4 October 2009 - Conferences

This week was a week of conferences. Every year I attend the conference of the International Association for Computer Information Systems (IACIS), and pretty much every year, it's on General Conference weekend. This year it was nice because I did not have to travel -- IACIS was in Pittsburgh for the first time in its 49 year history. So I commuted into the city Wednesday through Saturday to attend. It is always excellent to see my old grad school professors and friends.

I'm going to confess to something, so that you can all learn from my mistakes. On Friday night I was leaving the conference in downtown Pittsburgh to go to an area just outside the city where some grad school friends and I were going to eat Chinese food. Traffic was bad and the narrow road I was on was under construction, and it was rush hour. I was late for the dinner appointment, and I took a wrong turn and got stuck in traffic going the wrong way. There was no traffic going the other way, all I needed to do was make a quick three-point turn to get headed the right direction again. In my haste (and admittedly a little frustration), I swung my truck around as far as I could (did I mention the road was narrow), and then threw it in reverse to get turned around before traffic from the other direction arrived. As I quickly backed up, I failed to see a low, but *very* firmly planted guard rail behind me, and I smashed into it with my back bumper. If you click on the pic, you can see the damage even better.

Now, you probably noticed that in addition to a smashed bumper, the tailgate of my truck is pretty badly rusted. That's been happening for a while now, and I've been thinking about replacing it anyway.So I went ahead and ordered a new bumper and tailgate and took the bent bumper off for now. I'll put up some new pics once the little truck has had time to heal. It's 17 years old now, but never costs me a dime (except when I wreck it), and it runs too well to consider getting rid of it!

Since IACIS is only a half day on Saturday each year, I usually get to catch some of the Saturday sessions of general conference. Since I'm the bishop, I get to go open the church for those who don't have it at home (even though I do and Joanne stays home and watches it with the girls).
While I was over at the church for many hours on Saturday and Sunday, I took this picture of the bishop's office door. The door isn't what's remarkable, but rather, the six plaques on either side of it are. We have six full-time missionaries from our ward out right now. From left to right and top to bottom they are:

Devin Young, Long Beach CA, June 2008-2010
Will Urban, Provo UT, January 2009-2011
Kevin Moorehouse, Buenos Aires West Argentina, September 2009-2011
Robert Ealy, Bakersfield CA, November 2007-2009
Calvin Bergmann, Salt Lake City South UT, June 2008-2010
Robert Smith, Santo Domingo Dominican Republic, September 2009-2011

We are very proud of each of these young men and their dedication to the gospel of Jesus Christ.