Well, Today’s Mom’s performance down at the petalers. I went down there for a couple hours, but I’m back now cuz Mary needed help with shipping. I think Mom is singing until 3, though I’m not quite sure. Aaaaaannndd that’s all!

I’m going to just give my ratings on a few Linux Programs I’ve tried.

recordmydesktop
Well, it records well and all, though not entirely bug free. Overall pretty good though!
[rating:3/4]

Cinelerra
I like that there’s a video editing suite BUT Cinelerra is a little hard to run. I realize it’s free and all but I’m not really impressed with it so far
[rating:2.5]

BibleTime
I really like Bible time. The interface is a little hard to get used to, but it makes up for that in features.
[rating:5/5]

GIMP
Gimp is a great tool for Graphics and such under Linux. It’s free, Open-Source and Works Well. There are a few bugs that pop up, but they are fixable. With some developement, this tool could get better than PhotoShop in no time.
[rating:4/4]

digikam
Great software! One of the great things about Linux is, the pre-program things in. That means that when you get your digital camera, you won’t have to install a driver(unless it’s really really new). One of camera’s won’t work in win2k, but it never has a problem on Linux.
[rating:5/5]

Well, I was planning on updating yesterday, but for reasons I shall disclose, that wasn’t an option.

We were all jamming with our instruments yesterday and Martha came over right as we finished playing old dan tucker. She needed Isaac to check some stuff on her car so she left Levi inside. He was cute too! Which, is why I’m going to give you pictures!

This was the picture I took to get his attention!

Than He did this

Smile Levi!

Stiiiiilll Smilin’!

And the reason for not posting yesterday? Power outage! Fuse blew on the mains. Had to go to Ontario and get a couple new fuses.

Common Sense wasn’t written by Patrick Henry. It was Thomas Paine *goes and edits the post*

Well, today’s sunday. And a summer sunday to boot! Near the end of summer helps. Helps what? Oh didn’t I tell you? Nope. Ok well, it gets pretty busy, and we’re invited to about 3 different events!

1. A Baptism
2. The Anual Roswell Picnic
3. Pig Roast at the Shiras(just mary was invited)

We had also invited Eric Phillips over, without knowing what else was going on! So, What’s probably going to happen is we’re going to go to the Roswell Picnic and have him come along!

Martha and Nathan came over today. Levi is getting big! And smart? Whew! He’ll be walking around soon I bet. Bethany was cute. She found this set of little kids instruments. And Martha and Nathan were playing guitar and guitarbanjo(yeah, a guitar, banjo mix! got that last week.), so Bethany played all her little instruments along! I think she’s gonna be musical…. I told Mary we ought to get her a little accordion(>:D).

I’ve decided I like rice milk better than regular(home made). It’s just better for ya than store bought!

OK that’s all.

Benjamin

An interesting (e)book I’ve been reading is Common Sense by Thomas Paine. If you’re american, I’d bet a fair bit that you’ve heard of him! The book is a little hard to comprehend when you first start reading it(it was probably easier to read 300 years ago!), but it’s fairly easy to get the hang of it.

Any of you ever heard of/read it? I never had(still reading it BTW).

It’s a really interesting book(I’ll give the download link at the bottom in case you’ve never read it), about 50 pages, and it explains some interesting political ground for america, and gives you some perspective on why america declared independance. This was the book that sparked the flame.

Download I know it’ll run in OpenOffice. Probably will run in wordpad and microsoft word as well.

This is for all us Linux users
http://dmartin.org/weblog/things-i-can-do-in-linux-that-i-cant-do-on-windows

An interesting fact about colors is, Different colors effect your mood! This can be quite handy when you design your own website. It’s not always the pretty that wins the game, it’s the fitting color! Here’s the difference in colors:

Yellow:
Positive: Caution, brightness, intelligence, joy, organization, Spring time

Negative: Criticism, laziness, or cynicism

Blue:
Positive: Tranquility, love, acceptance, patience, understanding, cooperation, comfort, loyalty and security

Negative: Fear, coldness, passivity and depression

Orange:
Positive: Steadfastness, courage, confidence, friendliness, and cheerfulness, warmth, excitement and energy

Negative: Ignorance, inferiority, sluggishness and superiority

Purple:
Positive: Royalty, sophistication, religion

Negative: Bruised or foreboding

Green:
Positive: Monëy, health, food, nature, hope, growth, freshness, soothing, sharing, and responsiveness

Negative: Envy, greed, constriction, guilt, jealousy and disorder

Black:
Positive: Dramatic, classy, committed, serious

Negative: Evil, death, ignorance, coldness

White:
Positive: Pure, fresh, easy, cleanliness or goodness

Negative: Blind, winter, cold, distant

Strangest thing in the world…. I got banned from Yahoo IM, MSN IM, AOL IM, ICQ IM, Gtalk IM and all the other IM’s(must have something against me!) in the entire world for a whole month!! Well, ok, so not quite a whole month. One month minus one day! Gee what’s their problem??

Well, I’ll tell ya. They were just taking up too much of my time! So, what happened? I banned myself from Chatting for One Month minus one day. Starting the 17th, ending the 16th. The Purpose: Free up time, and get more done.

I’ll have more time for working, more time for posting(oh hoorah right?), and more time for doing whatever else!

So, in other words: I’m Self-Grounded.

More posts to come soon!

BenjieP

Now that it’s been a while since I first went on the trip, I’m gonna post the final day of it.

1:30 AM, “I need to go to the ER!” *the whole fifth wheel shakes and several people go out the door* *I fall back to sleep*.

After a night of mostly peaceful sleep, I wake up to see Grandma walking around the fifth wheel and going outside. I head outside and she tells me “Grandpa went to the hospital last night.” I was a bit surprised but I still remembered the night before. “Is he alright?” I asked. She told me that it wasn’t a heart attack(thankfully), and that he would probably be alright. Well, Grandma walked to the Hospital and I just hung around camp, made some coffee and waited for Dan and Rebecca to wake up.

After a while, everybody was up and Grandma came back. Rebecca had taken Grandpa to the hospital the night before, so she slept in the latest. Apearantly, what had happened was, one of Grandpa’s arteries got clogged up and the high mountain air was making it worse(making it show really). So, first we went to breakfast, knowing that Grandpa was fine for now(they put him on oxygen). And after breakfast we went to the hospital to see him. He seemed to be doing alright, talking, making jokes and all. Just couldn’t do much!

So, moving on, the hospital didn’t have the facilities to put a stint(that’s what was needed) in there to help him to breath, and so they were going to lifelite him to the Boise hospital. Why lifelite? Well, for one thing it would take a long time to go by ambulance. For another, they wouldn’t have cell phone service in an ambulance so if anything happened, there wouldn’t be any communications(all those canyons down there block it out). Before the lifelite came, the nurse asked if any of us would like to ride with Grandpa. Well, naturally any of us would, but I was the prime pick because I was the only perosn along who wasn’t driving a vehicle!

I didn’t get to ride in the helicopter though. You see, in the winter verses the summer, there’s a certain amount of weight the helicopter can hold. In the summer time, that’s considerably less than in the winter! So, between me, the two paramedics, the pilot and Grandpa, no ride was available for me. Almost but not quite!

Well, before the decision was made as to whether I was riding, Rebecca and Dan went back to camp because Rebecca had to get to work(she left her car at camp). And what’s more, in her car, she had two important items I would have liked to have along the road. One was the camera(so I didn’t get any pics) and two was my notebook(not as important, but I didn’t get to take more detailed notes). So, I didn’t manage to tell her that I needed her to take them out. Luckily I had my history book and my bible out in my tent at the time!

After Dan and Rebecca left(and Dan came back), the chopper showed up and took Grandpa for a ride. It was cool to watch it take off. I wanna be a pilot someday!!

After that, we went back to camp and packed up what we had left. Then we got the fifth wheel all ready to go and hit the road! I road with Grandma in the truck. First I took a nap for 15 minutes, then I mostly just read the rest of the way(how exciting huh? but hey! I got all the way to the civil war on that trip!). We then proceeded to stop at the weiser maverick(an hour from home) and got icecream. Dan told Grandma that one of the windows on her fifth wheel was open. So we unlocked the fifth wheel and fixed that problem. Then we hit the road again and got home in an hour!

Apearantly, once Rebecca got home, she had told the entire family that I went on a helicopter ride. So, Dad and Luke were going to the hospital right then to see Grandpa and pick me up. I think they probably would have gone and seen him even if they hadn’t thought I was there, but they went thinking I was there! Everybody was pretty disapointed when they heard I didn’t get to ride(probably even more disapointed than I was!). We got news from Grandpa the next day, and he was doing great. They let him out of the hospital within the next couple of days. Hasn’t had any more problems yet!

Aaaannndd I think that covers it! Oh! I did get my notebook later and recorded what Notes I could think. Then I started writing posts. That’s all!

Benjamin