Is My Family Prepared?

How to approach this subject? Most of you know that I am studying the effects of earthquakes on soil and buildings. So I take earthquake hazards very seriously. The first thing we considered in shopping for our latest appartment was how Julie and I felt that it would hold up in an earthquake.

Since it is the anniversary of the 1906 Sanfran earthquake a lot of people are more aware of the hazards of earthquakes. An article in the deseret news was sent to me by one of my professors from the U of U. This article does a good job in summarizing the effects of the big one and also with the little things that will make a huge difference in our well being or even survival when the big one occurs. Please read it!!!

Deseret News Article: It's 2008 and the "Big One" hits Utah.

Key Points:
Secure your Freaking Water Heater Man!!!!!!!!!!
Get some Freaking Food and Water Storage!!!!!!
Make a Plan so everyone knows where to meet!!!!!!
Remember that even Cell phones may not work!!!!!

Help Wanted

Help Wanted

Looking for 9 ring wraiths to hunt down the one true ring that I lost on vacation in Hawaii. Must be willing to travel: airfare can be provided if you do not have your own flying beasts. Those without black horses need not apply. Black evil dolphins are a plus. The ring was last seen in Hanauma Bay on the windward cost of O'ahu above a shallow bed of coral. See picture below.

1906 SanFran Earthquake - Google Earth

Hey everybody! The 18th of this months is the 100 year anniversary of the 1906 SanFran earthquake. If you would like to learn more about the earthquake and seismic stuff follow the link below. It is really, really, really, interesting...... for me at least.

Google Earth Earthquake Files

What a Smile

So I am totally amazed at how much Nate smiles. It is so great! This picture is so dang cute. It is really funny because he does cry more than the average baby (maybe) but he sure does smile more as well!!! It is so much fun to play with him and see in his eyes that he knows me and thinks that I'm just sooooo funny!!!!!!!

By the way, I have uploaded some pics of Julie and me for our engagement as well as some funny pics of me playing the drums.

Julie joins the blogosphere.

So the other week Julie turns to me and says, "hey, I think I want to start a blog. I have a great idea and I want to know what you think." So she explained her idea and I thought it was fabulous. We thought about a good url for about a week and it finally came to us. www.juliepages.info I checked out her first post and it was a lot of fun. Keep checking her page, I expect very good things from her. I put a permalink to her site in the sidebar.

Nate Laughing!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guys, you will not believe this. So this evening after we got home from the day's varied activities I decided to play with Nate for a while. He was sitting in his chair and starting to get a little bit annoyed just sitting there. So I hovered above him and started smiling at him and making all the funny noises that dads make to their children. (Dad's really are the best and making funny noises!!!) Anyway I was making weird noises and shaking my face at him and MUCH to my surprise he sort of went, "ha ha" and I was like, "hey he laughed!!!!" I said to Julie, "did you hear that," and she said yeah with much excitement. So I kept doing what I was doing and he did it again just a little longer!!!! We are so happy!!!! Nate is such a happy little boy as most of you know. He smiles and smiles and smiles, and he also cries quite a bit but I think that is a part of his personality right now. We'll see how he continues to develop.

Del.icio.us

Hey guys, I just want to let you know that I have started a del.icio.us feed. If you don't know what del.icio.us is you might check it out. It is basically a good way to share all the cool things we all look at online. When we find something cool we tag it to our feed in a click or two and anyone who cares can see what we think is cool. So you can always click on the link in the sidebar but I recommend using a feed reader such as newsgator (free online based feedreader that I use). For instance, I have a link to a desktop search client that I think is fabulous and I use it all the time. It is tons faster than any of the other that I have tried. And you can see it by following the link in the sidebar.

Goggled Goat?

032906_eclipse_lebanon
Originally uploaded by EngineeringNerd.

It is a good thing this kid put goggles on his goat!!!! This kid is looking at the solar eclipse that the other side of the planet was blessed with today. That would have been soooo cooooool to see. Anyway, I just couldn't help sharing this picture with you guys. Enjoy!

Alaska Voyage - May 2001

In May of 2001 my family went on a cruise to Alaska. We left flew into Seattle, Washington and drove to Vancouver, British Columbia to board the ship. We made two stops, one in Sitka and one in Ketchikan. Both were very small towns with not much but a main drag with shops. We didn’t end up doing any pricey excursions. But these two towns were cute.

Sailing Alaska’s Inside Passage was soooo beautiful. It was amazingly quiet; there was hardly any sound at all…just peaceful. One thing that amazed me the most was how large and empty the “Last Frontier” is, and I just saw a small portion of the coastline. It’s very cool how secluded and lonely Alaska can seem.

One of the coolest moments of the cruise was being on the upper deck in the middle of nowhere in freezing temperatures, soaking in the hot tub surrounded by the majesty of the mountains. Very cool.

Check out the gallery for a few more pictures.

Public Service Announcement

Recently Julie and I were discussing what types of phrases we should stop using because we are too old to use them. This was really sad because I don’t want to change my vocabulary just because I’m old. This also sucks because it is a reminder that I am getting old!!

“When the crap (or other explicative) hits the fan”

This is a really good expression because it really represents the worst thing that can happen. I mean really, it is the worst scenario when poop is involved. My friend over at the Mommy Going Crazy blog really knows that we are talking about here. She dealt with the lesser poop problem. She had it pretty bad but I am quite sure that no fans were involved over there.

So you got some crap, it’s a localized problem. It is a mess to clean up at this point! So imagine you have an industrial strength fan, no of these wimpy ceiling fans, I’m talking high velocity here. So you turn the fan on “high” and throw the crap at the backside of the fan. It hits the fan with a “womp” and now you are experiencing the worst scenario. The small and localized problem you had before is now terrible and most likely hazmat will need to be called in to take care of the problem. It is everywhere and has been smeared into everything.

So Julie and started talking about things phrases we could use to replace this one. So we put on our thinking caps and this is what came out.

“When the crap hits the fan” can be replace with, “when a whole family of dead (poisoned of course) bloated field mice are found under a wood pile in the garage and must be sucked out with a ShopVac fitted with a special bag and filter made specifically for this type of application.” Oh yeah, the sounds associated with this one is, “Thwump.”

So I think we have made and improvement here. I think this is more fitting for the situation where you just can’t say “when the crap hits the fan” such as during a professional lecture, during church, or while speaking for foreign dignitaries.

This has been a public service announcement