Big Bang

I read a poem a few days ago that really got me thinking. I didn't realize how influenced I had been by the educational system, and the current thinking of the time. The poem is from the children's book, Science Verse, by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith. It is titled, 'Twas The Night.

'Twas the night before Any Thing, and all through deep space,

Nothing existed-time, matter, or place.

No stockings, no chimneys. It was hotter than hot.

Everything was compressed in one very dense dot.

When out of the nothing there appeared with a clatter

A fat guy with reindeer and something the matter.

His nose was all runny. He gave a sick hack.

"Oh, Dasher! Oh, Dancer! I can't hold it back!"

He huffled and snuffled and sneezed one AH-CHOO!

Then like ten jillion volcanoes, the universe blew.

That dense dot exploded, spewing out starts,

Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Uranus, and Mars,

Helium, hydrogen, the mountains and seas,

The chicken, the egg, the birds and the bees,

Yesterday's newspaper, tomorrow's burnt toast,

Protons and neutrons, your grandma's pork roast.

The universe expanded. The guy said with a wheeze,

"Who will ever believe the world started by sneeze?

So let's call it something much grander, all right?

Merry BIG BANG to all! And to all-Gesundheit!"

I thought this a very funny poem when I first read it. The irony was clear. A sneeze triggering the creation of the universe. Then I thought a little further. The irony was that I believed that the universe started as a tiny speck and is expanding due to the release of infinite mass and energy from an infinitely small point. As I thought even more, what I found to be most interesting was the fact the because the Big Bang is the best model that has been presented thus far, it is accepted as absolute truth by the masses, those who are not astrophysicists.

Is the universe expanding? There is a good chance. Is it certain? No. Could it be that the universe is orbiting, like everything else in the universe, and that we are moving away from the center right now in an elliptical movement. Maybe. I suspect this would give the appearance of expansion from a single point, given the extremely large orbit and our extremely small ability to observe. Perhaps the universe is expanding because a creator at the center is creating more. Maybe we don't understand what we are observing. It wouldn't be the first time. I suspect there are all sorts of other theories out in the world right now. Some much more extreme than what I just said, some much less extreme. My point being, lets not close our mind because we can not understand everything. Maybe everything did explode into existence, but we will never know the truth unless we keep our minds open and explore all possibilities.

Alexis de Toqueville stated, "I am unacquainted with [God's] designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than His justice." I love this quote. I know God exists. I don't understand how He does everything, but that does not change the fact that He exists and is doing things that I don't understand. Not understanding why and how God does things seems like a poor reason not to believe in Him.

Well, just some random musings. I hope they almost make sense to someone. I know I exist. I know God exists. I know the universe exists. I think it was always here and is just being reorganize.

Six Steps to Maximize your Disneyland Trip (for those who have never been and don't want to go)

I did not go as a child. I did not want to go as an adult. The whole thought of taking my children there and listening to them complain as we waited in long lines for very short thrills all the while having people try to sell me noisy, cheap, plastic replicas of things did not sound appealing at all. Candace had very fond memories of going to Disneyland as a child and as a teenager. Candace has been planning a Disneyland trip for quite a few years and I have been reluctantly agreeing to go...sometime.

The time finally came. I could not prevent it any longer. I am writing this as Candace drives the current leg of our 12 hour drive back home from a great week at Disneyland. It took quite a while (years) for me to overcome my prejudice. I never got to the point where I really wanted to go to Disneyland, but I did decide not to hate the trip before I went. Not quite a open mind, but not completely closed. Here is my first step for maximizing your Disneyland trip. Keep and open mind. It might be fun.

FastPass, ChildPass, Disneyland guide books, planning schedules, hours of the day, days of the week, months of the year. You can find all sorts of statistical analysis determining the most effective way to traverse the paths leading from one ride to another. Decrease walking, Increase riding. As far as I could tell from talking to everyone that had already been to Disneyland, that was the key to having fun at Disneyland. I beg to differ. We walked all over Disneyland, saw all sorts of things, rode most of the rides (most only once). We just walked from place to place. Not in a hurry at all. Most of the rides were not too busy anyway. We didn't wait over 15-20 minutes for any rides. If it was too long a line we might get a FastPass, or we might just go to a different ride or play area. There is lots to see. We were there for three days and probably did not see a quarter of the park. Since the point is not to see everything and do everything, it is to have fun together as a family, we didn't even try to see everything. We just had fun where ever we were. So this is my second step to maximize your Disneyland trip. Don't try to see everything or do everything. Just move at the speed your family can have fun going.

Annmarie's favorite ride was the bus. She loved riding the bus to and from Disneyland. She cried when she saw the bus drive away one morning before we were ready to go. As we tried to hurry to get ready so we would not miss the bus, everything went crazy. Everyone started yelling at each other to call the elevator up, and to get their shoes, and to comb the last head of hair. The tension increased dramatically in a matter of moments. Instead of continuing this we all stopped, came back in the room, slowed down, and finished getting the ready at our own speed. This is the point that the bus drove off and our youngest started crying because we missed the bus ride. Here is my third hint on maximizing your Disneyland trip. The buses come every 30 minutes or so. Don't run to their schedule. Catch the one that is available after you are ready to go. The waiting time is less than many of the rides. If you are really that concerned about it though, rent a hotel in the park.

The best ride I went on was the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters ride. On this ride to sit in a little tea cup that spins around with the pull of a joy stick. There are also two laser guns that you use to shoot at the evil Zurg's minions. If I had been alone on this ride it would not have been that great, but I rode this with Christian. Seeing his wide eyes and excitement at shooting the bad guys made this the best ride ever. Christian was too small to enjoy most of the rides, but this was just his thing and he reveled in it. Yes, we even bought him his own cheep plastic astro blaster that lights up and makes noise. My fourth step to maximize your Disneyland trip is to enjoy your children. Even if Disneyland is not that exciting to you, your children can be.

I learned one very important thing on this trip. While we were having breakfast one morning our waiter brought us some Orange Juice. He brought cups with lids for the children. Then the magic happened. He grabbed a straw and pulled off one end of the wrapper then stabbed the straw into the cup. Cannon promptly told him that he left half of the straw wrapper on the straw. It was great! Now I know how to easily get the wrapper off of a straw. The fifth point...you can enjoy things that are not in the park as well.

Now for the sixth and last point. Disneyland is a business. It is going to take a lot of your money. Expect it. Accept it. It is OK to spend a lot of money very quickly every once in a while. The tickets cost $60 per person. Each meal in the park is going to cost $6-7 per person. There is also the cost of travel and lodging. In the end it is going to cost a few thousand dollars to make a trip to Disneyland. Don't begrudge the cost or it will ruin the entire trip. Disneyland is providing a service that you are paying for. You may be paying an excessive price, but you made the decision to do it and it is OK. Have fun at Disneyland!

The trip really was fun. It was a little stressful trying to keep track of the kids all the time with so much going on in every direction. There was a fair amount of whining from the kids...and the adults. But overall it was very fun.  Here is a slideshow of our trip.

Online Audio Books

I changed jobs recently. I am now working at Omniture, Inc. This has been a great move except for one thing…the commute. I know, I know, forty minutes to an hour is not that long of a commute by many peoples standards, but it takes me away from my family for an extra couple of hours a day. This is unacceptable to me so we are planning on moving to fix the problem. In the mean time, I have found something that at least makes the commute much more enjoyable: Audio books online.

There are quite a few different online audio book websites. I am just going to discuss my favorite. LibriVox provides over 1000 free audio books from the public domain. Volunteers record themselves reading books and make them available on the LibriVox website. All recordings are placed in the public domain.

There are several options for reading or listening to your chosen story. The full text is made available from the Gutenberg website. There are links available to Wikipedia telling you more about the author and the book you are looking at. The recordings are archived at the Internet archive website. The archive website makes the recordings available as mp3 files at either 64kbps or 128kbps as well as in the ogg vorbis format. You can also download the mp3 files as a zip file or listen to it as a streaming broadcast. LibriVox makes links available to quickly subscribe to the story as an iTunes Podcast. You can also join an email subscription to have the story sent to you one chapter a day. In other words, LibriVox has done all they can to please your listening preference.

I have listened to quite a few different stories now and have found most of the recordings to be of a good quality. They are certainly better than listening to repeatitive news casts or obnoxious DJ’s. In fact, I enjoy the books a lot. It has made my commute very enjoyable.

Winger’s Original Buffalo Wings Sauce

I deep fried some wings tonight for dinner. I found a recipe on the web for Winger’s Original Buffalo Wings Sauce. The recipe I used was not correct though. It called for 2 1/2 cups of brown sugar. It was more like carameled wings then buffalo wings. Pretty bad really. I have put a corrected version below so I will not make that mistake again.

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/3 cup Frank’s Red Hot pepper sauce
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup hot water

Place brown sugar and corn syrup in medium saucepan and melt over medium heat until boiling. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly or it will burn. Add hot water, pepper sauce and vinegar. Stir all ingredients together well and continue cooking at a low boil, stirring often until mixture has reduced to a syrupy consistency (about 15 minutes). The sauce will thicken considerably as it cools. You can adjust the amounts of Frank’s Red Hot and water to get the right amount of spice for your taste. Some people like only Hot sauce and no water.

2007 Backpacking highlight video

I created a short highlight movie of some of the backpacking trips I went on this summer with our boy scout troop. I created the movie with iPhoto and iMovie. It was surprisingly easy. After finishing I remembered one of the apple ads. “Better Results” is the personification of how easy it is to create a very nice movie. There is sample music, useful clip transitions, easy music adjustments, clip effects, and many more useful tools. The tools are available, but more than that, they are easy to use. It took only about an hour to build the movie, and upload it to YouTube. It was fun to waste the hour creating the movie.

paul

I've started a book

So I have been working at FamilyLearn for over a year now. I am finally getting around to writing my own book. I got the idea when my son start talking about “three fingered Jack.” I had made up a ghost story on our vacation to the Oregon coast. The kids were restless and I saw a sign that read “three fingered Jack.” I don’t know what the sign was there for, but it gave me an idea for a story. So I started to make up a story about a man named “three fingered Jack”. It was silly and I didn’t think the children even listened…but now months later I hear my son talking about it. This experience made me think that I should record these stories. Hence the book.

The experience writing the story (from a technical point of view) has been very good. The system is working much better than it ever has before. It is actually fun to write there. I didn’t think I would like writing in a web browser, but it was really not too bad. I want to write a few more books and put together some gifts for people as well. But, one at a time is probably best.

My mother is writting a personal history about her father. It has been a lot of fun helping her edit the book and organize ideas and so forth. I can’t wait to see the finished book.

paul

Closed in the Last 7 Days

I use trac for most of my project management purposes. One issue I had for quite some time was that I did not have a report showing me what tickets were closed in the last x amount of time. After studying the stock reports and digging through the database I found what I needed. The following query generates a report showing a list of closed tickets over the last 7 days (actually 604800 seconds).

SELECT id AS ticket, summary, component, version,
 priority, t.type AS type, owner, resolution,
 changetime AS _changetime, description AS _description,
 reporter AS _reporter
FROM ticket t
LEFT JOIN enum p ON p.name = t.priority AND p.type = 'priority'
WHERE status = 'closed'
  AND _changetime > (strftime('%s','now')-604800)
  ORDER BY changetime DESC

I hope this report will help someone else. Enjoy!

Flower in the crannied wall

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;—
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Mt. Timpanogos Hike

This weekend I spent 3 days backpacking around Mt. Timpanogos. It was a great trip. My neighbor and I took 5 boy scouts on the trip with us. We left from our homes on Thursday about 7:00am. We parked just above Aspen Grove and began our hike.

The first part of the trail is actually paved. Some time ago there was a one foot wide trail of blacktop laid. It turns out that this is not very nice on sore knees. Shortly after the pavement ends you come to a nice waterfall. This is a great place to refill you water (make sure you filter any water you plan to drink).

We hiked about five miles up the canyon to a hidden valley. The valley is just off the trail. It is a beautiful place to stay. It must be a favorite spot for the mountain goats too. They frequented our campsite. Many of them walked right through our camp.

Hidden lake is at the back of the valley. The second day we were there we spent an hour or so swimming in the lake. The lake was about 100 yards by 20 yards and only 1 yard deep. A little deep after you sink into the 6 inches of mud that forms the bottom of the lake. The water is run off from a glacier which sits at the South end of the lake. A truly breath taking experience.

About a mile up the trail from our campsite is Emerald Lake. Emerald Lake sits in a valley overshadowed by the Timpanogos summit.

From here you can see the shack that sits on top of the mountain. A small shelter was built at the lake about 50 years ago. About a 1/2 mile past the lake you get your first view of the American Fork canyon. As you climb over a small hill the canyon opens up before you.

The trail then lead over a large rock slide. This is a fairly rough trail. There is no flat spot to walk on. You only have rocks. At the far side of the rock slide is a steep trail covered in shale rocks. This is perhaps the hardest part of the climb. A series of tight switchbacks follows this to the top of the saddle. Following the saddle and then maneuvering up the side of the mountain brings you to the Timpanogos summit. I was dizzy for most of the final climb. You are literally standing on the edge of the mountain. The peak is only a few feet wide and very steep on both sides. The clouds were coming up from the valley floor by the time we reached the summit limiting our view some. But it was a beautiful site.

You can view a slide show of the hike if you would like.

Timeout a ruby system call

I was rather disappointed that I could not set a timeout on a system call. This is especially a problem because of the very poor threading model that ruby currently has. But, at least there is a way to get the job done. The following is a method I wrote to make a system call and then kill it if the timeout is reached.

require 'timeout'
class System
def self.system_with_timeout(timeout, *args)
 if ( (pid = fork) == nil )
   #child process
   @@logger.debug(args.join(' '))
   exec(*args)
 else
   success = false
   #parent process
   begin
     #TODO if the process fails return false
     success = Timeout::timeout(timeout){ Process.waitpid(pid) }
   rescue Timeout::Error
     @@logger.error "***** Timeout error"
     Process.kill("HUP", pid)
     Process.detach(pid)
   end
   success
 end
end
end