August 27, 2018

Good morning one and all.

I am surprisingly exhausted, given that my assignment is basically to type all day every day. Apparently there is just as much to be said for mental exertion as physical exertion. Who knew?

I think first things first I need to share that I changed my desktops:

I got informed that Iron Man and Doctor Strange are against the rules, sadly, so while I once cycled through a prodigious library of mixed family and superhero photos, now it's mostly just the twins, with an occasional family photo. I would attach some of them, but many feature a brother who shall remain nameless in a very much shirtless situation, so you're stuck with just a couple baby photos.

After I progressed from Information Processing to Communications, I got assigned to the Book of Mormon comparison project. Some time in the nineteen eighties a BYU professor decided that he wanted to compare all of the print editions of the Book of Mormon word-by-word. Our job is to add the 2013 version of the Book of Mormon to the existing comparisons. You wouldn't expect a lot of differences, but there actually are.

Anyways, for some reason he put it in a near unusable format. Here's an exerpt from 2 Nephi 2, my assigned chapter (this is the verse number and first four words of verse 10):

[ 1ABCDEFGH|10 IJLMNOQRT|53 K|78 PS]

[ 1ABCDEFGHKPST|. IJLMNOQR]

[& 1|And ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] because of the

Basically, anything in brackets is different across the different versions. the number 1 and letters A-T refer to a specific publication of the Book of Mormon. We're supposed to ignoreH, K, P, and S because they're RLDS versions, but that still leaves us with seventeen versions to extract from this hot mess.

Then, this is the format that we're putting it into:

Better than the one the prof did, at least. The only issue is that getting it to format like this is a pain. It gets to take an hour or more to do a verse, especially in a verse like 2 Nephi 2:10 where there are about two dozen commas and the brethren couldn't make up their mind about where to put them. (If you're curious, I've attached the full verse ten comparison).

I did about eleven verses like this and said, "This is lunacy. (although I was a lot more respectful about it any time I had to voice the thought out loud...) My dad didn't spend years teaching my way around spreadsheets for me to mimic them in Word!

So, following a wild goose chase of leadership figures, I took matters into my own hands and created a demonstration of why a spreadsheet would make significantly greater sense:

I know, I'm amazing.

Basically the concern had been that the brethren, who are elders in more than one sense of the word, would not be able to find their way around an Excel spreadsheet, and that increased ease of entry on our end would result in decreased accessibility on their end.

However, my ingenius father had spent a considerable amount of time showing me the power that someone who can manipulate a spreadsheet has, and I was able to create a format that:

1. Is comparable in terms of readability with the Word format.
2. Utilizes space more efficiently by automatically sizing columns and defaulting to a landscape orientation in place of a portrait orientation.
3. Automatically locates and highlights words or characters that are different from their immediate predecessor, making it possible to see at a glance wherever something was changed.

Long story short, after jumping through hoops and then going briefly rogue to put together the demonstration, I was able to start showing this to my leadership to universal awe. Everything about this is better than the older version. Now we're just trying to get approval to formally translate the project into this new format.

To paraphrase just about every male to ever give me work advice: "If you want to become indispensable, find a problem and solve it without being asked."

I'm not incredibly proud of myself. Why do you ask?

That effectively consumed the greater portion of my workweek. However...

*Twilight Zone Theme Plays*

...We haven't discussed what happened after hours.

As of Monday morning, I had gotten a bike helmet and was riding my bike to and from the train station in the morning (those of you who know me well will know that there was scarcely contained enthusiasm behind the words "train station" there) -- no biggie! Biking is great and I need excuses to force myself to exercise anyways.

Except that Tuesday morning my front tire blew out.

I landed in a very muddy flower bed. By some miracle I didn't stain the knee of my pants, although I did later discover a bit of yellow staining on my sleeve. Following a quick medical once-over, I asked my grandpa if I could borrow his bike and was back on my way.

I got to the train station to discover that my miraculously not-stained slacks had gotten bike grease from papa's well oiled bike down the inside of my leg.

Fortunately that evening nana was able to help me treat the slacks and sleeve, and they came out of the laundry clean.

Papa and I spent about half an hour wrestling a new inner tube into my bike tire. All was well, right?

Wrong.

I rode my bike the next morning, no problem.

I did not ride my bike home that afternoon. Problem.

My bike had been stolen.

I think I can safely say that I am getting both the proselyting and service mission experiences, here.

Fortunately I was able to go shopping at Walmart on Saturday and replace the bike, lock, and helmet for around $200. Silver lining, the new bike is a hybrid road- and mountain- bike, so it's much gentler on my back than my old mountain bike. (Who will be missed, seeing as it was a birthday present, but whatever. I'm not crying. Seriously.)

I also got a new lock. The thing's basically a weapon and weighs more than everything else in my backpack combined. The company that makes it places such high stock in their work that they offer to pay up to $1000 for items stolen out of the lock. Hopefully that gets the job done.

Anyways, that about sums up how my week went. I love all of you.

 

Elder M. Huntsman LeBaron (that's how my YSA ward did my name on my missionary plaque here and it's making me irrationally happy)