Salt Lake City - Utah Governor Jon Huntsman has announced the Utah State Board of Education candidates as recommended by the State Board of Education Nominating and Recruiting Committee. The candidates’ names have been sent to the Lt. Governor’s office to be included on the November ballot [below].

“These men and women were chosen from an extremely well qualified group of individuals,” Governor Huntsman said. “I am confident that each of these candidates would serve as exceptional board members and I wish them the best in the upcoming election.”

The candidates who were selected are as follows:

District 1
Shelly Locke
Susie Campbell Ashilman

District 4
Dave Thomas
Chris L. Dallin

District 7
Randall A. Mackay
Leslie Brooks Castle

District 8
Janet Cannon
Trent Kaufman

District 11
Ted H. Heap
Dave Crandall

District 12
Mark Cluff
Carol A. Murphy

District 13
Kyle Bateman
C. Mark Openshaw

• Complaint [pdf]

The two constitutional sections at play are Article VI Section 22 and Article X Section 3.

Complainants

The news media hasn’t listed all 37 38 of the complainants (the Trib reported there were 38 [UPDATE: The Trib called me on it—their count was correct, the paragraphs were numbered oddly]), which has allowed some defenders of the bill to claim this is a partisan action. Feel free to grab the complaint and read about each of them; I think you’ll find the complaint is a bipartisan effort.

The numbers below don’t add up to 37 38, as some people fall into multiple categories (e.g. Kim Burningham is both a current USBE member and a former Republican legislator).

• 7 former Republican members of the Utah House of Representatives, including a former Speaker of the Utah House, and a former majority leader of the Utah House
• 5 current members of the Utah House (4-D, 1-R)
• 1 current and 1 former member the Utah Senate (both Democrats)
• a former Chief Clerk of the House
• 6 current and 2 former members of the State Board of Education
• a former State Superintendent of Public Education
• 7 current or former members (not including members of USBE) of the Utah School Boards Association, a group comprised of local school board members
• 2 members of the PTA (a former president, and a former legislative vice-president)
• 3 current or former members of the UEA former (including a former president)
• a former member of Office of Legislative Research and General Council
• 1 person listed as a “community advocate” for education issues
• a former district superintendent and a former school administrator

Editorials

Reader’s should note the following editorials which oppose the omnibus approach and support the suit:

• SLTrib, 2008-04-19, “Power and politics: Court should throw light on omnibus”
• SLTrib, 2008-05-30, “Forcing the issue: SB2 must not be allowed to set precedent”
• DesNews, 2008-04-19, “Omnibus bill tips power”
• Standard Examiner, 2008-06-01, “Legislative grab-bagging”
• Standard Examiner, 2008-03-09, “2008 legislative report card”

The Herald also put out an editorial (2008-06-01, “Let Omnibus Roll Along”); they’re the only media outlet I’ve seen so far to oppose the suit. I found the editorial poorly written, ignoring facts (like the Utah constitution), and willfully exaggerating in an attempt to make the suit seem ridiculous.

The next closest thing to a media outlet defending the omnibus bill was yesterday’s point/counter-point in the Davis County Clipper

After some deliberation, I decided last year to not seek a second term on the Utah State Board of Education. (District 13) The decision was made for several reasons, and more recent events have only solidified my decision.

A list of current candidates may be found at elections.utah.gov.

The day we found out about Tobin’s cancer, I phoned my study group to let them know. They immediately promised to cover my portion of our group assignments, and asked if they could tell others about our situation. With my consent, they contacted the MBA administration and the MBA Spouses Association (MBASA)—who are better organized than any church organization I’ve ever seen. The following evening, a calendar had been posted on Google and families had signed up to bring us dinner through the end of the year. A day later, a group of the spouses came and cleaned our house from top to bottom.

In the past couple of days, MBA students and spouses, through many anonymous contributions, showered us with cards, presents, blankets, and a very sizable (and unexpected) donation of cash which will be used for gas to and from the hospital. Even some professors have chipped in.

On hearing of Tobin’s cancer, one of the MBA spouses contacted an organization called Children with Cancer for Christmas. We were immediately invited as guests, and told to pick out gifts for all of our children. (The party included Cosmo, in a blue santa outfit, and Santa himself, wearing red.) The generosity of our community again overwhelmed me. Tobin is getting a Fisher-Price basketball stand; my middle son is getting a bicycle. (Our oldest son can read, so I won’t spoil his surprise.) Wow.

I’m lucky to also have strong family support. I have three siblings in Utah who have variously spent hours (even overnight) with Tobin in the hospital, or babysat our other sons while we visited Tobin. Two sisters on opposite sides of the country (Seattle and Pennsylvania) have sacrificed, despite their own significant troubles (one is pregnant and on bed-rest), to fly my mother out to visit so we could spend more time at the hospital. My mother-in-law (who lives close by) has helped too, even though she is disabled and not ambulatory.

One of the up-sides of doing some little work for state government is that I’m able to participate in a pretty good health insurance plan. Between our insurance and other programs Tobin qualifies for, I believe our medical costs will be covered.

If one has to have cancer, Christmas is the best time of year to be stuck in the hospital. The Utah Grizzlies stopped by to visit. The Utah Highway Patrol came and dropped off the most hideous stuffed animal I have ever seen (right)—but it made Tobin laugh, and that’s what counts. Even Santa Claus himself has come by several times.

I’ve had many people email, call, or even stop by the hospital asking how they can help. We’ve received more than I could have ever asked for, and help continues to pour in. Tobin’s hospital room is decorated in Christmas lights, and his bed is covered in stuffed animals. The only thing I can ask is that you pray for us. Pray for peace, and that God’s will may be done.

If you still wish to share, consider contributions to worthy charities, including the United Way, KSL’s Quarters for Christmas, or the Huntsman Cancer Foundation.

As inadequate as my gratitude is, I can only offer my thanks, and promise that I will pay it forward. Thank you. Thank you.

May God bless each of you, and may your Christmas be merry.

Tobin had been sick for a few weeks, with a cough that wouldn’t go away. Multiple trips to the doctor’s office offered no respite. Antibiotics didn’t work. An inhaler didn’t improve his breathing. He visited the doctor’s office again on Monday, December 10th, and was seen by a “substitute” physician (the doctor was out for some reason).

A quick test showed his blood-oxygen level was insufficient (low 80s, if I recall correctly), and we were advised to take him over to the emergency room at UVRMC. There, the triage nurse confirmed the low oxygen saturation, and fast-tracked him in to the ER, where he was immediately put on oxygen.

They did a chest X-ray (because he was having trouble breathing, they moved him to the front of the line). The doctor concluded he has a “raging” case of pneumonia, and his labored breathing was caused by a significant amount of fluid in his right lung, rendering it almost useless. Draining it would require surgery to insert a chest tube. They sent us by ambulance up to Primary Children’s Medical Center (PCMC).

Shortly after arriving at PCMC, they gave him a CT scan. During that scan, it was clear something was abnormal, because there were six people crowded in a small room studying the monitor intently.

Only a few minutes later the doctor came in and told me Tobin has cancer, most likely neuroblastoma (the neuroblastoma diagnosis was later confirmed as stage 4). My wife arrived as we were discussing it (she had stopped to make arrangements for our other children), and we started the conversation over.

Tobin was admitted to the Pediatric ICU (PICU), where he stayed overnight before being transferred to the cancer ward the following day.

(I realize this is a rather depressing place to end, but I’m tired. I’ll write more in the coming days.)

In July and August I was able to finish up work with the startup I’d been developing for, helping them see their first profitable quarter. The long hours hunched over a computer quickly transitioned to long hours studying, as I quit work to go back to grad school full-time.

During these past few months, I’ve been wanting to blog about several things, including:

• Draft legislation [pdf] (as yet unnumbered), as discussed by the Joint Education Interim Committee on 14 Nov, which proposes to make the State Board of Education partisan, and increase its elected membership from 15 to 29 (a bad idea)
• Rubber ducking (aka “Talk to the duck”)
• Prototype, script.aculo.us, and Christophe Porteneuve’s excellent book, which I was privileged to review
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick M. Lencioni, particularly the part about how effective teams encourage controversy

Life threw another curve-ball last week: we learned our three-year-old son, Tobin, has cancer. The response from family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers has been overwhelming. Despite this new trial, I feel truly blessed.

I’ve avoided delving much into personal matters thus far, but I’m gong to break my own rule, and chronicle Tobin’s treatment in future posts. (Subscribe to the Tobin-specific RSS feed .)

I happen to like Litebox, although it requires a bit of manual setup: moving specific files to the web server. Don’t worry about the setup instructions on the Litebox site. We automate the file interactions below.

Getting Ready

The following requires OS X 10.4, and uses Automator.

Download the following supporting files, and put them on your web server. I put my CSS files in “/css” and my javascript files in “/js”. It’s up to you.

• TagLoader.js — Inside this file, you’ll need to change the two hard-coded file paths to match the paths to the js and css folders on your server. Change the following lines to match your setup:  BASE_JS: '/js/min/',
  BASE_CSS: '/css/',
• litebox-1.0.js
• prototype.lite.js
• moo.fx.js
• lightbox.css

Add the following to your site/theme CSS file. (Feel free to modify this CSS as you prefer. These values suited me.)ul.thumbs {
  text-align:center;
  list-style-type: none;
}
ul.thumbs li {
  display:inline;
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0 5px;
  list-style-type: none;
}

Build the following Automator action (or just download the complete version)

1. Finder : Get Selected Finder Items
2. Preview : Create Thumbnail Images — I left the sized at 128. Leave the suffix as “_tn”; it’s important later on.
3. Automator : (For some reason, WordPress is mangling the following code—it’s not showing the escaped quotes properly.)
   

   JS_FOLDER="/js/"
   IMG_FOLDER="/images/"
   LB_TAG=$(date "+%Y%m%d-%H%M%S")
   echo "<script type="text/javascript" src="${JS_FOLDER}TagLoader.js"></script>
   <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ 
   TagLoader.load('litebox');//
   //]]></script>
   <ul class="thumbs">"
   for tn in "$@"
   do
     #Get img base name (i.e. w/o path)
     tn=${tn##*/}
     #Guess at original image name
     img=${tn%_tn.*}.${tn##*.}
   
     echo "<li><a href="${IMG_FOLDER}${img}" rel="lightbox[${LB_TAG}]"><img src="${IMG_FOLDER}${tn}" alt="" /></a></li>"
   done
   
   echo "</ul>"

4. System : Copy Text To Clipboard
5. (optional) TextEdit : New Text File — Pop down the options. Check “Show action when run” and “Show entire action”

Within the Automator action you just built (and, of course, saved appropriately), you’ll need to modify some code to match your server file paths. Change JS_FOLDER and IMG_FOLDER (the top two lines of the Bash script) to match the file paths.JS_FOLDER="/js/"
IMG_FOLDER="/images/"

Save your Automator action to “~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/”

You now have an Automator action that takes selected image files, automatically makes thumbnails, generates the HTML snippet needed to load Litebox and display the thumbnails. The HTML is copied to the clipboard for easy pasting, Nifty.

If you want to dig further into Automator, you get bonus points for using the “Finder : Get Folder Contents” action instead of having to select individual files. Extra bonus points for integrating the Upload to FTP Automator Action. (Hint: You might have to add it twice: once before the thumbnails are created, and once after.)

Using our new tool

To use the Automator action, select the files you wish to insert/thumbnail/etc. Right-click, pick “Automator”, and from the pop-out menu, pick your new action. It’ll take a moment to run (depending on how many images you selected), and prompt to save the generated html file when it’s completed.

FTP the image files and newly created thumbnails to your web server. Paste the generated HTML into your blog. You’re done!

One bug

One bug I discovered when building this, is that my script assumes the original image file has the same file extension as the thumbnail. If the initial image is a png, Automator will output the thumbnail as a jpg, so you might have to do some find/replace.

The output

I ran my Automator action on three images, and followed the process above. This is the output (I had to manually fix the png file extensions, per my bug, above). Click the images to see Litebox in action!