Hannah's baby blessing

Last Sunday we went to Hannah's baby blessing in Utah.

 She had the most beautiful dress.  Hannah is a special little girl.

Her big brother Jacob looked very handsome too.

Isaac and Kim took a break from school and came too.

We had a fun weekend with Nathanael and Mary-Anne and with Isaac and Kim.

 These pictures are from a walk along the river right by their house.

It was a great weekend and we had a good time.

On the day we left Utah we hiked up to the Y on the mountain beside BYU.  It started to rain when we were almost to the top and Nathanael and Mary-Anne had to take Jacob and Hannah back to the car.  Jacquelyn and I finished but we got soaked.

It was a great view though and a fun hike.  Here's a closeup.

Leon's Baby Blessing

We went to visit Doranda and her family Sunday and went to church with her to watch Leon have his baby blessing.

 Here's baby Leon.  All ready to go.

 Big sister Scarlett with her new little brother.

 Tucker playing Ants in Pants.  It a game where you race to flip little plastic ants into the plastic pants.

One thing we noticed about Leon.  He's very alert for his age.

Patent Approved

I recently got the patent approved on the work I was doing for Boeing as part of my PhD dissertation research.  It took almost 2 full years from when the patent application was submitted.

It was for programming algorithms that would use artificial intelligence to model the size of the network needed for Connexion by Boeing.  This was a project Boeing had to put internet capability on airplanes.  If you knew how big a network was required, you would know how many transponders you needed on satellites to handle all the data flow.  It used artificial intelligence to adapt to changing conditions.

If you want to read more details, I've attached one of the journal papers I published in the Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence Journal.

Boeing Everett Factory

We took a tour of the Boeing Everett Factory.  It's amazing we've never done that before, after working for Boeing so many years and living in Washington for so long.  It was a 60 mile drive way up past Seattle.

You can the front of the factory here.  It's the largest building in the world in volume.  The footprint covers 1.9 million square feet.  One amazing fact, there is no air conditioning or heating in the building.  It gets enough heat from the machinery in operation and the lighting and the people inside. And if it gets too hot they just open the doors.    We had to take our coats off inside and it was really cold outside this morning.

Here are some of the finished planes parked outside.  Inside the factory we got to see the factory lines for the 767s, the 777s, the jumbo 747s, and the new 787 Dreamliners made out of composites instead of aluminum.

Here's Jacquelyn in front of a Rolls Royce engine at the visitors center.  There's only three engine makers, Rolls Royce, GE, and Pratt & Whitney.

Me by one of the wheels on the landing gear.  They seem so small for such large planes.  Some pick up trucks have bigger wheels.

This is the other side of the engine.  We had a good time together.