Traveling during snow season = not fun

Or, perhaps I should have titled this post: "101 reasons why automated, voice-recognition phone systems have driven me to the brink of insanity tonight." My wife and I were supposed to fly back to Utah tonight to visit family for the holidays. Mother Nature had something to say about that: "I'm sorry...please try again tomorrow."

You see, back when I booked our flights a few months ago, I thought I was pretty smart to notice the 45-minute layover in Minneapolis in the suggested itinerary and swap the first flight of the trip for an earlier one that would give us a 3.5 hour layover instead. "Sure, 3.5 hour layovers are rotten," I thought, "but you can never have too much slush time built into the schedule when flying in December." As it turns out, it would have been better to avoid Minneapolis altogether, since the layover is rather irrelevant when the flight is canceled.

In trying to get alternative travel plans figured out, I spent a lot of "quality time" on Northwest's voice-recognition automated phone system. Between the annoyance of the system mistaking the announcements in the terminal for my response to its questions, to spending more than an hour on hold this evening for nothing, I've had my fill of it. The worst part is that it's nearly impossible to skip the prompts and talk to a real person. I really dislike systems that "work" like that.

After the long, stressful afternoon and evening, the good news is that we have a direct flight to Salt Lake City tomorrow. Unfortunately, it departs from Kansas City International Airport at 5 pm. So, we'll be leaving after sacrament meeting tomorrow morning to pick up a rental car from the airport here in St. Louis to drive the approximately 4 hours to the Kansas City airport.

At least we get to sleep in tomorrow morning...

Doctor, we have a pulse...

I was just reading the latest post on my friend's blog and noticed that he changed the look of his blogroll. It now displays a list of his favorite blogs with an indication of when each blog was last updated. I saw some at the top that had been updated very recently (minutes to hours ago), followed by those less recently updated (days to weeks ago). At the very bottom of the list, I saw my blog, followed by the words "1 year ago." I have to admit I was embarrassed to read that. I clicked over to my blog and selected the link for the last post, dated Friday, April 20, 2007. After I re-read the pretty meaningless post (some book tag relay Internet game thing), I scrolled down to read the comments. My brother had posted a comment, a friend posted one, my wife posted one (at the 1 year mark), and there at the end was a new comment from my good friend Todorojo, added at the end of last week:

This blog is dead.

I think I had every intention of keeping this blog alive when I started it. Obviously, my intentions got lost somewhere along the way (they're probably just searching for the end of the Internet and will return when they've found it). In the meantime, as my friend very succinctly pointed out, the blog has died. To my credit, at least it was a quick, painless death.

Now, I'm bringing it back to life, kind of like the grasshoppers we used to catch in the fields (before the fields turned into subdivisions) during the summers when I was a kid. After catching them, we would drown them for 2 days, then wrap them in toilet paper and bury them in the sand box (don't ask me why). In what seemed like nothing short a miracle to me then, when we would dig them up later that day or the next, the grasshoppers would be alive and kicking and, of course, spitting that nasty, brown liquid (we called it "tobacco juice") all over our fingers.

So, yes, this is almost as miraculous, and yes, I'll try to keep the nasty, brown stuff to a minimum...

Book Tag Relay

Let the procrastination begin! I am sitting here trying to work on the final report for my senior project and I'm coming up with nothing but blanks. Naturally, it seems like the perfect time for another blog entry, and one that is long overdue. Here it is:

The rules of the game:

1. Find the nearest book to you.
2. Name the book and author.
3. Turn to page 123.
4. Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
5. Copy out the next 3 sentences and post to your blog.
6. Tag three other people.

Well, the nearest book to me is Ten Days That Shook the World, by John Reed. Quoting from the back cover, this book is "Reed's eyewitness account of the events in Leningrad in the November of 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized power..." I started it a few weeks ago, but haven't made much progress since then. Here's the requisite excerpt (from page 123, of course):

"All the Smolny telephones were cut off. With great glee it was reported how Uritsky had gone to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand the secret treaties and how Neratov had put him out. The Government employees were all stopping work."

Who knew the Bolshevik Revolution was so exciting? And to add to that excitement, I am tagging Todorojo, Brien and Cindy to continue this chain of random enlightenment. I look forward to what each of you have to offer.

The Mormons

I've read and heard some lately about the upcoming TV broadcast on PBS of a new documentary produced about the Church (of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). It's called "The Mormons" and is a co-production of American Experience and Frontline, the first joint venture of these long-running and popular PBS series. Being four hours long, it is scheduled to air in two parts, with the first two-hour segment to be shown on April 30 and the concluding half the following night, May 1. It strikes me as very interesting, definitely worth my time to watch and something I want to share news about. I've assembled a few helpful links below:

This is the web page created for the program on the PBS site. You should be able to find your local listings there.

An article I read yesterday that was originally printed on April 10, 2007 in the Deseret News : PBS's 'Mormons' is independent, church points out.

Lastly, here's the news release from the Church news site that is referenced in the DN article above.

Please post comments about anything else you have heard or read about this, or any thoughts you may have.

Next stop: Paris

Who knew it was so easy to get from St. Louis to Paris, France? Once again, I'm deeply indebted to Google Maps for its insightful directions.

More from me soon to come...probably.

Copycats and anti-terrorism efforts

Here's an interesting post about copycat criminals from Bruce Schneier's blog, Schneier on Security. Near the end, he makes a fair point about the application to anti-terrorism efforts in our country. Food for thought for a Monday morning...

An update of sorts

Ok, I know what you're thinking (because some of you have been saying it to me): I'm a slacker! I started this blog last fall, wrote a couple of entries, then disappeared from the scene. What happened? Well, I'm a bit ashamed that I let it slide as much as I did. But there's not really any use in crying over spilt milk, so I'll just do my best to summarize the events that have transpired since the end of November (gosh, it has been a long time, hasn't it?).

The most exciting news is that I have a girlfriend. Ok, ok...breathe normally, pick your lower jaw up off of the floor and stop laughing - it's not that shocking. I'll admit, I was even a little surprised at how it worked out...pleasantly surprised, of course. Liza (aka The Girl) and I have been dating about 2.5 months now, and I couldn't be happier. It seems she feels about the same, so we're doing well.

Christmas break was enjoyable and relaxing. I had an eventful trip home, driving cross-country with Liza and my brother, Grant. Eventful because we ended up on the road a lot longer than we expected, thanks to Mother Nature's desire to inundate most of Colorado and Kansas with large amounts of snow. We traveled south through Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico to get around the storm. It was two long days (and a lot of fun videos) on the road, meaning we were very glad to be home when we finally arrived. My brother documented our trip on his blog, if you care for the nitty-gritties. It certainly was nice to be able to spend time with family and friends.

My new job is going well. It feels a little strange that I'm no longer attending classes full-time, instead going to work (same place, same time) for 8 hours a day. It's not that I dread going to work - I love doing what I do. It's just new, I think. I will say, since I've started working, I have truly come to love and appreciate NPR (KWMU broadcasts live online and at 90.7 FM). You might even say I'm developing something akin to an addiction.

Other than that, I'm finding time to enjoy my new car (pictures to come) and the ability to read the books that I want to read. And, of course, I spend a lot of time with Liza (I can probably convince her to let me post at least one picture of her). Wish me luck with that...