New Addition

On sunday Josh had a lesson in Sunbeams about fish. His teacher is a young girl about 18 or 19. She gave him a fish to take home. I wasn't thrilled, but he was so excited that we found him a nice bowl and some blue stones. We'll see how long it lasts. Josh has decided to name it Daisy.

Pandora.com is amazing!

I've never been much into "online music", and I just don't get the whole "paying $0.99" to listen to songs on iTunes, but Pandora is different and I love it!

They built this thing called the Music Genome Project. Basically, took songs with similar melody's, mood, and feel to them and lumped them together into channels.

Kind of, "If you like this style of music, you'll probably like this one too" thing....and it works! It really, really works!

Pandora is absolutely amazing! My favorite channel is the James Taylor channel and the other music it suggests is spot on.

Give it a try but you've been warned, you just might get hooked.

Good stuff, that Pandora!
Here's the link

New Stock Market Terms

Gotta love these...

New Stock Market Terms
CEO- Chief Embezzlement Officer

CFO- Corporate Fraud Officer

BULL MARKET- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius

BEAR MARKET- a 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband lives in the doghouse.

VALUE INVESTING- The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER - What my financial planner has made me.

STANDARD & POOR- Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

MARKET CORRECTION- The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO - What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo at $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT - an archaic word no longer in use.

My Ox Got Stuck In The Mire....

So this morning around 5:30 I could hear a noise that sounded really out of the ordinary. Like a loud buzz, but more like a doorbell when someone pushes in but doesn't let go of the button. Kind of a "Nnnnggggggghhhh" sound.

I climbed out of bed, and all of a sudden I could smell something burning & thought, "Uh oh, that doesn't smell right".

It was coming from the direction of the furnace and I had a pretty good idea what it might be so I hauled butt downstairs to check the furnace and, sure enough, that darn Ox had really gotten stuck in the mud today.

That loud noise I was hearing was the sound of my furnace motor straining to turn...but not going anywhere. You know, like an electric motor when it's turned on but something gets jammed in it.....not good. And the smell it was emitting smelled like something electrical overheating too. (my sniffer knows electrical smells pretty good from my youth; all those pulling apart electrical devices & such).

So, I killed the power switch to the furnace and at 5:30 in the morning started pulling the furnace apart (so much fun I tell ya!)

With the doors off, I reached in & turned the fan blades, "Yep! It turns, but it's kind of stiff." I pushed in the cut-off switch, turned the power back on & waited for the fan to try to come back on...sure enough! "Nnnnnggggghhhhh"

So, down the power went. This time I reached in & spun the fan and then kicked on the power so that the fan was spinning when the motor came on. Yep! We got spinning & no noise....

Ugh! This could only mean one thing. Something BAD was wrong with the furnace blower motor.

So, I got my tools & started disassembling the thing. My gosh! Furnaces are nasty! Dirt, dust, lint, you name it, gets stuck up in there....

I pulled it out, hauled the whole assembly out to the garage & kicked on the air compressor & blew the crap out of it. Dust went EVERYWEHERE!!!

Well, I hauled it back in, put it back in the furnace and fired it up & it still wouldn't turn. "CRAP! Now I gotta buy a new furnace motor! That ain't gonna be cheap!"....and, there aren't any furnace motor retailers open on Sunday either.

So, went to church with my mind conjuring up things it could be, asked an electrician in the ward where I'd find a blower motor as I wasn't going to pay some HVAC place gobs of money to come & tell me what I already knew (that the motor was probably bad) and that I'd have to "wait until Monday to get a new motor" anyway.

So, when I got home I figured, "Hey, what have I got to lose? I'm gonna pull the sucker apart & see what happened".

So, out came the fan assembly & slowly but surely I extracted the motor (more dust & dirt). I'd read on the front of the assembly something about oiling the motor ever 2-5 years and to my knowledge it hadn't ever been oiled since we've lived here (going on 10 years). "Hmmm....I wonder if it just needs to be oiled"

So I popped the caps off the ends of the motor & sure enough, both bearings were dry as a bone. I oiled them up with some lubricating oil (by the way, 10W 30 won't work..it's gotta be 20 W Lube Oil..which I just happened to have laying around), did the other side, let it sit for about 10 minutes and noticed the motor now moved much easier.

"Hmmmm.....Well, it's worth a shot!" I threw it all back together, hooked up the wires, and hit the switch. WHIRRRRRR!!!!! The fan came to life! Yahoo!!!!

So, I got that stupid ox pulled out of the mud and the house is warm again...and I didn't have to spend a single cent! BONUS!!!

The moral of the story? If it's been a while since you've oiled your furnace motor....you might want to do it before you end up pulling it apart (or paying someone to do it for you) at 6:00 AM on a Sunday morning when it's cold outside.

I'm just glad I grew up with a dad that taught me how to fix stuff and for my love of pulling everything and anything mechanical or electrical apart at a young age (there's a whole other story behind that one....involves a vacuum cleaner at the age of 3). All of that experience just helped us keep the house warm again!

The Church Does YouTube. COOL!!!!

I just noticed that the church has an official YouTube Channel.

Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/mormonmessages

Very cool!

Here's a sample of one of their videos...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5x0wjT9Uq8

I love it!
-Graydon

Zoo Trip

On Wednesday Emily went with the Kindergarten on a field trip to the zoo. Josh has really wanted to go ever since and has been bugging me about it. I have just come down with a head cold and didn't really feel like going, so I kept telling him we would go later.

But when Graydon had business in Salt Lake for the evening and Laurie woke up from her nap early, I figured...why not? We were ready to go in 20 minutes. Why not have an outing with the kids instead of sitting at home all night?

We arrived at about 3:30 pm. I had never been to the zoo at this time of day or this time of year. It was Great! There was hardly anyone there and it was the perfect weather. It was the most relaxing zoo trips I'd had. It also helped that I left the double stroller at home and made the older kids walk. Not many animals were out; for instance, the elephants and rhinos were inside due to the cold, but it was still fun.

We ended the day with a visit to McDonald's for dinner and play.

I am so glad we did this.

Quotes By Thomas Jefferson....

Val say's my posts are way too long....so this one will just be of some quotes of Thomas Jefferson that I liked...

John Kennedy once said to a assembled group of scholars in the White House, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

The quotes below could prove his point.


"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe"
- Thomas Jefferson

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
- Thomas Jefferson

"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.."
- Thomas Jefferson

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
- Thomas Jefferson

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
- Thomas Jefferson

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
- Thomas Jefferson

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
- Thomas Jefferson

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.."
- Thomas Jefferson

And one final interesting quote in light of the present financial crisis, it's interesting to read what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:

"Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
- Thomas Jefferson