diary of Anne Frank

Today I finished reading the American version of Anne Frank's story called The Diary of a Young Woman. I read the book and definitely had questions about the authenticity while reading it. I found several critical documents have been written about it. I found one book available on Good Books by searching for The diary of Anne Frank: the revised critical edition By Anne Frank, H. J. J. Hardy, David Barnouw, Gerrold van der Stroom. One of the leading men who tried to critically review the diary was The Diary of Anne Frank: Is it Genuine? by Robert Faurisson. I found another article that commented on his article at http://www.holocaust-history.org/anne-frank/. It seems like this could be a life long project to find out if the diary was real, so I will leave it at that as I need my life for other things.

I liked the following parts:

page 171
Her counsel when one feels melancholy is: 'Think of all of the misery in the world and be thankful that you are not sharing in it!' My advice is "Go outside, to the fields, enjoy nature and the sunshine, go out and try to recapture happiness in yourself and in God. Think of all the beauty that's still left in and around you and be happy" ... And whoever is happy will make others happy too. He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery.

page 223
Why should millions be spent daily on war and yet there's not a penny available for medical services, artists, or poor people? Why do some people have to starve, while there are surpluses rotting in other parts of the world?

page 260
"All children must look after their own upbringing." Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

page 263
"For in its innermost depths youth is lonelier than old age." ... Older people have formed their opinions about everything, and don't waver before they act. It's twice as hard for us young ones to hold our ground, and maintain our opinions, in a time when all ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when people are showing their worst side, and do not know whether to believe in truth and right and God.

The measure of a man

Late last week, I heard Sidney Poitier speaking at a local college as broadcast on an NPR broadcast called The Story which is hosted by Dick Gordon. Up until then I had no desire to read about his life, but after listening to parts of his speech I had a great desire to read his biography named The Measure of a Man. I finished reading the book this morning and these are some quotes that I liked:

page 168
It often takes a near-death experience like ours to make us realize how simple life is, how few the essentials really are. We love; we work; we raise our families. Those are the areas of significance in our individual lives. And love and work and family are our legacy we leave behind when our little moment in the sun is gone.

page 176
The fact is you can't do that kind of parenting if your values aren't clear to you in terms of your own life. You can't be passing on to your kids a strong foundation if you don't have one yourself - because whatever foundation you do or don't have yourself that's what you're going to pass on. And when we pass on something that doesn't serve our children, we have to be responsible for that.

page 181
The measure of a man is how ell he provides for his children.

page 243
We're all imperfect, and life is simply a perpetual, unending struggle against those imperfections.

our son the cook

For our family Thanksgiving meal this year our middle son used these recipes:

Ham with Gingersnap crust
Ruth Chris' Sweet Potato Casserole
Pineapple upside down cheese cake

Most recently he experimented on us and made this yummy food:

Honey Brined Turkey

International food for Christmas

Four years ago we decided to start a new family tradition of allowing our middle son to choose where he wants to eat when we go out for his Christmas Eve birthday. It is sometimes difficult to find a place open on Christmas Eve, but since he likes trying different international food, that makes it easier actually. Many years ago we were visiting my mother in Tucson for Christmas and we could only find a single restaurant open. It was a Mexican food and that started the idea I think. Four years ago when living in San Antonio, Texas he came up with a great idea of eating Thai food. My coworkers pointed us to what many considered the best Thai food in the city. It was definitely a treat to take all of the family to that place. After returning to North Carolina the following year, our son decided he wanted to try Sushi. He knew it was not my favorite so he found a place that served both Thai and Sushi. Last year was difficult as we called so many places that he wanted to try but they were all closed. We found some other interesting places but they were too expensive like the "Melting Pot" which serves only fondu. So we decided on Greek food, which was a great choice. This year we went for Thai food again and it was wonderful. Who knows what next year will hold? At least we decided not to get ice cream cake this year as we have not had much success with those in the last few years. The photo on the right is the straw covers from our Thai ice tea which were mysteriously formed in beautiful rose shapes. The rice served for our curry dishes was also interesting as one was the shape of a teddy bear and the other one was a fish. Such a great place to eat. It was called Sawasdee.

local prisoner

As we have experienced in our family - problems never go away if you ignore them. I read in the paper today that a local man was sentenced to six years in jail for child pornography. It reminded me of a web site I found when I discovered one of our teenage boys looking at pornography at our home:

http://xxxchurch.com

Here is a link to his story:

http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2009/09/14/testimony-i-am-facing-8-years-in-prison-for-child-pornography

Here is the blog he is maintaining:

http://www.fromshame2grace.com

I really like the steps in this article:

http://porntopurity.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/are-you-a-step-away-from-child-pornography

1. His slide into pornography was gradual – Nothing happened overnight. David’s porn habit grew slowly over a period of many years.

2. His slide was progressive – It started with his father’s Penthouse, chatrooms then trading pictures. David’s behaviors got worse over time. It also took more to get his “fix”. And it took more and more of his time. The things that once seemed repulsive actually became exciting.

3. Many secrets were hidden - Porn grows in the dark, and feeds on a secretive life.

4. He was successful on the outside, yet decaying on the inside.

5. He is a regular guy, just like you and me, that slid in a horrible direction – This is the scary thing. Many of us have similar stories. We allow porn in our life thinking it’s not harmful. Thinking we can control it. All along, our lust is really controlling us.

Let's create a movie II

Last January after creating a movie using Windows Vista I documented it in a blog entry. This weekend before going to my wife's parents for an early Thanksgiving get together, I again created a movie but this time using my Apple MacBook. I already had digital photos that my kids took during their Princess Cruise to Scandinavia on my Mac laptop. When they got home from teh cruise, I hooked up our Canon Powershot A590 to my son's iMac and transferred all 560+ photos. I then sat down at the computer with my wife and came up with 75 of the photos she thought represented the whole trip. I burnt a CD of these photos to send to her sister. Before sending her the CD, I put it in my MacBook and created an iPhoto library for all of the cruise photos. On Saturday morning at 10 am I decided it would be nice to create a movie of these photos so we could watch them on their TV instead of huddling around my laptop to watch them. Plus they would have the DVD and could watch it whenever they wanted or to show their friends. I have never created a movie on my laptop nor used iMovie or iDVD.

The first thing I did was drag all of the cruise photos from iPhoto into iMovie. I then noticed the project had a default name so I changed it to "Princess Scandinavian Cruise 2009". I then thought it would be nice to change the way to movie looked so I went in the "Project Properties" and found six themes available with the default being a theme of "None". I tried the "Photo Album" theme which mean the project had to be rebuilt. Then I tried the "Bulletin Board" theme and waited for the project to be rebuilt before trying it. Then I tried the "Comic Book" theme and liked how that looked. By selecting this theme it automatically created nice transitions between the photo frames which I really liked. Then I thought I need to create a nice title page. I then found that I could add a dynamic map to that page. When I added the map I saw it had a default origin of San Francisco. When I double clicked on it, I found I could add my own origin and destination. I add JKF in NYC as origin since that is where they took off from. I added Copenhagen, Denmark as the destination since that was where they landed. I had a screen shot of their route while on the ship that I got from the Princess Cruise web site which I then added as the second title page. Then I saw that iMovie had automatically created a page that started with the words "Directed by Rick Evans". Now that was really nice touch. When I played the movie I saw the title page still had the default project name before I changed it. I tried changing the theme and that did not regenerate the title page as I expected. Then I thought I would try to double click on the title page and sure enough it let me change the title directly. I looked up at the clock and only 15 minutes had passed, which was also nice. Then I thought I have enough time to get a little creative with the end of the movie. I moved the "Directed by" page to the end and added a new credits page. There were so many formats that I tried a couple different ones. Then I added a nice underwater reflection behind the credits. When I played the movie the credits went way to fast, so I extended the length of the underwater reflection and then extended the credits to match. I then played the whole movie and showed it to my daughter, who approved.

I then tried the "Export" option from the menu and found iMovie creates Internet style movies for YouTube and Internet style sites. When in the "Share" menu I saw a "DVD" menu item and clicked on it. Then I waited and saw that iMovie was automatically transferring the files to iDVD, which I was not sure that I had or not. When I looked up at the clock it was 30 minutes since I started working on the movie and when it appeared in iDVD. It had even picked a nice 3D rotating animation for the initial DVD menu with my project title showing up in the menu and random photos being displayed on the rotating cylinder. Now that was simple and easy. With almost no effort I was ready to create a DVD and all I had to do was find a physical DVD to write it to. That was so easy it was embarrassing as within 40 minutes I had a very nice DVD. When we showed up during the weekend even though it was only 5 minutes long every one was happy with it.

I must say that it was very easy to create a very good looking movie with little effort.

birds in India

I have been searching this afternoon on the internet trying to find the amazing birds I saw in India and I think I finally found it:

http://www.pbase.com/ingotkfr/blackcapped_kingfisher
http://www.pbase.com/cajuca/bc_kingfisher

I saw this bird in two different parts of India. Once as I was talking a bucket bath in the Pipli Boy's Home in Orissa. By the time I dried off and got my camera it had flow away as it was sitting on an electric line visible from the second floor window.

The second time I saw it was when we were walking along the Ganges. I tried to get close enough with my disposable camera to take a good photo and it flew away.

What an amazing bird.

JAlbum Camelot

I played around with the new Beta version of JAlbum called Camelot which is all on-line. I created a photo album of the best photos from my India trip:

Best of 2009 India trip

The only thing I found a bit strange the first time I used Camelot was that I wanted to re-order the photos on the page where I added them to the photo album as well as add comments. I found out later that I could reorganize them and add comments after uploading them. I found the overall experience very nice. It will be good when I don't have to download JAlbum to my Mac to build a photo album. However, I think Camelot will not work for me as it appears I am close to running out of space. I post my albums to my public web site currently instead of using JAlbum free account. Very impressive for a beta product!

NC state parking

Last Sunday I managed to get the boys up out of bed at 9am and we were on the road by 10pm heading west on I-40. The goal was to spend the day in Hanging Rock State Park. I have wanted to go there ever since we first moved to NC many years ago. I read about it in the local newspaper in a Sunday morning newspaper travel special. For some reason we never made it there until now. I decided I needed a special event on the day before I turned 50 years old. Two months ago we were close to making it as we went to Stone Mountain State Park with hopes in also making it to Hanging Rock but that did not happen. After five hours hiking in Stone Mountain we just did not have the energy to go to Hanging Rock even though it was only 30 minutes away.

This time we had my son's GPS to help guide us to the state park. The route was not obvious at all and not the way I would have picked. I had driven on Highway 52 a couple of times which goes right by Pilot Mountain State Park and I saw signs for Hanging Rock right next to it. I was kind of surprised at the circuitous route the GPS suggested. It took us right to the main gate which was quite far from Highway 52. In fact we never saw Pilot Mountain while up on the Hanging Rock so it was much farther than I thought. We even spoke of going to Pilot Mountain afterwards and saw a glimpse of it as we drove a different way out of the park.



It was worth every minute of the 3 hour drive to get there as I enjoying climbing up the steep trail to the Hanging Rock. We also followed the park map and visited all of the waterfalls on the park grounds. We hiked around five miles all together. The weather was absolutely perfect for such a day's activities. I took along our digital camera as I have become quite addicted to since I used it so freely in India. As long as it is set to "auto" I am good. While in India because I took it in and out of my backpack frequently, I found the dial was often changed to some other setting which ended up taking a horrible photo. I do not pretend to be a photographer, but that "auto" setting was made for me. We were all pleasantly surprised to find many photographic moments around the waterfalls, which was an added bonus.

These are the photos from that trip:

http://50yearadventure.com/HangingRockStatePark/

travel in India

During the last week of October and the first week of November I went to India to travel with a friend, this is a summary of the transportation I took:

14,000 miles by AIR took 30 hours
3,000 miles by TRAIN took 75 hours
100 miles by CAR took 4 hours
30 miles by BUS took 2 hours
30 miles by FOOT took 18 hours
and who knows how many hours in auto-rickshaws?

by AIR : Newwark, NJ ➤ Delhi (3660 miles in 14 hours)
by TRAIN : Delhi ➤ Amritsar (278 miles in 8 hours)
by CAR : Amritsar ➤ Gurdaspur (43 miles in 2 hours)
by CAR : Gurdaspur ➤ Amritsar (43 miles in 2 hours)
by TRAIN : Amritsar ➤ Delhi (278 miles in 6 hours)
by TRAIN : Delhi ➤ Bhubaneswar (1070 miles in 24 hours)
by CAR : Bhubaneswar ➤ Pipli (12 miles in 1 hour)
by CAR : Pipli ➤ Bhubaneswar (12 miles in 1 hour)
by TRAIN : Bhubaneswar ➤ Kolkata (273 miles in 7 hours)
by TRAIN : Kolkata ➤ Varanasi (472 miles in 14 hours)
by FOOT : Varanasi ➤ Saidpur (30 miles in 18 hours walking the Ganges)
by BUS : Saidpur ➤ Varanasi (30 miles in 2 hours)
by TRAIN : Varanasi ➤ Delhi (471 miles in 12 hours)

scare me?

I just don't understand why someone would want to scare themselves on purpose. Why do kids like to be scared? I am not sure. Our two sons who are still living at home with us decided this weekend that they needed a good scare, so they drove an hour and a half to Greensboro to see Woods of Terror. One of them won free tickets somehow so at least they did not pay $25 each for such a thing. I heard three versions of the same night of terror. Our daughter talked to them when they got back so that was the first version we heard. Then I had to discuss it with our oldest son to see how he described it. Then I talked to my youngest son to hear his version. Somehow they enjoyed getting scared out of their wits. For me I think I would have died of a heart attack from the fright that they described. I really don't think it is good for me health and so I will use that excuse from now on.

While talking to my youngest son I found out why he has not been able to sleep at night the last four days. He watched a movie on the internet called Paranormal Activity. He said he watched it in bed on his laptop with headphones and has yet to be able to sleep at night. I heard him a couple of times this week running down the hall and then slamming the door to his room in the middle of the night. That certainly does not sound like a healthy affect to have on a person. Anything that makes you that fearful is definitely not a good thing. My son told me it was about demons. Also sounds like yet another reason not to see it. Now I understand why it is so scary for him. If you believe their is another spiritual world, then this is probably not the best film to see. The problem is that demons and angels both exist but neither of them should be our focus or concern. Jesus is here to protect us and keep us safe not to give us a spirit of fear. We should strive to help our fellow man not fear what we cannot see. If our fear keeps us from helping others, then I am 100% sure that is not something that GOD has sent to encourage us. I am not into calling things demonic but I would call this movie a scary distraction from what we should be doing with our lives.

cricketering

This weekend was the annual AID cricket tournament and it was the third straight event I participated. UNC was again chosen as the location for the event but because of the anticipated rain only 28 teams signed up instead of the normal 36. I was on the Cary Chargers team again this year but only three of us were from the team the previous year. We also had the same result as we lost all three of our games. This year we allowed a couple of the teenage sons of the fathers to play since we did not have enough people for the eight on a side games. As always I had fun hanging out with my new found Gujarati teammates, who are the same people I play cricket with on Sunday mornings. The nice thing about the AID tournament is that you have a lot of free time just sitting around. This is the best part for me as I love talking to my teammates, in English of course, since I know very little of the Gujarati language. As usual it is all about families so letting the kids play with us just makes the time all special for the parents. It rained on and off all morning long so it was not the best weather for playing cricket. I must say that I am not a fan of playing in the rain. I have a habit now of not being able to do well at batting and bowling in the same game on any given day. Yesterday was a good bowling day as I was able to get many of the opposing runners out, but my hitting was horrible. I just try to enjoy each day as I do not know how much longer I will be able to play cricket at this level. The main AID web site is http://durham.aidindia.org/cricket. I found the photos of the day's activities at http://picasaweb.google.com/aidrtpevents/AIDCricketCup09.


I met my co-workers as they arrived as they are on the serious cricket team of which I am not an invited member. It always seems that I get to see an interesting side of Indians when I play cricket. A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday morning as I arrived to play cricket at our normal location, I met my team members who said they had been kicked off the field because of a tournament. We then found a nearby field and started to play. Less than thirty minutes later the same Indian fellows showed up and said they needed the play on their normal field, which we were on. I was pretty angry as I could see what was happening. Their normal field had a little league baseball mound on it and so they had decided to take over our field instead that day. As they got settled into their game, the local town's grounds keepers came and said our normal field was reserved for a softball tournament. They had been forced to move to decided to reclaim their normal field. Since we were only four adults and five children, they realized we were just playing around and they needed the field more than we did. They told us they would help carry our wickets to the small field next to us if we would move. I was so sorry that they were taking advantage of us, but I did not want to make a scene and suggested we move.

Yesterday it got a bit more ugly in our second game. We were playing the UNC student team and it was very close. We bowled first and we all did very well and held them to 28 runs. When we battled, the adults all started and slowly we got out until only the young teenagers when left. Only the next to last ball, the UNC team overthrew the wicket keeper and we scored a run to tie. A great argument ensued with the whole UNC team charging the field to object to the umpire's call. I never feel comfortable in these situations as it is just a game for me and I don't understand the rules well enough to know who is correct, so I just watched from the sidelines. The captain of the UNC team was already unhappy with me as he claimed I got in his way when he was sure he could have gotten me out. The whole time I batted he complained to the umpire about me. In this case since teenagers were batting and clearly they were not as good as the UNC students, somehow the UNC team convinced the umpire that the run was not allowed. We ended up not getting another run and tied the game. One of the teenagers who was batting for our team was so upset by it that he started crying. To me that is the saddest part as someone forgot that winning a game was never more important that people and their feelings. In the heat of the moment it is easy to forget as I had done the same when I was that age, but it just reminded me that in my old age maybe I had become wiser somehow.

To end the day, on returning home I got lost just as I had the year before. For 30 minutes I wandered around lost only to find myself back to the same place I started. This time since it was raining and cloudy I could not use the sun to determine which direction I should be going in. I don't what excuse I had for last year. Driving around UNC is just very confusing to me. During the drive I was listening to "This American Life" on National Public Radio. I had heard about the show before but had never had a chance to listen to it. I had also heard the radio show was at times very liberal so I did not expect too much. Yesterday's show was about people following their conscience or ignoring it - some people say they have an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other. There was three parts to the show. The first part was on a church in Texas who each October run what they call Hell House where they try to scare children into following Jesus. The second part was on the film called Devil's Playground about the Amish Rumspringa where teenagers are allowed to choose whether they want to abide by Amish traditions or not. The third part was about a man who denied to he committed murder until he got too drunk and confessed it to the police unknowingly. He said every day that he heard a voice telling him how worthless he was and could never be forgiven and at other times he just wanted to pay his time for what he did and then get out and start over again. For someone who claims he is an atheist, I thought the show was very well done and did not put Christianity in a really bad light which is what I was expecting him to do. I definitely learned something by getting lost!

This photo is of my friends at work who had a second place finish this year:

audio files

I have been helping a friend with audio files posted to a web server. First of all, we had to enable streaming audio as an option on our existing web server. Then I had to figure out the best way to stream a multiple day conference. I started out creating a Adobe Flex project which resulted in the Flash file being uploaded to the web server. It was pretty simple as I have been using Flex at work for more than one and half years and found the Adobe Flex Sound help page very useful. After finishing the simple interface with Flex I wanted to try other things. I found a very simple M3U file format that iTunes uses to load a playlist. The only problem for us was that the MP3 audio files were behind a password protected folder, so that did not work as iTunes never asked for a username and password to access the folders behind HTTPS. I then found an open source project that plays a series of audio files by configuring an XSPF formatted file. The last task that I tried was to create a podcast. I did not really know what a podcast was except I had listened to them in iTunes. I found a great Apple document explaining how to create a podcast without using a special tool. I found out that a podcast is really just an XML file that stores content in an RSS feed format. I was very easy to create an RSS feed using Apple's podcast specification document. I have since learned that you can do the same thing in Apple's Garage Band, but at least I understand what a podcast really is.

Today I had the latest new task of learning how to edit an existing MP3 file. We needed to remove the first 12 minutes from an MP3 file that was 49 minutes long. I asked my son how to edit them and he informed me that Apple's GarageBand would do it. Today within 15 minutes I had to file loaded into GarageBand and with a little help from my son, I had the MP3 edited and posted on the web server. Just another example of how Apple makes a simple task simple instead of over complicating and making it way too difficult.

trip down memory lane

Today I drove with my two youngest sons around town looking for BMX grips. We went back to a store we had frequented so many times in buying skateboards and accessories like shoes called Endless Grind. The bike store above it was closed so we had to find other bike stores in the area. Since we did not have my son's GPS, I had to rely on my unusually super sense of direction to navigate the area. My middle son told me that his electronic generation was too dependent and had lost sense of direction. That was true in more than one way! It was interesting to think back to being in that very same store ten years ago with much younger little boys. In roaming around the area we finally ended up in Sk8-Cary Skate Park. We actually went there when they first opened in 2001 as the three oldest boys all skateboarded. It just so happened that today they were having a BMX competition with some locals and professionals. It was very cold but we stayed and watched the first round since we were shopping for BMX equipment anyway. It brought back memories from the past and we made new memories all at the same time!

lessons in life

This has been an interesting few weeks as of late.

This week has not been the high point in my life. I have been learning Squash during lunch breaks the last month. This week, in my eagerness to learn from multiple people's different styles and suggestions, I played too long and somehow hurt my back. Not the best timing since I am due to leave for India in a couple of weeks. I did manage to get my 50 Year Adventure web site up and running while resting with a heating pad on my back. I decided to use Host Monster to host my book web site. I also moved my Attentive 2 Design web site there also, since I can host as many domains as I want for a flat $5.95/month. I was already using it for another private NGO web site that I help maintain. That is the good news that happened while having a pain in my back.

Today I finished reading King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema by Anupama Chopra. My wife and I saw it in the reduced section at Barnes & Nobles a couple of weeks ago. The first chapter alone is worth buying the book as it explains what Bollywood is all about. It tells a story about how a man in rural Georgia won the lottery when he got to go up on stage with SRK when he came to Atlanta. What a great story!

A couple of weeks ago I attended a high school reunion in Virginia. My wife and I stayed with my sister, who we seldom get to see. We had a great time talking with her at night and on Sunday morning after the reunion on Saturday afternoon. I attended my 20th high school reunion but this one was the 31st and was much better. I really wanted to talk to as many people as I could since I had just finished my memoirs and the memories were still clear. Most of the people I attended school with from kindergarten to high school were present so I had fun catching up with them. My wife wanted to know why it seemed like everyone of them had been my girlfriend at one point in time - I guess that is life in rural Virginia! I found it interesting that my close friends from high school had little in common with me now, but I had a deep bond with those I grew up with in Churchville. It seemed like I had grown wild, changed a lot and then came back to where they had never left. Most of them were so dependable that I would trust my life in their hands. How that is what I call a true friend.

One of my childhood friends who lived behind me told me about the man who he bought sheep from to raise on his farm. He had only one leg and I cannot remember how he lost it. He had a huge sheep farm which he worked on himself. He was also quite wealthy and traveled all over the world hunting wild game. He had two large single story houses just to hold the mounted game he had killed. He never let his disability get in his way. My childhood friend looked to his two boys and said "Remember that the only limits we have are those we place on ourselves". What a great profound statement stated so eloquently from such a simple person who I am glad to still call a friend. Some days I think I try too hard and think too much and I greatly admire such a person very much.

sleepless night

I am really unsure what happened last night. I have been waking up at 3 am for many nights now. Last weekend I did not feel very good so I took a 2 hour nap on both Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday I took another 2 hour nap and that energized me to finally finishing editing my book around 3 pm. I then raced around the yard finishing the mowing in a record time of around 1 & 1/2 hours. Today I will have to go back over it and collect the extra grass clipping spread all over the yard, but at least it is cut! Last night my middle son and I went out to eat Indian food at Udapi. I have no idea what happened but after chatting with my son in California for a while about his MacBook "x" battery problems, I finally told him around 9:30 pm that I was tired and needed to go to bed. I am not sure I ever really feel asleep last night and finally at 4 am gave up and got out of bed. Maybe it had to do with my wife and two youngest kids returning home this evening. I have no idea but will definitely be taking a nap this afternoon after my Sunday morning cricket match.

These are some of the things I kept thinking about last night:

1) I really like this thought provoking comment about the Taj Mahal in India: "The typical was used to create the outstanding"

2) Somehow this thought kept coming up "I firmly believe that each of us has a unique reason to be alive, part of our pilgrimage on earth is to find it."

3) I have talked more with my middle son while my wife and other kids have been gone than we have ever talked in his whole life, which is a great thing. We were talking about what makes a skilled laborer when we thought that my oldest son, who is a wonderful artist when the urge hits him, would be a great tattoo artist since he has been getting many tattoos lately.

4) somehow I thought of this list of sports activities I have done in the last year at work either at lunch or after work:

Cricket, Volleyball, Wallyball, Racquetball, Sqash, and Tennis

In the past I have also played the following at work:

Basketball and Flag Football

The only sport I want to try one day at work is:

Ultimate Frisbee

Stone Mountain

While my wife and two younger kids are having fun on a Princess Cruise to Scandinavia, my middle son and I decided to go hiking. I have always wanted to visit Hanging Rock State Park or at least hike up Pilot Mountain State Park next to it. Yet again I did not go to one of these as we decided to visit Stone Mountain State Park instead as we heard it had some waterfalls. Once on the park trails it reminded us both of the area where we last saw waterfalls earlier in the summer. Just when we were getting tired we decided we had to see the actual Stone Mountain while in the park. When we reached the grassy open field to see it we did not to expect such a huge granite rock mountain. As we looked closer we saw people at the top and some tiny little people climbing up the side. We went to the very bottom of the rock face and saw ropes that people were using to go up the 600 ft rock face. When I looked at the park map, I saw there was a trail that crossed the top of the mountain. Since we had to backtrack to get back to the car I suggested we try the trail so we get on top of the huge rock. The trail map said it was a strenuous climb but all we saw was a series of never ending steps. The more we walked up the steps the harder it became until we had to stop a couple of times to rest. It was all worth it when we reached the top as we had a full view of the Blue Ridge Mountains in all directions. I wanted to stay on the 2305 ft mountain top forever and just soak in the beauty that GOD created. We did not have a camera or else I would have taken a whole roll from that point. I did not find any posted on the internet either that fully captured the scene. I included a couple that I did find. I need to move back into the mountains and forget the city life.

photos of kids

photos for book

book photos

785 miles later

For the long 4th of July weekend we decided to take a trip to the western part of NC to visit waterfalls that we did not see in our last waterfall trip two years ago. It was a five hour drive for the three of us as we decided it would be a guy only trip. We finally reached our first destination at 3pm. The last time we had reached Panthertown Valley it had started raining on us as we got out of our car and after a short walk we gave up and returned to our vehicle. We were determined to actually see waterfalls in this park and we found around ten vehicles parked on the dirt road to the main trail. We reached Schoolhouse Falls after a long walk and there was another family in the water with the father and grandfather fishing below the falls. It was only after talking to him and showing him the map we had did we realize where we were in the park. He told us where to go to see Warden Falls as it would be possible to reach that and have plenty of time to return. The hike was pretty steep in places and when we reached the falls there was camping equipment scattered all over the area around the base of the falls but no one was around. We decided to go in the water since we were pretty hot. After swimming across the pool we walked up the side of the falls and found the moss under the water really think and spongy which was so nice on our tired toes. We also noticed how soft our skin felt and I could see mica and fool's gold particles all in the water and the sand around the falls. I tried sliding down the lowest part of the falls and bruised my tail bone, but it was a great remote place to relax and enjoy the beauty around us.



Once we got back to the car after the long walk back we decided to see one more group of waterfalls before nightfall on the way back to Brevard, NC. We decided to take a short sidetrack to see the French Broad river where there was a group of rapids around the Cathedral Falls. We had written down directions before leaving as otherwise we would have never found them. We were the only car at the small gravel pull off on Highway 215. There are a series of falls right next to the road with a small dirt path leading to all of the falls. Our favorite was called Bird Rock Falls and we stayed as long as we could climbing around the rocks going down the river. After a full day we headed back to Brevard and found out that both of the hotels were completely full, but the person in the Hampton Inn told me they had rooms in the Etowah Country Club and gave me directions on how to reach it in the dark as it was around 9:30pm. We decided to eat at the Brevard Pizza Hut, which was the very same place we ate the last time we were in this area after learning that the hotels were full. When we reached the country club they had plenty of rooms and so we settled in for the night. In the morning as looked out the front door of the hotel room I saw the two golf green style croquet fields in front of me. I did not even know such things existed in the USA! The night before one of my sons had walked on it and thought it was spongy astroturf.


It was a tough decision the second day on where we should do. One of my sons wanted to go to Sliding Rock, but when we got up and felt how cool the air was outside we talked ourselves out of that morning cold shock. We decided to eat at the Huddle House for breakfast and then head to Gorges State Park which was west of Panthertown Valley. The hike was not as remote as the one the day before to Warden Falls, but it did seem to go forever. We saw several people walking back on the trail even though it was 10am. No one else was going in the same direction so we began to wonder if we were going on the right path, but there was only one path and we kept going. A couple hundred feet on the top of a ridge I asked the people coming down if we were close and they said we were. When we saw Rainbow Falls from the railed overlook we were all amazed. It was the most spectacular waterfall we had ever seen up close. We crawled down the rough dirt path to the bottom of the waterfalls and decided we should get in and go for a swim. The water was quite cold but the boys went in first. After they both got in and started swimming, I dove in from a near rock and swam over to the cliff. It was cold but not unbearable. We stayed for a long time to enjoy the cold water and marvel at the falls. It was hard leaving but there other falls in the area we wanted to see. It turned out that both were disappointing. We actually stopped in the parking lot for Whitewater Falls but we were too tired to make the walk even though I tried to force the boys out of the car to see it. On the way back home we stopped to see Looking Glass Falls right outside Brevard as we had seen it before. The problem with that waterfall is that it is so easy to get to that it is always crowded. That ended our 4th of July waterfall adventure trip for the summer of 2009.

sunset beach vacation

Photos from our yearly family vacation to the beach:

Sunset Beach

high school graduation

Probably the only public high school graduation we will ever witness happened last weekend. Our oldest son quit school and eventually got his GED. Our next to oldest son graduated high school by finishing his last two years using an internet high school called CompuHigh. We received our youngest son's diploma from PennFoster yesterday in the mail. So our middle son will definitely be the only son to graduate from public high school. Today we finalized his community college registration by paying for his first semester this fall at WakeTech, which is a local community college. His older brother also attended that same college for one year and that was also how I started my university career. We tried to enjoy every moment of the graduation realizing it may be our last. There are rumblings around the house that our daughter may try finishing high school on line as well.

The graduation was held in the new Raleigh Convention Center as there was over 400 students graduating, so with parents and family the ceremonies were too large for the high school auditorium. The whole process took almost three hours as we had to arrive early and then getting out was not the easiest thing once we got everyone to the car. The man in the front left hand side of the stage is the mayor of the town where we live in this photo:

customizing Mac login screen

I found the following web site has hints on how to customize all kinds of things on my Mac:

# http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/11/mac-login-window-tricks-part-4-change-default-background-image/
# DEFAULT - sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture /Users/javaswinger/nepal.jpg

# http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/06/mac-login-window-tricks-part-2-add-a-custom-welcome-message/
# DEFAULT - sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText "Welcome to Dharma & MacBook world"

# http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/05/mac-login-window-tricks-part-1-unleash-hidden-system-information/
# use any of the following:
# HostName, SystemVersion, SystemBuild, SerialNumber, IPAddress, DSStatus, Time
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo Time

Septoplasty

Yesterday was a different kind of a day from the normal grind. We all got up at the same time except my wife who woke up 30 minutes early. Since it was senior day for our son who was graduating from public high school, he decided to drive himself to school for the first time ever. They let the seniors out of school early after lunch and I told him we would not be home early to pick him up. We left the house a bit earlier than we expected and arrived at the hospital 30 minutes before the scheduled time of 8:30am. My wife was due to have her septoplasty at 10am and we began the waiting game. I took me Apple MacBook so I could spend the time either writing my book or learning Hindi. When we sat down in the general waiting area, I tried to see what wireless networks were available. There were two secure and one open wireless and so I was all set with internet access to learn some Hindi using Live Mocha. My wife was a bit nervous so it helped that I was not trying to talk to her but acted as if it was a normal situation. She had been given a paper that had her number on it and periodically an announcement was made but the numbers seemed to be totally random and unrelated numbers to the others we heard being called out. Finally she heard her number and after just a couple of minutes the initial insurance forms were complete. We then moved to the other side of the general waiting area at the front of the hospital. It was more like a huge room decorated like a high end hotel waiting area as the chairs were very nice to sit in. I know my wife did not notice such things, but I was in that area for the next six hours! At the desk on the other side of the room at the entrance to the surgery rooms, we were given a buzzing handheld device like is done at restaurants to notify you when your table is ready. It buzzed many times throughout the hours to tell us we were needed for certain events. It was just a great experience overall to make the best of place where no one wants to be. The deviated septum was fixed without any complications and we arrived home before 3pm. Our daughter was waiting to help in what ever way possible, so that was a pleasant but expected surprise for my wife, who needed the attention and help through the rest of the day. She had to sleep in a reclining chair all last night but they gave her really strong medicine to knock her out. I have to go find out how she feels...

Indian elections

Someone at work found these photos and posted the link on the India mailing list:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/05/indias_massive_general_electio.html

mother's day 2009

This was waiting for us when we came home from my wife's parents house on Mother's Day:





Lazy afternoon on Mother's Day as the kids were checking out the Princess cruise details for this fall:

series on breakdowns

The past week was just a series of things breaking down around our house. First our clothes dryer stopping working. I cannot recall the exact date when we fixed it previously, but it was within a few months of the last time we had it repaired. Our house has the worst possible location for a laundry area. I dare not call it a laundry room as it is more like a laundry closet. The problem is that the washer and dryer barely squeeze into the closet. The last time we had problems with the dryer, we shopped around for new ones and none of the ones that are made currently will fit into the closet, so we are forced to repair the ones we have. Soon after our dryer decided to stop functioning, our refrigerator started making scary sounds. It was like a slowly accelerating engine that would then deaccelerate. Up and down it would go all day long. It was especially obvious in the morning when I woke up as it was the only sound in the whole house. Fortunately, we have a really great appliance company near our house who helped us before. For under $200, he was able to fix them both.

Soon after buying our son a car, we heard a sound company from the back end of the car. I called my trusty mechanic to check it out. Both my wife and son complained about the brakes so I had him check those at the same time. Turned out that the brakes all needed changing and the noise was pretty harmless and should some day be fixed when our son gets a job and has money to fix it. At least the brakes are good, which is important for a new young driver!

The last thing to cause trouble was our Windows Vista laptop. For months the family account has had mysterious screens show up when you logged on. I tried downloading a couple of tools from a company called "PC Tools", hoping they would find this virus and kill it. I have Norton Antivirus on this laptop but I just thought I should try something else. After buying a couple of their tools, I was no better off than when I started. In fact a couple of days ago my youngest son informed me when I got home from work that the laptop was frozen. The new tools were complaining about the Windows Defender was running and it could not be running at the same time as these tools. It took me an around an hour to stop Windows Defender. Then the next day that same son told me that a third window was popping up when he logged on. It was in fact getting worse by the day. I had tried to update these tools and it hung the tool and the laptop. This morning I finally removed all of their tools and had to delete our family account and create a new one. For now all is back to normal. In my frustration last night with all of our computers, I decided to buy a new iMac for the family and a new MacBook for myself. I tried Windows for a couple of years and that was all I could take. I am back to an all Apple home again, like the good old days, 10 years ago when I had nothing but Apple machines. It is just not worth the struggle and fighting to have Windows any more.

rollercoaster of life

The past couple of days was quite the up and down affair. At work I had lunch with a man who had lived in the Middle East and we had a great time talking about our past experiences. He had also lived in Houston and his wife helped him decide it was time to leave just like my wife had helped me. After getting back to work, I had a meeting with a screaming woman who obviously hates me for some odd reason. The most unprofessional immature meeting I have ever encountered. Within a few minutes I went from feeling great to feeling awful. After taking 30 minutes of abuse, I got up and walked out of the conference room. I felt so bad that I had to take a sick day on Friday to recover. I guess she won in accomplishing what she intended to do and that was to make me feel really bad.

Yesterday, we bought my son a car and then on the way home we stopped by to see a local car show of hot rods. We had a good time as all of the boys at one time had enjoyed looking at cars. My son commented that now he understood what a really fine automobile looked like. After eating supper at home and sitting down to watch our latest Indian movie, our daughter entered the room and said one of her classmates had killed himself by a rope on a tree in their backyard. How horrible is that for a 14 year old to have to deal with. From happiness to horror in just a couple of hours. Such is the rollercoaster of life.

car shopping

There just is nothing worse for me than shopping for cars. I don't mind bargaining as that part is kind of fun but the vulture like car salesmen scare me with their forceful mannerisms. This weekend we were trying to find a car for our middle son, who is the latest in the succession of boys to have cars in our family. Like our next to oldest, I let him search the web to find cars he likes as he knew the amount that he had to spend and what he wanted to get. In these economically troubling days, small dependable cars are a bit hard to find as the days of the gas burning SUVs is on the downturn and people want just the car my son is looking for. He wanted a small car with good gas mileage and finally found one in north Raleigh last weekend that he wanted to see. He has been searching for the last couple of months but had to pass his final road test to get his unrestricted driver's license first before a car could be considered. That extra time was good as it enabled him to figure out what kind of car he really wanted. We test drove several cars so he got a feeling of what he liked also. Yesterday was the big day when he drove with his other two siblings and myself to see this car. It was a beautiful sunny day, which I tried to convince everyone that it would be a great day for hiking, but I got overruled as car shopping got a higher priority. The whole affair was fairly painless as the small used car dealer where the car was located had just bought this car at an auction and was happy to sell it to us. I bargained a little and before we knew it we had a car. We pick it up today as I did not have enough money with me and our son did not feel comfortable driving it by himself for the 30 minutes to our home through downtown Raleigh. Today we have yet another Hyundai in our family.

Car shopping brings back memories of past events with the other kids. Our next to oldest did his own searching for months and we bought his car at the local flea market since that is where the owner met us for the exchange of money for the car. He as so happy when he got home with his car, and yet just after a couple of months he accidentally ran into the post at a local gas station when his flip flop caught on the gas pedal. That resulted in a very nice "V" in the front of his car. His gray car became two shades of red as he found a bumper and hood at junk yard near our house. Then as he was driving home the hood flew back and smashed the windshield as the hood was not latched properly, so yet another car repair. The most amazing thing ever is that this car made it all the way across the USA as my son drove it with his best friend in a cross country road trip. Recently the car stopped working and may have met it's very end. Hopefully this latest car to enter our family will not be inflicted with such car abuse.

Then our oldest son was in such a hurry to buy a car in San Antonio that he quickly found a car and bought it in one week. The used car dealer was not a very reputable one and basically ripped us off. The good news is because we were buying a Honda from him, so the car could take much abuse and still keep going. He failed to tell us the radiator had a leak in it and since it was 100% plastic, it could not be repaired. The brakes were pretty much shot as well. In my son's frantic desperation, we had a car but just barely. Once we made a couple of expensive repairs, he decided to drive all the way back to North Carolina in a non-stop 22 hour driving spree. Eventually when he lost his driver's license, we sold the car to someone else by advertising with a for sale sign as it sat in the nearby WalMart parking lot. The car was in pretty bad shape but still with over 200,000 miles on the odometer, someone bought the Honda Accord for the good gas mileage. May our son's car make it that far as it has a little over 100,000 on it now.

spring break

This week was not just another week, but it was spring break, which meant our son came home from Emeryville, CA. It started out bad as he was supposed to be here last Friday but when his flight was canceled due to bad weather in NYC, it actually took him 36 hours to reach our house. He left this morning and hopefully will have a better experience getting back to school as this time he is going through Dallas, TX. However, I just checked the weather and the only place in the country that has bad weather is a region around Dallas! That is really pretty amazing as it was the same story when he tried to go through NYC last week.


My daughter was really hoping that this week would be better than the last time her oldest brother came and she was very disappointed in the lack of time she got to see him. This time was much better as this brother was around more and actually let her use his nice Apple laptop the last couple of days and even took her to the beach with him. Actually all of the kids went together to see my wife's parents in Wilmington and spent the night on Thursday night. It was the first time in over 20+ years that we were in the house without children. It is interesting how much of our lives revolve around our children as it was odd not hearing around the house that evening. Other than the beach trip they did not do anything special but just hung around each other. On the first day he was in the house they were all sitting on our middle son's bed talking, which unfortunately I did not get a photo of scene as it was a classic. Last night we went out to eat together at a local Japanese steak house in Fuquay and the food was really excellent and evening was entertaining as the cook prepared the food in front of us and definitely amused us.


The final event of the evening was the family bonfire as my middle son had been preparing a perfectly stacked pile of wood all week long, for the final evening together. The photo I took came out really cool as it looks like a fire breathing dragon coming up out of the midst of the fire pit. It was a relaxing memorable week, of which I am sure we will hear memories discussed around the dinner table in the weeks to come.

odd week

After ten days of not feeling well, I finally recovered enough to say I was over the recent nasty sickness. Even though I was at work for the first couple of days this week, it seemed like everything I touched went wrong. Maybe it was the sickness looming over me and maybe my mind was not clear enough for intensive work conditions. Whatever it was, I was not very encouraged by my slow progress on my tasks at hand. Just about when I was ready to give up all hope, I finally found a way to fix the bugs I was slaving away on all week. It has happened to me several times in my long career in software development.

In addition several other things happened yesterday of note. At lunch a friend of mine, who is a mechanic, showed up at our house to fix my car, which had a check engine light on for the last several weeks. The Nissan dealer told him it would be six hours minimum as the manifold would have to be removed in a long timely process. Being the experienced mechanic he knew to try other things first. He found and fixed the problem without the labor intensive procedures the dealer had suggested. The best thing of all was that the charge was half of what he originally estimated, which had to be at least half of what the dealer would have charged me.

Then when our kids got home from school, I was appointed to take my son to get his drivers license. Seeing that he had hardly driven, the end result was predictable as he failed the driving test. The people at the license office were not very friendly and were definitely intimidating, which definitely did not help matters at all. There crabiness never prevented a single accident or drunk driving teenager death and yet for some reason they spread their unhappiness to all who entered attempting to get a new license.

To top off the day, our son was to arrive from California, but his flight was canceled due to bad weather in NYC. He missed all of the flights for the evening and at the minute we are still waiting to see if he makes it on the next flight as a stand-by passenger. A typical end to a most unusual week.

resident evil

As my boys play the new Resident Evil #7 game, I have been laying around battling the evil bugs that have taken up residence in my body. Soon after reaching work on Monday I started feeling bad with my throat hurting and my head throbbing. I went to the company health clinic, but they did not help much. On Monday night my throat felt like I drank gasoline and threw a light match in my mouth. I did not get much sleep that night. The next day my head felt like someone was hitting it with hammers. My chest felt like a NFL lineman was sitting on my chest. In the afternoon I could not take it any more and went to our local family doctor. She had mercy on me and gave me antibiotics. By the time it turned dust my throat was on fire again. I tried gargling salt water, cough drops, some magic mouthwash stuff and nothing really helped. On Wednesday night I started cough uncontrollably. I moved into our guest room so my wife could actually get some sleep even though I had little hope of getting any myself. As the night progressed my whole body started hurting. My neck, my back and then my kidneys. When I got up in the morning I could only hope the medicine would start working so I could feel better. Finally after a morning nap I started to feel slightly better. Who knows when the evil residents will decide to leave, but I can hope that occurs sometime tonight.

Aradhna in Raleigh NC

For the last several months I have been planning on Aradhna coming for a visit to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle in NC. I ran an ad in the local Indian magazine called Saathee for the last three months. I ran the same ad in the local Indian movie theater called Galaxy Cinema. For the last couple of weeks before the event, the same as was run on Nazar TV, which shows Bollywood videos from 3-4pm each Sunday afternoon. Lastly, the NC State radio station has Indian music from 10-noon each Sunday morning on WKNC for a program called Geet Bazaar so they announced the Aradhna concert also. It took work and money to do this. So on Sunday night five days before the concert, I get a call from the president of the Hindu temple telling me I could not have the concert at the temple which was where all of the ads listed as the location of the event. So I have to make a mad rush to find another place in less than a week. It was very stressful to say the least. I felt like I wasted my time and money and energy. We finally decided to have the concert in the same location for both Friday and Saturday night on the NC State campus in the middle of the graduate housing buildings. I invited all of my Indian friends to the new location and was very disappointed when not a single friend of my showed up. On Saturday morning, the Aradhna tabla player told me the house would be packed for the second night and it was hard for me to believe it after the sparse crowd the first night. Sure enough the crowd kept picking up as time went along and before I knew it the whole room was full. That was a great feeling although quite different from my disappointment the night before. Because the crowd was excited, the band fed off the energy and the performance was special in many ways. On Sunday morning, I drove two of the band members to WKNC radio studios to meet Afroz Taz and John Caldwell as both of them had been in India and had not responded to my emails. I was beginning to panic that yet another planned event was going to backfire. We decided to drive to the studio and just show up. Thankfully, Afroz was there waiting for us. They had a short but great 10 minute session and sang parts of two songs. On Sunday afternoon we had several friends over to meet the band at our house. Our kids were so happy to attempt to play Chris' sitar and then play Rock Band with them. A sad start but a strong finish.

Andrew's drawings

Latest award winning drawings by our middle son, Andrew. It is a shame to be so good and not enjoy doing it. This weekend, I actually heard hints that he wanted to go to art school one day. That is the problem with being a teenager, you are trying to discover what you want to do with your life.

relaxing weekend

Friday was one of the worst days I have had at work in a long time. It seemed like everything I touched failed to work correctly. I tried to fix one problem and and would cause another. My co-worker was on vacation and obviously could not provide me with the wisdom I needed to solve the many problems I was causing. I was very frustrated by the time I got home. Plus I was running out of options in finding an audio engineer for the upcoming Aradhna concert. At least when I got home and checked my personal email account, I found a couple of people offered to help with the sound, so by the end of the day I had good news to make me feel better about my bad day at work.


Just last weekend it was snowing and was under 20 degrees, but this weekend the temperatures rose to 80 degrees. That was quite the 60 degree temperature difference in just a few days time. That meant it was time to get outside and mess around. I cleaned up the garage to celebrate the warm weather and then washed both of our vehicles. Not too exciting, but then the big event came on Sunday afternoon. I finally took the time to mount the painting of the children on our living room ceiling. We put it on a wall so the kids would not have to see it all of the time but my wife and I could look at it as often as we wanted to. Since it is so large we did not want it to be in our faces all of the time. It looks very nice up around 10 feet from the floor on the wall I filled in. I took a photo of the painting on the wall with our new $17 Logitech webcam which we used to talk using Skype with our son in Korea last night.

This is the meaning of the words on the painting:

Prema milana ko nai-na tarase
The eyes long to be united in love
Ghaayala mana tori nagari aawata
Wounded hearts come to your city
Saba eka chana mei swaagata paawata
All, in an instant, find welcome

Google Chrome vs. Safari 4

I have been using Google Chrome at home and at work since it was released. Today I tried using Safari 4 for the first time. I really like the Google Chrome "most visited" page as I can see what the page looked like last time I visited it. Plus it remembers the most frequently visited pages. The challenge in Safari 4 was customizing their "top sites" to have the same site I had in Google Chrome. It was definitely hard but I finally accomplished it. Two of the web sites I added will not generate previews, one of them being Bank of America's site, which I find really odd. CSS 3 is the secret behind both of these web browsers. Webkit is used in both of these web browsers as well as used within Flex/AIR. The thing I have always liked about Safari is the built-in RSS reader available in the menu bar. Nice to see iTunes CoverFlow being used for Bookmarks. At least they have a new style carousel for the "top sites" page that just looks too cool. You can make a tab become a separate window but I could not find a way to re-attach it. I find Google Chrome annoying on how easy it is to make a tab become an extra window but at least they have an easy way to just drag the window back as a tab. Somehow several times a day accidentally detach a Google Chrome tab as a new window. I am glad I don't have this problem with Safari 4. I have had Safari installed on Windows for a long time but only used it to double check browser compatibility as I found the fonts looked really odd on Windows. I found the CSS checker interesting as it shows how lacking IE and Firefox are and how far they have yet to go to catch up. For now I am a Safari 4 convert.

Kwangju, South Korea

This is a blog about the place in South Korea where my wife grew up. Her maiden name is Dietrick:

Kwangju, South Korea

This is the house where my wife grew up: