My two oldest children did not like dinner tonight. I was trying to figure out how to get them to eat when I stumbled onto an idea.

My oldest does not like marshmallows while my second child does. I said I would give my oldest a mallow if her brother finished first. I would give him one if she finished first. I know that is not the best deal but my son wanted to see his sister eat a mallow. He won and I gave my oldest the mallow. She whined and refused to acept the gift until I whispered in her ear that I only had said that I would give it to her. She smiled and promptly gave it away.

Funny kids.

I had an interesting talk over lunch with a fellow from southern California. We talked about many things and while he was finishing off his guacamole, he mentioned that he is growing his own avocado tree.

Last year we started growing our own tree. we started with a pit and some instructions from avocado.org. We started growing ours and it was looking so nice. We even took it with us on our vacation last summer to keep it alive. As suggested on the website we cut the tree. It has taken a long time to grow back and simply started growing out of the original stem again. So we cut it again. This time it has received some miracle grow and is sprouting sideways per the instructions.

We are excited and hope to have avocados sometime in about 5 years.

I have previously mentioned that I spent some time in Ecuador. I got to spend nearly 5 months near a town called Otavalo. This is a town filled with indigenous crafts. The town and the weekend market have become quite the tourist attraction. They make many different textile products such as felt hats, decorative rugs, panchos, carrying bags, woven vests and sweaters, hammocks, and the list goes on. They also seem to have quite a propensity for music. There are many local music groups. The textiles and the music combined provide and lot of jobs and wealth in the community. I would often run into someone that had just returned from places such as Belgium, India, Germany, The United States, etc. I got to know areas outside of Otavalo such as Iluman, Quincuchi, Peguche, and La Bolsa very well.

The native language in Otavalo is somewhat different than the largest native language in Ecuador. The most widely spoken native language is Quechua. However, in Otavalo and the surrounding area they speak Quichua, which is more than just a different dialect of Quechua. I suppose the structure and grammer of the two are similar enough but the words and accents are distinct.

I was able to pick up a good working knowledge of the Quichua language. It is an interesting language. However, by my observations it will soon be a dead language. I found that those younger than about 40 (ten years ago) knew and could speak both Spanish and Quichua. The older generation, often unless educated, only spoke Quichua. Those younger than about 40 but older than about 20 could understand Quichua and had some skills in it but it was not important to them. Those younger than 20 did not understand nor speak Quichua. This is just my observations and while not universally true seem to hold true for a large portion of the area.

I like to cook. See the Food section of this website for further details. Because I like to cook so much I often find myself in the kitchen stirring, dicing or making some food. When it comes to stirring, I have four helpers. Everyone of the kids likes to help stir ingredients together. They enjoy adding ingredients to the mixing bowl. Even our littlest one likes to get involved. He will push a chair up to the counter and demand to help. He will even push older siblings out of the way.

While this is cute and I am indeed very grateful they love to help, it can be difficult to work around so many bodies trying to reach one bowl. I would much prefer to have some one on one time instead of three or four trying to help at once.

I was asked by the local Varsity Team and Venturing Crew 422 to help prepare for their summer camping experience at Philmont. The idea is to get the boys into physical shape so that they are able to do 40 to 50 miles in a week plus other strenuous activities while at Philmont.

Today they planned to do some snowshoeing and target practice. This event will be very similar to the winter olympic biathalon of cross country skiing and rifling. However, snow shoes are cheaper to rent and they are not allowed rifles on an open range so today we used BB guns. They were scored on their time through a 2.5 mile figure 8 and also on their marksmanship.

I was asked to be in charge of one of the five shooting stations. I and a couple others snow shoed in to get setup for the runners. We got to nearly break trail. In some places I would sink into the fresh snow up to mid calf deep (about 16 inches) with the snow shoes on. Other places, off trail, I sunk nearly up to my hips in the snow. That was difficult to get out of with the snow shoes on.

I took along my wife's digital camera and tripod. I had thought it would be a great spot to get a panorama. It was but the shots I took did not stitch together very well. I will try again another time. It was fun to be involved with the scouts again and to do some winter activities.

I often use free, open source software. I like the idea of contributing to society and helping each other. Plus, I do not like paying for something that is freely available. One example of this is the computer operating systems. On any given computer there are typically two operating systems of choice (I will get to Macs in a minute). 

 The most common is MicroSoft Windows while the other option is a flavor (distribution or distro) of GNU/Linux. For those living in caves, the operating system is the base software you use to controll your computer. On top of the operating sytem is a user interface, these days it is typcially some graphical interface. In windows these two pieces are interwoven together. In GNU/Linux they are separate and thus there are different graphical interfaces which a user can apply and use. In GNU/Linux, the major ones are KDE and Gnome but by no means are they the only ones. This is a highly simplistic view, if you want further information please ask or consult your local admin. Lacking an admin, your best friend may be a search engine of choice.

 I mentioned I would get to Macs. OS 10 will not, so far as I know, operate on hardware not proprietary to Apple Computers Inc. If you build yourself a computer or only have a small budget, you will probably not be working with a Mac. Plus you most likely would have to pay extra for it anyway. 

 I like to undertand and be intimately controlling hardware and software as part of my computers. I thus often use some distribution of GNU/Linux. I have used such versions as (in alphabetical order)

• archlinux
• debian lenny?
• fedora 12.0
• mepis
• mint
• quantian
• redhat (before fedora)
• redhat 5.3, 5.4
• scientific
• slackware
• suse (9.3, 10.0-11.2)
• ubuntu
• vector
• zenwalk
• and a few others

Of these, my preference is for the kde interface on Suse. Briefly, My first significant experience with GNU/Linux was with red had prior to fedora. Jeremy White helped me get a feel for it and install it. Later, I used slackware for my desktop for a long time. Slackware is the longest continually maintained GNU/Linux distribution. Synonymous with rock solid stability. I found it refreshing to not have everything done for me. By using Slackware I really began to understand GNU/Linux. Once I learned a lot, I wanted to search for another desktop ready distro. I tried mepis and mint with mild attraction to them. They both advertise simplicity and being ready out of the box. I found neither statement to be entirely true for either. I then tried scientific whihc I found unorganized. so I tried fedora which leads into redhat from whom scientific is descended. I then tried vector and zenwalk. I liked the small size on the hardidsk but I could not run many programs I wanted to use. For a time, I dove heavily into archlinux, which is a split (not a fork) from zenwalk. The overall philosophy of the distro is great but I finally found that I needed something more stable. I tried quantian for a moment and then ubuntu. I do not like the brownness and the lack of real knowledge in the community. I also do not like following the crowd so I was quick to grab another distro. I then tried the parent of ubuntu and long time stalwart in the community, debian. This is well known for its stability but I did not like lack of cohesiveness in the distro. It seemed very happhazard in design and in program subset. With my employment, there is a license of redhat available. I installed 5.3 and find it stable but it is behind the rest of the world in terms of features. I upgraded to 5.4 and look forward to using 6.0 once it actually comes out. Many new programs do not run on it. This is hard for me to swallow. That brings me to suse 11.2. It is stable, if I dont install the latest, no-so-completly-tested versions of programs. It has a very professional feel with a cohesive design and a nice set of admin tools (YAST).

I have put some other thoughts on the web here.

My children like to make things and often have interesting ideas about building blanket forts among other things. Recently they have been getting some candy as a reward system. Our oldest started hording the cnady and the others have followed suit. She made a box in which to store the candy and a hiddne location in which to put the box. This is her treasure.

She was greatly incensed when one of the other children wanted to copy her idea. She complained and was ready to come to blows over the issue. That was a bit much and I stepped in. I taught her that in society when some one comes u pwith a good idea they can write it down and claim a copy right or patent. I explained what that meant and that it also meant that if anyone else wants to use the idea they need to ask permission. when I explained that often permission to use the idea is bought her eyes got wide and I saw the wheels in her head spinning fast.

The other children, for a fee, now have horded treasure troves too.

When I was a kid I never found much use for grammar. I thought the subject beyond boring and very useless. I never put much effort into it and consequently my grammar was not very good. I spoke and wrote like everyone else around me. I put no thought into the order of my words nor how thoughts should be communicated.

I now need to very carefully and correctly transmit my ideas and scientific results to the rest of the world through peer reviewed papers, posters and oral presentations. One aspect of that is the grammar. I am still working on getting my voice and clearly stating ideas.

The way I really learned grammar was learning spanish. I spent some time in Ecuador (nearly 22 months) and really wanted to communicate with the people in their language. I put a lot of effort into learning Spanish and learning it correctly. While studying spanish grammar I would often literally have flashbacks to sitting in 7th and 8th grade English classes (I had Mr. Foulon and Mrs Gilger) in which the teacher was attempting to help us learn English grammar. I would have a moment of "Oh! That's what they meant. I get it now." What funny moments those were. The reason is that translating incorrect English grammar into Spanish just makes the Spanish garbled and wrong. It sounds and feels wrong. The idea would then work around in my head and come up with a memory that the same thing is really wrong in English but simply ignored in common language.

If you think that somewhere in this jumbled website I have used incorrect grammer please let me know and why you think it is wrong. If your reasoning is sufficient I will readily admit to being incorrect and learn from you.

I have intended to setup a website. I also wanted some way to sync things together with a common style, add various features and also have good security. Such a package is refered to as a content management system (CMS).

I have been looking at using the Concrete5 CMS for a long time. I was excited by the project and the feature set. I installed a version on a spare computer I have in the backroom. I then played with it for a while and tried to install several mods. I was rather disappointed that many "key" features were only available for a fee, either directly from Concrete5 or from their wide user base. While I do not object to people being paid for their work, I want something that is fully open source. I looked around at various CMS's. I even used CMSdemo to try out many different ones.

When I decided to host with HostMonster.com I looked at the CMS's that they offer as simple installs. I compared those and found that ModX was probably the best for me.

I started trying to find a style and how to get ModX set up. I like the style used by Nic Jurich for the ECE weather station at MSU. I have even used his css files (with my own modifications) to setup my website hosted at MSU. I used that as a starting point and added an extra column (one on either side of the content).

I then had to get all this to work inside ModX. I found a nice series of beginners guide for ModX at maryspad. I followed her lead in adjusting my own style. I learned a lot from her explainations and from just getting my hands dirty in the code.

So this website is the result of using ModX.