Author: Sam

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Faith Musings of Sam

Seasons and Sacrifice

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We are often asked how long we plan to travel. The answer is both simple and complicated.

There are things we  enjoy, and things we believe strongly in, that do not fit well with a traveling lifestyle. I love woodworking, home automation technologies, and technology meetup and hack fests. Jess loves regular photography shoots, regular gym access, a pantry, and neighborhood friends for the kids. We miss having more opportunities to teach our children the value of hard physical labor. Though we attend local church meetings every Sunday, we all miss other regular church activities.

We believe that life should be balanced, but not necessarily in each moment, or even in each season of life. Some seasons have more school and less money. Some have more work, more driving kids to activities, and housework. We are blessed to be able to spend this season of our life traveling. This season requires the sacrifice of some good things for the overall experience.

Sacrifice is the practice of giving up something good for something better.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…” – Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

We love traveling. We love how it directs the time we spend, the places we go, and the act of intentionally choosing each day the way we will love. We will travel as long as it supplies, for this season of our lives, what our family needs. This season could be a few short months, or may extend into years. I am confidant that we will know the end when we get there, and that this season will have been a success.

A new season will begin, and it will be time to spend time on other things, we will move our life in a different (and perhaps slightly more normal) direction. But today? Tomorrow? Onward, little Family, to new and exciting places!

Categories
Daily Life

Irregular Mail and Credit Card Trouble

We pulled into a gas station a few nights ago on our way home. On autopilot, I pulled out my wallet, and selected the card we always use for gas. Instead of asking for my zip code, the pump terminal presented a message I haven’t seen in awhile: “Card Expired.”

Um, What? A quick inspection of the card confirmed that it had in fact expired a few days before. We usually find out that our credits cards are about to expire when the new cards show up in the mail. Our mail turned out to the the problem.

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For the past few months, we’ve been using a mail forwarding service called Traveling Mailbox. We have a temporary forward set up from our address in Utah to our address with the service, and we request our mail when we have a known address for a bit. We had sent a bundle of mail to the RV park in Anaheim where we stayed during our Disneyland visit, but the package had never arrived. A few days after we left, the bundle showed up….. back in North Carolina, where our Traveling Mailbox address is. For some reason difficult to figure out, the postal service had refused to deliver our mail to the RV park, and returned it.

We checked the contents, and indeed, our new credit cards were in the bundle. Now, the only option we have is to send the mail here to San Diego, and make sure it gets here before we leave.

We have mixed feelings about Traveling Mailbox as a service. They do a good job themselves, but we would have appreciated some guidance from them in managing the postal service, and how to get our mail reliably. I imagine that mail forwarding services all suffer a bit of the same fate on account of working with the postal service.

By the time our new cards get here, they will have traveled to Utah, North Carolina, California, North Carolina again, and finally to San Diego. Getting important mail can be painful at times, but somehow we manage it anyway!

I did get gas by the way: having a few cards for situations just like this means that we had backup in place. Just as long as they don’t all expire at the same time, anyway!

Categories
Airstream Accessories California

How to Make your Smartphone Battery Last ALL day at Disneyland

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Smartphones are useful tools, but their short battery life can cause plenty of frustration at someplace like Disneyland. Having spent a week at Disneyland, my smartphone battery never dipped below 50%. Read on to learn my tricks:

Disable WiFi and Bluetooth

You won’t be using these anyway, and they will waste lots of battery looking for connections.

Disable Mobile Data

This is the big one. Turning off Mobile data saves battery in two important ways. First, mobile data takes lots of battery power. This is particularly true in crowded areas like theme parks, where thousands of cellphones are fighting for limited cell signal. Second, inbound push notifications cause your phone to ‘wake up’ to process the message. When you disable data, you prevent push notifications from causing your phone to wake up and burn battery in the process.

Use a Desktop Widget to toggle data on and off easily. Some quite useful things on your smartphone (maps, line wait time apps) will need data to work. Use a desktop widget (I use Power Toggles) to make switching data on and off easy. iPhone users will need to get familiar with adjusting their settings for fast switching. There are times that having data is useful, particularly when waiting by yourself in a long, boring line. Save your data use for these times, then turn it back off when life begins moving again.

Use Text Messages (SMS) to Communicate

Using Text Messages may seem old-school in the days of Facebook and Google Hangouts, but it’s perfect for communicating in a crowd. SMS messages are sent along the same control channel that your phone uses to coordinate with cell towers, and that gives you two important advantages. First, SMS messages are extremely battery efficient. Second, SMS messages are faster and more reliable then anything requiring a data plan.

If you need to communicate with a group and don’t want to deal with sending SMS messages to everybody on your phone, use an app like GroupMe.

GroupMe assigns a new phone number for your group. One message sent to that number will be sent to everybody in the group. Note that after the group is created in GroupMe, you need to tell it to use SMS message delivery before turning your data off.

Share Later

Now that your battery will last all day, pull out that phone to take pictures and video. Then, wait till the end of the day when you have your feet up to post those pictures with friends. This not only saves battery power, but prevents you from standing in the middle of the Happiest Place on Earth with your face glued to your phone. Enjoy your experience, and share it later.

Enjoy!

Using these tricks, my phone battery was usually between 50% and 70% after a FULL day in the park. It was always ready when I wanted to snap a picture or coordinate with my friends.

Note that these tricks work well at parties, conferences, conventions, and sporting events. Apply everywhere as needed!

Categories
Maryland National Parks Washington DC

Fort McHenry and the 2013 Defenders Day Bicentenial

visiting Fort McHenry in Baltimore Maryland with Kids

Visiting Fort McHenry was a wonderful experience of connecting with history. We went with some friends from college and timed our visit for one of the Bicentennial events which celebrated the victory during the war of 1812. Although the war began in 1812, it lasted two years and ended in 1814. The Friends of Fort McHenry arranged an annual celebration starting in 2012 and culminating on the 200th anniversary in the fall of 2014.

When We Visited: September 2013

Ages of Kids: 7, 6, 3

Things to Know: The Jr. Ranger Badge is one of the more difficult ones we’ve encountered. You also need to bring your own colored pencils and a pen. Free parking, but its a bit of a walk. Definitely recommend a stroller for little ones.

While Fort McHenry is always there, additional activities included musket demonstrations, bands, plenty of folks in period clothing, and an evening of fireworks. The kids had a bit of trouble with the loud musket demonstrations, but loved exploring the fort and earning their Junior Ranger badges.

While there is plenty of history behind the fort and the War of 1812, our historical realizations focused on three things:

First, the War was all about telling the British: “No, Seriously. We mean it!” The British wanted the American Colonies and came across the ocean to bring us back under the flag of the British Empire. They soon learned that we liked being an independent nation and were not interested in their offer. The war of 1812 also involved the burning of the United States Capital.

Second, was the situation surrounding Mr. Francis Scott Key and the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. Mr. Key (a loyal American) was on a British ship out in the bay during the entire event. He was aboard the ship negotiating the release of an American prisoner, and although he secured the prisoner’s release, they overheard the British plans for an attack on Forth McHenry.  The British held Mr. Key and his released prisoner on board until after the attack was over. In the morning, Francis Scott Key raised his binoculars and through the smoke saw the Stars and Stripes “gallantly streaming”. He was so inspired, he penned the words to The Star Spangled Banner, a song which would later become our national anthem.

Lastly, we learned that the “Star Spangled Banner” does not references just any American flag. The title specifically applies to the flag with 13 stars and 13 stripes. They fly the Star Spangled Banner at the fort everyday and we were able to help with the lowering of the large day time flag, and the raising of the smaller flag they fly at night.

If you happen to be in the Baltimore area in Fall 2014, be sure to participate in the last Bicentennial Defenders Day Event!

Fort McHenry Bicentennial Event

Categories
Faith

Always a Guest at Church

Always a guest at church

We are church people (hopefully that’s obviously by now). Each Sunday we track down a local congregation to attend where we spend the day as visitors. Normal LDS culture involves attending church in an assigned time and place with the same people every week. However, being a visitor is actually really easy. The LDS congregations around the world are structured in similar ways, with consistent curriculum and Sunday School Lesson schedules. When visiting a different congregation (ward, in mormon-speak), it is common for visitors to introduce themselves, usually with your name and why you happen to be visiting. In most larger cities, there will be one or two visitors, while most smaller towns there will almost never be one.

We’ve explained ourselves enough times to have figured out that some people want the long explanation and some just want the short. We usually tell people that we are visiting, and are on a long-term road trip with our family. Those that are curious will often ask more and we share more with them, while those not very interested can then move along, happy with our answer. Occasionally we will show up WITH the Airstream and then that generates a whole new slew of questions all by itself.

Our kids have a similar situation each week. In the children’s Sunday school classes (or Primary), visitors are almost always greeted with a short song to make them feel welcome. Most children will experience this once a year or so while visiting family that lives further away. OUR kids get it every week, and they’ve gotten used to it. Even if it’s common for us, it’s a nice way to feel welcome and included. So welcome, in fact, that when I check in on them during class my kids are typically up front singing the loudest.

I really don’t mind talking about our travels, but having an easy answer has definitely helped us introduce ourselves and alleviate confusion. Explaining our situation week after week can get tedious, but we’ve learned to spot those that really would like to hear the whole story. Several times, we’ve been asked lots of questions by a curious family, often planning something similar. We do love to share what we’ve learned and hear about the dreams and plans of others.