New header image

"Look at me! I'm on top of the world!" - Homer J. Simpson

That little image you see just above that says "second fiddle"? I spent a boatload of time getting that right so both of you could enjoy a new look to my blog.

Katie has long wanted to be able to fiddle with these sorts of images to enhance her blog. She also loves to scrapbook. So I bought her killer layout software - Quark - for Christmas. I used Quark back when I was younger - like 20 years ago. It's become a lot beefier and more complicated in the ensuing years.

Here's what I had to do to get this image to work:
* Figure out Quark enough to get the layers, fonts and image right.
* Save it. Doh - it saves as a Quark file and nothing can read it.
* Save it as the other option - EPS. Doh - I don't have photoshop to open this so I can save it as a jpg.
* Buy photoshop. Doh - Adobe's web site won't accept my credit card.
* Screenshot and save in Paint? Doh - this is a Mac and I don't know how!
* Ah hah (weeks later). Screen shot using Clip. Save as Tiff. Doh - Blogger doesn't accept tiff.
* Ah hah. Macs have a preview program that can open tiff and save as jpg. Catch that? Four file conversions - Quark to EPS to tiff to jpg. Alas.
* Upload. AHHHHHHHH! Width is off and my OCD kicks in.
* Grab the image on my PC and shrink it by "eyeballing" the width until I get it right - on the third try. So if the aspect ratio appears a bit tight horizontally, it is - 1.99% to be exact.

So woo hoo. I can finally make a decent masthead. It's as easy as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 on our cool iMac with its rocking design software.

By the way, I really like the image. He/she who guess what it is (not Katie) gets a shiny new congratulations and an invitation to the next game night. Hint - it's an original photograph from yours truly sometime in the last month or two.

Bittersweet Feelings

Gordon B. Hinckley, the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, passed away Sunday evening. It's interesting for me to hear those outside the church sometimes scoff at the admiration members of the church have for their leader, as though this common affection is somehow lemming-like. His passing has given me pause to consider the impact he has had on me personally.

I never met him in person, but have been very affected by his counsels, his leadership and his example. He has been the leader of my church almost my entire married life. One third of the members of the church have never known another prophet. He has inspired me and admonished me with counsel of how to live, love and whom I should strive to become. I could probably write an entire page summary of his teachings that I remember and have attempted to apply to my life. Most recently I have been trying to follow his specific counsel about being slow to anger and quick to forgive.

Under his direction, he has brought the full opportunities of the church to the world through a massive building program. However, the program he may be less remembered for by others is the program that has most affected me personally - the perpetual education fund. The fund is a mechanism whereby earnings from donations are extended as educational loans to capable people in areas where they might not have that opportunity. They then pay the loans back and the program continues.

This program has impacted me in a very personal and emotional way for two reasons. First, it was modeled after a similar program from the 1860s called the perpetual emigration fund, and was the means my ancestors used to emigrate from Europe to Utah. I'm a beneficiary of this charity. Second, I served a mission for the church in Latin America and was struck by the inequities inherently there. I was no more intelligent or capable than my Latin American associates, yet when my mission ended I would return to the university and a life of opportunity while they would return to their village to try to support themselves and their families with little opportunity. I literally wept when he introduced this program and am so pleased to have such an elegant way to give back.

Finally, I have been touched by his example despite not having spoken a word to him. I have admired him from a distance, in public and through friends, as I've seen how he treats others, his family, and particularly his wife. I have no doubt he is very pleased to be reunited with her this week. I try to be as optimistic yet self-effacing as he.

Coincidentally, I know his personal secretary quite well. He tells the story that the Monday after his wife's funeral, Pres. Hinckley came into work, slammed his fist on the desk and said "Let's get to work." As torn as he felt by her passing, he was not going let his grief stand in the way of what he had to do. I suppose those that cared for him can only do the same.

It has been said that the highest tribute we can give the dead is not grief but gratitude. I'm very grateful for the impact Pres. Hinckley has had on my life in a very personal way and look forward to being similarly instructed by his successor, Thomas S. Monson.

Though Pres. Monson has enormous shoes to fill, he will do so splendidly. He is equally capable, insightful and kind. I anticipate continual admonishments to "always do our duty", which has always been Pres. Monson's repeated theme.

Horse Kicked One Last Time

So I've beaten this dead horse quite enough, but I got interested today in our Christmas card mailing list and started pulling some stats. Some I found interesting. Bear in mind that we really don't try to send a ton of cards - we just happen to have moved a lot. Churn reduces the number a lot as well. As an example, we currently only send 12 cards to Sweden though we certainly consider more than 12 Swedes to be good friends after the time we spent there. Here are some stats on the list.

Countries represented - 7
States in the US represented - 25
Most common states - Utah (107), Texas (54) and Idaho (46)
Most common country outside of US - Sweden (12)
Most common first names - Greg, John (6 each)
Most common last name - Wright (5)

I was tripped to see we send cards to 50% of the states in the US. Bschool is probably the #1 reason, more than our tendency to relocate. Also interesting that Wright was more popular than Graham or Hadfield. I guess that's what happens when you have a small family or lots of daughters changing their names as they are married. And no, I didn't send myself six cards.

You didn't want to know any of this, but it was a nice break over lunch to play with pivots.

Load shedding

It's been a while since I've shared quirky things about South Africa from my foreign viewpoint, but I think it's that time. However, I think even South Africans would find this quirky.

South Africa has not invested quickly enough in several types of infrastructure over the last decade or two to keep pace with the growth they've experienced. The most visible example of this right now is in the power industry. Even though this summer is unseasonably cool, they do not have remotely enough power generation capacity.

Every day they have to black out a different part of the country. It feels like it is nearly always either Woodmead or Bryanston, where I live and work. The power goes out for a few hours and everyone quickly tries to convince their boss that they can't work without a PC/power and get out of the building before the power comes back on and ruins their short day. This is pretty comical to watch, lame to live through and a bit scary since the stoplights are ALWAYS out right now, seemingly everywhere. Traffic's a nightmare.

Here's the part I find the most funny though. You can imagine how this puts strain on the economy. POS systems don't work when the power goes out at the mall. Restaurants can't serve food. Ice cream is always melted or gross at the grocery store.

The funny thing is how it is affecting the local gyms.

Gyms are starting to lose significant business because they are just plain dangerous. Imagine you're at the gym, minding your own business, listening to your iPod and watching a rugby game on TV while you run on the treadmill. You're cruising. You're quite sure you could be the fastest guy in the gym right now, even faster than those twenty somethings down the way. Kick it up a notch. Feel the burn. Feel the sweat. BAM! Lights go out, TV turns off and the treadmill stops abruptly. You go flying into the console ahead of you blindly. Bruised and bloody you hear nothing but Pearl Jam from your iPod, suddenly way too loud, and the screams of all the other treadmill runners around you.

This doesn't happen just once. It happens every night.

This is an indication of how far the load shedding culture has gotten - one of my consultants got an SMS on his phone the other night from a restaurant he'd eaten at the previous night right after the lights went out. "We have generator power and serve dinner through load shedding", it said. Very entrepreneurial. Very funny.

Especially funny when you get to leave in a couple of weeks. Estimates are that it will only worsen for at least five if not ten years before more generation is available. One more good reason to love Texas. (are you counting these, Katie?)

Churn

For the last few years I've been responsible for quite a bit of direct marketing. I may have put a catalog in your mailbox or an email in your inbox. It's also possible I put a Christmas card in your mailbox. At least I don't telemarket.

One of the challenges for any direct marketer to manage is churn - people moving or changing email addresses. This is also the case for those of us who try to stay in touch by exchanging Christmas cards. One of the most disappointing things each December or early January is to receive that pile of "return to sender" Christmas cards and realize that we've lost touch with a few more friends.

If you happen to know where any of the following now live, please email me so I can get back in touch. I hate to lose contact with good friends.

S. & H. Henretta
E. & A. Kerr
P. & M. Ceverha
C. Condiff
Alfredo & C. Gomez
J. Pearson

The Office

You've probably already received this via email from me.

One of the rare TV shows I enjoy is The Office. It is one of maybe two or three shows Katie and I can both enjoy, at least as long as Jim is yearning after Pam. I mostly enjoy it because I enjoy watching Jim (reincarnation of Mark Taber) terrorize Dwight. So I got this email from some guys I used to work with that made me grin. Hopefully it will make you grin too.

Stewart, the phone guy, went on vacation for three weeks. Three weeks is a long time for a vacation in the US, especially when you're in charge of the phones. He sits in the IT department. Apparently they thought his area needed some sprucing up, so they gave his cubicle a little makeover. This is a picture.



It is now complete with working porch and interior lights, a ceiling fan and a planter box with real petunias. I'm so grateful for workers with a sense of humor. I only fear that by the transitive property that means I'm grateful for IT, which is rarely the case.

Christmas cards poll complete

OK, so my little poll that was hardly statistically significant proved what I feared. We send the most Christmas cards of anyone bored enough to participate in my poll. Thanks J for licking all those envelopes. Thanks Katie for not making me manufacture them by hand this year. What a tradition! And now we get to do it again in a month with change of address cards.

We either need to stop moving, stop making friends when we move, or stop deluding ourselves that people want to get a card from us after we've moved.

There were three people that didn't send a single card. Somehow I suspect that single is a word that could be used for these three in more than one context...

Blog Withdrawal

My favorite blogger has been inconsistent and quiet over the last while. She's written little and not at all in a couple of weeks. She's been busy visiting new places and hosting guests. I need to get the kids to bed early for her so she can pen some new insight, or at least post cool pictures from her time in Cape Town and Victoria Falls.

In the meantime, here's a picture from the aforementioned trip to Cape Town. It looks like they are just in front of the beach, but in this picture they're actually quite a ways up there - we hiked up to a promontory where we could see most of the cape.

Come back, Katie, come back.

I Miss My Dog

I'm coming, boy.

Thank you Amanda and John for bailing us out!

The Holidays are Over

Over the last three weeks we've been frenetically trying to see as much of Africa as we could while South Africa was away on holiday. We have less than a month left here and I had spent most of my time working, so it was time to cram in as much sightseeing as we could. In the last bit I've visited Durban, Cape Town, Pilanesberg, the Apartheid Museum, the orphanage (twice), Swaziland, Victoria Falls, and Drakensberg. I'll push some pictures up to Katie's web gallery so you can see some of the fun. In the meantime, here are two pictures that for me summarize much of the last three weeks.

Here are some more pics from Cape Town.