Rickety – Page 75 – Mostly about Utah

Some American words rendered in English

August 16, 2008 by rickety 2 Comments

When acquaintances learn I am from England one of the first things they talk about are words. Everyone knows that the hood of a car is really a bonnet. Or that gas should be called petrol. But Rickety is Rickety the world over. Over the years I have compiled a list of American words and their counterparts in English. Some of the English words are really slang, for example an American who is sarcastic would still be sarcastic in England. Cheeky is merely slang for sarcastic. However, the table below for the most part represents some true differences in American and English word usage.

Before proceeding I must mention one short conversation I had with a lovely American lady. This illustrates that there are more differences than just a few words:

Are you from England?
Yes.
I could tell by your accent, it is really cute.
My wife thinks so too.
Where in England are you from?
From Crewe in Cheshire.
Do you have Thanksgiving in England?
No, but we do give thanks the pilgrims left.

American	English
Apartment	Flat
Baby stroller	Pram
Bad guy	Rotter
Bar	Pub
Candy	Sweet
Cookie	Biscuit
Cop	Bobby
Crib	Cot
Diapers	Nappies
Elevator	Lift
Expensive	Dear
Extravagant	Posh
Flat	Puncture
Freeway	Motorway
French fries	Chips
Garbage can	Dustbin
Gas	Petrol
Good-bye	Cheerio
Grandma	Granny
Guy	Bloke
Hood	Bonnet
Line	Queue
Liquor store	Off-licence
Mom	Mum
Movie	Film
Overcoat	Mac
Pants	Trousers
Parking lot	Car park
Popsicles	Ice lollies
Potato chips	Crisps
Rest stop	Lay-by
Rest room	Toilet
Sarcastic	Cheeky
Senior citizens	Old age pensioners
Soccer	Football
Steal	Pinch
Subway	Underground
Television	Telly
Thanks	“Ta”
Truck	Lorry
Trunk	Boot
Underpass	Subway
Vacation	Holiday
Welfare	Dole
Yard	Garden

Dan at the Bountiful Temple

August 15, 2008 by rickety 10 Comments

The Bountiful Temple showing the entrance at the north

Yesterday Daniel, my youngest son, went to the Bountiful temple to receive his endowments. For my readers that are not familiar with temple endowments I will give a short overview.

The Gift of the Endowment

Daniel at the Bountiful Temple

An endowment is a sacred ordinance. Endowments take place in a dedicated House of the Lord, or temple. Temples were centers of religious worship anciently and Mormons build temples today to administer the ancient ordinances of salvation that have been restored to the earth.

The dictionary defines an endowment as a gift given by a higher power. The temple endowment is a gift of knowledge that helps Mormons understand who they are, where they came from, and where they are going. It helps members understand what they should do to prepare to meet God, and how Jesus Christ offers salvation to each of us.

The temple endowment conveys information in a highly symbolic manner. Symbols used in the temple endowment and the meanings of those symbols are sacred to Mormons. Mormons don’t talk about the details of what goes on in the temple—it is too sacred to be discussed, except in the most holy of places.

Temple Covenants

When presenting the endowment, Church members are required to make very specific covenants with God. A covenant is a two-way promise. In religious terms, a covenant is a sacred promise made between an individual and the Lord:

The ordinances of the endowment embody certain obligations on the part of the individual, such as covenant and promise to observe the law of strict virtue and chastity, to be charitable, benevolent, tolerant and pure; to devote both talent and material means to the spread of truth and the uplifting of the race; to maintain devotion to the cause of truth; and to seek in every way to contribute to the great preparation that the earth may be made ready to receive her King, the Lord Jesus Christ. With the taking of each covenant and the assuming of each obligation a promised blessing is pronounced, contingent upon the faithful observance of the conditions. (James E. Talmage, The House of the Lord, p. 84)

A Family Gathering

All endowed extended family members met at the Bountiful temple to be with Daniel when he received his endowments. Not present were Jake who is serving a mission in Mexico and Derek who is building a school in Guatemala.

All available endowed extended family were at the temple

We gathered after the ceremony in the Bountiful temple grounds and took some photographs. In parenthesis is the relationship to Daniel. Left to right: Rick (father), Jill (mother), Daniel (himself), Miguel (Melissa’s fiancé), Susan (aunt), Melissa (cousin), Kent (uncle), Connie (cousin), Mark (Connie’s husband), Sarah (sister), Paul (brother), Steven (brother), and Adelaide (Steven’s wife). By now it was 8 pm and we were very hungry so we headed out to Chuck-a-Rama to eat all their food and ruin their profits for the day. For Jill and I it was a great feeling to have all five of our children endowed and active in the faith.

About the Bountiful Temple

In 1897 John Haven Barlow Sr. purchased forty acres of land from the United States government. There was little that could be done with the land until in 1947 some of the land was cleared and four hundred apricot trees were planted. Bountiful City requested the use of the soil from the site to build a dam and over two hundred thousand cubic yards of soil was removed, leaving the area an ideal spot on which the temple would later be built. The temple is the 47th operating temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I remember well helping to direct traffic at the open house and being one of 200,000 members attending the temple dedication. Sarah and Derek were married in the Bountiful temple. Some temple details:

Announced: 28 May 1988.
Site: 11 acres.
Exterior finish: Bethel white granite.
Architect: Allen Ereckson.
Rooms: Baptistry, celestial room, four endowment rooms, eight sealing rooms.
Total floor area: 104,000 square feet.
Dimensions: 145 feet by 198 feet. 176 feet spire.
District: 30 stakes in central and south Davis county.
Groundbreaking: 2 May 1992 by President Ezra Taft Benson.
Dedication: 8-14 January 1995 by President Howard W. Hunter; 28 sessions.

Source: 2008 Church Almanac, p 518

The Bountiful Temple showing the entrance at the north

Rickety Kiva Map

August 14, 2008 by rickety Leave a Comment

Kiva, back on July 23, announced Kiva Maps. To show you what it looks like, consider my own Rickety Kiva Map above. Each of the leaves represents one of my loans all emanating from Kaysville. Neat huh? It is just a Google map so you can zoom in for more detail. In Cambodia I have a number of loans as you can see in the detail map.

Every day over 16,000 people all over the world are viewing Kiva. Kiva Maps also uses the Google Maps API on each Entrepreneur Profile page to show the geographic distribution of lenders to that Entrepreneur. Check it out by clicking “Map View” in the “Lenders to this Business” section.

Kiva did experience some problems shortly after going live with the feature. There were some Internet Explorer issues (as usual), and they also ran up against Google’s limit of 15,000 geocoding requests per day very quickly. Seeing Kiva laid out on a map will show how big this thing really is and encourage even more people to participate.

Below is the geographic distribution of lenders for one of my borrowers, pardon me, one of my entrepreneurs. Picks me right out in little old Kaysville.

Related Posts: Kiva

A Property Tax Alternative: The Home Consumption Tax

August 13, 2008 by rickety 6 Comments

Big Tax Increases

Last year my property taxes increased from $740.06 to $938.13, an increase of 26.76%. This year my taxes were raised to $1,062.94, an increase of 14.22%. So over the last two years the increase is an enormous 44.8%. As a software developer you might think my pay increases would counter this raid on my bank account. Really? 2006 saw a 3.8% raise and 2007 delivered a 5% pay cut. Additionally, in 2007 my wife switched from full-time to part-time work. Before kind hearted soul you rushes to send me a check I hasten to add my finances are in very good shape.

Property Tax Defects

If my property taxes seem low I must point out dear reader that compared to other states they are indeed low but in Utah we have a lot of other taxes to pay. My property taxes are in line with what my neighbors pay. So rather than write a post that only complains, I would like to propose a solution. But first let us look at the defects in the current system:

Assessments are hard to kept current.
Large increases in property values bring government tax windfalls.
Property improvements without a permit escape taxation.
The burden is on the homeowner to prove false an over valuation.
You can lose your home if property taxes are not paid.
A bureaucracy is needed to run the program.

I am sure you can think of some more problems with the way property tax is administered.

No More Property Tax

I sound like a campaigning politician with my No More Property Tax mantra. But consider that the quickest way to reduce cost is to cut out the overhead and/or simplify the process. The taxes must be collected so the key is to use an existing system of collection. Now it would seem fair to tax on something related to the property. In addition the tax should fall a little heavier on those able to pay.

Home Consumption Tax

Any heading that has Tax in it is not a very pretty sight. Nevertheless, as a separate line item on your utilities will appear a Home Consumption Tax or HCT. These are the utilities that will have the HCT:

Electricity
Water (excluding secondary water)
Garbage
Natural Gas

I was tempted to add phones to the list but they are heavily taxed already, and VOIP phones would avoid the tax. Besides, phones consume very little resources. Each of the items in the list can have a different tax rate if desired. Also the option to exempt from HCT the first $20 of say, electricity and natural gas could be implemented, thus helping the poor.

Summary

We have scrapped an inefficient system.
Utilized an existing collection process to fund county government.
Based our new HCT on consumables that are billed monthly instead of yearly.
Significantly reduced the chances of home loss through non-payment of taxes.
Eliminated huge tax windfalls.
HCT assessments are automatic and accurate down to the last drop, amp, and BTU.

Well, my friends, pick holes in my proposal but don’t tax me too much with your contrary insights. I do believe my HCT would work rather well.

Grandpa Rickety Twice Over

August 12, 2008 by rickety 5 Comments

This is a family blog so it is appropriate to post once in a while about birthdays, new births, and pregnancies. Speaking of which you may recall that I blogged about Sarah and Derek expecting a boy in October, their first child. Of course some family members decided to fire up their creativity and contribute to naming the baby and came up with mossly good suggestions like:

Pete Moss
Forrest Moss
Chris Moss

I am really looking forward to being a grandpa. To make things even better, on 29th June Adelaide and Steven announced that their first baby is due in February. We do not know the gender yet. Last week they said it was OK to let everybody know. If the photograph is anything to go by this is going to be one beautiful baby.

So now I will soon be a grandpa twice over. Awesome!

How to not NoFollow

August 11, 2008 by rickety 17 Comments

The NoFollow attribute

When you comment on a blog and leave your own blog address you will get a backlink that search engines will pick up that will help you to increase your ranking. However, many blogs use the NoFollow attribute to make search engines ignore your backlink. They do this by including code like this:

href="http://www.rickety.us" rel="nofollow"

You can see it in a blog’s comments by using your browser’s “View Page Source” command. Blogger and WordPress both have NoFollow turned on by default, as do many other blogging platforms. Some blogs delay removing the NoFollow by a measured number of hours and others require a certain number of comments. I call these type of blogs restricted DoFollow.

Removing NoFollow

When I used to remove NoFollow from my WordPress blog I used the DoFollow plugin by Denis de Bernardy. I no longer remove the NoFollow attribute. This is purely an effort to reduce the number of plugins I use. Note that links placed in the body of the comment will still be NoFollow but the website listing typed into the website box will be DoFollow. Of course there is really no DoFollow attribute but if the NoFollow attribute is removed, the link is automatically followed.

Detecting NoFollow

The way I prefer to detect NoFollow is to use the Firefox SearchStatus plugin. Once loaded, when you go to comment you will see links that are NoFollow in a pink box. Very useful.

Finding DoFollow

There are a number of DoFollow directories that list DoFollow blogs. The problem is that restricted DoFollow blogs are mixed in with the the good unrestricted blogs. In some directories there are even some NoFollow blogs that slip through. Now that gets really annoying. So for a time I kept my own directories. With the SearchStatus plugin, when I came across DoFollow blogs, as I read the comments I would add them to my directory. Just surfing by a blog’s homepage that has Recent Comments displayed, Stylish will display the true colors of a commenter’s link.

A more direct approach is to use Google Image Search for “U Comment I Follow” (with the quotes). You might even want to make sure that the same text is displayed in your alt tag when you choose a DoFollow image for your blog.

Update

I have discontinued using the dofollow plugin to reduce the number of plugins I use.

Scripture Links

August 10, 2008 by rickety 2 Comments

Note: Since lds.org was redesigned many of these shortcuts do not work. Check back for updates.

Studying from my scriptures is a great way to improve my life. I want to know how to quickly get to them online, and it has been useful to me to learn these shortcuts.

To link to a scripture so that it is highlighted use:

scriptures.lds.org/en/hel/13/26-30#25
where:
en = English (de=German, es=Spanish, fr=French, it=Italian)
hel = Helaman
13 = chapter
26-30 = verse range
#25 = starting verse at the top of the page (not highlighted).

Notes:
When no language is specified, defaults to English.
Here is a list of abbreviations. This is about all you need to know except for a few additional ones I list.

To refer to separate verses use commas:
scriptures.lds.org/en/dc/89/1,4-5#1

To refer to the study helps indexes:

scriptures.lds.org/en/gs links to Guide to the Scriptures. Substitute for gs bd, tg, in, jst, biblemaps, or chmaps for the other helps. Add a through z to access the contents, for example scriptures.lds.org/en/gs/d lists all topics beginning with d. This works for the other helps except for the JST which uses a number to refer to select passages. biblemaps, in addition to a through z, also accepts a map number from 1 to 14 as does chmaps with map numbers from 1 to 7. biblephotos and chphotos only accept numbers 1 to 32 and 1 to 18 respectively.

Old Testament

Example: scriptures.lds.org/en/ps/127/4-5#5

Only use ot for contents (ot/contents) or The Epistle Dedicatory
(ot/epstlddc)

Genesis gen	Ecclesiastes eccl
Exodus ex	The Song of Solomon song
Leviticus lev	Isaiah isa
Numbers num	Jeremiah jer
Deuteronomy deut	Lamentations lam
Joshua josh	Ezekiel ezek
Judges judg	Daniel dan
Ruth ruth	Hosea hosea
1 Samuel 1_sam	Joel joel
2 Samuel 2_sam	Amos amos
1 Kings 1_kgs	Obadiah obad
2 Kings 2_kgs	Jonah jonah
1 Chronicles 1_chr	Micah micah
2 Chronicles 2_chr	Nahum nahum
Ezra ezra	Habakkuk hab
Nehemiah neh	Zephaniah zeph
Esther esth	Haggai hag
Job job	Zechariah zech
Psalms ps	Malachi mal
Proverbs prov

New Testament

Example: scriptures.lds.org/en/eph/4/32#32

Only use nt for contents (nt/contents)

Matthew matt	1 Timothy 1_tim
Mark mark	2 Timothy 2_tim
Luke luke	Titus titus
John john	Philemon philem
The Acts acts	To the Hebrews heb
The Epistle to the Romans rom	The Epistle of James james
1 Corinthians 1_cor	1 Peter 1_pet
2 Corinthians 2_cor	2 Peter 2_pet
Galatians gal	1 John 1_jn
Ephesians eph	2 John 2_jn
Philippians philip	3 John 3_jn
Colossians col	Jude jude
1 Thessalonians 1_thes	Revelation rev
2 Thessalonians 2_thes

Book of Mormon

Example: scriptures.lds.org/en/moro/10/32-33#32

Only use bm for the first seven items below

Book of Mormon contents bm/contents
Title Page bm/ttlpg
Introduction bm/introduction
The Testimony of Three Witnesses bm/thrwtnss
The Testimony of Eight Witnesses bm/eghtwtns
Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith bm/jstestimony
A Brief Explanation about The Book of Mormon bm/explanation
First Nephi 1_ne	Alma alma
Second Nephi 2_ne	Helaman hel
Jacob jacob	Third Nephi morm
Enos enos	Fourth Nephi 4_ne
Jarom jarom	Mormon 1_ne
Omni omni	Ether ether
Words of Mormon w_of_m	Moroni moro
Mosiah mosiah

Doctrine and Covenants

Example: scriptures.lds.org/en/dc/121/46#46

Doctrine and Covenants contents dc/contents

Explanatory Introduction dc/introduction

Chronological Order of Contents dc/chrono

Official Declaration—1 od/1

Official Declaration—2 od/2

Pearl of Great Price

Example: scriptures.lds.org/en/a_of_f/1/13#13

Pearl of Great Price contents pgp/contents

Introductory Note pgp/introduction

Selections from the Book of Moses moses

The Book of Abraham abr

Facsimile No. 1 abr/fac_1

Facsimile No. 2 abr/fac_2

Facsimile No. 3 abr/fac_3

Joseph Smith—Matthew js_m

Joseph Smith—History js_h

The Articles of Faith a_of_f

Ward Campout 2008

August 9, 2008 by rickety 3 Comments

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to me.

Todd wins oven gloves that he really needed during the cookout

Friday evening Jill and I were minding our own business when Max called and asked if we would like to spend the evening at the ward campout. We wouldn’t stay over but would just eat the food and leave and perhaps visit for awhile. Jill had been working hard all afternoon on the invitations for Melissa’s bridal shower and she needed me to help to get them finished. So I had hard duty putting the stamps on the envelopes. They were self-adhesive stamps so I didn’t even break into a sweat.

Sharon and Max came by, I grabbed my camera and my rickety gorilla stand and we stopped at the store to buy supper to eat at the Weber Memorial Park. To stave off hunger we had to eat the bag of chips on the drive to the campground. I wanted to get Subway sandwiches but Max forced me to eat chicken which turned out to be a good choice as did it ever taste good. After we ate we placed our chairs around the campfire and visited with a few of the ward members. The temperature was very comfortable and I relaxed around the fire breathing in the wonderful aroma of smoking wood. You can’t camp unless you come back home stinking of smoke.

Just then I heard the sound of aircraft in the distance. It looked liked there were three of them flying really low. They buzzed over the campground and banked to make another pass. They dropped even lower and suddenly the ground around us was alive with miniature volcanoes exploding all in a row. But the noise told me it was machine gun fire and the holes in the back of the empty chair confirmed it. No-one was hurt on that first pass but we just couldn’t spare any more chairs. I was galvanized into action, I really didn’t want the dutch oven cooking to be ruined. I ran to man the gun (every campground should have one) and opened up. Thankfully budget cuts had not reached to eliminating park ammunition but had cut out police patrols instead. I got two of the planes but the remaining one took off to the east. I think I got his fuel tank so that will cost him a penny or two at the pump.

Jill was shaking me, “Wake up, you were yelling ‘Take cover’ in your sleep. What were you dreaming about?” I replied, “You know, I do believe it’s time to shoot some pictures.” Jill said, “Who put the holes in my chair?” I answered, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The children were tubing in the river and trying out the slide. Todd won the dutch oven cookout with a peach raspberry cobler. Soon it was time to head home and Jill and I were glad that the Blair’s are such good friends and neighbors.

My Experience with Prosper

August 8, 2008 by rickety 8 Comments

Two months ago I funded my Prosper account with a few hundred dollars. Prosper connects those seeking a loan with lenders. Risk of default from rickety borrowers can be spread out by investing only $50 per loan. The interest rate is determined by lenders bidding the rate at which they are willing to loan.

When I am searching for loans to bid on I check off the homeowner box and select a B or higher Prosper credit rating. I allow any debt-to-income (DTI) ratio in the search. I then sort on hours left for bidding and select prospects with interest rates 10% or higher. I find the better the credit rating the lower the risk. The correlation is amazing. I look for lower requested dollar amounts to be borrowed and those that need the money for credit card debt consolidation or for their business. Currently my lending is earning 17% but I am allowing for 7% of this to be defaults which will give be a net return of 10%. I shall not grieve though even if my net drops to 3%.

One can join a Prosper group and pick up tips on possible candidates for loans. I have loaned to a business borrower, based on a group tip, who had an E Prosper credit rating. I am rewarded with a return of 30% which bumps up my average return. I recommend you don’t have too many of these in your portfolio because of the risk of default.

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