Learning to Dance in the Rain

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Here are some pictures of Luke climbing his first stairs, and eating his first Thanksgiving meal!

For Family Home Evening tonight, we made a list of the things we are thankful for.  Here is what we came up with.

1. Super-Luke, Luke-ee-spook, Louie-Luke
2. Microsoft benefits, especially health insurance
3. Family
4. Home
5. Full-time employment
6. Freedom of religion
7. Reliable car
8. That Cheryl can be a stay-at-home mom
9. Rain because it makes everything so fresh and clean, or muddy and wet depending on how you look at it.
10. Different perspectives
11. Sleep (when we can get it)
12. Food, and food storage
13. Friends, who are so generous in helping us get ready for our baby
14. Sarah had a baby
15. Rebecca is pregnant
16. Mike got a new house
17. Sean got into BYU
18. That Isaac got into BYU too
19. Nathan got himself a woman
20. Matthew can teach Andrew stock market research techniques
21. Andy is going to be the first Mackrory to become a citizen (in December)
22. Hannah’s entertaining book
23. Jared has interviews with Stanford and Wharton
24. Our health
25. Luke is developing well
26. The Ric & Lisa Lewis’ family is having a baby
27. Our opportunity to go to South Africa next year

Here are some pictures of us at the ward Halloween party, and a few other random photos of Luke.

This also serves as a demonstration of how to get a slideshow of photos on a blog, so a single post doesn’t have to be so tall because it’s chock full of pictures.  Yay.

So here’s how you do it.  Upload your photos to PicasaWeb using Picasa.  Then look at your online photo album within PicasaWeb and click the "Embed Slideshow" link on the left.  Follow the instructions and copy the HTML code into a blog post.  And you’ve got an instant photo slideshow of that album as I have above.

While I’ve come to like Windows Live Photo Gallery far better than Google’s Picasa, I don’t like the ads or links to other people’s photos that are on Microsoft’s or Flickr’s photo sharing web sites.  Google’s on the other hand doesn’t try to draw your viewers to others’ photos, making the web a slightly safer place to those looking at your pictures.  So what I do to bring in the best of both worlds is I use Windows Live Photo Gallery for all my photo work, and then I just start Picasa long enough to upload the photos to the web and then keep using Photo Gallery.

I learned recently that physical therapy is for the young as well as the old.  I injured my back while helping a friend move some exercise equipment a few months ago and it has gotten steadily worse.  I’ve been to the chiropractor several times, and recently I’ve been to physical therapy to learn some specific exercises to build up my "core strength," or my lower back muscles.

Meanwhile I sit with pillows and back supports attached to my chairs. 

This isn’t quite as good as the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings videos, but it’s still amusing.

If you believe in and revere your God, do not watch the movie "The Golden Compass" and especially do not buy the books. 

You may already know about this, but I just learned about a kids movie coming out in December starring Nicole Kidman.  It’s called The Golden Compass, and while it will be a watered down version, it is based on a series of children’s books about killing God (It is the anti-Narnia).  The books are written by an atheist.

From what I understand, the hope is to get a lot of kids to see the movie – which won’t seem too bad – and then get the parents to buy the books for their kids for Christmas. 

Here is a quote from the second book:

’The knife,’ he went on after a minute. ‘They never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they’d made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant. The Authority. God. The rebel angels fell because they didn’t have anything like the knife; but now…’

’There are two great powers,’ the man said, ‘and they’ve been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.’

– The Subtle Knife, p. 283

Learn what is really going on here, and warn all your friends:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

If you remember Superman (the original), you’ll appreciate this. So true, so true.

Why do teachers get reserved parking closest to the school, while students fight over open parking multiple blocks away from their classroom?  Who is working for who?

I often question the logic of having "staff parking" nearer to a building than customer/student parking.  The thinking for them, I suppose, is that staff are more important than customers/students.  Or maybe their political voice is stronger.  For whatever reason, staff and teachers typically get preferential treatment in parking to those who actually pay the bills of the establishment (the students and customers).  This seems mixed up anyway.

But now consider that a staff person will typically come once and leave once per day, staying the whole day and enjoying their short walk from car to building and back again exactly once per day.  A student/customer will typically stay for only an hour or so before leaving again, leaving their spot open to the next student/customer.  As often happens, many students may use the exact same parking spot in any given day.  So several students walk the long trek from car to building per day. 

Walkers enjoying a short walk: 1

Walkers forced to walk a great distance: many

This is economically unsound.  In your mind, swap the position of the staff and student parking.  Put the parking spot used by the staff member farther away and the student parking spot close to the building.  What do you have?  A system that benefits many more people:

Walkers enjoying a short walk: many

Walkers forced to walk a great distance: 1

Doesn’t that make more sense?  Leave a comment and let me know if you agree or disagree.

I just added a "Sustain’d" button to this blog. If you read an LDS-oriented post that you like, please click the "Sustain This!" button to refer it to others.

While adding the button, I found out that the instructions on the sustaind.org web site for adding these buttons to blogs hosted by Blogger is out of date and has bugs in it. I fixed up the code before inserting it into my own blog.  In case you want to add it to your Blogger-hosted blog, here is the code I used in my blog template to add the button. I added it directly under the line that has the tag <data:post.body/>.  You may have to check the Expand Widget Templates checkbox to see this tag.

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