Yesterday I did it! For the first time in a very long time, I jogged an entire mile. For me, this is a big thing. Sure, it was a treadmill mile (which is a bit easier than the real thing), and sure, I really had to push myself especially the last 1/8th mile, but still! I just like the fact that I'm slowly seeing some progress from my trips to the Rec. Center's fitness center. And I must admit I do love the after-effects, the natural endorphine high exercise brings.

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This past Sunday, after attending sacrament meeting at my home ward, I decided to visit my sister's singles ward. As I drove across town, I was listening to a BYU Singers CD Songs of the Soul, the second track in particular, a song titled Behold the Wounds in Jesus Hands. It is a very beautiful song, appropriate to the sabbath day. I turned up the volume above the road noise and the noise of the air conditioner, until the low notes on the pipe organ rumbled, and the pure toned voices of the choir rang through the air. Ah, heaven!

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Another response by some members of the open source community at Groklaw to SCO's threats against Linux appears online here. It is well written and addresses the relevant issues in a calm, reasoned manner.

Also, near the end, the letter mentions the City of St. George, Utah as using Linux. I was pleased to see the community where I live mentioned. I suspect that St. George was mentioned in part because...

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Well, Horsey did it again! In one of his regular columns, he talked about an issue that's all the rage in the online culture, namely MP3 file trading and the RIAAs recent actions to attempt to curb the spread of copyrighted material shared freely online.

Oh, the article! Here it is!

His well-thought-out article even managed to rate a front page appearance on the geek site, Slashdot this week. Not bad.

Maybe someday the recording industry will get a clue and make true CD-quality downloads available legally, unencumbered by encryption, at a reasonable price. Perhaps they'll be smart enough to...

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After just over a week of web site downtime, my site is at last back up, all data restored! All this due to some corruption of the RAID-5 array when I moved the four drives from the Athlon 700MHz machine to a new Athlon 2600+ machine. For a bit, I was worried that I'd lost some of my data, including some of these web site postings. Fortune has smiled on me, and so far, all my data appears intact, though it has been a rough week trying to figure out ways to recover it.

Next, I need to get my mail server running again. Once that's done, I then need to figure out where I'm gonna stash the new server box. Right now it's sitting out in the middle of my living room amidst the clutter of torn-apart-computers (yes, I've had several open, guts strewn across the room) and shipping packaging. I wish I had a good server closet.

After my previous rant about the goings on with regard to SCO, and after reading SCO's Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community, in which Darl ...

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Ok, this just bugs me. In this modern day of the Internet, I really, REALLY would like to be able to buy and download an audiobook, then be able to enjoy it. While browsing Amazon.com's web site, I notice that they offer audiobooks for download from Audible.com. Sweet, I think and so I swing over to that site.

Now I'm intimately familiar with the very negative problems DRM (Digital Rights Management) can cause. If you don't know what DRM is, it's a means whereby copyright holders release digital products (audio files, movie files, documents, pictures, books, etc. -- anything in digital format) only in an encrypted format that can ONLY be decrypted and displayed or used with a special computer program or item of computer hardware. The idea is that this protects the copyright owner from having their work distributed or copied without authorization. It sounds like a good idea at first, but it turns out to be very rotten.

Recently I signed up for an account at buymusic.com, to try out their music service.

I ran into the first problem just going to their web site.

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White standstone lit by the setting sun in Snow Canyon State Park - the perfect setting for an evening hikeThroughout this week, and especially today (Saturday), I've been chomping at the bit to get outside and go for a hike. As the day wore on, and evening neared, I worried that this week would end without my ever getting away from St. George into the outdoors. As a last resort, shortly after 5:00 PM, I messaged my brother (you know, using one of those online instant messaging systems, Jabber in this case) asking him if he wanted to go for a hike in nearby Zion National Park. He was game.

By 6:00 PM, I had not yet departed for Hurricane to pick my brother up. I'd been searching and searching for my glasses, without which I am too blind to drive, to no avail. I couldn't remember where I'd put them, and they weren't in the usual places. So I called Kendall back, and proposed another solution. He could drive to St. George and pick me up, and we'd go hiking somewhere around here. We settled on the very close Snow Canyon State Park.

The evening sky was streaked with clouds, the tattered edges of summer storms to the east, and the air was much cooler as the sun sank toward the painted stone cliffs to the west. It was the perfect setting for an evening hike. From the parking lot, we descended toward the west across sandy soil and black lava rocks.

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Sad news reached the ears of my family yesterday. My cousin, John, who lives in Las Vegas, lost his adopted 19-year-old daughter. My heart goes out to him, and to everyone who will miss her, and her kind spirit. I didn't know her, but I've heard wonderful things about her. She will be missed.

My new favorite breakfast cerealI have a new favorite breakfast cereal. In the past I've been a Wheaties, corn flakes, Chex kind of cold cereal eater when I wanted cereal for breakfast. Sure, hot oat meal or craked wheat was fine, but it just wasn't tempting enough to spend the few extra minutes cooking it when I could have cold cereal instead.

That has changed. I've found a hot cereal that changed my mind. It's one of Bob's Red Mill cereals (and I like several of Bob's Red Mill cereals), in particular, Museli Old-Country Style. A cup of cereal in a large bowl, a cup of water, a dash of salt, perhaps a bit of honey, 4-5 minutes in the microwave, add a bit of milk, and... Mmmmmm... Delicious!

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