Breaking the Wall

Day of rest. Went to church. The Sunday school lesson was on the Fall of Adam and Eve. Then I substituted at the nursery. The talks in the Sacrament meeting were on tithing again, and I was glad to hear it in spite of the repetition. Tithing helps develop faith in a unique way. Another thought about tithing. People often question the need for priesthood authority and organized religion on the basis that you can just talk to God without a mediator. While this is true, an important question remains. It is clear from Malachi 3 that tithing is a very important commandment. But who do you pay it to? Who is authorized to receive it, and how can you know that he is?

A.M. 10 by myself, 2 with Jenny, everybody else was sick. I got a new job moving from Percona to Linkedin, but not really moving anywhere as I still work out of my house. I will be doing custom MySQL development. Most people will find what triggered the move rather odd. Percona insisted that I go to Cancun for 7 days for a company meeting. I was willing to go for 3 days figuring I like my colleagues, but not enough to leave my family for 7 days to hang out with them. Percona insisted that I stay for full 7. At the same time, my friend who is now at Linkedin has been asking me to help him find somebody to work on a MySQL project. So I figured, maybe it is time to move jobs.  Yes, I know, most people will actually look for ways to stay longer at a job that gives them essentially a free vacation in Cancun, but not me.

A.M. Total of 12. Kids were sick except for Jenny. She ran 2 miles with me.

P.M. Drove to Las Vegas with the family on the way to Mountain View, CA - Linkedin wanted me to visit for a couple of days, and allowed me to bring the whole family. Stayed the night with Jeff and Kimia.

A.M. Ran with Jeff for the first 5 miles on his way to school (uphill), then turned around and ran back. My chest was still giving me problems, but I was able to get going some on the way back - 37:00 out, 32:25 back.Then ran 1.6 with Jenny (Julia did 1.1).

P.M. Drove to Sunnyvale, CA where our hotel was (Marriott Residence Inn). There are not many hotels that will accommodate a family with seven children in one room, but we managed to solve that problem. On the way stopped in Bakersfield to fill up and Benjamin tried to run. He did not make it very far - about 0.6 miles, as his throat was burning. On the positive side of things, I liked the GPS and the rental van. The GPS helps with "our we there yet" concerns, can be programmed to find obscure gas stations with low prices, and can help locate places like Costco right on the route when we run out of something.  And on top of that, you can take wrong turns and still get away with it. The van (Chevy Express) tells you how much further you can go before you run out of fuel, has a very powerful engine, can do 80 with the foot barely on the gas pedal, and still achieves 15 mph at high speeds. I watched the fuel range estimator and noticed something odd. It seemed to have no better economy at 60 than it did at 80, but what made a lot of difference was uphill/downhill. Maybe because the van is so big and heavy that increased air resistance at higher speeds does not play as much of a factor?

A.M. 10 in Sunnyvale,CA. I liked the warm weather. I even found a running trail with the help of the Course Tool. It did not have the quarter marks, unfortunately. I did not like having to wait at the traffic lights while trying to get to the trail.

P.M. I am sure glad I am a remote employee. I must have some kind of anti-office allergy and it may be more than mental. After a day at the office my nose was runny, my throat started getting sore, and I got a minor fever. Sarah and the kids went to the beach in Santa Cruz. 0.9 with Benjamin. Julia ran 0.9 with Sarah. Everybody else was too sick to run.

A.M. Woke up feeling better. Logged in to FRB to see if I could map out a better route, and discovered that a bot was bringing it down with frequently repeated hits. Disabled "Hot Discussions" and  "Lost Sheep" until I can optimize those better. We really need to start using memcached there, but when I will have the time to implemented is a big question. Still ran only 8 to keep things safe.

Sarah had some interesting experiences on the trip. Somebody asked her if she was in charge of a day care. She said no, then the question was immediately "Are you Mormon?"

P.M. A meeting was supposed to end at 3:30 PM so we could leave a bit earlier to fight our way through traffic, and it was going a bit overtime. Sarah called. This gave me a chance to end the meeting with: "My wife has seven kids in the van, and she says it is time to go". Fortunately the people I work with have respect for that, so the meeting ended.

We stopped in Gilroy to buy food and run with the kids. Benjamin and Julia ran 1 mile. Jacob and Joseph did 0.6. Jenny was too sick to run.

A.M. It was an adventurous morning. Last night we stopped at Marriott Inn in Bakersfield,CA. Steven got sick and has been coughing all night. Then we woke up and found Jenny disoriented and delirious. So we called 911. The operator could not figure out where our hotel was from "Marriott Inn on Chester Lane in Bakersfield, room 1112". Google search for that phrase minus the room brings up a map with the location of the hotel. Additionally, we were using a cell phone, which should have allowed pinpointing our position to within a few hundred feet anyway. Fortunately, as we were talking to 911 dispatch, Jenny drank some orange juice and started feeling better, so there was no need for us to spend the time and effort looking up the address of the hotel. The moral of the story is that you need to know your street address when you talk to 911 - at least in Bakersfield, CA.

Along the same lines of the need of city services to progress in the use of technology. Provo City encourages residents to report graffiti, which I often do. One time the location of it was rather difficult to describe in words, so I used the map, determined the GPS coordinates, and called the police dispatch with the information. They did not know what to do with it so I had to resort to the complicated verbal description,

After the morning adventure, I ran 8 miles, then another 0.8 with Benjamin, Julia, and Joseph (Jacob ran 0.3), and we drove home to Provo. 660 miles in 9:45 with 7 kids, some of them sick. Sarah is very efficient at the stops. A small adventure on the way. About half way between Barstow and Las Vegas we were going up a hill and saw a slow moving bus in the slow lane protected (you would hope so) with a solid white line. I commented to Sarah that there must be a lot of fat people on that bus, that is why it has a hard time going uphill. Right as we approached it, the bus, seemingly in revenge, suddenly moved into our lane. I was able to react and swerve to avoid it. To complicate the matters, another car was passing us at the same time. Fortunately that driver reacted quickly, and swerved to avoid us in time, so it all ended well.