It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas?!?

Wait a minute... isn't today March 30th? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is the END of March. Why does Utah toy with our emotions and makes us think spring has come at last and then we get this weather? I bet it will probably melt by the end of today or at least tomorrow. At least we get one more cold spell before the hot weather hits (I prefer the cold to the heat right now--especially when our current apartment doesn't have A/C).

Well, for those in Arizona saying they are glad they don't live here and how it is 80 degrees there right now, I will be sure to post pictures during the summer of how beautiful the weather is when we are living in California! :0)

What life will be like in 2008 (as predicted in 1968)

This is a really interesting article Trevor found about someone's predictions of what life will be like in 2008 predicted in 1968. Some things are pretty far off while others are surprisingly accurate (like the Internet and computers). I don't think I could predict what life will be like in 2048!

Here are some excerpts if you don't want to read the whole article. These are some of the things that I thought were pretty accurate.

"Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use."

"The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance.....Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities. Not every family has its private computer. ..."

"Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card’s number is fed into the store’s computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance."

"Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier. When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance. Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores."

"Besides school lessons, other educational material is available for TV viewing. You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously." (This is what I would call the Internet!)

Happy Easter!

We went to Trevor's grandparents' house in Lehi tonight for Easter dinner. We had a great time! Here are some pictures we managed to take this evening. We are trying to be better about taking pictures.

Here is (left to right) Rhett, Aurora, and Summer. Rhett and Aurora are Trevor's cousins and Summer is Trevor's younger sister.


Another close-up of Aurora and Summer.


Whose belly is bigger now?


Trevor's grandparents--Aurora and Henry Florence


Alicey Melo (Trevor's niece--Heather's daughter)

Strengthening our families

This is kind of late, but I thought I would share it because it has been on my mind. I don't know how many people were able to attend the Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting on February 9th, but if you didn't I would highly recommend either reading the talks or downloading and watching the meeting (see link above). It is all about strengthening the family and building up a righteous posterity. Trevor and I actually didn't watch it on February 9th (we completely forgot about it), but the past couple weeks for FHE we have been watching the talks and discussing how we can help strengthen our family. It has been a great blessing in our lives.

We watched President Packer's talk this week and I just love listening to him speak. Even after reading the Proclamation on the Family multiple times, certain phrases stood out to me for the first time and had special meaning to me. It was neat to have someone who helped in the construction of the proclamation to read it out loud and emphasize certain passages. I also really liked when he said,

"When you wonder why we are the way we are and why we do the things we do and why we will not do some of the things that we will not do, you can find the authority for that in this proclamation on the family. There are times when we are accused of being intolerant because we won’t accept and do the things that are supposed to be the norm in society. Well, the things we won’t do, we won’t do. And the things we won’t do, we can’t do, because the standard we follow is given of Him." - President Packer

I'm so grateful for the counsel we receive from our church leaders and for the restored truths of the gospel. It calms some of my fears of raising a family in such a turbulent world.

Really big numbers!

I don't have anything really interesting to say about what is going on with us other than I gave a presentation about my research at our college's Spring Research Conference to about 150 high school students and people who donate large amounts of money to our college (no pressure, right?). I'm just glad it went pretty well and I don't have to worry about it anymore.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to have people possibly learn something new while checking out blogs today. It may provide an interesting topic of conversation.

Do you know what the largest number that has a commonly-known specific name is? Well, it is actually called a "googolplex."

A "googol" is 1 followed by 100 zeros. A "googolplex" is a 1 followed by a googol zeros. Another way to write a googolplex is:

It is mind boggling to me how big this number really is. Here are some interesting facts about a googol and googolplex:

1. A googol is greater than the number of elementary particles in the observable universe.
2. Since a googolplex is one followed by a googol zeros, it would not be possible to write down or store a googolplex in decimal notation, even if all the matter in the known universe were converted into paper and ink or disk drives.
3. A googol is also greater than the number of Planck times elapsed since the Big Bang which is estimated at around 8*10⁶⁰. Therefore a list of the state of every particle at every measurable unit of time since the Big Bang would have nowhere near a googolplex entries (around 8*10¹⁴⁰).
4. Thinking of this another way, consider printing the digits of a googolplex in unreadable, one-point font. One-point font is .3514598 mm per digit, which means it would take about 3.5 × 10⁹⁶ meters to write in one-point font. The known universe is estimated at 7.4 × 10²⁶ meters in diameter, which means the distance to write the digits would be about 4.7 × 10⁶⁹ times the diameter of the known universe. The time it would take to write such a number also renders the task implausible: if a person can write two digits per second, it would take around 1.1 × 10⁸² times the age of the universe to write down a googolplex.
5. The American mathematician Edward Kasner first used the term "googol" in 1938. The name for this very large number was suggested by Kasner's nine-year-old nephew.
6. The company "Google" is a misspelling of the number googol. I'm not exactly sure if it was deliberate or not--different sources say different things. The headquarters of the Google company is called the "Googleplex". Now you know how Google got its name (if you didn't already know).
   

These fun facts about the googol and googolplex were taken from Wikipedia. You can check out the website for more information.

Happy Pi Day!

In case you didn't know, today is the day math lovers celebrate pi (Because it is 3/14). And no, I didn't spell it wrong... I'm referring to the number pi. Here is another website with information on Pi day.

The BYU Math Department had a big celebration on campus today. They had a "pi" eating contest, "pi" your professor, see how many digits of pi you can recite by memory, and other fun things. They are also having an integration bee later this afternoon with cash prizes! It's like a spelling bee, sort of, but seeing how fast you can calculate integrals. If I had recently taken calculus I probably would have entered, but I'm pretty rusty now seeing as I took it a few years ago. I wouldn't stand a chance against math majors who work in the math lab.

So, I actually didn't attend any of these festivities, but they sure sounded fun. So go celebrate pi day by having pie for dessert tonight (or you could work on a really cool math problem if you don't like eating pie...)!

Now you know how weird I truly am.

What would you do to celebrate Pi Day?

My general nightly routine

Before pregnancy:

1. Go to bed between 10-11pm
2. Wake up around 6am
   

During pregnancy:

1. Lay on the family room couch around 8-8:30pm (sometimes earlier) trying to convince Trevor I'm only taking a "short nap" (he knows better than to argue with me and lets me do it). I tell him I'm too tired to do my nightly routine stuff right then and I need to rest first (this is "sleepy Lindsay" reasoning).
   
2. Wake up on my own or Trevor wakes me up around midnight to actually make it to the bed, change into PJs, take out my contacts, eat a snack, etc.
3. Wake up around 2am but convince myself I don't need to get out of bed. Usually I can eventually fall back asleep without getting out of bed. Half the time I also wake up at 3am, but usually manage to fall back asleep within a half hour.
   
4. Wake up between 4-5am either starving or aching from sleeping on my side all night.
   
5. Eat something and check email trying to help myself go back to sleep.
6. Wake up from my alarm at 6am only to push snooze for 10 minutes. Then get out of bed.

I can't wait to see my sleeping pattern after Calvin is born. I think this intermediate stage is only beginning to prepare me for the sleepless nights yet to come. I'm just grateful I still get sleep during the night.