Jason's Blog

Makenzie lost her 4th tooth the other day. As you can see below she now has the top two and bottom two teeth missing. She talks a little different, but the thing that she thinks is the coolest is that she can eat fishy crackers through the hole without opening her mouth! I agreed with her that is way cool!

We took our annual visit to the pumpkin patch this last week. The kids always look forward to seeing all the pumpkins and especially the big ones.

We also went to Disneyland to check out the Halloween stuff, the haunted mansion is always cool at Halloween time

One of my favorite web apps that I can't live with out and that I check every morning with my hot cocoa is Google Reader. If your a person that keeps tabs on a lot of different blogs and or websites than Google Reader is for you. There are of course other rss feed aggregation tools like Bloglines & Techmeme but in my opinion Google Reader has the best features and is the easiest to use. If your still confused as to what Google Reader is than watch the video below which explaines Google Reader in plain english.

I'm not a big reader, mostly because of time constraints, but I got this book in audio format and listened to it on a Vegas trip I made a while back. It was written by Jeff Hawkins who was the the CEO of Palm as well as a couple other high profile tech companies. The goal of the author is to be able to make intelligent machines (not artificial intelligence machines, he explains why that's not the future). A good portion of the book is spent exploring how the brain works and how intelligence occurs. The author is great at using real world examples of how the brain interprets data and stores it. Some of the book is a little technical, but the author breaks things down in very bite size pieces.

Jeff has created his own company to solve this problem and build intelligent machines called Numenta. He has had some major breakthroughs and is continuing to work on this problem.

I recommend you listen to this radio interview below with Jeff regarding his book and you can get a feel for the subject and see if you would enjoy this book. I loved it!

Buy it on Amazon for $10.88

Radio interview with Jeff Hawkins

You can fast foward and rewind using this player

Yesterday, a few minutes after dinner I walked into the kitchen and what did my eyes behold! I saw Chandler at the kitchen sink on a chair doing the dishes. I watched him for a second and realized what a great thing this is. Now why am I so excited? Well, my main two chores in the house are doing the dishes and taking out the trash. One down, one to go! Actually the kids always go out with me to take the trash out. They always want to carry the bags out so I'm pretty much there. Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with all my spare time. Maybe eliminate world hunger, or solve the energy crisis...

I read a cool article today on which Apostles served full time missions. There is a lot of detail on some of the circumstances of their missions. You might be surprised at how many of them didn't serve missions, but if you think about what was going on in the world (wars) and in church history it makes sense.

The First Presidency & the Quorum of the Twelve: Did They Serve A Full-Time Mission?

So I have this hobby/habit that has become a guilty pleasure of mine and no one knows about it. Or no one did. I love to collect funny and cool ring tones. I know what your thinking, most ringtones are stupid and annoying. I think that's what I like about them! My plan is that when I come across any cool ones I'll share them with all of you and you can annoy the heck out of everyone around you. They will always be mp3 files because that's what works on my HTC Mogul phone. They work for most phones. All you need to do is connect your phone to the computer with a data cable or email the mp3 file to your phone.

Todays Ringtone



Download the ringtone here

If you are gutsy enough to put this on your phone let me know. I have it, but I haven't used it as my ringtone yet.

I just saw this video and couldn't believe it. I know a couple girls getting married in the near future and I think I'm going to email this to them. How mean am I!



So lets review the lessons we've learned:

1. Don't get married next to the pool
2. Don't pick a klutz to be your best man
3. If your at a wedding and something like this happens, don't ask permission, just post it all over the web

Pushing the bride into the pool during the wedding ceremony, PRICELESS!

Everywhere you go and everything you do now a days you can't help but get hit with all kinds of political info. I'm finding the worst place to get data is from the news. They put such a spin on everything and contradict themselves so much. The best place I've found my information is on the web. The following are a few of the places I've been able to find out where the candidates actually stand on issues. not what the commentators say there positions are.

In Quotes lets you type a term and see how Obama and McCain referenced it in speeches, interviews, and other places.

Factcheck.org is the perfect place to see if a canidate did or didn't really do something. Perfect for fact checking during the debates when they are claiming that there candidate did or didn't support a certain bill and then change there mind, etc.

You Tubes campaign site lets you watch all the speeches and blurbs given by the candidates and see if they did actually say what the other party claims they said.

Its always a good idea to follow the money. With opensecrets.org and Fundrace 2008 you can see who is contributing money to what candidate and how much. Hint: if their positions match up with their top contributors positions 100% of the time that usually isn't a good thing.

There's plenty of other places to get information on the election, but the important thing is to be informed. This is probably one of the most important elections of my life and yours.

If fall wasn't here prior to the last few days, it's definitely here now. We went from 90 degrees in the afternoon just 3 days ago to cold windy blustery days ever since. The kids are excited for Halloween. They have just about decided what they want to be. I have to think of a killer costume for myself. Any ideas? The last couple of years I didn't really do much so I have to make up for it this year! Besides, the more effort you put into dressing up, the more candy you get. It's a proven fact! It's been a while since I've posted anything on here. It feels pretty good! Hopefully I can be more consistent than I have been. Good night from Cali.