More Wakeboarding

Here are some highlights from another Friday morning wakeboard session. I'm already getting bummed that we're getting close to the end of the season... Enjoy.

I love primary

I've got a new calling in our ward. I'm teaching the 9 year old's in primary. It's a lot of fun. I'm team teaching with another guy who's about my age. They're a good group of kids... they like to talk, but they are also excited to participate in the lessons. You know I even feel like I'm probably making more of a difference in the lives of these 5 kids with the lessons they'll learn at this age then any of the lessons I taught to the elders quorum in my previous calling. And to top it all off I still get to go to elders quorum every other week... it's great!

Dallin was tired after Sacrament meeting today and didn't want to go to the nursery. This is pretty rare now, he usually really enjoys the nursery, it's only on days like today where he wakes up early and is ready for a nap right after sacrament meeting that he doesn't really want to go to nursery. I tried to get him to play with the other kids for about 5-10 minutes but finally gave up and decided to take him with me to my primary class. I figured the kids would kind of like having him in there, and I was right.

He sat with me for a little bit while I taught the lesson. Then he drew on the chalk board next to me for a few minutes. A little later we looked over and he was laying on the floor sound asleep.

He woke up when we went to sharing time but still sat still on my lap for most of the time. He liked looking over my shoulder at the bigger boys on the row behind us.

About halfway through he pointed up to the pictures of the First Presidency and apostles and said, "Daddy!" I was quick to explain that those were pictures of the prophet and apostles, but none the less I was flattered that he thought I fit into that crowd!

I sure enjoyed taking my son to my primary class today.

Twilight: Just say NO

(Twilight is a teenage vampire romance novel that's spreading through the female population like wildfire)

I mean it... Just say NO.

I am a self professed expert at the technique of understanding others. In an honest self evaluation I feel that I'm pretty good at putting myself in others shoes to attempt to understand what they feel and why they may feel the way they do. This is only one of my many super powers ;) This skill even extends in to the female species. I've always scoffed at the old cliche that men don't understand women and felt that I was high above the average in this regard. I can even appreciate a decent chick flick every once in while if it develops realistic characters that you can relate too... okay... I'll admit it... I even enjoyed all 6 hours of Pride and Prejudice.

Well... I've been stumped.

A few months ago Jen started reading this new teenage book series known as Twilight (written by an LDS author but not necessarily to an LDS only audience). She raved and raved about how good this love story is between a teenage girl and a vampire.

... that's right... a vampire.

She finally convince me that I should listen to the book on CD. She placed it on hold for me at the library and rushed to pick it up when it arrived. I have to admit I was interested to listen to it if not just to understand what it was that Jen liked so much about this book.

I've usually enjoyed Jen's recommendations in the past, and began listening to this one with an open mind, trying the best I could to listen to it from Jen's perspective to perhaps learn more about my wonderful wife.

I didn't hate the book... It was mediocre. The action/adventure portion of the plot was perhaps enjoyable, but I simply cannot understand what everyone sees in this love story! I thought I understood girls to some extent, but this just throws me for a loop. I don't understand why all the girls that read this book just go goo goo eyed for this fictional vampire character.

My biggest complaint about this love story is this... there isn't any... It's just *poof* we're in love! Where is the human emotion in that... Where is the development of true devotion to each other... come on! I thought girls out grew the valiant knight sweeping me off my feet and carrying me off into the sunset fantasy at about age 15. I expected they traded that in for a true perspective on love, one that includes serving, giving, understanding, as well as attraction and passion. You know... like Clint Black says, "Love isn't some place that we fall, it's something that we do". Love is something that is layered through the experiences you share together, which is what makes it grow over time. This teenage infatuation fantasy is so shallow compared to what really can exist between a husband and a wife.

So as the wildfire continues to spread rapidly through ranks of our wonderful wives, sisters, daughters, and friends. I stand as one lone voice against the fury calling husbands everywhere to stand with me and warn their wives when they are pressured into reading Twilight to just say NO.

PS. To Stephenie Meyer I mean you no disrespect. Your book is much better then anything I could ever produce. My satirical remarks here are not so much a critique of your book as a desire to understand what it is about teenage infatuation that makes even grown women weak in the knees.

Blessed

Count your many blessing... la de da dum dum.

This weekend I've just been thinking about how happy my life is and how blessed we are. I have a wonderful wife, two incredible boys, a job that I enjoy and plenty of friends in the ward. I have many hobbies that keep my free time always occupied. I can't think of much to complain about. Sure we have our trials as everyone does but it sure seems like we've got are fair share of blessings as well :)

I think the biggest factor my rosy attitude has been my new position at work. As much as I enjoyed the technical challenges that my previous position presented I wasn't passionate about our teams charter. Now I'm working on a product that I'm excited about as well as growing my technical skills. I really enjoy going to work everyday. Considering work takes up at least a third of my day each day it's not profound to conclude that a more enjoyable job will equate to a happier me :)

Yesterday was our annual ward salmon bake. This is by far our favorite ward activity of the year. I think the reason for this is three fold:

1. It is an adult only activity so with all the kids home with the babysitters the adults are all unfettered to mingle and truly enjoy each others company.
   
2. It's held in the Folkman's backyard on their private beach on Lake Sammamish (weather permitting), which includes boating activities before and after the dinner. While I've been lucky enough to go out on the lake many times the past few seasons, the salmon bake is usually the only time that Jen and I get to go out together. Yesterday Jen and I both water skied, and I also got to wake surf and wakeboard all in one evening.
   
3. Last but not least the food is always excellent. We've really grown accustom to the excellent sea food found in the northwest, and the high priest always find delicious was to prepare the barbecued salmon.
   

All in all it was a very enjoyable evening.

Cooking

Cooking has become one of Jen's new favorite hobbies... Yum! And I'll say she's become quite the cook. For instance tonight she wipped up a flank steak covered with carmelized onions and sprinkled with broiled fetta cheese, served along side asparragus and a spinach salad. That was of her own creation as well.

Dessert!

We had icecream cones for dessert today... One of Dallin's favorites!

Share "My Pictures"

Warning... this may be a "boring post" so feel free to skip :) ..I know Jen always skips over any of my "technical" posts event though these types of post are not really targeted towards "technical" people but rather those that use technology and may not know how to get the most out of it.

I really prefer to have separate accounts for each person in the family that uses the computer. This way each person can have their own file organization, internet favorites, etc. Plus then you don't have to constantly log the other person out of your internet mail account just so you can use yours.

However, I really don't like having pictures downloaded from our camera randomly land in the "My Pictures" folder (now called only "Pictures") of the person who happened to be downloading the pictures that day. This puts you in the situation where you always have to look through at least two accounts for the picture you want... plus I believe Vista won't have the other user's pictures indexed when accessed under a different user account, so searching will be much slower as well.

I recently wiped my hard drive and reinstalled Vista... this was with the intent of moving away from a dual booted XP and Vista machine into a computer with only one OS the new and improved Vista (trumpet fanfare). Jen had previously been familiar with using separate accounts under XP, but whenever the computer was booted into Vista she would only use my account. In order to break this habit I not only created her an account with her usual name and password, I also decked it out with a new background image I thought she would like and a bundle of Vista gadgets that I thought would suit her taste... including the Flower Clock. She was impressed.

So the last thing to solve was the how to have both of our user accounts share the same "Pictures" folder. Unix has had the notion of "links" for a long time, but that concept has not really existed in windows at least not as a built in feature. In windows I could create a "shortcut" in Jen's Pictures folder titled something like "Jason's Pictures" that would then jump the user into my Pictures folder and likewise create another shortcut in my folder jumping to Jen's. However, this doesn't really solve the problem the pictures are still going to be scattered thought out both locations.

The problem is increased due to the easiness of the picture import tool in Vista which with very few clicks will import all of your pictures into the "Pictures" folder of the currently active account. This means that it's unlikely that Jen or I would take the time to tell Vista.. "No, actually I want you to import the pictures into the folder pointed to by this shortcut."

The solution is to create a "junction point". NTFS has included support for junctions for some time but there was no built in utility for creating them. You had to download the resource kit or support tools in order to get the appropriate tools for doing so. Not so with Vista... a new command was added called "mklink". Some of the features of junctions were also modified to make them mimic UNIX links more closely.

There are three different types of links you can create using mklink:

1. A "symbolic link" which is kind of similar to a shortcut, except that it actually works from the command line and not only the GUI.
2. A "hard link" in which the link is really just another name for the target. For instance if I create a file called a.txt and a hard link to the file called b.txt both a.txt and b.txt are two names for the same file. If I delete one then the other will be deleted as well.
3. A "directory junction" which is a hard link from one directory to another. That is like in the example above if I create a directory a_dir and a directory junction b_dir then both a_dir and b_dir will look like separate directories but the contents will be the same.

Naturally I used mklink to create a directory junction to solve the "Pictures" folder dilemma. I moved all of the pictures on our computer into the "Pictures" folder on my account. I then deleted the empty "Pictures" folder on Jen's account and then in Jen's user folder I created a directory junction called "Pictures" with my "Pictures" folder as the target. Now when Jen logs into her account and clicks on the word "Pictures" on her start menu it will jump into what looks like her "Pictures" folder, but is really a junction into my "Pictures" folder. More importantly when Jen connects the camera to the computer and says import these pictures they will all be dropped into the correct folder.

Here is the command line I used:

mklink /J C:\users\jenofarc\Pictures C:\users\joswing\Pictures

Note: In order for this to work Jen's user account has to have access to my "Pictures" folder. If you need help doing this just ask me in a comment.

I did the same thing for videos as well. I've considered doing it for music also to create one flat music collection on our computer... but then I realized I don't really want "Jenny Phillips" showing up in my music collection ;)

I've also discontinued the use of sub-directories in the Pictures folder. I used to have a directory for every month of each year in which all the pictures that were taken during that month would live. I now use one flat pictures folder with no sub folders. I then use Vista's built in "Photo Gallery" to view the pictures. It has links on the side that you can use to view pictures based on the date they were taken. So now instead of only being able to view all pictures taken in one month I can select any date period, such as all pictures taken in 2003, or October of 2002, etc. I'm also in the process of tagging all of our pictures with the names of the people in the picture as well as keywords for the activity being displayed. This enables Vista's built in search capabilities to function more appropriately when searching for pictures. When this is complete I can then simply type "Dallin black and white guitar" to find the black and white picture of Dallin playing the guitar. The search functionality also works in file open dialogs, such as trying to find the picture you want to attach to an email or upload to your blog.

Now if windows could simply do away with using backslashes for directory delimiters I think I'd be happy :)

Diaper Beanie

Dallin likes to goof around while we try to change his diaper... Sometimes I'll get frustrated at him if we're in a hurry, but other times I'll play along. He didn't want me to put his diaper on so to play along I asked if I should put it on his head... He thought that was funny!

A great morning on the lake!

I LOVE Friday mornings!

Today was a beautiful day on the lake. The water was very nice, there was a little rain... very little. It felt like a little mist while we were boating. I didn't even notice it while wakeboarding. Scott, Taylor, and I all had excellent runs.

I was getting some great jumps (much better then in the video I posted earlier). Taylor pulled out is cell phone and managed to get a very well timed photo of me on the first jump that I have ever actually got the tail grab! That takes quite a lot of talent... to get the photo with a cell phone camera... the delay on the camera is like 5 seconds or more so he had to hit the button while I was starting my cut and got very lucky :)

Last season I saw Mark (Jen's brother) do a 360 on the surface of the water passing the handle behind the back. I've been trying to do it off and on all season, and today I finally got it!

It was a great day on the water.