Distraction

This past week has been amazing from a working perspective.  I’ve been having flashes of insight while running and in the shower and at work.  Whole new areas of understanding have been opening up to me.  I mentioned one of the applications of one of the new areas in the last post.  But it’s the tip of the iceberg.   This last week has been how I would like my whole life here to be.   But can it keep coming?  When new areas of understanding open up it seems a bit like a miracle.  It’s like walking into the unknown and having a path form around your feet.  There is also a state of mind that seems to be required, a hunger for understanding and beauty that practical considerations sometimes bury.

Just barely I got a call from a recruiter at hrg.  He introduced himself to me and said that he was looking for technical talent and had found my profile and wanted to talk about the possibility of working as a financial analyst for a hedge fund.  The phone call was quick and he followed up with a brief email.  But if I get distracted that is a major cost.  You might say that I live most of my life in a day dream and that it is in day dreams that I do my most effective work.  If you steal my day dreams then you steal half of my ability to produce.

Quotes this time

This week

• Lily said, “Dadadada,”

• Elsie said, “I’m not a little punster, I’m a big punster,”['Punster' is our derivative of puny.]

• Timmy changed his minds when seeing shot needles and said, “actually, I think I’ll wait.”

• Abby said, “Mom, who’s the happiest cleaner?” “Oh, you all are happy.” “Mom, who complains the least?” “Kate.” “Mom, who is the best when they are cleaning? The answer is me this time.”

• Katie said, “I think that the real reason you go to peoples houses is not for the thing they invite you over for but to have fun together and be together.”

• Gina said, “Is that blood, or is that spaghetti?”

• Doug said, “Yesterday I figured out how to condense a 1 kilometer optical cavity down to 100 microns for limited bandwidths.”

The week of our first blizzard

• Lily learned to get Cheerios from her tray to her mouth,
• Elsie, our local windows admin, rearranged our desktop again,
• Timmy made a huge snowball,
• Abby took her fastest shower ever,
• Katie had to put her tooth out for the tooth fairy two nights in a row,
• Gina got our fireplace/pellet stove working, and
• I started an experiment that involves showering only every other day.

Coincidence?

Yesterday for dinner we had “smoked rice.” Tonight we had “smoked lentils.” For the first time in a little bit I cooked some this weekend. And, for the first time in a little bit the kids got to taste two new smoked dishes.

Winter Preparations

• Lily started clapping,
• Elsie began giving a taunting laugh, “ha haaah!,” rather than feeling bad when caught in mischief,
• Timmy remembered to feed the fish all by himself when it was his turn,
• Abby came home convinced that she was the smartest kid in her class because she was the only one who knew that people “wear wooden shoes in Holland,”
• Kate held and comforted Lily for a long long time while Gina and I helped clean up after a ward pot luck,
• Gina spearheaded the preparation of 21 bottles of pears and 28 bottles of applesauce, and
• I watched our freshly raked yard refill with pine needles during a single night.

General Conference:Individuals as opposed to their roles

Yesterday we had a host of delightful talks. Different talks stood out to me for different reasons. But a couple of talks in particular combined to enable me to think of life and people in a new way. Two talks, one on patience, and the other on the Plan Salvation, came one right after another that gave me something of a new perspective. I hope to try to express that perspective here. Here goes:

I’ve always thought of life as a limited resource. I’ve watched the days, months, and years go by with mourning, always wishing I could pack more into this short time that I have here on the earth. Perhaps, too, there has been something of a feeling that life is a race: that a task accomplished before your are 13 is better than the same task accomplished when you are 35.

I’ve also been affected in my relationships with other people by status and positions. Some people are children, others are parents. Some people are bosses, others are employees. (Oddly enough I technically had an employee for a little while as a graduate student. She was a tall Jewish woman, an amazingly hard worker and a great employee.)

The idea that life is eternal, that we are eternal changes the way that you think about time and people. Life is not a destination, but a journey. Seeing the days go by, then, is not a sad thing, it is part of the journey. You still want to seize the moments as they come. There is a time to be a kid and a time to get married and a time to raise kids and so on. But life isn’t a race anymore. It’s a fascinating and exciting journey. And the most interesting part of it, the only part that matters, is the other people around you.

When you think about things from this broader time perspective the current positions of people matter less. The man who is the boss was once a child. The child will one day be a father. The rich man may once have been poor and the poor man may one day be rich. Old, young, poor, rich, powerful, or free, healthy, or sick: all of these things are just temporary trappings, part of our journeys through this life. We can change from one outfit to another. But we remain the same eternal beings.

My dad likes to say that after you turn about 30 you pretty much stay the same. Inside you are 30 forever after that. I interact with my children, even Lily who is 6 months old, and it isn’t hard to believe that they are more than just kids. Their status as individuals matters more than their statistics such as age. So that is part of what hit me as a result of this General Conference.

Increments

• Lily started using Elsie’s high chair,
• Elsie came to the table with a booster,
• Timmy got to hold a fresh trout (through gloves) on a tour of the grocery store,
• Abby gave her ghosts elaborate and friendly faces,
• Kate helped Elsie get all the way ready for bed,
• Gina found out that she had ’saved’ $1478 at Smiths so far this year, and
• I came home before 6:00 every day this week.

My first “real” Google Gadget

The main idea behind a Google Gadget is easy deployment.  You write it and then people can add it to different web pages.  Ideally, you write one thing and it shows up all over the place, wherever it is useful.  I think the place where they are used most is on peoples customizable Google home pages.  You can gather a collection of media gadgets, tools, games or whatever, all on the same screen and you can order them how you want.  I really like the distribution possibilities so I decided to learn to write one.

I sent some of you a link to this little quiz that I made to help people learn the countries of South America and their capitals. It was fun to write partly because it forced me to learn a little Javascript. To add the gadget to your Google home page, click the name below.

South American Capitals.

To try it out as part of a web page click here.