~I just feel so much in my heart right now. Words truly cannot express how full my heart is. I just finished watching the movie "A Far Off Place". It has always been one of my favorites since I was a little girl. The music in it has always stirred deep emotions within me. It is just gorgeous. It has a melody that tugs at my heart. I ...

Here are the latest pictues of Samuel and the kids.  He is doing really great!  At his two week check on Monday the Pediatrician said he looks perfect.  We are adjusting pretty well.  The main problem for me is just lack of sleep right now, but that will get better with time.  Anywho, enjoy the pictures. Samuel's fi...

I've been pondering, and struggling somewhat, on how exactly to write what I'm going to write today - for quite some time. Growing up, I was encompassed by stability.  I had a stable religion which required us to attend meetings once per week, which we did religiously (pun intended).  I had two parents who loved one another.  My m...

I've been writing a snippet of code to take a list of rows from a table in an Oracle database, and have been having problems with a pesky error having to do with PostgreSQL's character encoding and PHP's handling of it. The error I've been receiving is thus: Query failed: ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xae HINT: Th...

*sigh* As programming techniques become more and more complex, and the programmers continue to be just as, or more, diversified, companies who insist on being the industry standard while tossing away organizations such as the W3C, make life as a web developer increasingly difficult. If that didn't make much sense, let me rephrase:  Micro...

Three days ago my inlaws arrived here, and the living arrangements were such that Annie, Craig, and their two wonderful children got to bunk up with us here in Springville. I don't want to go into detail as to the exact happenings of this weekend, but I'd find it hard to maintain peace within unless I wrote a bit about something which I could im...

One thing I noticed while reading verses 7 through 11, apart from the torn emotions of all the people, was what caused their emotion. Why did they feel so "amazed" and fille with "pain and anguish", and with "exceedingly great joy"?  Well... When was the last time you felt filled with pain and anguish for some...

I got the chance to go to work with my mom yesterday and help run the shop while doing some seminary when we had no people in the store. Around 3 I sat down at one of the desks and opend my books and the door bell rang and I got up since my mom was on the phone helping some one else, but the man went to some products that I have NO clue about so I ...

Hmm....  I'm kind of tired right now, but I figured I needed to read some scriptures... This time around, I realize how being under the rule of a tyrant would be absolutely horrible.  In this case, Alma was under the rule of one (or more) of the Amulonites - which were his wicked peers when they were the king's priests.  Talk about...

Ya know when you have one of those days where something is just off?  Well..  Today started out that way, but that all changed when I decided to crack open a couple of my energy drinks. Now, I'm no proponent to something addictive and potentially dangerous, but I'm a believer also that everything has its place.  I mean... Morphine ...

     I have an older brother and sister in Brazil on their missions.  I also have another brother at BYU.  My dad went to Iraq twice and recently returned home from his last tour.  Having my dad back has been like a fantacy, but I still miss my brothers and sister.  I have another older brother, ano...

My wife and I got a dutch oven set about a month ago. We finally decided to try it out. We have both seen and helped with dutch oven cooking before, but have never done it without the help of someone more experienced. Problem #1 You need to get the coals lit before you can cook anything. I tried a couple methods to get them started. Pile o...

I've been using Linux now for long enough to have heard just about all the facts, opinions, babblings, and flame-wars about Linux security vs. Microsoft security. *sigh* It seems that every time I try to explain to people the added security inherent to Linux, they have all sorts of explanations why my explanations are bogus.  Some of my ...

Okay...  So I own and operate a recording studio, and I've been using an M-Audio delta 1010 as my primary audio interface.  This provides me 8 channels of simultaneous audio streams coming into my workstation.  Up until about a month ago, this has been very sufficient. About a month ago, I ordered another Delta 1010, and planned o...

An interesting thought came to my head that turned into a quote of sorts. I'm sure others have said likewise, but I think this would be a great thing to have hanging in the house to constantly remind us. May thoughts and choices of today bring God to guide and light my way. Life with a healthy baby and a healthy wife sure is good. Welcome to ou...

Interestingly enough, while I was praying last night, I felt prompted to start a fast. While I started it, the words flowed freely as the code from my fingers on a good day. :) I fasted that I might not be so friggin' scared about finding employment. I fasted that I might know what to do to make ends meet while I try to figure out what I want to...

Well..  Today wasn't as bad as I thought.  The only thing that really got to me was this lack of sleep.  I woked up at 6:30 this morning, and by 2:00pm, this afternoon, I was dead. I won't bore you with details, but today was filled with food, and loads of technical information.  I've really got to get to sleep now, so I'm go...

This might be the only "current events" post I ever do, but something has been puzzling me for the past 6-12 months. Last night, I watched the last half of the democratic candidates' debate on TV, and although it wasn't mentioned much, there were still a couple of references to a "downward economy", and the need for "job...

Day Two.... I woke up this morning to a wonderful sore-throat.  Nothing too bad, and I felt that it's one of those that will go away as the hours pass by.  Turns up I was right. I rolled around in bed (after getting probably like.... 2-3 hours of sleep on Friday night) this morning for a good 2 hours, trying to go back to sleep. When I...

 So, this chapter, I hate to say it, wasn't very inspiring to me. I'm not sure if it's the state I'm in, or the chapter itself, or both, but there wasn't too much inspiration going on. I did, however, 3 years ago, begin the journey of reading and writing about each and every chapter in the Book of Mormon, so I've gotta write something, if I ...

Man...  11 straight hours of tracking can sure be....... FUN!  Yup...  Herod the Fink is still on schedule, and after yesterday's session, I can say the end product is gonna be something you've never heard in a Christmas album before, guaranteed. To give you an idea of what was recorded yesterday, the title of one of the songs we ...

After having killed one thousand and five of their own people, and having realized they didn't really want to be killing their own people, I imagine the anger of the Lamanites went to pretty extreme levels. I can't imagine the scene which must have taken place at the city of Ammonihah.  That has got to be one of my favorite "God's justi...

Chapter 22 was another toughy, but I figure I'm gonna better my life if I read and am only able to type a tiny bit, rather than not read at all. I guess my brain is still getting over this sickness, because I find it difficult to do any critical thinking.  Anyway... I found it interesting the bit about "more are the children of the de...

I noticed in this chapter that even though many threatenings were made to the king of the land of Jershon (most likely an Ammonite), he didn't seem to care at all.  His concentration was on the many poor people of the Zoramites who were coming to his city. Eventually, I believe this action was the tipping point for the wars forthcoming throu...

To write... Feeling as though worthlessness is she who has found me... The block of feeling sinks deeper into an endless ocean... of creative decay. Yes, to write is to live. But to live defines my weakness my misunderstanding my inadequacy my wretched mind my life. nevertheless! to write... ..is to live... ...and I shall live....

You know those types of musicians...  The ones that just "get it".  They don't worry much about writing the music, but rather, it seems to write itself.  Now, I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but it sure seems like this is the case with Alex Bateman. He came in, knew what he wanted, and the way he wanted his reco...

Alright... So one of my hard drives failed in my backup server LVM array, and I received the new replacement disk today. So, I turn on my computer and even though the volume group isn't initialized (due to the missing disk), it still exists, and has all the other drives in the array still held captive. So, this is how to completely destroy your...

While reading this chapter, the first thing that stood out to me was a misconception I've had about Zeniff going back to the land of Nephi. I thought, until about 10 minutes ago, that Zeniff tried to go inhabit the land twice, when in reality, the first time he was by the Lamanites, he was spying on them.  Nothing too earth shattering, just ...

So, I just got off the phone with my wife, and she was at our new home-to-be this evening, and apparently, almost everything is done.  The carpet isn't in, nor are the toilets, nor are the cement stairs leading down to the basement, but everything else - yeah - it's done.  I'm just beside myself.  We could be moving in as early as la...

Jarom, for some reason, didn't seem all that inspired to me, this time around. The only thing which caused me to question was verse 2. To me, it seems that Jarom didn't want to write "much" for two reasons:  1. Because the plates are small, and 2.  They are being written for the benefit of the Lamanites. I guess I can u...