PolarVortex

Funniest story I ever heard about a yard sale... probably from Reader's Digest, but I forget. (I remember howling with laughter at the stories from "Life in These United States.") A women was having all the carpets in her house cleaned. The carpet cleaners arrived and saw that it was a warm, calm day with zero chance of rain, so they moved all the furniture out onto the front yard and started cleaning the carpets of the now-empty house. The woman was in the kitchen looking out the window to make sure her furniture and belongings were okay, and suddenly she sees a man on her yard walking through her furniture and picking things up and examining them as a buyer would. She rushed out to tell him her things weren't for sale, but before she could speak the man said, "Nice yard sale, lady. Too bad all the good stuff has already been sold."

While we're waving the memory wand, let me zap everyone else on the planet. My first name is very common (#16 in popularity in the decade of my birth), but it's sort of similar to #3. Both are common Biblical names. And yet all through high school and college I was addressed as #3, even after I would correct people to #16. In one college class I met someone who started #3-ing me and I didn't have the energy to correct him, so I simply started responding as #3. To my horror, we became good friends as the semester progressed. (The professor called us all by our last names, so my friend was never corrected by external forces.) Finally this deception boiled over one day when my new friend heard me called by my correct first name by other friends. He was very offended. Never saw him again. Later someone suggested this as a way to break up cleanly with a girlfriend. When you're ready to pull the plug, just say, "Sweetheart, you've been calling me Herbert, but my name is really Roger."

It's just that whenever I use the Windows command shell (do they call it a shell?) I feel like I'm writing a long poem with a keyboard that has no "E" key. Yecccch. I know some people who use this awful thing called Cygwin, but I refuse, and I simply tell prospective clients that if they hire me I don't do Windows.

Hmm... I read your post quickly and for a moment thought that you needed to know the periodic table of the elements for something related to church, such as home teaching or EQ. (And I thought my ward was full of geeks.) I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm not the dullest. And yet I cannot remember version numbers of software products for some reason. Android, iOS, Java, Excel, Skype, Safari, Firefox... I couldn't tell you the current version if my life depended on it. It would be great if I could memorize these once and for all. I'd also memorize all U.S. and Canadian area codes, and all North American and European airport codes. I once flew to Corpus Christi, TX to visit my mom and stepfather, and my baggage almost went to Casper, WY because the agent picked the wrong luggage tag (CRP vs. CPR) and I didn't catch it. This was back when luggage tags were not printed on the spot but instead selected from a colorful pre-printed set. Oh, and the genders and plurals of all German nouns would be nice, too. I can never remember plurals and am sick of saying things like, "Please give me a piece of paper... on second thought, make it two."

I agree, but I live just a few miles from the San Andreas fault and I periodically feel earthquakes. Makes me nervous about running servers in my home office. Of course, I found out recently that my virtual servers are physically located just 2 miles from my house, but they do real backups. I have one Windows machine left that I could convert to a server, but I just cannot stomach the command window in Windows. Whenever I use it I feel like a middle-school student. A while back I told a good friend (a Ph.D. in math) that I was between jobs and needed something to occupy my time. His answer, and I quote: "You could use your time to master unusual skills in computation, such as memorizing the square roots of very large numbers." So I'm happy to pass along the suggestion to you...

Perhaps not now, but someday you will be a mother-in-law...

It's amazing what can be sold in garage sales and yard sales. My neighbor (Monsieur Packrat) once had a garage sale and asked if I had anything to donate. I had an old 7-foot cat tree that my cat had torn to shreds. I was certain nobody would buy it, but my neighbor pressed me to bring it to his garage sale anyway, perhaps to add some extra charm to his merchandise. I got a friend to help me carry the cat tree down the stairs out into the street. He went out the door first and dropped it, and I tipped it upright and swung it up and over and out the door. Instantly I heard the sound of screeching brakes. A pickup truck had stopped in front of my house, and a passenger rolled the window down and asked "How much?" I timidly suggested ten bucks. I saw the driver nod vigorously, so we dropped it into the back of the truck, took the $10, and the truck roared off. The entire transaction could not have taken more than sixty seconds. And this cat tree was simply awful. It was less useful than a hundred pounds of dryer lint. Of course, my house is in a very densely packed city where the front doors are six feet from the street, so these types of sales are very easy. YMMV.

I used to run Linux servers (Ubuntu) in my house, but I got tired of paying through the nose for static IPs. Moved everything to Digital Ocean and I love it. Those "droplets" there (virtual private servers) are my own little sanity zone. No Microsoft software, and the fans don't get clogged with my cat's fur. What more could anyone ask for?

Restaurants seem to have learned this trick, too. A local television station did an exposé on restaurants in the area. They quietly interviewed employees to find out whether restaurants really were clean. They were, for the most part, but a few Tex-Mex restaurants did not discard uneaten chips when the customers left. The chips were tossed back into a big container and redistributed with fresh salsa to new customers.

A few years ago someone came up to me in a crowd and blurted out that I looked just like Leon Trotsky. I don't think he had been drinking, either. I don't know which puzzled me more: that anyone could see a resemblance between Mr. Trotsky and myself, or that a complete stranger would feel urged to tell me that I looked like a famous totalitarian. I do have a mustache and I do wear glasses, and I am cursed with a full head of dark hair that turns to thick black cotton candy on windy days. And I was outside when the stranger saw me, and it was a windy day... well, perhaps the stranger wasn't hallucinating too much. Not long after that I started wearing my hair very short. The real Leon Trotsky, not PolarVortex

Let's return to the original topic, I'm sorry to have steered us off into that other thing, yikes. I'm not kidding, I really feel a huge mental boost when my house is clean. I divided my house up into 90 little zones that can be radically cleaned in 5-20 minutes. I have them in a spreadsheet. I clean one zone a day, and my house is regularly praised on its cleanliness by visitors. (Not so much on the decor, which a friend once described as "Early Kmart." But I've been working on that, too.)

Agreed, of course. I only remember that letter (I read it decades ago!) because I was so utterly shocked that someone would ask such a question, much less phrase it so bluntly and send it in to an advice column. Even worse, I seem to recall that the girl was asking this question because of peer pressure. O tempora! O mores!

Try harder, but try smarter. My advice would be to set three priorities: 1. Live a life that is pleasing and obedient to God. 2. For the things in your life that you can completely control (education, job, investments, diet, exercise, hobbies, etc) pick things that increase your value as an ambassador of Jesus Christ and your appeal as a husband. 3. Make as many friends as possible of both sexes and be an honorable friend to them. You might not find any spouseworthy people in your circle of friends, but behind each friend is a network of people you may not know, and you'd be amazed at what can pop out when you least expect it. I know many single people who are stuck being single because they seek out and socialize only with people who they'd consider marrying. Big, big mistake. 31 is still young!

Goodness. Your comment reminded me of a "Dear Abby" column where a teen-aged girl asked Abby, "What's the best way to get rid of my virginity?" (One assumes she wasn't LDS.) You are getting rid of nobler things, I'm sure. I don't have a clutter problem, because my neighbor will accept almost any unwanted items I give him. He's taken books, empty boxes, broken appliances, uneaten food, used gift wrap and ribbons, bits of wire and litmus paper, and even photographs of people he doesn't know. He eats Popsicles and then washes the stick and paper and files them away for possible future use. I'm with you, a neat and clean house is the road to happiness.

I use TP, but I measure in metric, so let's say 65 centimeters per sneeze. My pompous pedant friends use Kleenices. But I got a nasty cold this week and have been using Bounty today.

Tough choice... Yoda looks quite regal, but I have to go with Catwoman. Love the collared cat at the bottom.

Moi aussi ! Welcome. The mormon.org site is also available if French, if you prefer that: http://mormon.org/fra

I wonder why the people who dish it out sure can't take it. I was recently listening to a recording of "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross. The show was a rebroadcast of pieces of previous interviews of Joan Rivers, who passed away last September. As you may know, Joan Rivers cracked an endless stream of really mean jokes about Elizabeth Taylor and her weight problem: "Elizabeth Taylor has more chins than a Chinese telephone directory. She puts mayonnaise on aspirin. She is the only woman who stands in front of a microwave and screams Hurry!" But during the interview we learned that Rivers was profoundly insulted and greatly offended whenever people referred to her as "young," as in "you are 80 years young." What a strange thing to be offended by, and how amazing that her skin would be so thin about this when she hurled such searing, hurtful jokes at others. I thought about this off and on over the last few days, and I cannot understand it.

I did some research today on the old "Adventures of Superman" television show and was astounded to learn that Noel Neill (who played Lois Lane) and Jack Larson (who played Jimmy Olsen) are both still alive and doing well. Neill is 94 and Larson is 86. Here's a picture of Noel Neill in 2008. She still looks like the Lois Lane that I knew well from AoS reruns.

A change in human nature, which many believe is simply the motion of God through our souls. I love old movies but I tend to avoid watching any movies made after 1970 or so. The violence, language, and crude behavior are bad enough, but what really bothers me is the wave of enjoyment that sweeps through the audience when the villain is killed or tortured at the end. Sure, I stood up and cheered when the Death Star exploded in Star Wars, but over the years I have come to realize something important: that it's wrong to glamorize any human suffering, even when the bad guy deserves it and really gets it in the end with a chainsaw through the skull. It stokes and strokes the animal core of our psyches and reinforces revenge and retribution as human norms. Star Wars couldn't end with the entire Imperial Army apologizing and marching off to anger-management classes, but part of me thinks that violence will be around until we replace revenge and retribution with repentance and redemption. (My, look at all those re- words.)

Yes, welcome indeed.

Sorry you're going through this, it sounds very frustrating. Unless something really sinister is going on in your ward, I'd say your bishop is the one to set the terms of your rebaptism. But you have a right to know those terms and to understand his approach for measuring your progress. If I were you, I'd meet with the bishop and ask what progress has occurred since the last time you spoke with him. If his answer is "none," then I think you have a right to be upset and perhaps to escalate it. But I doubt this is the case. And I'd keep meeting with him periodically to ask what progress has been made and whether I could help with anything. I'd also make it clear that I want to be patient and obedient throughout the entire process but that I am committed to being rebaptized. However, his definition of progress may be different from yours. Might he simply be waiting for several months to be certain that your decision to rejoin the Church is rock-solid? Rejoining the Church after having your name removed is similar in some ways to remarrying a former spouse. Long engagements are often a good thing, even though waiting isn't always easy. In the meantime, nothing is stopping you from acting and behaving (with few exceptions) as if you had already been baptized. And that itself might prod the process along.

Thanks, that makes sense. Many of the other rules, such as not being alone with a child, carried stern warnings about legal implications and the difficulty of proving your innocence in foreign cultures if accusations arise. Yet in some cultures, such as Albania's, it's an insult to evade babies in a visited household, at least from what I have read. I wonder if the next edition of the Handbook will contain rules for iWatches. A missionary could wear one all the time, and his/her pulse could be constantly reported to nervous parents who tend to worry. Mission presidents could generate detailed wall charts from pulse readings to make sure the missionaries aren't visiting inappropriate web sites, too.

I'm fairly sure that the missionaries will be coming to my house in 2015 to visit, so I've been sniffing around the Internet lately and reading random things about LDS missionaries. I came across a 2006 on-line edition of the Missionary Handbook today and read it out of curiosity. (I converted to the Church as a thirtysomething and never served a mission, but I've always been interested in what it's like to serve a mission.) Most of the instructions seem reasonable, such as "do not handle explosives" and "do not tamper with your mission vehicle's odometer" and even "notify your mission president if your companion leaves you." The carrying of guns is also prohibited. But this edition of the Handbook has one curious instruction: "If you play basketball, play only half court." Why is the playing area of any significance? Is this to prevent missionaries from developing unhealthy passions for competitive sports activities that might distract them from their Gospel duties?

Been a busy day. Aunt is in hospital but will recover. A few days ago someone sneaked into her hospital room and rummaged through her purse, leaving the cash but stealing a credit card. The credit card company called her house (where I was staying) with a notice of suspected fraudulent activity. The thief had gone on a rampage trying to charge lots of things from the Walmarts and gas stations in the area. I got it all straightened out after several hours on the phone in my aunt's hospital room so the credit card company could talk to her whenever necessary. We called hospital security to let them know and they said such thefts were becoming more common. (So if someone in your family is admitted to a hospital, be sure to collect all their valuables and bring them home with you.) Aunt's kids (my cousin and her husband) and my mom and going to dinner tonight, then probably a quiet evening and another visit to the aunt, who is itching to come home, perhaps even literally. Happy 2015 to all.