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This year’s Christmas card wasn’t my finest work, but it did seem fitting…

Not that it shows, but it took a considerable amount of time to build my zombie army in the background. I had to find a bunch of pictures of zombies (thank goodness for the internet!) as well as a run-down building. Then everything had to be composited, colors adjusted, shadows fixed, and so on. The “toast” from our photo shoot was the crowning touch. My new tablet actually made a lot of it a ton easier.

Several people have commented on it, saying they found it pretty funny. Apparently Zaque wasn’t entirely impressed, though, because he told me today he didn’t think it was “as good as other years”. Yeah, thanks for the support, kiddo.

That said, his mission companion and a few other missionaries down in Oklahoma saw it and thought it was a masterpiece. And now they’ve decided to make a card to share with the mission (featuring three sets of missionaries) and told Zaque he should ask me to do it. So there, kiddo!

He had two photos for each pair: one “normal” and one humorous. I slapped everything together into a fairly vanilla card:

But I felt like there was something missing. I went to work.

Yes, much better! Apparently they’re going to head over to Walgreens and print a bunch of these to hand out to people. Hah!

Last night was the peak of a solar coronal mass ejection (CME) which was expected to intensify the aurora borealis so it could be visible as far south as Montana and Minnesota. Having never seen the Northern Lights before, I was excited at the prospect. It’s been cloudy for a few days, but yesterday was quite clear so it seemed like good viewing conditions.

I went out around 7pm when it was pretty dark, but couldn’t really see anything. Again at 11pm; still nothing. Then I got out of bed at 1:30am and peered out the window. There was a distinctive green glow on the northern horizon!

Unfortunately Kalispell is also to the north, so the city lights kind of spoiled the horizon. But now I can say I’ve seen the Northern Lights… well, kind of a greenish Northern Glow, anyway.

Today I played my second game of Twilight Imperium with some friends. To be more exact, I should say it was my second half-game… we played for five hours straight and only completed two and a half turns.

That was about half the game. We finally had to call it, which was unfortunate because I was just about to make my Big Move. It may be the longest and most complicated board game I’ve ever played. But it’s a ton of fun. Of course we’ll be playing again next week.

Today, driving along Flathead Lake, I was struck by the dark, brooding clouds hanging over “our” side of the lake. Seven miles away, across the water, it was sunny with blue skies. The water was dark and frothing from the wind, and a gorgeous blue on the other side.

The picture doesn’t really do it justice. But, as always, I’m entranced by the beauty of this area.

Today I was driving along the highway and thought of something I needed to do. Something terribly important. Something that started with the letter “M”. Since I was driving, I didn’t want to add it to my to-do list (on my phone) so I grabbed a pen from the console of my car and scribbled a little “M” on the back of my hand. That’ll remind me, I thought, so when I get home I can formally add it to my list.

I got home. I noticed my hand. And I have no idea whatsoever what it could be. All I know is it starts with “M”.

So if any of you, my four or five loyal readers, can think of something I need to do that starts with “M”, please let me know.

As I’ve continued to enjoy drawing comics, I decided to launch the official web site of my newborn Far Far Away webcomic. If you don’t yet have enough ways to waste time, bookmark it and enjoy.

Today in seminary we were talking about Flat Earthers. Don’t ask; it’s not important.

What is important is the part where one of the teenage girls in class said “I actually know someone who believes the earth is flat!”

One of the boys snorted and said “He must be a Democrat.”

She replied, “No, he’s not.”

And he responded incredulously, “You mean he’s a Republican?”

We all kind of laughed it off, but later, as I thought about the exchange a bit, I realized it bothered me for a couple of reasons. First, this young man– who’s a great kid and quite sharp– seems to believe that all people can basically be defined by their political beliefs. You’re either a Democrat or a Republican, and that’s it. And second, he clearly feels that the former are idiots and the latter are geniuses (or perhaps better stated, Democrats are wrong and Republicans are right).

I feel like this pretty much sums up the way American society is today. So many people have an “us and them” mentality, where they place anyone who believes differently than them into a category, and then turn them into an enemy. And everything– literally everything— is politicized. I long for the Good Old Days when we were the United States, and where polite, respectful discourse was the norm, not this bitter rancor we see now.

Sigh.

It’s not officially the Christmas season until I’ve printed, stuffed, addressed, and stamped 300+ cards to send to friends and family.

These puppies are ready to drop off at the post office. It’s officially the Christmas season.

I’m working on a new house project: remote temperature sensors. With a house as big as ours, I feel like it’ll be useful to understand the temperature of various places, so we can be more efficient in our heating and keep those pesky electric bills down. I looked online for wireless sensors, but they’re both surprisingly expensive and frustratingly un-useful. Most require a special phone app, and have no way to export the data.

Well, I’m a Linux geek and I love electronic gadgets, so I decided to buy a handful of Raspberry Pi Zeros (Zeroes?) and attach them to some digital sensors. Once they’re connected to our wifi, I can ping them every few minutes to collect temperature (and humidity!) data. I’ll stuff it into a database and generate some cool graphs. Even better, when we’re away from home we’ll be able to monitor things and make sure nothing is freezing or whatever.

I installed Linux on the Zero and plugged it into a monitor and keyboard, and BAM away we go! What’s really cool about these little guys is how incredibly small they are… maybe half the size of a credit card. In the circle below is the Zero: a full-featured Linux computer!

I’ve successfully written a Python program to grab the data from the sensor, and now I have to figure out how to collect it remotely and aggregate it.

It’s good to have hobbies. And gadgets.

One might argue that since I’m retired, I don’t need to “keep up” with web technologies or computer programming in general. But I would retort that because I’m retired and enjoy programming, I should spend some time learning and practicing. Keeping the saw sharp, as they say.

Also, I’m kind of a geek.

Every December there’s a famous programming challenge called the Advent of Code, where each day there are two tasks which require a computer program to solve. You can use any language you want and build the program however you want; all that matters is that you end up with the right answer. This year I’ve decided to tackle the challenges in Python, a cool language I’ve dabbled in over time. I don’t consider myself strong in the language by any stretch– I tend to spend a third of my programming time reading documentation!

But I’m off to the races, having finished the first couple of challenges. The ol’ saw’s in good shape.