Small World After All

We spent last week in West Yellowstone, MT. It was an awesome trip overall. We drove 750 miles to get there. My parents went in their vehicle as well so we traveled more or less together but separately. Of course we stopped to take tons of pictures. I had my Canon Powershot along with my Panasonic video camera that records on mini-DV tapes. My cameras are several years old as I got them before my kids were born. My little Canon took hundreds of pictures, over 500MB worth. That's nothing compared to what my brother took with my Dad's Canon Digital Rebel. My Dad also filmed a few hours worth of video on his new HD camcorder that saves to flash memory cards. Their photos took 3.6 GB, the video took 207 GB.

We took the north loop in Yellowstone on the first trip into the park. Shortly after going in through the west gate, you can still see by the tall blackened tree remnants just how close the fires of '88 came to West Yellowstone, within 1/2 mile. The park is pretty huge and there's not what I would consider anything like heavy traffic within the park for the most part. However the park does have many visitors every day. Last year, Yellowstone had 3,151,343 recreational visits.

Stay with me, I'm getting somewhere with all this.

We learned quick that if we saw a group of cars pulled over somewhere, especially where people had their cameras out, you'd probably be interested in what they're all taking pictures of too. We happened to be following one of the popular yellow tour busses when in abruptly turned into a large pullout overlooking a large meadow. We found there was a herd of elk feeding there and I got this picture (edited for this post) of the bull elk.


We stayed there for a bit taking pictures and eventually moved on down the road taking pictures of scenery, waterfalls, thermals (hot springs, etc) along the way. Shortly before getting to Norris Geyser Basin we saw this lone Bison / Buffalo chowing down in a large open area beside a narrow river or small creek. We stopped of course, excited to see a real Buffalo and walked down a short path towards the water where we took pictures of the Buffalo on the other side of the water less than 50 yards away. I took this picture (unedited) while standing there.


Initially I felt somewhat safe that this large animal was on the other side of the water and confident that he wouldn't trudge through to charge at me or my family so we didn't feel like we were in any kind of danger. He was alone and not acting any way hostile any way. However, just before I started back up the trail to my vehicle I took a better look and found that the water was probably not even a foot deep. I didn't say anything at the time but got my family calmly back to our vehicle.

My parents and brother had already left in their vehicle to the next spot on the map we had planned to stop while I was getting my kids loaded in the car. This was fine as we were using our handheld transceiver ham radios to keep in contact with each other.

So just as we're putting the kids back in the car, my wife is suprised from behind by my Aunt Nancy asking if we come here often. With her is my Uncle Cal (my Dad's brother) and his daughter (my cousin, born the day or two after me) Kristin, with her two young babies in their car. They're from Marysville, WA. So here we are, over 750 miles from home, and my relatives show up out of nowhere. I get on the radio and let my Dad know I'm talking with his brother & his family and on top of all that, for the last couple days, they had been staying in the cabins right next to where we were staying.

They were actually on their way out of the north entrance of the park and happened to see us on the side of the road. It's one of those situations that makes me ask myself, "What are the chances of something like that happening?" I guess it truly is a small world after all and, no matter where you go, your relatives will find you.

True Price of Ammenities

I think this picture I took during a recent hotel stay says it all.  I found it particularily amusing that they found a need for just such a sign.

Non-Emergency Assistance

Well, you learn something new every day. I guess I was unaware that there was a non-emergency number to call in place of 911.
There's 311 for stuff you might need to talk to local authorities about but may not be considered an "emergency" per se.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-1-1
Burning building? Call 9-1-1. Burning Question? Call 3-1-1.
Wikipedia has this to say:

3-1-1 service is generally implemented at the local level, and in some cities it is also used for various municipal calls.

Examples of calls intended for 3-1-1:

• illegal burning
• suspicious persons
• debris in roadway
• minor injuries
• non-working streetlamps & parking meters, etc.
• noise complaints
• local government inquiries

However it also says that it's not available in all areas and, according to this website at least, it's not available in the Seattle / King County area though further investigation might yield different results and/or other non-emergency numbers for your local area. Perhaps that's why I've never heard of it.

Dream Job

Whenever I meet someone new, sometime in the course of conversation in attempt to get to know them better, I will ask "So what do you do?" with the assumption that they actually are doing something of course and the added inferrence that the so-called "do" refers to a job or how they spend most of their time.  They could be a full time student and that would suffice for an appropriate answer.

However, regardless of what they answer, I listen more closely to how they answer.  I find it interesting that I rarely get a response that indicates the person is excited or enthusiastic about what they do.  So my follow up question eventually leads to, "What do you really want to do?".  This line of questioning tells me what they're doing now of course but most people seem to not be doing what they'd love to be doing.  I suppose to some degree, I may be no exception.

Don't get me wrong, I like what I do and if you ask me or any of the people I work with or used to work with what they would miss most about going to another job, I can almost guarantee they would tell you it would be the people they worked with.  I have a great team that I have the pleasure of working with.  Generally speaking we work great together, we support each other, we share each others loads & responsibilities, we communicate regularly via bi-weekly team meetings and daily via our Instant Messager and hosted conference room where we can all post questions and get immediate responses from everyone else on the team.  There's also lots of playful banter even with the new people that have recently joined the team.

Yesterday marked my 8th year anniversary with Avaya.  I'm in the same role now as I was when I started too.  Part of me is ok with that only because other related groups that I might have had the opportunity to move to have had more layoffs than my group.  I've had several co-workers move to other groups only to be eventually let go.  So I guess I've remained because I do the job well and as such there's a level of expected security.  As predicted, my 8th year anniversary came and went without anyone knowing besides my co-worker who sits next to me that I mentioned it to that it happened just as predicted.  No recognition whatsoever.

But I digress, the point is that I too would be doing something different if I thought I could get paid anything close to what I'm making now.  Because while I would love to "live the dream", I have a deeper rooted sense of responsibility to my family than to my dream job.  I guess I actually have 2 different dream jobs I would enjoy.

The first dream job is one where I work for a company that offers goods & services for technical solutions to internal or external customers.  My role would be to research new technology.  When a request comes in for a technical solution, I would come back with solution A & solution B that meets their requests.  A full solution would include cost breakdowns of time & materials, how long it would take to implement, what it would take to support & maintain, relevant dependancies, etc.  Then I would work with a team of resources to implement the solution.  Being paid to research and play with new technology sounds really fun to me.

The second dream job would be one where I get paid to do multimedia editing.  I would like to be able to spend more time on audio & video editing (mostly video) but I have various obstacles.  I really enjoy some of my so-called obstacles though like my family, vacationing, etc.  One of my main obstacles is getting video to work with.  This has 2 main sub obstacles in itself.  

1. I don't particularly enjoy doing the filming most of the time.  I don't have anything to film anyone would really find of much interest in the first place and my hand isn't the perfect camera stabilizer so there's too much shakiness in the videos.

2.  Part of the reason I don't really enjoy filming is because the video camera I have now doesn't put out the video quality I want.  I'm so used to viewing things in HD now that everything else looks grainy and if I can't produce something I can be proud to show others, I'd almost rather not to it at all.  The video camera I have was bought this century and records on mini-DV tapes with a firewire port, can film decent in very low lighting with the built in filters, and can zoom in pretty far.  But since I've been spoiled by HD quality tv & movies, the picture to me now looks almost like it's one step above the old reel-to-reel home movie films like they mimicked for the opening sequence for the Wonder Years tv show.

I do enjoy video editing and I've done some simple audio editing in conjunction with that to make audio tracks the exact right length or to make my own ringtones from .mp3 files.  I just don't have a good source of video files to work with.  I've tried all kinds of software packages that do video & DVD editing for creating my own fancy home movies.  I haven't had much exposure to playing with these features on a Mac yet but that's on my wish list.  Windows Movie Maker is suprisingly easy yet can have features flexible enough to make a decent video.  See my Father's Day tribute.  I've been trying to learn Adobe Premiere off & on over the last several years but it's got so many complex features that make it incredibly flexible, it comes with a huge learning curve.  To make it a little easier on learning and the pocketbook, Adobe presented Premiere Elements which has all the most commonly used features an interested amateur hobbyist might use.

I know my wife has already said she'd be supportive of me switching careers.  She said we'd find a way to make it work.  That might mean moving to a smaller house and doing without some of the amenities we currently enjoy too.  I know she'd even be willing to move out of state or possibly even out of country if needed.  I think I'm holding myself back because of how it would negatively affect my family, the added stress it would bring to their lives and such.  For me to do that just seems too selfish and I'm not sure I can bring myself to do it.  Perhaps one day, maybe if I ever get laid off or whatever, who knows.  Until then, it will be a minor hobby.

Making Memories

Labor Day, the last 3 day weekend for summer, brings for many people the last great opportunity for the year to do something fun and have a break from work or school before getting back into the routine of things that we're used to the other 9 months of the year. For parents like me, it means a last little mini-vacation with the kids and/or friends & relatives before everyone gets back to school schedules and other activities that come during the school year.

In my case, besides a daughter starting 2nd grade, another daughter starting Kindergarten, and the youngest starting pre pre-school play groups, it also means the older 2 daughters having schedules during the month for dance class and girl scouts. This in addition to the activities Mandy has been doing for the Gluten Intolerance Group.

This Labor Day we returned for the 2nd year in a row to a camping location we have come to appreciate and love. As a matter of fact, this was my 4th time camping out at Zion's Camp this year. I stayed in 2 different long houses, a tent, and one of the cinder block cabins. It's funny, I had my 2 older kids with me 3 of the 4 times (the one time was a father / son thing I did with my Dad & brothers.) However, it was only the 2nd time Mandy had been here and the first time was this time last year.

This year we invited Mandy's Mom, Janeen & Step dad, Ken who brought their (his) 16 year old son, Brook. Brook also brought a friend so he could have a buddy since there was nobody else his age. We also invited the rest of Ken's kids (they're all older and living on their own, some of which have kids of their own.) While Janeen's other daughter Jessica came again this year with her husband John and son Dawson (who also brought a friend), only Ken's daughter Heather accepted our invitation and brought her 2 young daughters Lucy & Ellie. Her daughters along with Dawson & his friend were about the same age as my kids, enough such that they had fun playing together anyway.

Yesterday I took one of the canoes out on the lake with John, my 5 year old daughter Sara, Dawson & his friend. The canoe is faster than the row boats and easier than the pedal boats here.
While I've always had this fear of going under water, the instability of the canoe was exciting, exhilarating, and yet scary at times when the small boat would rock. I initiated the activity as it's part of my self-motivated plan to overcome my lifelong fear and after paddling down to the other end of Coon Lake and back, I had my fix and the kids had a blast as well.

This camping was part of Mandy's plan inspired by an article she read in The Ensign that I wrote about earlier this year and so here we are, me without an internet connection and barely any cell service, making memories with our family and me typing this post into wordpad on my laptop since I've refused to install Microsoft Office and haven't had a need to install Open Office yet. Perhaps I'll do that when I get home, back to broadband land, and after I upload this post.

Retail Opposites

A friend of mine recently published this post regarding a recent trip to Sears where he recalls the poor customer service he had there. When you go to an establishment, it's not unreasonable to expect a certain level of service and when that expectation is not met, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth and a negative emotion associated with that store that you remember for the next time you want to shop for an item that store sells.

I would like to submit that, in general, our customer service experiences are either on par or moderately sub par with our expectations and this decline in good customer service has made it such that while we still expect the same level of customer service we always have, we may not be as surprised or disappointed when our expectations are not met since it has happened so many times before. Perhaps this is partially my fault when, to get lower prices, I shop at stores that probably hire people that don't require high wages or high skills & experience and are usually somewhat easy to replace.

Having said that, I think that when we get exceptional customer service it also leaves an impression on us. This is what reminds us that price isn't everything and neither is location. I say this in reference to my recent drive down to Lacey, WA where the only Cabela's store on the west coast is. That's a 40 mile drive for me. Every time I pass by it on I-5, I am always on my way to somewhere else like Oregon and I have the wife & kids with me who just want to get to where we're going and get out of the car.

We took the drive down there and it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to get there. First of all let me say this store is huge. It looks like it should be a warehouse store from the outside but is very much like a department store on the inside. As far as what's in the store and what it looks like I'll just say that it's amazing, there's lots to choose from, and many things I didn't even know existed. There's even an artificial mountain as the centerpiece for the store that displays all kids of taxidermy animals and birds from small marmots to Elk, Antelope, and Mountain Goats. Underneath even has an aquarium with real fish. Large salmon, halibut, trout, etc. There's even a section for African animals like Lions and Elephants. If you enjoy outdoor activities, there's something there for everyone.

Ok, back on topic and getting to the point of this whole post. The people there were very visible, made their presence known to the customers, and were not shy about stopping whatever they were doing to ask if you needed any assistance. They're the type of people that seem to have an eye for that look on customers faces that just says, "I could use some help please." My Dad was looking for a specific watch and while he was looking in the glass case he was asked if he would like to look at anything in particular. He replied that he hadn't found what he was looking for and was directed to another section of the display cases to where the item was located. He had questions about the item and the employee was able to answer what they knew about it and on specifics regarding how the item worked or how to use a particular feature, when they didn't know they opened it up, let my Dad handle the watch and check out the manual that came with it.

Ok not overly impressive so far but later when we were in an entirely different part of the store this same employee happened to be there as well. It wasn't even on the same floor (there's two floors). And again my Dad had that look and so again this employee approached and inquired if assistance was needed. This is the part that is unusual because typically an employee is trained on how to work in a specific section of the store and outside that section they are lost and try to not make eye contact with customers. Not so in this case. This person was knowledgable in this area of the store as well and was happy to help.

I've been in so many large stores like this that employ people that have no idea about other areas of the store and sometimes you're lucky if they even know anything about how to do their job in the area of the store they are assigned to. It becomes frustrating when you go into a store looking for assistance on an item they sell and you know more about it than they do so, like my Dad, you end up teaching them about it but still leave without your questions answered due to a lack of knowledgeable staff even if you can get someone to engage you. I will purposefully and obviously look around like I'm lost in the hopes that an employee walking by will ask if I need assistance rather than simply walk by without acknowledging my presence with a hello, eye, contact, etc.

For a great overall retail experience that includes a great selection, helpful & friendly staff, with a delicious variety of meats (like buffalo, wild boar, ostrich, etc) served at the deli & grill, visit Cabela's. It's worth the drive.

The Mountain!

Every clear day in the Puget Sound area the weather is neither sunny, nor cloudy. I mean technically it is in meteorological terms but to us natives the weather is judged great if "the Mountain is out". This, in the south Sound anyway, is of course Mt. Rainier. Any time I have my kids in the car and I can see the mountain I shout out "The Mountain!".

After the first several times of no response eventually my 7 year old Jennifer responded letting us know that she both heard me and was somewhat tired of me saying it by repeating my exclamation in a very bored tone as if I had just told a very cheesy joke, the kind our high school history teachers would tell.

Jennifer's middle name is Eden which meaning is translated as something meaning Paradise. When Jennifer sounded bored with my exclamation of The Mountain, I decided I needed to instill some excitement and memories of the beauty and majesty of Mt. Rainier in her and my other children. The main visitors center, located at 5400 feet is at the location on the mountain called Paradise. When I told Jennifer this and that I was going to take her there she was suddenly excited at the prospect of going to the place that represents the meaning of her name.

So after planning and scheduling we finally went up the mountain this week. My parents & brother Chris came along in their vehicle as well. It had been hot & muggy all week and this was a nice break from the heat of the house & was a little cooler at the higher elevation or so at least it felt that way. Entrance was $15 for our car and $10 lifetime pass for any National Park now that he's of qualifying age. We drove to Kautz creek where there was a hiking trail, picnic tables made of recycled material, and overly smelly "bathrooms". I didn't go in as I could smell it as I drew near the door. It was 1pm by this time and everyone was hungry so we stopped here for a picnic lunch that we had packed.

We drove on 3 miles up the road and stopped at Longmire which is about 7 miles from the Nisqually park entrance at the southwest corner of the park. We heard on the parks AM broadcast station that there was a free tram that ran every 30 minutes on the weekend that would take passengers from Longmire to Paradise with a stop in between at Cougar Rock. We all boarded the next bus which saved both our vehicles 22 miles worth of gas round trip. Good thing too as the Paradise parking log sign said "Full" when we got there.

We were dropped off right in front of the Henry M. Jackson visitors center. I explained to Jennifer that this is where I proposed to her mom almost exactly 10 years ago at the very top observation deck while she was on one of the center benches relaxing. It is also the building where my dad proposed to my Mom.

There was a bucket of snow right inside that was put there for people to touch. As I started exploring the visitors center, I found that what I had hoped to share with Jennifer was noticeably absent. She had been to a couple free presentations at the library having to do with stuff they can experience outside like watershed areas, insects, etc. I figured since she enjoyed that, she would love the displays of the animals and wildlife they had at the visitors center.

To my dismay the displays I remembered from the last time I was there a few years ago had been changed as part of a centenial celebration and the theater exhibit was entirely closed in preparation for being moved to the new visitors center opening this fall.

At least we got to view people at Camp Muir with my Dad's optical toy he brought along.

I didn't know there was going to be a new visitors center but there's a poster about it downstairs and how the new building will be extremely more energy effecient and able to withstand all the snowfall, melting the snow on the roof, keeping the place warm, etc. The existing Henry M. Jackson building was opened in 1966 and will be torn down next spring which I was dissapointed to find out as I will never get to share those memories with my daughters but at least we got to visit it one last time before it's gone forever.

It is The Mountain and I got a collectors patch that I'll put on my backpack and a Mount Rainier National Park spinning keychain to add to my growing collection of keychains from places I've visited (and some I haven't from my brother like Germany and Iceland). We'll try to return again in Feb. when the beautiful snow should be covering the area and then visit the new visitors center and recently redecorated Paradise Inn lodge.