Wright Place Right Time

This week we went to the National Air and Space Museum.  Elaine and the kids went earlier without me and I finished up the work day and then joined them.  I had forgotten how much there is to see there.  They were a couple hours ahead of me and only saw a small portion of the museum.

After I arrived we were able to see two parts:  "How Things Fly" and "The Wright Brothers".  I enjoyed "How Things Fly" a lot because every display was "hands on" and taught some principle associated with how things fly.  It was fun to see the kids try to figure out the "how" and "why" of each display.  The mechanical engineer in me absolutely loved it and I think the kids had fun too.

I was so happy to discover that the museum had a Wright Brothers display.  Immediately I hoped it would make up for our disappointing trip to Kittyhawk two weeks ago where we arrived at the park 15 minutes before closing and didn't get the full experience.  The display at the museum didn't let me down.  It was really well done with good information and some hands on displays as well.

One of the Wright Brothers displays that was interesting to me described Orville Wright as easily doing well in school, inquisitive, super smart, quiet, and having a creative/artistic side.  When I read that I immediately felt like it was describing my son Sam.  When I pointed it out to him he seemed to like the comparison.

The rest of the display was great too.  There were hands-on models of wings and gliders/planes constructed like the Wright Brothers', real pieces from the Wright Brothers' original gliders/planes, the actual structure of one of the original planes with new fabric on the wings, and realistic animated videos re-creating those historic first flights.  The models of the different airplane parts (wings, structures, components, etc) showed how the Wright Brothers worked around weaknesses in their designs and solved problems.  I really liked how they described the Wright Brothers' success as the result of an iterative, incremental, experiment-improve cyclic process.  They would make a design, fly it like a kite, refine the design, fly it as a kite again, and then ultimately if it was good enough try it themselves.  I think a lot of progress in life is iterative and incremental.

Here is a neat quote from Orville that I liked:  “Isn’t it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so long so that we can discover them?”  Included in those secrets were the three things that they discovered about an aircraft as it flies:  pitch, yaw, and roll.  These three things together describe an aircraft's position in the air as it flies and controlling them is still the basis for controlled flight.

The Wright Brothers display definitely made up for the disappointment of our visit to Kittyhawk.  I'm glad we went and would recommend the museum to anyone who visits Washington DC.

First Week in DC

We are in Washington DC right now, and have been since Tuesday. It took us about five minutes to move in to our new apartment, which I thought was pretty sad. Our apartment is big enough, two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen and tiny sitting area/family room. The best part of it is that we are really close to the metro station, so we don't have to walk far to get to the subway. We took our rental car back the same day, so we don't have a car anymore. Most of the days this week we went to different sites in DC. Our dad stays at home and works while the rest of us go see stuff.

On Wednesday we went to see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. We also went in to one of the Smithsonian museums and saw the Star Spangled Banner. It was pretty cool to see the documents in person. They were really faded though, from being exposed to too much light. Also, in the Constitution there are a few typos, including Pensylvania. They were pretty neat, those documents are really what started our country. The Constitution gave us our whole legal system, the Bill of Rights gave us rights that can't be taken, and the Declaration of Independence, while it holds no legal value, spurred on the colonies and people to fight to free our country.

The Star Spangled Banner was pretty neat as well. It had lots of holes in it though. It would be pretty cool to look out and the only thing you could see was it waving in the wind. It could inspire someone to write a song, namely Francis Scott Key, who wrote the national anthem. On a side note, when it said the bombs bursting in air, that was the point. A whole bunch of little sharp metal pieces could do more damage than a big cannonball could.

On Thursday we went to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. It was very hot and humid, which just made the half a mile walk terrible. It was only around two or three blocks to the Washington Monument, but those blocks are pretty big. Then when we got there, the guy said that it was closed because of the earthquake last year, and won't be open again until 2014 (I think, or maybe 2015). So that was kind of a disappointment. Then we walked to the Lincoln Memorial. It didn't look very far, but it felt pretty far. We saw the World War II memorial with the big pool of water. We walked to the side of it to see the Vietnam War Memorial. It is a big wall with the names of all the soldiers that died in the Vietnam war on it, and the wall is pretty big, and the names are pretty small. It made me appreciate soldiers a little bit more. We walked on to the Lincoln Memorial. It is a big Greek Temple with a statue of President Lincoln sitting on a Roman Throne. It looks like his arms are resting on books in the statue, and we asked one of the park rangers what they were, and he said that the pattern is the one the Roman Emperor would have on his thrones. It symbolized high ranking or high status or something. So the guys who made the statue and the temple really should have coordinated better. They mixed Greek and Roman stuff.

We visited Ford's Theater and the Smithsonian Art Museum on Friday. Ford's Theater was where Abraham Lincoln was shot. It was one of the more interesting museums I've been to. It showed the days of Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth. That was my favorite part, it was pretty interesting to learn about the days of both Lincoln and Booth. Lincoln was just doing normal president stuff: meeting with people, going to meetings, writing speeches, and stuff like that. Booth was planning out his murder: he was renting horses to escape on, obtaining a gun, and preparing to do the deed. I learned there that Booth was a big time actor. He was good looking, smart, athletic, basically the Brad Pitt of today. That was why nobody really questioned him going into the box with the president.

I found it very interesting that Abraham Lincoln had a dream about five days before he was assassinated. He was in the white house and saw a casket being guarded and protected. He went over to one of the guards and demanded to know "who is dead in the White House?" The guard replied "The President! He's been assassinated!" I thought that was very interesting. He had told his wife a few days before he was killed.

The art museum was just like any other art museum, with paintings and sculptures. Except for one exhibit. The Art of Video Games. That was my favorite part. It had every game console, starting from the Atari. My mom remembered the Atari, with the 6 games on it. She thought it was the coolest thing to go over to her friend's house and play it. My brothers and I found that pretty funny. That would hold our interest for about 12 seconds. The Exhibit had little videos about the best games from each console in several categories, and I'm happy to say that the Zelda games were always the top Adventure games. They had some games you could try out, but there were lines, and the games were old, like Pacman.

We went to the Arlington Cemetery on Saturday. It was my dad's day off work and he wanted to go to the cemetery. It was a pretty somber place. There are a ton of graves. We took a tour around it, because it was huge, and we didn't want to walk it. We saw the grave of the Kennedy's. It was kinda cool to see the eternal flame. We went to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was cool to see the changing of the guard there. They marched around all military like and changed the guard. They clicked their boots whenever they turned or stopped. After they changed the guard they changed the flowers by the tomb, and that had it's own little ceremony, with five guys and a trumpet player.

Today (Sunday) we went to church. It started at 1:00, so we left our apartment at noon. It was pretty much the same as at home, but we don't know anybody, and the ward has a pretty small youth.

So far, Washington DC is pretty cool, but it is very hot and humid.

Ford's Theater [BY JENNA]

I went to Ford's Theater.  That's where President Abraham Lincoln was shot.  The shooter came from the back and shot Abraham Lincoln and then jumped out of the booth and onto the stage and broke his leg.  After he was shot they took him to the house across the street.  He was shot in the back of the head.  Ten days later they found the guy who shot him.  I thought it was cool to see where Abraham Lincoln was shot.

That's where Abraham Lincoln was sitting when he was shot.

Memory at the Memorial

The penny is worth 1 cent.  We may not realize the value of a penny just like we might not realize the value of Abraham Lincoln and that's why the government built The Lincoln Memorial, the place where many people come and remember what a great president he was and what things he did for this country. With ending slavery as his main goal he did just that. The Lincoln Memorial is a very unique building with an ancient roman design and a 19 foot high sculpture of Abraham Lincoln in a curl chair. The Lincoln memorial was a lot bigger than I expected it to be. In the Lincoln memorial his most famous speech is carved in one of the stone walls: the Gettysburg Address. Earlier in the trip we saw the place were Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address.

Abraham Lincoln in the curl chair. 

The Lincoln Memorial from the outside.

Abraham Lincoln in the curl chair.

The place where Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address.

Run on the Mall

This morning I had an hour-long, guided, running tour of the National Mall in Washington DC.  On the tour my lovely tour guide, Elaine, showed me the National Archive, the Washington Monument, the White House, the Vietnam War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, Korean War Memorial, and Jefferson Memorial.  In all we ran about 6 miles.  I think it is the most patriotic place I have ever run and can't think of another that would be more patriotic.

I owe two heartfelt apologies.  First, I apologize to all of the service men whom we did not properly stop and remember at the memorials.  The memorials were touching even as we ran past them.  Second, I apologize to the other passengers on the subway.  I'm sure I didn't smell nice after our run in the heat and humidity.

Video Conferencing via Skype for Meetings

At work we have a monthly reporting and planning meeting.  We all come together and talk through what we've accomplished during the past month and what we plan to accomplish during the next.  My employer has been very supportive of me working from the road.  Recently we had the first monthly meeting since I've been gone.  Skype was the technology we used and it worked fabulously.  It isn't exactly like being there but I would recommend it to anyone who needs to be remote but stay connected.

Beware, the pictures aren't very flattering of anyone in them but they are good enough to illustrate how it worked for us.  The formal meeting was in a conference room in Utah.  The conference room is set up with a PC and a big screen monitor mounted on the wall.  There is a webcam mounted at the top of the monitor (the little black rectangle).  You can see most of this in the first picture below.  The PC sits in one of those cabinets and runs Skype.  My picture is on the monitor on the wall, larger than life.  I was reclining in a lounge chair on my mom's covered patio at the time.

The meeting's view of me.

The next picture shows what I saw during the meeting.  Again, not a great picture but good enough to feel almost present.  It really surprised me how well the sound worked.  The microphone in the conference room was so sensitive that when no one was talking I could hear the ticking of the clocks on the wall (see photo above).  The microphone being so good had a downside.  Whenever there was a side conversation the microphone picked it up and mungled all of the sound together.

My view of the meeting.

For now this arrangement is working great.  It will be interesting to see how it works when I am in Europe or Asia.  I'll post again later and let you know how it works.

The Amish Don't Use Technology

We went to an Amish town. The Amish don't use any technology. There reasoning is that their forefathers didn't have it so they don't need it. The five oldest bishops decide what is too modern. When bikes came out they said it was too modern and outlawed bikes, but when scooters came out they didn't say anything against them so everyone has scooters. They can pay other people to use technology. Many of them that have a large business pay someone to use a computer and track the money they make. They can have telephones outside their house, at the end of the driveway, but not any closer! Everyone in the town gets around with buggies. We went on one that went through the farming places. The tour guide was Amish until he was 17. He lived on a farm and every year when his dad needed to contact people to get all the crops they moved there phone closer to the house. They did that for five years until one of the bishops said no phones for you. Then they stopped being Amish and changed to Mennonite. They also have the best soft pretzels in the world. They dip them in butter, they were really good.

This is Jenna and a horse

This Is Seth :) and Joe :( waiting for the carriage