On Sunday, we didn't really do all that much for Easter.  We USUALLY do the eggs and candy and everything like that on the Saturday before Easter, but since my older son and I had TWO performances of On Golden Pond on Saturday, we decided to postpone it until this upcoming Saturday so we would have the time to spend to have more fun.

So on Sunday evening, we decided to color Easter eggs.  I boiled the eggs in the afternoon and in the evening, I was headed into the kitchen to get the dye ready.  Both of my sons were in the family room watching a movie.  Suddenly, the younger son started crying.  I looked over and his glasses were in two pieces.

We THOUGHT he was crying because his glasses had broken.  He was just adjusting them and the bridge between the lenses just snapped.  That might have been PART of the reason he was crying.  But the larger part of the reason behind his tears was because his eye was hurting.  He could hardly open his eye at all.

Fortunately there's an InstaCare nearby.  Fortunately, it was open.

When the doctor came in, he first put a numbing drop in my son's eye.  That made things a LOT better.  Then the doctor put some dye in younger son's eye and we looked at it under a black light.

His cornea was scratched almost from one side of his iris to the other.  No WONDER the poor boy was in pain!  Fortunately, even though it was a long scratch, it wasn't a deep scratch.  The doctor sent us away with a prescription for an antibiotic ointment (kind of like Neosporin, but for eyes) to soothe his eye and to keep it from getting infected.

The next adventure of the night was finding a pharmacy in Utah County that was open after 8:00 on a Sunday night.  That's another blog post entirely.

I shaved my goatee.  I don't really like facial hair.

Actually, that's not true.  I don't mind facial hair.  I just don't really like it on ME.

GJ?

He was my High School band director. Gary James Tangen.

Mr. Tangen wasn't your typical band director. He was a large man with a rather large, protruding gut. He was a bit gruff, with long "lamb chop"sideburns. He usually smelled of a mixture of cigarettes, coffee, and old spice. During the summer, when he wasn't teaching school, he was a long-haul truck driver. He certainly looked more like a truck driver than a band director.

But he definitely had the knowledge and love of music. Once in a while, he would drag out his trumpet and play along with us. (I hear it happened more in the jazz band.) He'd tell us stories about his younger years and the groups that he played with, or about when he met Doc Severinsen, a trumpet player whose trumpet case (he says) he wasn't even worthy to carry.

I took clarinet lessons from him while I was in High School. His daughter, the best clarinet player around (and currently principal clarinettist for the Billings Symphony), was one of my best friends. Like most wind instrument players at Billings Senior High School during the Tangen years, I loved my band director.

One of Mr. Tangen's goals, beyond that of having the best band around (Don't talk to me about marching bands though, ok?), was to help young adults learn about life. He taught us to take responsibility for ourselves and he taught us how to get along and become productive members of society.

Mr. Tangen had four rules that he expected all of his students to follow in band, in school, on tours, and at performances. I think that these four rules, if followed by more people in this world, would help make this world a much better place. So here, for your reading enjoyment, are Gary Tangen's four rules:

1. Know your part.

This has obvious meaning in a group of budding musicians. If you don't know your part, you can't contribute to the overall musicianship of the group. Yet, I believe that this simple statement has impact far beyond its application to membership in a band.

In my work life, I have worked with a lot of people who know their part. They have the expertise and knowledge needed to do their job and they have the ability to apply that knowledge to the projects that they're working on. Additionally, they're happy to share this knowledge with others. These people know their part and they are more productive and better employees because of it.

Knowing your part will keep you from sticking your nose in someone else's business when it doesn't belong there. Knowing your part will help you take care of yourself while not meddling in other peoples' affairs.

2. Wear the right clothes for the gig.

Again, the meaning of this rule is obvious when applied to a band, but the implications reach much farther. During the last couple of weeks, I interviewed different candidates for software engineering positions. Some of them didn't even bother to dress appropriately for the interview. All other things being equal, we ended up hiring one candidate over another because of how he dressed for the interview.

If you're dressed appropriately for the event you're attending, not only will you be more comfortable, but you'll also spare yourself embarrassment and others discomfort.

3. Love your neighbor. Mr. Tangen used to say, "you don't have to like him, but you d*** well better love him."

What a different world we'd live in if everyone followed this simple rule! I doubt it's possible to like everyone, but it IS possible to treat everyone with courtesy and respect. There are certain people I can't stand being around, but that doesn't mean those people have to KNOW that I can't stand being around them. I'm not going to go out of my way to find opportunities to be near them, but when I AM near them, I'll treat them well.

Isn't this the second great commandment set forth by the Savior?

4. Don't be a jerk.

This is my favorite of Mr. Tangen's rules. It was the "catch-all" for when any of the other three rules didn't apply. It covered late-night pranks in hotel rooms on band trips. It covered how bands often treated substitute teachers. This rule also implied "don't be an idiot." It is closely tied to rule 3.

This is also the rule that Mr. Tangen would often call people on. If someone was being a jerk (or an idiot), Mr. Tangen would have no problem whatsoever berating the jerk in front of whomever was present, often the whole band. That seemed to cure jerkiness pretty quickly...at least until the smart of the public humiliation wore off.

Those are Mr. Tangen's (GJ's) four rules. Learn them. Live them. Love them.

A year and a half ago (7 September, 2006, to be precise), I wrote a blog entry entitled "A Face Full Of Braces."

Today, he is all smiles, because he is DONE!

Check out the picture from that blog entry for what his teeth looked like before. (I didn't get one pre-braces, stupid me.) And here is what he looks like today!

That's the last picture with braces! Here's his first picture without:

I can only imagine how he's feeling, because I never did the braces thing. But look how beautifully straight his teeth are. Hooray!

It turns out that I don't have another cold.

It's a pretty major sinus infection.  The doctor told me that it's a bacterial infection secondary to all of the viral stuff I've been hit with.  All that viral crap wore down my system and now the bacteria decided to take over for a while.

So now I have antibiotics to wipe out the bacteria.  I have a decongestant to let me actually breathe through my nose.  I have less stress at work so I can actually get some rest and start to build up my immune system again.

Hopefully, I'll be over this soon.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

I'm getting a cold.  Again.

Ugh.

This very difficult week is finally over.

I've been under quite a bit of pressure at work. I mentioned in an earlier blog post that my product had gone Beta. Little did I know that there would be two more "refreshes" of this beta before it became official. So I was rushing to get a couple of features added during the last month. It went right down to the wire, but I actually got it done. This afternoon before I left work, I published all of the "beta" stuff and finally finished something that seems to have been hanging over my head for quite some time now. It's a good feeling.

Add to that the fact that tonight was opening night for the play that I'm in. That meant that this past week was "tech"week. We were in rehearsal every night from 6:30 until after 10:00. That left precious little time for anything other than sleep.

Most days this week consisted of:

• Waking up
• Getting my older son to school
• Going to work
• Teaching
• Picking my older son up at home and reheating some dinner
• Taking my dinner to rehearsal and eating it quickly before I went on stage
• Running through the play
• Getting notes from the director
• Going home and preparing my next lecture
• Crashing in bed without having practiced my guitar.

Add to all of this the fact that my younger son was sick and my older son had parent-teacher conferences. It was NOT a fun week.

But the release is out and the opening went very well. The audience was responsive, and I'm VERY proud of how well my son did for his first time on stage. Incredibly proud. We went out for ice cream with the cast after the show.

I'm glad it's over though. It's time to sleep now.

You can't make this stuff up.

A Developmental Math teacher at UVSC received an email from one of her distance learning students. Here's the unedited email (with the student's name removed to protect the guilty):

I have a question you may think is a bit strange...or maybe you've heard this one before. Is it considered cheating if I have the Quadratic Formula tattooed somewhere on my body that is visible while I take the test?

I'm asking because it seems like I've had teachers who didn't care if we brought a paper in with us to take the test, as long is it only had the formulas we might need and not the actual answers to the test.

Besides, I'm trying to get into engineering, and it just seems like having the most useful formulas tattooed somewhere on my body would make my life SO much easier in the long run.

I'm absolutely serious, so I'm hoping for a reply...no matter how funny it sounds :0) I just don't want to get in trouble, so if it's not allowed, then I'll hold off on getting the tattoo.

Wow.

Just...

Wow.

I found a new WordPress theme and I really quite like it.  I hope that you do too.

As a matter of fact, I found a hundred free themes.   You might like some of them.  If you're looking for a good WordPress theme, this site is worth a click!

Some years, we get a leap second or two.  You probably didn't even notice, did you?

Actually, the last leap second we had was in 2005 when 1 second was added to the 31st of December.

Why?  Broadcast standards for civil time, called "Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)" is measured by stable atomic clocks.  Solar time is determined by the angle of the sun in the sky.  The problem is that the rotation of the earth is continually slowing, though at a slightly variable rate.  This means that UTC and solar time aren't exactly the same.  So once in a while, to keep UTC and solar time in step with each other, they add a leap second.

There's your interesting tidbit of information for the day.

Happy February 29th.  These only come around every four years you know.

Well... except for century years.  Those are only leap years if they are divisible by 400.  That means that the year 2000 was a leap year, but the year 1900 was not, neither will 2100 be.

There is an old English tradition that women may make a proposal of marriage to men, only in leap years.  Some cases restrict this even further in that the proposal may only be made on February 29th.  If the man rejects such a proposal, he should soften the blow by providing a kiss, one pound currency, and a pair of gloves (or sometimes, a silken gown).

So ladies, go out and propose to your man today.  At the very least, you'll get a kiss, a couple bucks, and a pair of gloves or a new dress.  Unless, of course, your man is a complete cad.  In which case, WHAT ARE YOU DOING PROPOSING TO A COMPLETE CAD??

Happy Leap Day!