Category: McBride

Yes, he is a bad motor scooter! Check out the video below the picture.

Last weekend over Easter Amanda and I drove the youth of our ward up to Conference.  We decided Rustyn need a whirlwind trip like that, so he stayed the night at Jennifer and Earl’s house until Grandma and Grandpa got home.  Friday night Grandma and Grandpa got home, and had the weekend with Rustyn.  My mom sent pictures throughout the weekend (below) to let us know how he was doing.  We even Skyped him Saturday night when we got back from the Priesthood session.  It was great to get back home and see him.

If you would indulge me please for a moment while I geek out..

For sometime I have wanted to play with Voice over IP, or VoIP as it is better known.  I wanted to build a completely open-source PBX (private branch exchange).  Essentially trying to provide the same kind of system that costs 40 to 50 thousand to install.  With all the spare time that we have in our lives i decided to convert an old machine that I finally got back off loan into a TrixBox.  It allowed me to teach IP Phones and computers how to interact with it.  While waiting for a part from China I ordered a SIP trunk (think of it as a phone line that comes over your internet connection) and taught TrixBox how to use it when I wanted to talk on the phone.  Using it, as well as Google Voice and some help from a friend I was able to essentially have an phone line with unlimited in and outbound calls for around 8-11 dollars a month after 911 location service.

Since, I have gotten the card in from China and now have my POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line jacked into TrixBox as well so I can tell it which to use.

Pretty boring stuff I know, but something I’ve wanted to figure out for a while.  Sorry again for the geek lesson, but it is cool to see it all working.

Geek, I mean Wes, out for now..

While out feeding the animals we decided Rustyn was ready to get to ride the “carnival” we have out at the barn.  The carnival consists of a horse walker, a little tikes jet plane, and a johnny jump up.  He learn how to blow “raspberries” so his tounge is out for most of the pictures.

There has been all this hype of the worst storm in 30 years in Arizona. There were 3 storms that came through and we are in the middle of the third one now. It was predicted upwards of 5 feet of snow from this storm. I think in some parts on northern Arizona have seen this amount of snow! As of today they are evacuating Greer because even the snow plows are getting stuck. Navaho and Apache Countys have declared stated of emergecy becasue of these storms. We were planning on going to the Valley this weekend to see Jenn before she left on her mission, and so Wes could do some work, it doesn’t look like we are going to make that trip. Good luck to Jenn, and you will do great!! Just don’t freeze up in Alaska.

In the middle of this storm we decided to have a little fun with Rustyn. He has never been in the snow so we put his snow pants on, with his cowboy boots cause he doesn’t have any snow boots… and a coat and put him in the snow. He didn’t seem to mind one way or the other.

Continuing with our marathon of traveling all the time we headed out to Vegas last weekend to watch the NFR.  I drove down with Mylea a day early to the valley to work at a customer’s office and to surprise Mylea with a flight to Vegas.  Clancey drove up the next day and we had a blast!  I took my wife and mother to Phantom at the Venetian on Saturday.  We had fourth row seats, and it was an amazing performance!  Sunday was church and the rodeo that night.  The craziest part of the whole trip was driving back through the snow storm on I40 in between Kingman and Holbrook.  Flagstaff was getting hit hard for sure when we drove through.  We made it home, and are on a weekend break before we head down to the valley next weekend for Christmas lights and ASU Graduation.