Teaching Moroni’s promise

My son is about to give his first talk in Sacrament meeting on Sunday.  It will be interesting to see how it goes.  Most of my kids have spoken in Primary before, but those are basically reading talks, they are given a set script and they just read the lines.

This time I wanted to sit down and get some input, get him to own the talk a bit.  At twelve speaking is an intimidating process but it is something that gives him a chance to grow and I am happy he had the experience.  Given that statement I also want him to understand what he is talking about so that he is just not doing a seminary answer talk, where he reads the latest story from the Ensign, New Era or Friend.

Question - contacting your new ward leaders

The last week or so has been nuts, I have a new apartment I am about to cram my family into, I am needing some advice about what to do in this instance.  So readers your input and comments are needed.  I have just found out this week that the place we are moving to on the campus housing is on the third floor of a three story building.  Somehow they did not bother to put an elevator in the place.  We will need help for sure.

So while I will have plenty of help (crossing fingers) here in my present location I will be brand new to the area in which I know exactly two people.  My faculty adviser and the head of the History department.

The dangers of grass and 7 year olds

So I am checking out daily my home to be to see what the weather is like, and to a degree out of bordom with the slow crawl to the moving date.  After a hectic few weeks trying to sort out financing and then getting our place sorted on campus.  We are moving in August.  (My wife follows that up with AGAIN)

I am currently just waiting for our immigration card from the school so that I can begin the immigration process.  Once that is ready we move on August 19th. 

Meantime, last night i was checking out the webcam from the area that takes some still photos of the area.  All of a sudden the mountain above the University of Montana had smoke trailing from the lower half.  So I quickly go to the live camera and low and behold half the mountain face is on fire or burned.  Of course that is disconcerting enough but it was combined with the knowledge that the area it started at was near where we were scheduled to be living.

This book I once wrote

A long time ago on a helpdesk far away, in Cardiff to be exact.  A legend was born.  Or bored.  Depends on how you look at it.

About 2001 several members of an IT helpdesk in Cardiff Wales started a forum, which has long since vanished off the face of the earth.  In it many of the characters from Deep Space 9 were matched to the various people on the desk.   Fun was then had making this story bigger and bigger.

After about six months only three were left crafting the story.  It had changed radically into a much less inside joke humor to a broader range.  I would say it grew a lot over the years

It could either be called a total SciFi rip off or a mild send up in the fashion of Mel Brooks of our favorite stories and common situations during that period after 9/11.  It is light hearted but I might say it is heavy in British humor and style so if you like Hitchhikers Guide or Red Dwarf you might find this mildly amusing.  Or not.

Since I doubt it will ever see a publishers office I just wanted to post it for consideration and hope it you like it.  Or not.

I give you:

Web World Nine: A Space Oddity

Happy Canada / Dominion Day

To mark the occasion a little history, the first Canadian National Anthem.   Since the sixties when O Canada replaced it due to it not exactly PC enough for French Canada.

The Maple Leaf Forever

In days of yore, from Britain’s shore,
Wolfe, the dauntless hero came,

What Hath God Wrought - one big book

So today I got one of my summer reading books What Hath God Wrought: The  Transformation of America 1815-1848, a part of the Oxford History of America series.  Written by Daniel Walker Howe an Emertis Professor at Oxford and UCLA in American History.

ouch that hurts

if you have been wondering where i have been this weekend, I managed to do something to my elbow, meaning that my pinkie has been tingling for over a week.  So out of concern over that i have not been using my fingers to type, which makes blogging a bit less than exciting.

Sorry about that but i should be back up and going regularly again.

Jon