And for your enjoyment, there is a house JUST like this in my parent’s neighborhood. Pretty impressive!

Follow-up (11:00am):

It has been snowing like a <insert word of choice> here.  In fact, snow was so bad this morning that we lost power for almost an hour, and now they’ve closed the only road into our subdivision because of high winds and huge snow drifts.

At the road closure, picture courtesy of KSL

Our deepest gratitude goes out to the family, friends, and fellow Americans who work to protect this great country.  Thank you for all that you do!

More pictures are in the photo album (top-left), and Trish and Kelly have their own blog up at http://kellyandtrishglenn.blogspot.com/.

Vegas is a surprisingly fun place for a couple.  I don’t know if I’d bring kids, but for two adults there is tons to see and do.  Here are some highlights:

A nice panoramic view of a section of the Strip (taken from the Venetian, where my conference was held).

Treasure Island at night.

Some scattered celebrities we met at the conference.

Yup, she really is that cute.  I’m a lucky man!

Outside the Luxor.

The rest of the pictures are in our Photo Album - link is at the top-left!

Every job I’ve ever had has required SOME use of a Microsoft Office product. Whether it’s graphs in Excel, or Powerpoint presentations for the management team, or writing up a timecard in Word - everyone is stuck using Microsoft Office at some point in their life.

And when you’re a student, sheesh - you may as well just tattoo MSOffice to your forehead. I spent half my time in college on SOME Office product.

Anyway, Office does a lot of things right. No doubt about that. But such functionality comes at a high price: the Standard version is $399 new, the Professional version is $499, and the cheapest version - the stripped-down Home & Student version - is $149. (All prices USD) I don’t know about you, but if I had a spare $149 lying around, I wouldn’t want to spend it on MSOffice.

Fortunately, there’s an alternative to all this!  The wonderful world of free, open-source software provides an excellent replacement for Microsoft Office.  The product?  OpenOffice.org.

(As you can probably imagine, the OpenOffice.org homepage is http://www.openoffice.org)

OpenOffice.org (or OOo) comes with 5 core programs:

Writer - Word Processor (like Microsoft Word)
Calc - Spreadsheet (like Microsoft Excel)
Impress - Presentations (like Microsoft PowerPoint)
Draw - Vector Graphics Editor/Basic Desktop Publishing program (like Microsoft Publisher or CorelDRAW)
Base - Database (like Microsoft Access)

Each of these programs is an easy switch for someone used to the MSOffice counterpart, and the best part?

THEY ARE COMPLETELY FREE.

Besides working similarly to the MSOffice products, OOo can also import and export your existing MSOffice files.  Writer can open and save Word documents, Calc can open and save Excel spreadsheets, Impress can open and save Powerpoints - so you don’t even have to lose your existing documents.

Honestly, OOo is one of the most impressive pieces of software I have ever used, paid or not.  Its uncanny similarity to MSOffice products - combined with faster load times, improved stability, and no price tag - made it a total no-brainer switch for me.  Even better, they just released version 3.0 this week, and the new features and improved performance make the switch to OOo easier than ever before.

For more information on why OOo is awesome, I’d highly recommend starting here:

http://why.openoffice.org/why_great.html

And if you find the lack of a price tag dubious, here’s an explanation of why OOo is free:

http://why.openoffice.org/why_free.html

Nine Days has been one of my favorite alternative/power-pop bands since I first heard their hit single “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” from their 2000 album The Madding Crowd.  (I’m sure you’ve heard the song - “This is the story of a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world, and while she looks so sad in photographs, I absolutely love her when she smiles.”)  Nine Days is particularly unique for their use of two lead singers - and, even more surprising, both singers are good!  This is one of the few no-need-to-press-skip-repeatedly albums I own.

Anyway, I decided to look the band up to see if they’d released any other albums since The Madding Crowd in 2000.  Turns out they’ve tried, but due to disagreements and difficulties with their record label these albums have yet to come to fruition.

The silver lining to this story is that the band has posted a bunch of songs online FOR FREE.  Check out their free song selection by clicking the “Music” link at www.mr-tea.com/ND/. (In total I counted over 60 tracks available for download! Wow!)

Also, this may surprise you, but musicians have to pay bills too.  :)  If you like their free music, support Nine Days by acquiring their one completed studio album.  It’s only $6.99 new from Amazon ($8.99 as mp3 downloads).  Click on the album picture above to be linked to the album’s Amazon page.

(Fun fact: do you know where the title “The Madding Crowd” is derived from?  No?  “Far from the Madding Crowd” is a famous classical novel by Thomas Hardy.  Not coincidentally, John Hampson - one of Nine Days’ lead singers and guitarists - is a high-school English teacher.)

Along those lines, I’m starting a new section of the blog called “I Like Free“.  My hope is to periodically post things that you - our faithful blog readers - can acquire for absolutely nothing.  I know, I know - it’s too awesome to describe.  Feel free to send me cash donations if you find this information useful.

(Although, I suppose that sending me cash donations in return for notifying you of free stuff would defeat the purpose of the entire project….argh.  Forget it.)

I’m starting this blog topic because I realized today that over 90% of the software I use is FOSS (”Free and Open Source Software“).  Legal, free software is one of the amazing benefits of the internet age, but I’m quickly discovering that not everyone knows about FOSS and it’s many benefits.  As such, I hope to pass along some of the cool stuff I’ve discovered, and hopefully in return you’ll be able to share this information with others that could benefit.

Disclaimer: Sorry to all you pirates out there, but I will only be sharing information on software that is LEGALLY available for free.  I strongly, absolutely, completely and unequivocally condemn all forms of software and media piracy.  Do not participate in that crap.

For those unfamiliar with the Simpsons, the above picture is based off this poster:

And here’s the coolest part of this story!

The artist of this magnificent little piece of work originally uploaded the image to her deviantART page. (For those who don’t know, deviantART is one of the premiere user-generated art sites on the net - think of it as MySpace for artists.)  Within days the picture became so popular that it was featured on the deviantART homepage, then picked up on digg.  From there it inevitably spread across the internet and blogosphere until it ultimately landed on ABC News.

From there, the image eventually made it all the way to Matt Groening - as in Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons - and this previously unknown artist was offered a job with Bongo Comics, Groening’s comic book company.  Rumor has it that she is now working on the relaunched Futurama.

Moral of the story?  SHARE YOUR TALENTS!  You never know who might notice.

BTW, she has also done a fantastic Futurama-as-anime pic:

Check out more of spacecoyote’s impressive work at www.spacecoyote.com.

2. Sweet, sweet college football.  BYU 59, UCLA 0.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

3. American Idol, and not just because of the new season.  (Although having a 4th judge sounds like a good idea, provided the judges don’t talk as much as they have in past seasons.  One more incorrectly diagnosed “pitchy” comment from Randy and I’m gonna punch the TV.)  The AI winner from last year - David Cook, of course! - is releasing his debut album on November 18th.  I can’t wait to hear what he and Raine Maeda put together.

4. Other great fall TV (aka The Office and Heroes).  The season 4 finale of The Office was one of the funniest TV episodes I have ever seen.  (”You cheated on me? When I specifically asked you not to?”)  Will Jim finally propose?  Will Angela leave Andy for Dwight?  And as for Heroes - well, Jess and I recently watched all of season 1 and 2 in less then 72 hours.  That sums up how we feel about Heroes.

5. Beautiful fall weather.  Temperatures comfortably between 75 and 85, the occasional rainstorm, and no school to tarnish it.  Ahhhh.

6. My birthday!  I’ll be 25 this year.  I don’t know whether it’s better to think of that as “halfway to 50″ or “only a quarter of the way to 100.”  Both interpretations seem to suck.

7. I’ve finally finished a complete rewrite of my award-winning-ish novel manuscript.  After a couple finishing touches, I’m heading back into the horrible world of manuscript submission to agents and publishers.  Let’s pray for minimal rejections this time around (although Jessica stands by her comment that it’s good for me to get “a little rejection,” whatever THAT means…).

8. The end of this month marks 3 years since Jess and I first met.  Man, it’s gone by fast, and each year gets better then the last!  Yay for marrying your best friend!

9. Elections.  This will be the first presidential election I’ve voted in, and it’s turned out to be a surprisingly interesting little contest.  Though I’m not registered with either party, I’d have to say that my current vote is leaning towards the McCain/Palin ticket - but the upcoming debates could certainly play a role in adjusting this…

10. November will mark one year at my current job.  I really don’t mind my current work situation, and hopefully my one-year mark will translate into “big fat raise.”  Not likely, but I can certainly hope! 

So, Labor Day weekend was the beginning of school for a lot of people, namely those who go to BYU.  My mom brought Stephanie out to BYU with Lizzy in tow.  It was awesome to see them and have a girl’s shopping trip!!!  Of course Lizzy and I enjoyed trying to find ways to entertain ourselves while we were at WalMart for two hours stocking Steph up with enough groceries to feed an army!  Hehe.  I also had fun buying clothes for Lizzy as a belated birthday present.  She’s the only non-adult girl on either side of the family, so I don’t get to buy girlie stuff very often.  We took really cute pictures of her new outfits!

Sunday saw us at the Parkinson’s (my mom’s parents) up in Logan.  It was fun to see lots of relatives and eat yummy ham and funeral potatoes!  (a Parkinson favorite)  Of course it poured rain on the drive home so we were all grateful for Tanner’s excellent driving skills.

Mom and Lizzy left early Monday morning.  It was still pouring when Tanner, Steph and I had the pleasure of packing her dressers and “groceries enough for an army” into our Explorer.  I swear it was 95 on Saturday!  Monday was freezing!!!.  Lucky for us it wasn’t raining in Provo when we unloaded the stuff.  Whew!

Then we met up with Tanner’s parents and Carrie (who is a freshman at the Y this year).  Here’s where I put a plug in for the restaurant Noodles ‘n’ Company: they really are awesome!  Great pasta!  Great prices!  Anyway, we ate there and then HAD to go shopping at the mall.  Oh darn.  After that,  Tanner and I visited our alma mater to show Carrie around a little.  I haven’t done that much walking since I graduated!

So good luck to Stephanie and Carrie this year and all you other bums who are still in school!!!  hehe