Boston Legal

One of my guilty pleasures is Boston Legal. For those of you who may not know, it is a continuation, if you will, of the Alan Shore character from the television show "The Practice"--another series that I enjoyed. Between the two, Boston Legal and The Practice, I prefer Boston Legal. Rather than being a serious melodrama, Boston Legal is a dark comedy playing on many societal ills--much as "The Simpsons" does.

At the same time, however, it does address some very serious issues, and does so with tact and seriousness. One such was in the episode "Stick It", where Alan Shore (played by James Spader) defends one of the women who work at the firm from tax evasion charges. During closing arguments he makes an impassioned plea for his client, which addresses the ills facing the United States as a result of the war in Iraq and the fight against terrorism. You can see a clip from the episode here. In the greater context of the show, it had a far more dramatic affect then what you see in the short clip, but nonetheless it is a very well presented oratory.

War....What is it good for?

When we went to war in Afghanistan, I understood the reasoning. I understood that it was to bring a government to account for their support and harboring of criminals, murderers and terrorists that planned and supported the tragedy of 9/11. I was in favor, as much as one can be, of the war in Afghanistan--we were seeking justice and to bring the individuals and powers responsible for 9/11 to account.

The war in Iraq I was not in favor of. Not sure why--it just didn't seem to ring true. What I was reading and hearing didn't add up. But more importantly I did not feel it was the United States' responsibility to enforce the dictates of the U.N. If the U.N. passed resolutions and mandates then it was the responsibility of that body to enforce them. Unilaterally enforcing them, as the United States was proposing, I felt was wrong. I felt that this was the perfect opportunity to force change within the U.N. Those were my objections to the war in Iraq, and why I felt and still feel it was unjustified.

So what now? Two of the blogs I read regularly have a good summary on this very subject. The first is written by my brother Rus. The second was written by a friend of mine. Both are well written and articulate some of my feelings better than I can. Take a peek.

500,000....Wow!!

All I can say is WOW!!!

Whirlpool Duet Dryer

Back when we remodeled our kitchen, we remodeled our laundry room and decided to go with a front-loading washer and dryer. After checking the reviews on the Internet and checking with Consumer Reports we decided to go with the Whirlpool Duet.

Both the washer and the dryer have worked well. The clothes are cleaned and dried rather quickly. Some heavier loads take a little longer to dry then others, and sometimes the heavier loads were a little damp (minimal) when the dryer said they were dry. Overall we have been very happy with the setup...until recently.

I have always figured Whirlpool to be a high-end name brand, that made products that lasted. So when the thermostat and now the console board went out, I was a bit surprised. In checking the literature I unfortunately found the dryer out of warranty by six months. A little surprising that it was only a one year full warranty on the dryer, with a two year limited warranty on the circuitry, and a five year warranty on the porcelain top (so the lovely Whirlpool support person stated). Interesting that they warranty the porcelain top for more years than the circuitry...you know the stuff that makes it work. But oh well, the warranty was better than the one that is currently offered--a one year limited warranty. I guess more stuff went out in the second year of operation than they expected and had to cut the warranty as their profits weren't as high.

Needless to say I was disappointed to find myself out of warranty. It really would have been nice if Whirlpool would have covered it since I was only six months out of warranty, but what should I have expected...the new models they sell now only have a one year limited warranty. I guess the profits weren't high enough once you calculated in the warranty work.

Fortunately the refrigerator we are thinking about getting next is a Maytag.

Pics Server

Well that was a pain. After longer than anticipated delays, the pics.berrett.org server is back online.

Back when I initially built the machine and brought it behind my DSL line I installed Gentoo Linux. I did this primarily because I had used Gentoo at work on my desktop and loved its ease of use, and particularly its portage program (program installation system). It was very configurable and easy to maintain. So when the pics server went down, I figured I would stay with it and upgrade the kernel to 2.6.

Man I am totally out of practice. I had a pickle of a time trying to get that machine installed and running properly. On top of that I had problems getting Apache to compile the way I needed.

So after much hassle, I switched back to what I know best--FreeBSD. Just like riding a bike--it all came back to me. Good thing or else those 7 years of working on BSDi and FreeBSD would have all been a waste. The install went quick. The only problem I ran into was that the kernel needed to be recompiled to read the SCSI disks that were formatted under Linux. Once that happened I got all the content off, reformatted the SCSI drives, and voila everything back to normal with minimal additional tinkering.

Should have run FreeBSD from the beginning. Simple, easy, great server. We had to tinker with Apache a bit, but that was relatively painless--much easier than Gentoo's install.

Berrett Pics Server

Update: My server kung-fu is not what it once was. Still down.

03-20-2006

Did I say that I disliked computers? Yes I did. Now I hate them.

The Berrett pics server (http://pics.berrett.org) is down for maintenance. Complete reinstall.

Hopefully back online by tomorrow, Sunday March 19th.

CRAP!!!

Cheers.

Computers

The Berrett Family pics server is slowly dying. The hard drive is having problems on reboot--marking one of the partitions as bad. Every time I try to fix it, it gets marked clean but when I reboot the home partition fails to mount on boot up. Once it boots, however, I can mount it just fine and everything appears to be working fine. Needless to say I am holding my breath. Makes me remember why I don't like computers a whole lot.

Speaking of computers, I have been (near) Windows free for over a year now. Back in January or so of last year my last regularly used Windows computer crapped out. My wife's genealogy laptop is the last computer I have that runs windows, and that is nearly never used. So for the past 14 months I have had the blissful life of being Windows-less. Oh sure I get the occasional freeze, and am required to force quit an application and the very rare force reboot, but on the whole I have been enjoying up-time results on my computers that are very nice--usually only have to reboot when a system upgrade occurs. When people say that Apple computers just work, they aren't kidding.

Number 9

Well, well, well. Nine years. Nine years ago my life changed dramatically. Jen and I were sitting in the doctor's office anticipating the birth of our first child three weeks later, oblivious to the shock we would shortly get. I can still picture the doctor's look of astonishment when he dumbfoundedly asked,

"Are you having any contractions?"

When Jen responded in the negative he looked more astonished and stated flatly, "You're having the baby today."

Jaws hit the floor. I was quickly ushered to the pharmacy downstairs to check out a wheelchair, and took my wife to the hospital next door. I can still picture the nurses when they asked me if I had a camera looking quite nasty at me for being unprepared for the birth of the child. They acted like it was my fault that we didn't have anything at all prepared for the birth. Like anyone is prepared 3 weeks ahead of time. Needless to say it went well. Though Ky may have come into the world as a surprise, he has been a wonderful kid since.

He is a wonderful son, and a great older brother. He always seeks to help his brothers and tries his hardest to share and do what's right. He is very conscientious of others' feelings, and works hard to involve everyone. This of course leads to some emotional breakdowns over sometimes trivial things, but he recovers well.

From a school standpoint Ky is excelling. In most of the standardized test categories he is scoring in the top 90%. He is also reading well above his age group, and we will regularly find him curled up on a couch or bed reading. His favorite right now are the "Charlie Bones" series. A couple weekends ago he read a 400 page book over the weekend. Grandpa Berrett seemed pretty proud when I related that to him.

Happy Birthday Ky.

Berrett Birthday Time

Today in celebration of Ky and Tyler's (Ky's cousin) birthday we had the Utah family over to celebrate both Ky's and his cousin's (Tyler) birthday. Tyler was born on Ky's one year birthday, so every year of his life he has been sharing the day with his cousin. His first birthday night was spent in the hospital waiting for the birth of Tyler, so from birthday one they have spent them together.

As with any Berrett get together, particularly with Brent attending, it was loud and chaotic. All the cousins had fun, and it was enjoyable from an adult standpoint. There were a couple episodes where several of the kids began crying, once because in testing the glow in the dark feature of Tyler's Nerf dart gun Ryan's dad accidentally shot Ryan in the eye. In his defense he really couldn't see Ryan in the dark. Other then a couple hurt feelings and a little blood, nothing major happened with the kids. No real harm, no foul.

Ruby River Steakhouse

Restaurant:	Ruby River
Cuisine:	Steakhouse
Rating:	Best Prime Rib, Berrett Family Favorite
Price:	Kids: $5.99-$8.99, Adults: $12.99-$25+
Location:	Salt Lake, UT, Sandy, UT, Provo, UT

As the rating states, Ruby River is one of this Berrett family's favorite restaurants. Jen and I have been going there since our first year of marriage--nearly 11 years ago. I am not sure who recommended it to me, but I am happy they did; my pocketbook, however, may not have such fondness for the recommendation.

In years gone past Ruby River was a regular monthly outing, and at times when Jen was particularly tired (pregnancy and all) it became a biweekly trip (yes I said biweekly). But alas the days of a paycheck and excess money are gone, so Ruby River is an infrequent but still favorite excursion.

The reason we went to Ruby River tonight was for Ky's 9^th birthday. It has become a family tradition to allow the kids to select a restaurant either for their birthday dinner, or for a dinner close to their birthday and more often than not they chose Ruby River, and today Ky chose it as well. Perhaps it is because of the enormous free dessert they give, or the giant foam hat they get to wear (my hunch is the hat) all the kids love going to Ruby River.

Appetizer: We always start out with the cheese fries which is a giant plate of hot fries topped with melted cheese and crumbled bacon. These go quickly as they are quite addicting, and they ALWAYS leave me disappointed that they went so quickly. Their fry sauce is also tasty. On occasion we also get their Buffalo Wings, but as I am really the only one that enjoys them, they are a limited fare (usually on my birthday). But if you like hot wings, get them at Ruby River, they are by far the best I have ever had.

Main Course: For the kids we usually get them the chicken or pasta. Neither look overly appetizing to me, and lately, the last couple times, the kids have hardly touched their chicken. We may need to look at getting them something else in the future. For Jen and I the only thing we get is the Prime Rib. It is the best I have ever had. Occasionally we will get a tougher piece, but 99% of the time the meat is tender and incredibly tasty. I have gotten the steaks in the past and they are good, but for me the only reason to go is the Prime Rib.

Atmosphere: The atmosphere is very casual, with a country theme. We have no qualms bringing the kids as the atmosphere is rather loud for a restaurant.

Overall: Good food, family friendly atmosphere. Enjoy!!

Yeah....I know

Why I expected to be able to keep up on this, I don't know. Every time something fun or interesting happens I tell myself to remember and write this on my blog, and then I forget to do it.

Some of the things that I found interesting since I last wrote:

How Heather calls Ryan "Seesan", even if you properly pronounce it for her before she says it.

How things are moving quickly and going quite well with the student teaching.

More on Heather's birthday.

The ten days we watched Jen's sister's kids while she and her husband were in the Caribbean.

The start of indoor soccer...yes I still play goalie (a little slower, but still pretty good). Most likely due to the physics involved in the gravitational attraction of larger objects on smaller ones.

My Grandma falling and cracking her ankle.

There have been numerous things I would have liked to talk about but have failed to do. Someday, someway, I will hopefully get better.

Ky's Party

Today was Ky's friend party, and since Ky is Ky he invited 13 people to the party. I am not sure how Ky decides to invite the people that he does. On the periphery it look like he is inviting the people he does in hopes of getting good presents. But on the other hand in watching the dynamics of the group, and Ky's general disposition, it seems that he invites based upon not hurting people's feelings. I am leaning towards the later.

In all the party was a great success. Ky wanted Dad's pizza, so that is what I spent most of the afternoon getting ready, and then cooking during the first 30 minutes of the party. It was good pizza (usually is when I make the dough the night before).

The kid's seemed to enjoy everything. They played "ghost in the graveyard" at the end, and many kids complained to their parents that they didn't want to go when they were picked up--good sign.

Needless to say it was not as chaotic as Taylor's Party, but it did have its moments of frustration.