Today (July 24th) was Pioneer Day, a Utah state holiday celebrating the arrival of the pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley.  The closest city to us where there were going to be fireworks was Fairview, so we drove there and watched the fireworks.  Last year George was scared to death of fireworks, but this year he seems to mostly be okay with them.  He got scared at first because of the noise and said, “Let’s go home!”  But pretty soon he calmed down and enjoyed the show, and when we got home he was disappointed we weren’t going to see more fireworks.

Earlier George, who is three, and I went to Kent’s (a local grocery store) to get some hamburger for dinner.  When I was strapping George into his carseat he found a die and told me it was a dinosaur tooth.  When we got to the store he insisted on bringing his “dinosaur tooth” in with him.

Kent’s has a couple of smaller grocery carts with little plastic cars at the front for kids to sit in.  We got one of those carts, got the hamburger, and went to the checkout.

While we were at the checkout George started talking to the cashier, and got out of the car to show her his “dinosaur tooth.”  She asked him for more information about it, and he gave her all kinds of details.  The whole conversation was really cute.  It would have been even cuter if George hadn’t had his hand on his crotch the whole time.

Bridget, George, Glen and I were just outside watching bats come out of the attic of the house next door.  We counted past fifty, and I’m sure there were a lot more we didn’t count.  It was cool to watch, but I’m glad we don’t live in that house!

George loves looking at those giant windmills, but every time we drive past them I think of this:

I just read an interesting blog entry by Eric Raymond, one of the leaders of the open-source software movement.  Now, before your eyes glaze over because you think this is going to be some boring nerd rant, take a look at the following quote:

Cisco could change the terms of its service to give it even more sweeping and arbitrary privileges at any time.  Or Apple could do that, or Microsoft could.  The power relationship remains dangerously asymmetrical; the closed source remains their instrument of control over you.

This is why you should demand open source in your router, open source in your operating system, and open source in any application software that is important to your life.  Because if you don’t own it, it will surely own you.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Cisco owns Linksys, the most popular brand of home router.

The entire article can be found here.