I left my [wife for] San Francisco

Well not permanently or anything.

You see, I was invited to speak at a sales conference hosted by the fine folks at GoldenGate Software. This had been pre-arranged some time ago, and I thought it would be a non-event. What I didn't know was that I was the keynote speaker at this conference. I guess they didn't want to burden me with that pressure.

Anyway, they say getting there is half the fun. I wholeheartedly disagree, but staying there was ALL the fun. I will explain.

Monday past, we received the largest snow storm in quite some time here in the SLC. The official measurement was 16 inches at my house. 14 of them had fallen on the ground by the time I needed to leave for the airport. I taught Sherise how to use the snowblower and then let her make a hole while I showered and finished getting ready to leave. The fine folks at Delta reassured me that despite the large snowfall in such a short time, that my flight was still on time.

So I had Sherise drive me to the airport. My rationale being that the time saved not having to figure out parking on a very messy snowy day would give me the precious extra time I would need to offset the longer drive time due to weather. This proved to be academic. While having her drive me certainly saved time and frustration, the fine folks at Delta announced 10 minutes before boarding that our plane had not yet left San Francisco. And oh, by the way, it's approximately a 2-hour flight. In other words, they knew 2 hours before scheduled boarding that the plane was going to be late but didn't bother to let anyone know. Did you know that DELTA is an acronym for Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport?

There was one other problem with having Sherise drive me - she couldn't get back home. The 14 inches on the ground when we left were 16 by the time she got back home. Only problem was the snow was still on the road leading up to our house. And the snowplow hadn't been by yet. And it's uphill to our house. You can see where this is going, Sherise got stuck trying to turn into our street. With the help of a neighbor, she dug herself out and was able to get back onto the main road.

He suggested that she go around the block once, and then take a big run at it. She tried that. And got about 20 feet further up the street than she did last time. She called me and asked me what to do - I suggested that she back out, turn off the traction control, and take an even bigger run at it. She did that too. And got about 20 feet further still.

Sherise managed to get the car over to the side of the road where she parked it and hoofed it back to the house. Another neighbor watched the whole thing (from the comfort of their home) and offered to help get the car back to the house. The solution? He'd fire up his snowblower, Sherise would fire up ours, and they'd dig - he from the car, she from our driveway and they'd meet somewhere in the middle. And that's just what they did.

I want a refund on my property taxes.

Anyway, after 3 hours of delay, I finally got on the plane and left the SLC for San Francisco. Upon landing, I found a nice guy holding a sign with my name on it, and a lovely Town Car to take me to the St. Regis Hotel downtown.

The cool part was the hotel itself. I've stayed in a lot of hotels through all my years as a traveling consultant. Some were very nice, some were holes. They all suck compared to this place. These guys thought of everything when they designed the rooms. The lights turn on automatically when you open the door to your room. The alarm clock controls every light, the window shades, the climate system, the TV, and the media center. It even knows your name:



They also solved one of the age-old problems present in every hotel room I've ever seen in a very clever way. Finally, you can have the big bathtub right next to the bed (where it belongs) but also provide privacy as needed:



Brilliant.

The view out the window was also quite nice:



The sweet little girls in GoldenGate's marketing organization who coordinated the whole thing also left a HUGE gift basket full of every kind of chocolate Ghirardelli makes:



As for the rest of the trip, it was much like attending any of the other conferences I've gone to. The feedback on my presentation was good. The food/socializing/etc at the conference was good. I got to explore the city for a couple hours the next morning. The trip home was boring. You can hardly see my house from the street because of the huge snowdrift in front of it.

And I really like downtown San Francisco.

Happy New Year!

The holidays are always fun.

This past week has featured at least 3 forays outside with the snowblower and high temperatures below freezing. Winter is finally upon us. We need the snow so that people from out of state can come and ski on our mountains, and so we can meet our legal obligations to ship our water to Nevada and California (who don't appreciate it, but are happy to waste it).

Cleaning the dreaded basement finally percolated up to the top of the to-do list this past week (remind me NOT to take vacation days unless I'm going somewhere), and the junk has been a-flyin. Highlights of the treasures found so far:
- My 1992 COBOL text book from college
- Hate mail from the parents of the girl who was not accepted into Madrigals when Sherise was teaching high school choir
- Multiple Franklin Planners and binders of "archived" pages
- A trash can full of ... trash
- A dead plant
- Marketing swag for large companies that no longer exist, such as MediaOne Cable, AT&T Broadband, and American Management Systems

We really shoulda cleaned out the basement before letting the big burly movers come and pack it all up.

However, there were some high points. Sherise's brother and his family came to visit, and his kids and our kids couldn't have been any happier if they were pigs in $@!+. We were pleasantly surprised to see that they have been training their (almost) three-year-old to be a cage fighter:



Video footage comes courtesy of Calvin.

The Intersection of Holidays and Technology

Sherise got a digital camcorder for Christmas.

Our first experiment follows - given that Katie wasn't into it, the light was bad, and neither of us know anything about digital camcorders and editing, we're feeling rather chuffed.



Oh yeah.

Stay tuned right here for funny stories, pictures, and now videos as well.

I Just Spent Twenty Minutes Picking Glass Shards Out Of My Oven: Why Multi-Tasking In The Kitchen Is Usually A Bad Idea

Q: If

1. You are doing holiday baking.
2. The bread you're making requires a water bath.
3. You're a little distracted because you're preparing several different recipes at the same time.
4. You decide that rather than transport a pan full of water from the sink to the oven, you will put the Pyrex dish into the oven and then pour the water into it.
5. You allow the glass dish to reach the oven temperature, which is 400 degrees.
6. You then pour hot tap water (approximately 120 degrees) into the preheated glass dish.

Do you know what happens?

A: Yep.

Conversation on the way to Dairy Queen

Mom: Can you hear that Snickers Blizzard calling to me?

Calvin: Yeah, it's saying, "Sherise, don't have me! Go on a diet!"

No loaves here, but a miracle with a fish!

This is Spotty the goldfish.

Before you start rolling your eyes, I have to explain that this fish is more than just a fish. We’ve had this thing for over two years. It was a birthday party favor received by Thomas from his very very bestest friend in the whole world. Spotty was only an inch or so long when we got him (we refer to him as a “he,” although we have no idea how to tell fishy gender), and now he’s probably five inches long, plus another couple inches of very pretty flowing fanlike tail. He’s quite beautiful, and people often comment on what a cool-looking fish he is. We even moved this thing from Colorado to Utah when our family moved a year and a half ago, propping the half-full aquarium between the front seats of the minivan, keeping an eye on the thermometer and dropping in ice cubes when the temperature rose too high. We’re very attached to this little fish, especially Thomas, because it’s a symbol of his friendship with the aforementioned very very bestest friend in the whole world.

So, two weeks ago, Paul's brother was at our house watching football (yay BYU!!), and he caught a small spider in the family room. He thought it would make a nice snack for the fish, so he dropped it into the aquarium. (BIL is a fish enthusiast who has several tanks of his own, so he’s not just an idiot who tried to kill my kid’s fish on purpose!) I wasn’t aware of this, as I was out grocery shopping at the time. I got home less than an hour after the spider snack, and as I was unloading groceries onto the kitchen counter, I happened to glance over at the fish tank, where I saw to my horror that Spotty was floating belly-up! He’d been fine before I left, so we can only assume that the tasty little spider snack did him in. Paul, BIL and I tried to revive the little guy (no, we did NOT do fishy CPR), but he was gone. Our poor beautiful fish!

I knew Thomas was going to be completely devastated, so when he came in from playing at a friend’s house, I headed him off before he saw the tank, took him into another room, and broke the news that his pet had died. I held him as he sobbed and sobbed, and I felt awful. Thomas is an extremely intense, emotional, tender-hearted kid who takes things very hard. Plus, this fish wasn’t just a fish, it was a reminder of his best friend, who now lives several hundred miles away.

After Thomas had calmed down a bit, we had to figure out how to lay our fishy friend to rest, because simply flushing him would have been traumatic for our boy. Thomas decided he'd like to bury Spotty in the backyard. I went to the tank to get the fish out, and I saw that Spotty was still breathing! Oh great, now we couldn’t even give the thing a proper sendoff because he wasn’t dead yet. He was still floating motionless at the surface, but his mouth and gills were moving, and every few minutes he’d struggle to move, but he’d give up and lie there again. We didn’t want to mercy-kill him, so we figured we’d just wait a few minutes for him to expire. Well, an hour went by, and he was still breathing. Two hours, three, it got to be evening, he was still alive. We started to hope that maybe he’d recover once the spider toxins left his system. That hope died when he sank to the bottom of the tank and lay there on his back, unable to move. Aw, shoot. But lo and behold, at bedtime—still alive. Okay, we thought, we’d bury him before church on Sunday morning. Morning came, and you guessed it, he’s STILL breathing! He’s still just lying on the bottom of the tank, but every once in a while he manages to wiggle his body and get into a different position before flopping over helpless again. Now we’re wondering if it’s cruel to let him suffer like this. Well, surely he’s going to die soon, so let’s just let him pass on his own instead of killing him ourselves. We go to church, come home expecting the worst, but guess what? Still alive!

I forgot to mention that when we first figured out that he hadn’t died yet, Paul, Thomas and I went to a quiet room and had a little prayer that Spotty wouldn’t suffer, that we’d really like him to be healed, but if not, please let him die quickly and painlessly. Since then I had had a constant prayer in my thoughts: “Okay, I know that one little goldfish isn’t that big a deal, but my son’s relationship with his uncle IS a big deal. And my BIL’s mental health and well-being is a VERY big deal. If it isn’t contrary to your will, could you please please please heal this little fish? Please?” As Sunday drew to a close and Spotty was still alive, I started to wonder if my prayers were actually going to be answered! I was still afraid to get my hopes up too much, though.

Well, Monday morning, he was still alive. He wasn't looking great, but I thought he might be slightly better than he had been the night before. He was still crashing to the bottom of the tank, but most of the time he could at least keep himself upright instead of flopping over onto his back or side. As the day wore on, he got more and more active, and by the time the kids got home from school, he looked nearly normal. And by Monday night at bedtime, he was swimming around his tank like nothing had ever happened to him! We couldn't believe it! Now, nearly two weeks later, he's better than ever. The Lord cares about a goldfish! Or, more to the point, He cares about my son and his uncle, and is willing to answer prayers about a silly fish when He knows how much it will impact two of His precious sons.

Long live Spotty!

It's [supposedly] the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I'm down on Christmas right now. Since I work for a major online retailer, this is absolutely the worst time of the year. I'm trying not to complain -- I mean I have a good job, and I don't work near the hours of some of my colleagues in the warehouse who are actually trying to make sure the elves get their goodies to their final destination in time for Christmas. But the visions of fresh snow, beautiful lights, and wonderful surprises have all been replaced by words like "year over year sales growth," "contribution margin," "fulfillment scores," and "revenue by channel."

Only now do I really understand why my dear Dad says that his idea of hell is having to listen to the hymns for the rest of eternity. Work has a way of taking the luster off anything. Said differently, stay out of the kitchen if you don't want to see how the sausage is made.

Two friends of mine, "Vern" and AntiCruiser have two other very compelling reasons to think twice about the meaning of Christmas. Vern points out that the whole gift giving/decorating thing is pretty far off the mark and very contrary to what Christmas is all about. I'm not going to stop giving gifts (or receiving them), but she makes a good point.

However AntiCruiser has meticulously documented a Christmas gift that has seriously gone off the rails. I'll be brutally honest. At first I thought he was looking a gift horse in the mouth. However this "gift" passed "sweater that I'll never wear but can't take back" status some time back in April.

Now that the day of reckoning looms, one can finally see the true metamorphosis from un-needed gift, to unwanted gift, to inconvenience, to unhealthy situation, to a true disaster. And some very obsessive behavior on the part of the gift giver. I'm not a screenwriter, but I know funny when I see it, and this has farce written all over it. Although nobody in the cast will be laughing.

So for Christmas this year, my gift to AntiCruiser and his family will be praying for their very souls, and for their sanity.

And I think Vern might be right.