousing rounds of Spastic Uno and the Comic Strip Game.

Did you know that in Bulgaria, they nod their heads 'yes' to mean 'no', and shake their heads 'no' to indicate 'yes'? Apparently, it's a tradition that goes back 700 years when Bulgaria was being invaded by the Turks. Muslim Turks were killing all Christians that wouldn't deny Christ. When the Turkish invaders stormed a particular monastery, the monks all agreed that they would reverse their yes's and no's, but answer truthfully in their hearts, so that Christianity in Bulgaria would survive. The Turks thus asked the monks if they believed in Jesus Christ, and they all shook their heads 'no' (but meant 'yes') - and thus were spared. The custom continues to this day in Bulgaria and parts of Greece.

The piano bench in the Primary room has somehow been mysteriously fixed (the one with the dangerously wobbly leg). I accompanied the ward choir this morning on "Because I Have Been Given Much" (SATB, arranged by Martin Green). It could have been better, but it wasn't actually too bad, especially considering I'd put in about 10 hours over the past two weeks practicing the song, but still couldn't get it completely right... =(

Watched the original "Oceans 11" (1960; Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Angie Dickenson, Cesar Romero, Buddy Lester) tonight on VHS. Not as good as the newer one, in my opinion. I tried watching "Napoleon Dynamite" (2004; Haylie Duff) the other night on DVD at Heather and Dave's birthday party, but it was so lame, I just couldn't sit through it. Majorly lame. Ratchet.

Well, the debate on sweet potatoes vs. yams has arisen, yet again, with some people claiming that they're the same thing, and some arguing that they are, in fact, different foods. If you think you know, go ahead and look at this photo, and try to identify which is which:



The only thing I'm certain of, is that neither are the same as an ocarina (despite what the dictionary says).

Along the same lines, what is the difference between a colander, strainer, skimmer, sifter, chinois, sieve, and ricer? I always thought this was a strainer (tight metal mesh):



while this was a colander (larger plastic holes, not mesh):



but apparently I'm wrong. I have never seen a sieve, to my knowledge (unless both of the above are sieves, that is).

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie's "The Simple Life 3: Interns" show is almost not even watchable. They lack so many basic life skills, that it's hard to know if they are just acting dumb, or really are that ignorant.

According to a Promise pamphlet that I picked up at the store the other day, all food products will be required to list trans fats on a separate line on the nutrition label, starting on January 1, 2006. Very cool.

Watched "Animal Farm" (1999; Patrick Stewart, Kelsey Grammer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julia Ormond, Pete Postlethwaite, Sir Peter Ustinov) last night on VHS. Based upon George Orwell's novel of the same name. Lame.

We tried some new Minute Maid Light Raspberry Passion recently. Very tasty. I also tried some Mary Kitchen 50% Reduced Fat corned beef hash ("Hash Lover's Hash"). Also very tasty.

Misti, the kids, and I found the 'Treat Cache' today. I tried some of the new Vanilla Crème Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast this morning - very yummy. I watched "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" (2001; Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland, James Woods) tonight on VHS. Very cool.


The thought occured to me while playing 'Connect Four' with Becky that I could easily contruct another Mondrian.

The new 2005 Federal Poverty Guidelines have finally come out (both the HUD edition, and the DHHS edition). It just doesn't quite feel like a new year until they do. In fact, I think the feds observe the Chinese New Year, instead - so, Happy Year of the Rooster! This year also marks the 40th Anniversary of the Federal Head Start program. Happy Birthday to Ed Zigler and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society program!

After reading a few other notable opinions around the web, I tried out a couple of alternate tabbed browsers yesterday, namely Avant Browser (the 'fastest browser on Earth') and Maxthon (Chris Pirillo's browser of choice - yes, there are other tech people out there that also don't like Firefox - SHOCKER). Avant, however, sucks because you can't customize the toolbars the way I like (minimal footprint - in IE you can get everything on one toolbar and free up a ton of space) and it also screwed up the way my existing links work (well, they actually just stopped working completely), while Maxthon fried the functionality of an important DOS batch file and it's printing of webpages to PDF that I use three times a day (even when Maxthon wasn't running). Having these less-than-stellar experiences right out of the box, I lost patience and subsequently uninstalled them both and everything went back to normal. So much for trying new things - I'll stick with something that works, thanks.

Watched "Gone in 60 Seconds" (2000; Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall, Giovanni Ribisi) last night on VHS - not too bad for a Cage action movie. Tried some new Minute Maid Premium Cherry Limeade a few days ago - quite tasty, if you like limes. Mike's discovery of the condiment packet gallery is simply awesome! Mike, how'd you stumble across it? Pretty random. I like to watch the packets shuffle across the screen as the images load - very entertaining. I especially liked his store. Good thing he stuck to teeshirts, and not underwear...

Looked at a couple of interesting, new web services yesterday: Jotspot (a wiki for the masses) and Mappr (a geography-based photo album). Lots of potential. I enjoyed reading the kid's version of Small Pieces Loosely Joined ('A Unified Theory of the Web', or 'What the Web is For'). Good stuff.

I don't think anyone would argue the fact that Firefox/Mozilla proponents routinely wield a double-edged sword that can only hurt themselves in the future. They always seem to highlight the fact that IE is insecure even after MS releases a patch for a particular hole, and how that even though a patch is available, the majority of IE users never patched their systems (like that's MS's fault or something). In other words, they're saying that it's still MS's fault that a virus infected so many systems, despite the fact that a patch has been out for weeks or months.

This lame (and flawed) argument can only hurt them. Why? Because if their lesser-known alternative browsers ever did actually become popular with 'non-techie' folks (9 out of 10 web surfers), then the same exact thing would happen to them. New Firefox vulnerabilities would, of course, be discovered, and despite any team efforts at issuing timely patches (whether it's within minutes, hours, days, or weeks - it doesn't matter), no one would ever go get them. Whichever version was originally installed on their machine would be the one they would always use for the next five years until they got a new computer - there would be no patches, no upgrades, no newer versions, no nightly builds, no latest milestones -ever- for the majority of users.

In summation, if they can't build it perfect the first time (which we all know they can't), they shouldn't complain about Microsoft, because they're in the exact same boat. Their whole "we patch faster than MS" argument is entirely irrelevant and useless. In fact, the only thing all their rantings have done, in essence, is to speed up the delivery of Internet Explorer 7.0 beta this summer. So, in that regard, I thank them!

I was perusing Anil Dash's archives and ran across a truly scary photo of Michael Jackson. Jeremy Zawodny has a funny post about spell-checking. <grin />

Misti made some wonderful Twice Baked Potatoes (Great American Recipes, Group 10, Card 14) for dinner last night. Mmmm. I really like the new geocaching.com site upgrades. Looks more professional, and I like the new features!   =)

Watched "Chocolat" (2000; Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Alfred Molina, John Wood) again last night on DVD. Hadn't seen it for two years. I understand the need to play on a nice piano, but this is going a bit too far...

MS Publisher doesn't do strikethroughs - weird. McAfee has now moved from weekly updates to daily updates. This is a no-brainer; even Grisoft's AVG Free Edition does updates more than once a week. Found the 'Multiplicity' multi-cache today at lunch with Dan. This one threw me the first time around since there are 36 coordinate combinations for the second leg, although there are only 12 possibilities in the park. Even still, Dan and I were still scrambling around the park the first time with no luck. Had to chuckle at the placement when we finally found it! =)

I finally computed the statistics for our NevNugNov novel-writing experiment (part of last November's NaNoWriMo 2004 project), and they are as follows:

Kekoa ('camembertman')

---

Words: 18,702 (33.90% of the book)
Chapters: 10 (19.61% of chapters)
Pages: 39
Paragraphs: 347
Lines: 1,763
Characters (with spaces): 107,524
Characters (no spaces): 88,994
Days: 9 (30.00% of the month)
Chapter Listing: 5, 9, 15, 22, 27, 30, 34, 45, 50-51
Date Listing: November 2-3, 5, 8, 11, 14, 18, 28, 30

Richard

---

Words: 15,580 (28.24% of the book)
Chapters: 18 (35.29% of chapters)
Pages: 31
Paragraphs: 253
Lines: 1,385
Characters (with spaces): 90,291
Characters (no spaces): 74,336
Days: 16 (53.33% of the month)
Chapter Listing: 1, 6, 8, 11, 14, 21, 25, 28, 31, 33, 35-36, 39, 41-44, 47
Date Listing: November 1-5, 7, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19-20, 26-29

Brad

---

Words: 14,042 (25.45% of the book)
Chapters: 17 (33.33% of chapters)
Pages: 28
Paragraphs: 245
Lines: 1,250
Characters (with spaces): 77,409
Characters (no spaces): 63,570
Days: 15 (50.00% of the month)
Chapter Listing: 3, 7, 10, 12, 17, 19, 23-24, 26, 29, 32, 37-38, 40, 46, 48-49
Date Listing: November 1-3, 5-6, 8-9, 11, 13, 16, 21, 23, 26, 28-29

Ray ('RW Mime')

---

Words: 7,629 (13.83% of the book)
Chapters: 4 (7.84% of chapters)
Pages: 24
Paragraphs: 401
Lines: 1,075
Characters (with spaces): 45,736
Characters (no spaces): 38,514
Days: 3 (10.00% of the month)
Chapter Listing: 13, 16, 18, 20
Date Listing: November 5-7

Mike

---

Words: 757 (1.37% of the book)
Chapters: 1 (1.96% of chapters)
Pages: 2
Paragraphs: 20
Lines: 78
Characters (with spaces): 4,206
Characters (no spaces): 3,416
Days: 1 (3.33% of the month)
Chapter Listing: 2
Date Listing: November 1

Darlene

---

Words: 332 (0.60% of the book)
Chapters: 1 (1.96% of chapters)
Pages: 1
Paragraphs: 5
Lines: 27
Characters (with spaces): 1,840
Characters (no spaces): 1,500
Days: 1 (3.33% of the month)
Chapter Listing: 4
Date Listing: November 1

As for the book as a whole, our combined totals were 51 chapters comprised of 57,042 words, spread over 27 days, by 6 co-authors. Whew - now if we can just make it through a month of editing...

The LDS online Interactive Church Music Player is awesome - it'll not only play hymns for you, but also transpose the music on the fly, then let you print out the modified version. Very handy.

Doxology (a short prayer or hymn of praise that extols the glory and majesty of God) is a word with a long history. Thomas Ken's "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow" (Hymn #242), is a famous example of a doxology. His words are apparently based upon either Psalm 86:12 or Psalm 184:1-2 (according to different sources), but I don't see how - the words aren't even close on either one. The funny thing is that this entire song's lyrics are actually just the last verse of one of his much longer hymns ("Awake, My Soul, and with the Sun").

Tried three new food products this weekend: Quaker Lower Sugar maple and brown sugar instant oatmeal, featuring sucralose and 50% less sugar; Bottled IBC Diet Rootbeer, with evil aspartame and saccharin; Log Cabin Sugar Free low-calorie syrup, again featuring sucralose. The first two of these items tasted pretty good, but the latter was just downright nasty. Two for three isn't bad, though.

Misti special-ordered me some Black Cherry Diet Rite all the way from Chicago (since none of the stores around here seem to carry it) - mmmm, very tasty. Misti also made a wonderful dinner last night, Chili Cheese Chicken (Walmart Family Cookbook 2005, page 19), which is hilarious because there isn't actually any chili in it (only chili powder, not chili con carne). It would actually be more appropriately named as something like 'Cheesy Jalapeño-stuffed Chicken'. Mmmm, very nice.

Got my tooth patched and then fixed at the dentist's on Monday and Thursday of this past week. (Filling fell out due to a small cavity behind it, taking a tiny chunk of my molar with it). Got it fixed with a composite filling, and now it's as good as new.

Celebrated Darlene's birthday tonight with a small dinner, party, and movie at our place. Dave's Spanish skills came in handy, as parts of the movie (Strictly Ballroom) are in Spanish, and although the subtitles were on, there are some lines that simply aren't translated. Misti made Turkey Heros (Great American Recipes, Group 1, Card 45), but substituted chicken for turkey. Mmmmm, quite the treat, indeed.

Viewed "Bandits" (2001; Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett) on widescreen DVD last night. Not the best film ever.

Huge Symantec security flaw in the news today. Bleh. Also, another newly discovered browser security flaw (IDN spoofing) that affects every browser EXCEPT Internet Explorer. Scary to see in action, but I'm feeling smug right about now.   =)

It looks like you can also query Google Maps with a set of coordinates directly, but it doesn't (yet) put a little marker over the point. This has great potential, however. I've enjoyed listening to the following albums over the past few days:

"Dummy" by Portishead
"Last One Picked" by Superchick
"J Lo Tha L-O! The Remixes" by Jennifer Lopez

Found this awesome site about photographing snowflakes with a microscope. Very cool. Legislative tracking is fun, for those that may not have tried it. The general public can sign up for a free account and track up to 10 bills per account. Had some very tasty Honey Mustard Dirty Potato Chips today. Mmmmm.

I love 'critical updates' Tuesdays. The new Google Maps looks awesome (and so much easier than Mapquest!). I found how you can actually use it to get coordinates of a point, by centering and zooming in on your point like normal (or by using the cool keyboard shortcuts), then clicking the "Email" link, which will then generate a URL which contains the latitude and longitude of your point, like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=43.084229%2C-79.070592&spn=0.051147%2C0.086139

where the data in between the "ll=" and the "%2C" is the latitude (positive numbers are North), and the bit between the "%2C" and the "&spn=" is the longitude (negative numbers are West), in degree decimal format. You can, then, convert these numbers to minute decimal format at jeeep.com for easy usage whilst geocaching! (Too bad it's limited to North America, though.)

Ever wonder what the surname Herrera means? Here's the answer:

Last Name: Herrera
Spanish and Jewish (Sephardic): habitational name from villages so called in the provinces of Seville and Badajoz, from a word meaning ‘iron smithy’, ‘blacksmith’s forge’ (a derivative of hierro ‘iron’, Latin ferrum).

French: habitational name from the Gascon form of Ferrière, a place in Pyrénées-Atlantique. The place name is derived from Latina ferraria ‘iron-mine’, ‘iron-forge’.

Here's my recent watercolor Mondrian attempt:



Do you like it? Becky's little watercolor set didn't have black, so I had to mix colors to simulate black, as evidenced by the hints of purple, brown, and blue.

'TV Guardian' is hilarious on how it substitutes bad words (or supposed bad words) on movies. Normally any reference to a female breast is converted into the word "form", but awhile ago we laughed and laughed about the French phrase Bon Appétit magically transforming into "Bon Appéform". Good times.   =)

The 73rd session of the Nevada State Legislature started today. The legislature only meets every other year, for 120 days, so it's a frantic time, with lots to track!

We attended Virtual Stake Conference this morning. What will they think of next? The Credit Card Prank (and it's wacky sequel) that Mike pointed out are simply hilarious!

I like Mike's new blog for several reasons - it's more colorful, the frequency of updates gives me something new to read each day, and his sketches add another wonderful dimension. I've always wished I could draw, but since I can't I just try to write more to (hopefully) make up for the dire lack of any artistic input. If I could draw, however, I'd have tons of little doodles and sketches interspersed throughout my ramblings. It's the thought that counts, anyway, right?

My folks identified a new soda that I had to buy: Hansen's Diet Black Cherry soda - no caffeine, no carbs, no sugar, no calories, no sodium, no fat, no cholesterol, no preservatives, no coloring, no aspartame, and no artificial flavoring. Another wonderful tasting soda that uses sucralose (Splenda). Mmmmm.

You know, if sugar and carbs and fat and calories and [insert every other bad food component here] are so effective in causing weight gain in Americans, and considering the fact that there are starving people the world over, instead of donating rice, flour, and beans overseas, why aren't we shipping them butter, eggs, bacon, pancakes, pizza, chocolate, chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, Pepsi, Goldfish, Cocoa Puffs, whole milk, etc.? That would fatten them up. Then instead of hearing about how 30% of Americans are obese, you'd finally hear about all those overweight Ethiopians. Sally Struthers would be out of a job, though, so it'll never happen. (Did you know that the Ethiopian calendar is 13 months long and is nearly 8 years behind our calendars? They had better start planning now for the Y2K bug!)

Becky tried some Spongebob SquarePants Wild Bubbleberry Pop-Tarts today, and then played some Pop-Tarts online games. Of course, I ended up being the one to waste time getting to level 100 and over 200,000 points on the chocolate chip cookie dough game.

Watched "Dragonfly" (2002; Kevin Costner, Kathy Bates, Linda Hunt, L. Scott Caldwell) last night on VHS. A couple startling parts, but an excellent ending.

We found the "Hallelujah!" micro cache today - a nice little drive. I was finally able to try the Golden Peach flavor of Diet Rite soda tonight, and it's definitely my new favorite. Walmart never has it, though - but I found some at Albertsons. It's enough to make me switch stores (except for the sad fact that everything is twice as expensive, of course). Have enjoyed listening to Sarah Brightman's "Time to Say Goodbye" album on CD this past week.

We watched "Dinotopia" (2002; David Thewlis, Alice Krige, Anna Maguire) tonight on VHS. A little cheesy, but it was cool to see more familiar faces. (Thewlis is 'Lupin' from Harry Potter, Krige is the Borg Queen from Star Trek, and Maguire is the younger version of Drew Barrymore's 'Danielle' character in Ever After.)

Ever since MSN launched their new search technology a few days ago, their MSN Toolbar has ceased functioning - oops!

Watched "Mona Lisa Smile" (2003; Julia Roberts, Julia Stiles, Kirsten Dunst, Marcia Gay Harden) on DVD last night.

Watched the free "Real Teen Driving" (2004) DVD that Geico (the insurance company) mailed me. Very weird. Speaking of driving, Brad's NTE (near-ticket experience) is quite humorous. Hang in there, Brad!

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Misti made some Grilled Neptune Sandwiches (Great American Recipes, Group 1, Card 35) for dinner last night, featuring minced clams, baby shrimp, crab meat, Dijon mustard, Parmesan cheese, and a handful of other choice ingredients. A refreshing and tasty seafood delight!

Enjoyed "Strictly Ballroom" (1992; Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice; Directed by Baz Luhrmann) on DVD last night. It's a quirky, Australian ballroom dance film with surprisingly humorous characters and great music, including Bonny's favorite 'It's your birthday... da da da da da' Spanish tango song, which Becky thought was great - she was smiling and excited about the film even before it started. A wide grin beamed on her face at the opening menu screen, and she was practically dancing around throughout the entire movie! As Gene would say, good times!

I found it great that Psalm 89:9 foreshadowed Jesus' calming of the storm, found later in Matthew 8:26 and Mark 4:39.

Watched three episodes from season two ('Never Name a Duck', 'Bank Book 6565696', and 'Hustling the Hustler') of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (1962; Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie) on DVD a couple of nights ago, which we scored at Wallymart for only $0.88 USD.

More Firefox, Mozilla, and Thunderbird security flaws made the news again yesterday. Time to reinstall browsers - AGAIN. Why can't they just issue a patch instead of having to reinstall the whole dang browser??

There was a good Reno Gazette-Journal article yesterday on vitamin "megadosing" - of which I'm admittedly guilty. I'm glad they covered the Linus Pauling thing because I think that's an important factor in why people take too many vitamins.

Spam is about to take a nasty turn. Not good - so much for whitelists and Bonded Sender!

Dan and I found the "Canada, eh?" cache during lunchtime today. Finally! (Even based upon two clues, it still wasn't where I thought it was supposed to be.) Bummed to hear that Enterprise has been cancelled. I know loads of people didn't like it, but I did.

I finished another book today – There’s a Boy in the Girls Bathroom by Louis Sachar. He does a great job of capturing the age and personality of his main character. In his biography (link above) he says his wife “was a counselor at an elementary school. She was the inspiration behind the counselor in There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom”. The counselor in the book is very awesome! She reminds me some of my reading tutor in the fourth grade. Fun book! I enjoyed it! On to the next…