None of the above things have anything to do with each other. They were just some of the things I got up to this last week.

My prior post mentioned that I was going to attempt to repair the manufacturing defect in one of the controllers for the new Nintendo system. It has abysmal reception; held in an odd manner, or behind one’s back, its signal drops considerably, causing difficulty in gameplay. I headed in to the workshop at my office to attempt to remedy the situation.

I watched plenty of YouTube vids on how to solder, just to refresh myself – I hadn’t done any soldering since I was much younger, under Dad’s tutelage. Finally it was do-or-die time. As soon as the solder was applied, I neglected to take any pics since I was anxious to put it back together and see if I’d destroyed anything.

Prior to disassembling the unit, I’d paced out how far away I’d need to be to get the controller to misbehave. I repeated the process, and couldn’t get far enough away to cause any degradation in signal. Huzzah!

Of course, later that week I learned that Nintendo had rolled out a fix, and would repair mailed-in controllers by inserting conductive foam. Internet speculation was that one of the assembly plants thought that the foam was part of packaging, and hadn’t included it properly. At least there’s recourse for everyone else, though my own unit’s warranty is good and properly hosed.

That evening I was at my roommate’s first-ever birthday party; as he’d been Jehovah’s Witness last year, he’d never celebrated a birthday before. Had some fun times doing karaoke.

We were just getting ready to settle down and watch a movie, when I got a text message from our EQ president. His teacher for the next day had bailed, and he hadn’t been able to find anyone to fill in, and would I kindly teach the lesson tomorrow. Fiiiiiiiiiine.

The last time I taught in Elders Quorum – or any lesson for that matter – was 2011 or 2012, back in the Alpine YSA ward. I’m not being humble when I say it was a real disaster. Luckily I had plausible deniability with this one; if it turned out badly, it was everyone else’s fault for not stepping up before the night prior 🙂 But I decided to try and make something good anyways.

I headed back from the party and got to work reading the source material: Continuing Revelation, by President Eyring. I got to this paragraph:

Not only was he then called of God to establish the true Church of Jesus Christ, but with it was restored the power to invoke the Holy Ghost so that revelation from God could be continuous.

And I recalled an object lesson used by one of my district leaders in Australia. It involved trying to use a cup to empty a basin of water, by repeatedly dipping and emptying it. The district leader had someone try this approach, then demonstrate how much faster the task could be accomplished by using a siphon, routing a rubber hose so its exit lay below the submerged entrance, causing the water to continuously flow out.

If I’d been back in Alpine I could’ve found some way to do this, but it was 11:30pm the night before and I had no resources to call upon. I puzzled over it until I came up with a more interactive approach that could be used in its stead: one person is assigned to race back and forth to move a stack of hymnals, one at a time, from one location to another. Then four other people are given the same task, and will hopefully figure out how to coordinate to form an assembly line and perform the task drastically faster.

I didn’t have time to cover this, but I would’ve very much liked to mention that this activity highlights the difference between latency and bandwidth in networking contexts. The solo participant would be able to ferry a single hymnal across the room much faster than the assembly line. However, the former approach only allows for a single hymnal to be in transit at once, while the latter allows four.

This brings to mind the old quote, “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.” I would’ve followed this up with a quiz: how much information can be stored in a milk jug full of microSD cards? Select the following invisible text to view the answer: The jug, with 25,000 cards, could hold ~1600 terabytes, and cost $1.2 million. (Source).

The last few times I’ve prepared a lesson or talk, I’ve tried to incorporate some esoteric source, just to make things more interesting. This time I cracked open the Doctrines of Salvation books I inherited from Gram. I hadn’t opened them before, and it was cool seeing the inscription inside the cover – a note from Margaret Gordon, wishing Granddad a happy birthday in 1956.

I found several neat quotes on revelation. It looks like they were geared less towards personal revelation, and more towards making sure members knew how to identify Church-scoped revelation, and how it can only come from the head of the Church – I guess they were having problems with spurious sources back in the day.

The Lord will never ignore the presiding officer and quorum of the Church, for he respects authority, as he requires us to respect authority.

We do not need to write to ask questions in regard to these things. We do not need to question them for a moment, because the Lord is not going to give a revelation to any high priest, any elder, or seventy, for this Church. It will come through the one who is so appointed.

Everything in the Church is done in order. Everything pertaining to the kingdom of God is in order, because it is obedient to law….

I also decided to incorporate one of the aspects of Mom and Dad’s New World Order pow-wows, where the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of family life were enumerated. So we had a discussion on the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of revelation. Someone, in passing, used “the Atonement” in the context of both a right and a privilege, so we had a good side discussion on whether it was more proper to view it as a right or a privilege. The consensus ended up being that it had elements of both.

We ended up getting side-tracked a bit, which was fine, but one of the things we covered that actually showed up in the source article was what kind of revelation is typically “continuous” in nature. Examples from the article were confirming revelation, that something being spoken by an authority is true; also, President Eyring made the case that feeling love for the Prophet is another form of continuous revelation.

I opened my lesson with a warning, that it’d been five-odd years since I’d last taught an EQ lesson, and the last one went quite poorly, and if you do something horribly enough the first time you won’t get asked to do it again, and my criteria for success for this lesson would be how horrible I could make it so I could have another five years of peace and quiet. Hardy har har. I wasn’t able to get through all the material I’d prepared, thankfully. Afterward, our ward’s senior missionary told me he had some good news and bad news. The good news was that I’d done a swell job; the bad news was that I’d probably be asked to teach again some time. Gee dangit.

On Wednesday we finally watched Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. We’re not quite done with the franchise though, since we skipped over Episode I, and haven’t seen Episode VII or Rogue One. Maybe we’ll just blast through them in three days this week; I’m kind of ready for non-Star Wars movies. Next up after they’re done is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

On Thursday I accidentally stayed up entirely too late playing the new Zelda game. The visuals are breathtaking.

Unfortunately, I left off playing that evening heartbroken, as I’d misplaced my trusty steed. We’d gone everywhere together thus far, and he’d vanished after I left him alone for a few too many in-game hours. However, this is therapeutic; now that I’m not so attached to any one horse, I can afford to go off exploring mountain ranges where I’d have to leave my horse behind.

On Friday I went on a triple-date to an escape room, the first time I’ve ever done one. We were trying for one of their easier rooms, but it was booked up, so we ended up doing their hardest one: Ancient Egypt.

The room involved four sub-rooms, each with clues we had to decipher. There are some clues I still don’t know the solution to, as I was in a different room working on other ones. But we made it out with five minutes to spare (out of a given sixty).

Yesterday I went on a bike ride with a friend. We traveled from Bothell, a town 10 minutes away, over to the University of Washington, and then on to the Ballard Locks. In all it was very comparable to riding from Alpine to Provo and back again. (Compare this vs that.) Which kind of shocked me; Seattle doesn’t seem as close as that.

I was incredibly sore and tired and hungry when I finally got back. Took a hot shower and a nice two-hour nap. And that’s that for my week.

I’ve been told in the past by both my manager and the senior engineer I work with that I’m staying too late at work, and I really need to just disconnect and go have a life. The point’s been raised often enough that I’m really committed to following through this time. However, as I alluded to last week, a new project just landed in my lap that has an extremely strict deadline, and I’ve been staying up quite late getting things sorted on that end. Luckily I’m at the point where all the hard effort is done, and the rest of the project will require minimal work going forward.

It’s funny, I just said how my manager wants me to go have a life and such, and I think I would be having a much rougher time of it here, but the Church really does fill up the remainder of my time. It’s lucky I finished up the hard work on this project on Tuesday, ’cause after that there was always something.

Tuesday night I had a synchronized viewing party with my old roommates from Provo. One of them, and I, had seen Battlestar Galactica all the way through, and we’d been watching on and off with the other roommate. They’re notoriously slow at these sorts of things, and it’s literally taken them over a year to work through the show. But they were finally ready to watch the finale. We hit play at the same time and enjoyed the show, then webcam’d it up for a bit afterwards, to rave and to catch up. Their cousin, my actual roommate from back then, just recently got engaged, so that’s exciting.

Wednesday night we watched Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. We’ll wrap up the marathon next week with Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. I’m not actually totally sold on the idea of skipping Episode I. Intellectually it makes all sorts of sense, and there are a lot of persuasive arguments about how the story unfolds without it. However, from my limited observation, watching Episode II without having seen its predecessor leads to confusion. The various locations aren’t adequately introduced; ‘they already know what Coruscant is and what the Senate looks like, no need for establishing shots or exposition.’ It also requires some explicit explanation of backstory for Anakin, when he starts seeing visions of his mother, and goes to visit his old planet Tatooine, and his old master Watto.

In addition, Episode II features a mystery investigation by Obi Wan. Someone who’s seen Episode I knows what they should and should not be surprised by. I had to explain to the person watching for the first time, “We don’t know anything about these clones, this wasn’t explained in Episode I, it’s all a mystery.” Kind of draws you out of the experience, I think.

Anyways. Thursday night was the third Thursday of the month, and our Service & Activities committee put on a video game night at the chapel, a Mario Kart March Madness tournament. Good times. Someone brought an N64 and the reminder of what kind of graphics prior generations worked with was eye-opening.

Last night was “Shamrocks and Murder”, a murder mystery dinner. I think I’m getting the hang of these – there’s always some character that everyone can’t stand, and they end up dead. Then anyone who had a real beef with them is the suspect, and one of this group ends up being the murderer; though I haven’t been able to use the clues to effectively narrow down the suspect list.

Today I’ll be heading in to work to use our “maker space” workshop to try and fix one of the wireless controllers for the new Nintendo console. Due to a manufacturing defect, the antenna on the left controller is not powerful enough to get a decent signal back to the console. Its etched directly into the board, right next to a large metal something-or-other, and located directly where the hand usually covers the unit. There’s a soldering point on the trace, and the plan is to attach a wire and run it down to the bottom of the unit, where it’ll hopefully get better signal out. Why the antenna wasn’t attached in the first place is beyond me. The right controller is set up in this way, just not the left. There’s an instructive YouTube video that illustrates how to run the wire, I’ll just need to refresh myself on proper soldering technique.

I disassembled the controller last night just to familiarize myself with the internals. Didn’t remove any wires, just unscrewed some cover plates. Unfortunately, when I put it back together it had far worse coverage than before, so I hope this venture is successful; it’ll make playing it quite frustrating going forward if not.

Later on tonight I’ll attend my roommate’s first ever birthday party. This time last year he was still a Jehovah’s Witness, and didn’t believe in celebrating holidays of any sort. So that’ll be fun.

Click to open these in a new tab, they look better enlarged.

Love ya!

(In which you get way more detail about the process of obtaining a video game console than you ever, ever wanted to know.)

The scene is the bedroom, early Monday morning. All Target retail stores in the area received fresh shipments of Nintendo Switch units the day prior, on Sunday. The hope is that at least one store will still have units left over.

8am rolls around, and the phone starts dialing. Nope, nope, nada, zilch. Disheartened, I prepare to mosey on down to work. When I notice that Target.com is claiming a store 25 minutes away, in a smaller town, has units in stock. Having been burned last week in a similar manner, I call over and ask pretty please if they might maybe have some units left. “Why yes, as of 20 minutes ago there were nine units left.”

I debate whether or not it’s worth it. Having spent all of 5 seconds on the conundrum, I zoom off in search of the prize. Thankfully I’m heading in the opposite direction as most people on the road at this time of day. Although, the prospect of sitting in all that traffic, empty handed, does not sound nice.

20 minutes later I’m in the Target parking lot. I prepare to exit the vehicle, patting my pocket to ensure I have my wallet. It’s not there. I left it by my bed.

Thankfully I keep my Bank of American Fork debit card in my backpack. It’s gotten me out of pickles like this before. I rush to the Electronics department, hunting for a rare attendant to badger. “Oh, yeah there’s like one unit left, they’re all up front.” <schoom>. (That’s the sound effect for “walk briskly to the front of the store”.) “Yes, certainly, I’ll be right over.” The cashier unlocks a cabinet, where I spy two units left.

She brings one over. And this is where the tale turns somewhat dour. It’s the variant with neon red+blue controllers, not the grey kind that are far more in demand. Makes all sorts of sense why these would be the only kind left in stock, but it will mean a rough clash with the rest of my A/V equipment. All in all not the end of the world, the unit is secured after all, but I know it’ll gnaw at me.

I check out anyways. A man lines up behind me and snags the very last one. I drive off to work semi-triumphantly. I end up not opening it that day, as Target’s return policy is very strict when it comes to electronics. My goal is to somehow obtain the grey variant, and return my neon one. I’m in no particular rush; the fact that I have a unit at all lets me put an upper bound on the amount of time I’ll need to wait to play the thing. If it turns out that supply chain issues mean units are impossible to come by for months, then I’ll break down and open mine up.

Tuesday rolls around, and a fellow Googler posts on an internal mailing list that he’s pre-ordered one too many grey-variant units, and wants to sell his off instead of returning it. Yes please. Grey unit secured, huzzah. The next day I pulled the same stunt to offload my neon-colored unit.

I could finally take a crack at the new Zelda game. And boy howdy, what a game. Its vast open world-ness creates ample opportunity for amazing little adventures. Like that time I engaged in a high-speed horse race deep into unknown territory, past monsters I had neither the desire nor ability to fight, just so I could catch and attempt to tame a beautiful red steed. (I failed on that last bit, I’ll have to try again when I’m leveled up; she was just too crotchety.)

Or that time I silently paraglided, in the dead of night, behind enemy lines so I could attempt to climb and activate a tower, dodging laser blasts from mecha-spiders as I clambered up its sheer face.

I’m sure there’ll be more, and I’ve only explored a tiny portion of the world so far. Let’s just say it’s definitely coming with me on the Europe trip. Though I kind of doubt I’ll be the one playing it..

All in all it’s been a much quieter week than last, which is a definite plus. Work’s picking up in pace a bit, got a tight deadline approaching that I’m fairly confident I’ll meet, but it’ll be interesting nonetheless.

Last night I attended an Ensign Symphony & Choir concert in Seattle with a friend. I’ve mentioned this group before, they’re like a lite version of MCO. Hillary Weeks, an LDS singer-songwriter, performed with them. While everyone sounded amazing, it was a tad too “pop” for me. Like, let the symphony symphonate. But that’s just nit-picking, it was a really nice performance.

Today I mostly Zelda’d, between running laundry and deep-cleaning my room.

I’m gonna have to leave the apartment soon and hunt down some grub, since a) I’ve eaten two bowls of cereal and a clementine today, and b) it’s Sunday tomorrow and I don’t really have any food here.

The title of this post comes from a very witty song a couple of friends have been putting together. I’ll leave you with a badly-angled recording of the current draft.