Bryan's Blog

Bag of Crap

2012-02-08T14:28:00.000-08:00

So if anyone knows me all that well you will know that I like to frequent the website woot.com. If you don't know much about that site it's ia nifty business idea. They sell one item a day. Usually it's electronics or nerd related but not always. If the item sells out before the end of the day then that's it, you can't buy anything for the rest of the day. However, they don't sell out all the time, which means that they will start to accumulate a lot of inventory of items where they don't have enough to warrant a full day sale, but they have to do something with the excess.

So they came up with the idea of a "Woot-Off". In the Woot-Off they will sell one of those items until it is sold out and then put another item up. A Woot-Off will generally last 2-3 days. Woot-Offs have become great places to get even better deals than Woot.com originally offered. I would imagine their traffic spikes a lot on those days as people habitually come back to the site to see what the new product is.

Another fun feature of the Woot-Off is the Random Crap item, also known as the Bag of Crap or BOC. It is like a mystery box of stuff. It could be one of their high end products, or it could be a bunch of crap. People also rarely refer to it as the Bag of Crap anymore, instead trying to think of clever substitutes for the acronym BOC. Give it a try yourself, Box of Carp. Bastille Only Credentials, Beginners Oft Cry.

Another thing to note is that the Bag of Crap always sells out within 10-15 seconds. And it only takes that long because the servers need that much time to process the massive amount of orders that go in all at the same time. Basically if you blinked when it was posted, you missed it.

I have been trying to buy a Bag of Crap for like 2 years now. It's never happened. I'm never on the ball enough, so this time arond when the Woot-Off started I though, maybe I can help myself out a little. I wrote a VBA program that will log on to Woot and refresh periodically and if it detects the BOC then it will go through and purchase it. So whenever a new product was about to come on I would set the program running.

Well it worked! And I got it this time. Unfortunately... it was also mostly crap. But that won't stop me from trying next time!

Contents:
- 3 XL Fruit of the Loom t-shirts
- 1 USB hookup Hulk smash button (I guess it commences the gamma ray sequence on your computer?)
- 1 Design maker
- 2 Frames ("One Cool Dad" and "Worlds Best Mom")
- 1 Pair of headphones
- 4 Electronics screen cleaner cloths
- 1 Gym duffle bag

I actually find the screen cleaner cloths quite useful for my tablet and phone. And the gym bag isn't too bad either. Headphones never go out of style, but the other stuff... well, they don't use the word crap for nothing...

Sushi!

2012-02-08T14:17:00.000-08:00

In our latest exploits, SUSHI! I got myself a nifty sushi kit for a whopping $3 at Bed, Bath and Beyond and now I can make sushi. I learned that the rice for sushi is a bit different and has to be seasoned at makemysushi.com but the rest is pretty easy. Just get some seaweed sheets, whatever filling you want and roll it all up with rice. It turned out pretty good. Now I can eat sushi without having to go to a restaurant (though that practice will still continue as they make it much better).

Cinnamon ROLL pancakes

2011-12-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

I like cinnamon rolls but I think I mentioned before that they are really hard to find around here and even harder to make. So much preparation!

Also, I find breakfast to be an interesting meal. Kind of boring to cook for. A lot of people I know love breakfast and it's their favorite meal of the day. "There are so many options! Such variety!" I'm told. I don't quite get it though. I can pretty much list every breakfast food variety off the top of my head.

So I have a little trouble getting my creative on when it comes to breakfast. But apparently some other people don't. I came across this recipe this morning and made it for breakfast. They are delicious. And even though I didn't come up with it, it seems quite creative and I like that! So here is the link to the cinnamon roll pancakes.

Click here!

Scarcity of Charity

2011-12-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

In Elder's Quorum we were talking about being charitable and one of the class members commented that he was trying to be more planned/deliberately charitable. He is good at being randomly charitable. Say he's raking leaves off his lawn, he'll just hop over and do the neighbor's lawn or something. His goal now wasn't to stop being randomly charitable (I suppose serviceable could work here too) but to start being more organized. His flow chart of charity went kind of like this.

Take care of family --> Take care of Home Teachees --> Take Care of Everyone Else

If you think about it, this kind of reasoning makes sense. Let's assume that everyone was charitably perfect. Meaning all their free time was given to performing charitable acts for others. Now in this world these people only prescribe themselves to random acts of charity. You would think that this would mean that everyone would equally receive adequate charity and on average you would be correct. The average amount of charitable acts that people receive would be something like 5 per day.

The problem with this system is that even though we have a high average, there are people who get more and people who get less, or might be missed completely. (Now I'm starting to sound like Occupy Wall Street). So what it looks like to me is that the Lord has given us a system that makes sure that everyone gets covered. We have all sorts of stewardship programs. The Prophet and apostles steward the church, the 70's steward regions, Stake Presidents steward smaller regions, Bishops steward wards, Quorum/Relief Society Presidents steward units within the ward, Parents steward families and then to top it off we assign people a small number of other people to steward through Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching programs.

Now if only we could get to that point of perfect charity...

[Citation Needed]

2011-11-21T14:23:00.001-08:00

Have you ever been reading Wikipedia and after it asserts something you'll notice a link that says [citation needed]? It has turned into one of those memes of popular culture that you can bring out anytime you are unsure of someones facts and challenge them to prove the source.

This related nicely to my Sunday School lesson yesterday. The last part of the lesson is about false teachers from within the church. The scriptures in the lesson talks about people who seem pretty malicious in their intent to deceive. I also think that we should be wary of those who might not be maliciously misleading, but unwittingly doing the same thing.

We have quite a few things in the church that are practiced but aren't actual doctrines. Some are harmful, and some are harmless. Like raising your right hand to the square to sustain. There's no doctrine that you need to raise your hand to the square. A quick look at the conference edition of the Ensign shows the apostles in all different states of arm extension (I'm counting this as my citation as well as citing my D&C teacher John Farmer or was it Farmer John...). Though really this is harmless if you ask me.

Something that was a bit more harmful was a cultural practice that only men should pray at the beginning of sacrament meeting. In fact when I was on my mission and became Branch President in a little branch my departing companion and former Branch President told me that he'd been told it was better to have a priesthood holder say the opening prayer and that the meeting just runs better if you do it that way. I think I followed his counsel for about a week and then I didn't. Apparently it was a misinterpreted comment that Ezra Taft Benson made a few weeks before he died. It started to go around with the pass of "doctrine" stamped on it. Turns out it has no doctrinal basis.

Now that I think about it the talks generally follow a wife first then husband. I don't know if Bishoprics ask the man to go last or if that's just how the couples self select their order. Next time I'm asked to speak with Laurel I'm going to have her go last. :)

So my point in the class was that there are somethings that end up in the church that aren't doctrinal and sometimes we need to say "Citation Needed!" It's also up to us to seek out doctrinal bases. I guess that's why we are supposed to continually search the scriptures.

And yes I already anticipate at least one comment saying "Citation Needed" on something I said.

Elizabeth Bennet, Queen of Hard to Get

2011-10-19T20:41:00.000-07:00

I have been reading Pride and Prejudice lately and I got to the part where Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth. Elizabeth politely and promptly refuses his request for her hand in matters of matrimony with the utmost eloquence. Mr. Collins replies that he believes her goal in refusing him is to make him ever more so interested in her so that when she does accept his hand he is even more smitten. He fully expects her to accept him on his second humble request. Indeed he does not begrudge her such antics as it is quite expected among ladies of such a well established background. Despite Elizabeth’s profuse and insistent efforts to dissuade Mr. Collins, her efforts only affirm to Mr. Collins that she is indeed playing “hard to get.” The situation is rather ridiculous and humorous to the extent of a hearty mental “har har har har….”

I don’t think many people believe that playing hard to get is very effective these days. At least not once they get past 8th grade. Perhaps it is effective but the window of effectiveness is very small and therefore very few people actually manage to hit that target successfully. The consequences of missing that target are quite high.

Let’s consider the situation portrayed in the book (at least from Mr. Collins point of view). A suitor is outwardly interested in a lady. The lady is inwardly interested in her suitor but doesn’t show it and thinks that she can increase his level of interest. This would make the relationship more beneficial to her (and him for that matter) later on when they get together. So she concocts a plan to increase her suitor’s amorous desire by leading him along on a string with a hook attached to his nose. She plays disinterested and lets her suitor use his imagination to create an image of her that is even more love stricken. The result is when she does accept his hand he is properly wrapped around her finger and life is ever so much happier than if she had initially accepted his advances.

The theory seems to make sense. I have not yet devised an experiment to test the results of such efforts. However I go back to my small target theory. I posit that it is possible that playing hard to get can be a fruitful tactic. I also posit that the window of success is so small and the risk of failure so large that the efforts are almost certainly bound to fail.

If a girl doesn’t play hard to get long enough then there will be no positive effect and it will possibly even hurt her chances because the guy is going to suffer an initial blow to his interest level due to rejection. So she will have been worse off. Then the guy will start to think about her more often and perhaps his interest will start to increase. Then the window of opportunity will open for the girl. His interest will surpass his initial level of interest and the girl finds some way to encourage him that there might be a chance and he takes it. But since the girl has no idea when this time is, she will probably miss it.

Then there are two more phases. The guy starts to idolize the girl beyond what she really is. If the girl manages to pull him back he will then be disappointed and his interest level will drop even more. Now she is worse off. If she doesn’t rope him in at that point then he will lose interest completely and move on. So now she has no guy at all. She lost that dangerous game.

When I started thinking about this blog I thought, you know I haven’t done an econ related blog in quite some time. It’s too bad that this one doesn’t work out. Well it turns out that it does. However this blog is getting rather long so I’ll leave the rest for another entry.

Life in the Fast Lane

2011-10-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

I’m not one of those drivers that you get stuck behind and will box you in. I generally try to go about the speed of what the fast lane is. I figure that if I’m going the speed everyone else is then a cop won’t pull me over because I’m just going with the traffic flow. (Even if that flow is 10-15 miles over the speed limit). I also try to be considerate of people that may want to go faster than me, which means I try to get out of the left lane if there is someone trying to get by (a courtesy that is lost on most people).

Making sure you are going the general speed of the fast lane, passing cars, making sure no one is coming up and getting stuck behind you and all the other things you have to be aware of while careening down a concrete pathway at speeds people 50 years ago would have though insane can be rather mentally demanding at times. I don’t think we notice it much, but everyone has finished a more stressful drive in traffic and felt that relief that it’s over.

Sometimes I like to take a step back and drive in the slow lane. It’s rather refreshing over there. No one is trying to get around you (all those people are in the other two lanes), you don’t have to worry about accidentally going too fast, people don’t cut you off as much, and you can almost feel a sort of camaraderie with your other fellow slow drivers. It’s like you’re all moseying along singing a silent mental tune saying “Life is good, we’ll get there and it will be fine on the way.”
In New Caledonia they have a saying: “Casse pas la tete” which translates to “Don’t break your head.” It basically meant don’t worry about it. Islanders are pretty good about not getting to caught up in life that you can’t enjoy it. I suppose if I lived my whole life on a beautiful beach it might go to my head too. “Why worry? We’re on a beach!”

So I like to enjoy life from time to time and imagine that I am on a beach. Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a breath, relaxing, and driving in the slow lane.

More Salsa

2011-07-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

So over the past few weeks I have been experimenting with salsa. I like salsa, but most store bought salsas are just kind of bland. I know how to make a decent pico de gallo but that takes a really long time to make and I don't want to spend that time every time I eat all the salsa. (Something that happens quite often). Pico de Gallo isn't really salsa anyway. (Which for those of you who have ever heard that piano piece I wrote called "No More Salsa" it should actually be called "No More Pico de Gallo")

So I have come up with a recipe that doesn't call for dicing 10 tomatoes into itty bitty pieces and tastes much better than anything I've found at the store. It's also much cheaper and you can customize it to your taste.

And like always, I never really measure anything so these are all guesses. Not measuring makes it more exciting because it's a little different every time!

1 can diced tomatoes and 1 can diced tomatoes with jalapeno added (This will make a medium spicy salsa. For Hot use two cans with jalapeno or mild 2 normal cans.)

4-5 Green onions

1 Onion (Give or take half an onion depending on how much you want.)

1/2 bundle of fresh cilantro

Concentrated lime juice (probably around 3-5 tablespoons)

Salt (like... 1 tbsp? You'll need enough to handle the canned tomato taste. Kind of like how plain tomato paste needs a whole lot of seasoning to work as spaghetti sauce.)

Drain the cans of diced tomatoes into a bowl, you'll need some (or maybe all) later. Dump the diced tomatoes into a large bowl. Dice the onion and green onions and add them to the tomatoes. Dice the cilantro by either wrapping it up into a tight bundle and dicing it or use one of those hand chopper thingies. Pour in some of the juice you drained previous till it's at a consistency you like. (This could depend on how many onions you put in or just how runny you like your salsa to be.) Add the lime juice, salt and mix it all up with a spoon.

There you go, that will cost you about 3 dollars in all and make probably about 9-10 dollars worth of salsa. And it will taste better!

You can play around with the quantities of the ingredients. I prefer to have it lean towards the cilantro and lime flavors, but not everyone likes that.

Stuffed Basil Chicken

2011-05-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

I made this up a few days ago. I thought it was delicious.

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts thawed
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1 1/2 tablespoons basil pesto
1/2 cup sour cream
2 cups bread crumbs
1 egg
1 teaspoon italian seasoning
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon rosemary
3 cloves garlic minced
baby carrots

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix the mozzarella, sour cream, basil pesto, italian seasoning, garlic salt, rosemary, and minced garlic in a bowl. Slice the chicken breast in half long ways but not all the way through, like a hot dog bun, or a subway sandwich bread. Dip the chicken in the whipped egg then in breaded crumbs to get a nice coating. Fill the chicken on the inside with the mozzarella filling. Coat a baking pan with butter or Crisco and olive oil. put the chicken in and some baby carrots around the edge. Season the carrots with salt or rosemary or something good. Bake for 35-45 minute or until the chicken is no longer pink on the inside. Try to cook it the least amount possible. It will be more juicy and tender that way.

And voila. Eat it now.

More food!

2011-05-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

So a few years ago I created one of my favorite dishes. I call it coconut lemon chicken. As always, I'm not much of a measuring person. I just throw things together, but I'll try to put measurements of what I can.

1 onion
1 can coconut milk
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into strips or 6-7 chicken tenders
3 cloves of garlic chopped (optional)
Garlic Salt
Concentrated lemon juice usually around 4 or 5 tablespoons... I think
Pepper
1/2 can chicken stock (broth) or 1 cup water and 4-5 teaspoons of chicken seasoning granules or bouillons
Olive or vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups rice

Set the rice cooking

Cut the onion into slices. Sautee the onions and chopped garlic with oil in a large sauce pan for a couple of minutes. Season chicken with garlic salt. Add chicken and brown. It's best if you just brown the outside of the chicken at this point, it will come out more tender and succulant! Add chicken broth or water and chicken seasoning. Add lemon juice and coconut milk. Let simmer for 7-10 minutes or until chicken is cooked all the way through. (This is the point where just barely browning the chicken pays off as the coconut milk and other juices soak in.)

Serve on top of rice and enjoy.

I've always been rather proud of this one. I like cooking with coconut milk. That's New Caledonia coming out of me. Maybe you will like it too.

Common Sensiquette

2011-04-04T19:45:00.000-07:00

In the Victorian Age children were taught strict rules of etiquette on how to behave in society. Many of these rules have lived to today and guide us all to show respect and be courteous to each other. Simple things like opening doors, and not burping at the table and so on. I personally think it gets a little burdensome and unnecessary when codes of etiquette to eat dinner with the proper utensil at the proper time in the proper way are more complicated than the story line of “Lost”. That’s just my own humble opinion though.

Anyway, one thing the world seems to lack is common sense etiquette. People can rave about how great the “good ole days” were and dream of returning to the Victorian Age (Until you remind them about no central heating, air conditioning, and outhouses of course), but the same people lack many of the basic things I would consider common sense. Here are some things I have noticed as of late.

Funnel points. Every room has them. They could be entrances, doorways, or just places where the hallway gets smaller for some reason. Why do people think this is the best place to stand? I don’t know why but people just plop down and hold huge conversations for 10 minutes in these areas during the most high traffic times like passing period in between class, the end of church, parties, and so on.

Take this picture for example. This is a highly sophisticated, to-scale model of the foyer at our church.

Now ideally you would think people would congregate in the following fashion to stop and catch up with their dear friends.

Instead it generally looks like this:

Please. Allow your fellow brethren and sistren to exit the building with their 6 children below the age of 10, strollers, baby bags, relief society center pieces and inspirational object lessons to pass without having to setup siege and eat their rations of cheerios and fruit snacks till the iron curtain blocking their exit is torn down.

This also happens in grocery stores a lot. My favorite is when there is someone who has their cart on one side of the isle and is looking for an item, and then someone comes from the other side and parks their cart side by side so not even Flat Stanley could squeeze by. I hope you found your favorite brand of miracle whip.

I thought I would have a whole list of things, but I guess I don’t. Other things that aren’t covered in etiquette that I might think of will probably have to do with emailing and texting each other. This post seems long enough though.

Analogies

2011-02-15T15:33:00.001-08:00

I came across this link of the 56 best analogies of high school students. Washington post held a contest for the best analogies teachers have seen over the years. I think I am going to start modeling my writing style after this....

1. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

2. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.

3. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

4. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

5. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

7. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

8. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

9. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

10. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

11. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

13. The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.

14. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

15. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

16. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at asolar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

17. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

18. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

19. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

20. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

21. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

22. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

23. Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it hadrusted shut.

24. He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.

25. She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.

26. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

27. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

28. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

29. “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.

30. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

31. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

32. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

33. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

34. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

35. Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”

36. The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

37. The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

38. She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.

39. Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.

40. Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.

41. They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”

42. Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as Calvin Klein’s Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances.

43. The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.

44. He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.

45. The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747.

46. Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light.

47. The baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas.

48. I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.

49. She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.

50. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

51. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

52. Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.

53. You know how in “Rocky” he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in.

54. The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.

55. Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.

56. The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.

Provo Ultimate

2011-02-14T15:25:00.000-08:00

So Frisbee has been going strong this year. Here are some updates on what the world of Frisbee in Provo is doing.

- The BYU team and the Alumni officially separated into two separate teams and organizations leaving the BYU team as the “Destroying Angels” and the Alumni team took on the name “Killjoys”. This is a good move for both teams. It give the BYU team more autonomy and better organization as well, and it gives us old Alumni more organization and an opportunity to develop on our own in the direction we need. This also means that we now have two separate but very competitive teams who can scrimmage each other and improve greatly.

- The Killjoys have elected Dave Kroupa as team captain and Brian Howell as Assistant Team Captain. They will serve in this capacity for a year and the team will reelect new captains.

- We finally found fields that we can use during the winter. This has been a point of woe for as long as there has been competitive ultimate in Provo. During the winter there are no fields with lights to play on at night. Finally we found a field in American Fork that we are able to rent for $25 a night. There is still snow, but it’s leaps and bounds better than not having any fields.

- Killjoys are making an increased effort to get the whole team to condition individually so I have taken up running and parkour which will lead me to my next blog entry.

All in all the Frisbee world is going strong. We have scrimmages every other week against the BYU team and the competitive atmosphere is growing. We also have a few tournaments coming up. The Killjoys team is hosting its first tournament ever on February 26th. Teams who should be there include: Golden Spike Club Team, SUU, USU Alum, BYU, and Killjoys. It’s a small tournament, but it should be a good chance to see some other teams and prepare to the next week where we have another tournament in Vegas.

And so I'm back....

2010-11-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

Well I basically stopped blogging when I started dating Laurel. Really, I looked at my last blog and it was in January. I started dating Laurel in February. I ran out of time. Then we got engaged and I had less time. Well at least less of the kind of time that you use to write blogs. Then we got married and she wrote all the blogs about the stuff we do. So I had nothing to write about. At least not without being repetitious. So if you are wondering how we are doing, I would like to direct you to her blog.

So what do I write in my blog. Well I make up foods basically every time I cook. I usually don’t like to use recipes. If anything I’ll peruse the cook book to get inspiration, then I’ll put it back into the cupboard and start making things up. So I figured I should start posting the recipes (or something slightly akin to a recipe) of the things I make up on the blog. Now if you see something on here that is just like a recipe you make. I am sorry. I am not so creative as to think up something that has never been thought of before. But at least I thought it up. For example, I made stuffed mushrooms a while back with a few suggestions from Laurel and later on we were perusing the cook book and found a recipe that was rather similar to what I made. The proportions weren’t the same (at least I assume they weren’t because I just randomly threw things together in amounts that “seemed good”). So yeah… perhaps this will be good for those single college bachelors like I was so recently. That is where I got my cooking style from after all.

So today I based my recipe off of Chicken Cordon Bleu. I apologize, I have no pictures. I didn’t think to take a picture of it before I thought to eat it. Maybe next time. I shall call it Stuffed Cream Chicken.
Ingredients

½ Bell Pepper Finely Chopped
¼ Yellow Onions Finely Chopped
1 Roma Tomato Finely Chopped
1 tsp Minced Garlic
Garlic powder
Basil spice
Italian Seasoning
A Large Spoonful of Sour Cream
½ Cup Shredded Mozzarella (optional)
1 tbsp Olive Oil
Butter
Salt
Pepper

2 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts (or however many you want)
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Mix the Bell Pepper, Onions, Tomatoes, Garlic, Sour Cream, Mozzarella and Olive Oil in a bowl. Season it with a little Garlic Salt, Basil, and Italian Seasoning and mix. It should be more chunky than liquidy.
3. Pound the chicken breasts flat with a meat tenderizer (or a hammer would work) until the chicken is about ½ inch thick and salt and pepper the underside.
4. Place the paste from the bowl on the bottom side of the chicken, wrap it up and hold it together with toothpicks.
5. Line a glass baking pan with butter and place the wrapped chicken in it. Then cover the chicken with some leftover paste. You can add vegetables to the pan if you want. Broccoli and carrots work, those make sure the carrots are on the bottom so they get in the liquids, they will cook better that way. They will still come out more crunchy than cooked.
6. Place in the oven and bake for 35 mins or until the chicken is no longer pink inside or anywhere.
7. Remove from the oven and take a picture if you plan to show it off on your blog.

Thoughts on thoughts... well without the first thoughts

2010-01-17T15:33:00.000-08:00

So every once in a while I have a notebook on hand, and when I do, I decide to write down some of the thoughts I get. Now, for most people it seems like this would be a profound insight into who the person is and possibly a serious thing. Well in my case it is generally weird, sometimes funny, and probably doesn’t make much sense. So here are some random things I wrote down during church. More like those, “Huh, how about that,” kinds of thoughts.”
- Little kids stare at my hair
- Scruff = more compliments
- Marrying is good, merrying is bad.
- If Come Come Ye Saints were written today, it would say “S’all good” instead of “All is well.”
- Would you get a crunchy leaf to step on if you put a green leaf in a fruit dehydrator?”
- I create a vortex when I run… :).
- The general population's average IQ is not as high as I used to assume.
- There’s a market for facebook statuses and the currency is comments.

Now that you all think I’m apostate and don’t pay any attention during church, I will let you keep on thinking that.

Breakdown Blessings

2009-12-20T12:53:00.000-08:00

So I had my first major car break down on Thursday. It just stalled and stopped. I tried to restart it and the engine would crank and turn over, but the engine wouldn’t fire up. So I checked all the fuses and got a guy to help me try to jump the car. That was futile. So I left it parked on the side of the road till the next day where I could get it towed to the garage. So as far as inconvenience goes, this was a very convenient break down. It’s going to be to be a big financial hit but a lot of stuff that could have gone wrong went right. To start the car broke down right in front of my apt. All I had to do was push it over to the side of the road to park it. It happened during the daytime, which is usually better if you want to try to see if you can get it started. It also happened the day before payday. That’s nice. And then at work they had temporarily changed my schedule a couple days before from 5 AM – 1:30 PM to 6-2:30. That means that I was able to take the bus to work in the morning because the bus system starts at 5 AM. Woot. So all in all, I think it worked out pretty well. It’s fixed now and is running smoothly.

MaD Library Party

2009-12-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

So Saturday was the annual Music and Dance Library Christmas Party/Talent Show. I don't work there any more, but I was still invited, so I got together with one of the guys who works there and put together a couple of songs. I couldn't resist using the accordion of course. Could you? Here are a couple of the videos.

** It looks like the page cuts off part of the screen, so I would recommend clicking on the video twice or so to get sent directly to the youtube page.

The recording got started a verse late on this one. The first song is called "Istanbul" and the medley includes in order: Canon in D, Jump (Van Halen), Semi-Charmed Life (Third-Eye Blind), Island in the Sun (Weezer), Viva la Vida (Coldplay), Hey Jude (Beatles).

This was actually a spur of the moment thing. Someone found the music to this song somewhere in the archives at the library and the words were just too amazing to let pass unnoticed. It is originally written for harp, oboe and voice. Unfortunately the harpist got hung up somewhere and couldn't make it, so they asked me if I could accompany the song with the accordion. It turned out to add a nice level of humor to it. It wasn't the best performance, but I had never played nor heard the song before.

The first song is the musical rendition, and then the second is the poetic interpretation.

Black Eye

2009-11-11T21:13:00.000-08:00

So I’ve come across a new battle wound that I am proud of. I am generally quite proud of battle wounds, regardless of how I got them. So I have a nice black eye. Story of how I got it? Well the best one I came up with was on Sunday when I went to ward prayer in my old ward. I was actually slightly helped by someone else, or at least their help sparked the fire. Someone asked me how I got the black eye and he said “Oh he got mugged.” So I started back, “Well he tried to mug me. He came up and asked for my wallet and I said, NO! give me your jacket! So we fought and he caught me with a right hook in the left eye, but ultimately I got the jacket and he… well you should see him.” It was mostly good because I was wearing a leather jacket at the time. I learned last time I had a black eye that I need to be careful about making up stories. My friend asked me how I got the black eye and I told her that I saved a girl from getting hit by a car and in the process fell over and hit my eye on something… like the curb or something. Well she believed me and told all her roommates and they deemed me the hero of the day. All before I could tell them that it wasn’t true and that I actually got hit in the eye with a Frisbee. I got a guilt trip after that about how I never lie to her. Oops.

This black eye on a side note happened in Frisbee as well. I caught a flailing hand in the eye as someone who was air bound was trying to regain balance. It didn’t really hurt much, but it looks bad enough.

So usually when I see someone who hasn’t seen me in since Saturday they gasp and ask me “What happened?!?!” Sometimes I forget that I actually have a black eye (In fact sometimes I forget so completely that I am surprised to see it when I look in the mirror) and so it takes me a second to actually realize what they are asking about. Then I am faced with the decision of whether or not to tell the truth or make up a story. Usually if I tell the truth they say “You should make up a story.” So in my head I debate what I should do and often it just ends up as an awkward silence as I try to say something but nothing comes out, or I bumble about.

Anyway, here are some pictures.

Last day

2009-08-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

Friday was my last day of work. We went to brick oven for lunch. It was fun. I knew the waitress too. Sorta. It was fun and I really appreciated the fact that Emily set it up for me. It was a very kind gesture. So we had fun. I worked at the desk all day and closed up at 6. When that came around I ended up being the last to leave and do the final close up. I stopped at the door, pulled out my camera, took a picture and walked out. It was the first time that moving home really hit me. I’m done working in the MaD Library. I’ve been there 3 years, and many of my closest friends I’ve met there and worked with them. So it was a somber day after that. I’m moving home, but it feels more like moving away from home.

Starry Night and a Velociraptor

2009-08-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to put this up for a while. I drew this on a date a couple of weeks back and never got around to posting it. Go figure. So without further adieu, here it is!

Awkward and or Creepy Conversation Starters

2009-07-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

So I randomly made and observation in my head about someone else's foot (Yeah, awkward I know). Her second toe was longer than her big toe. It's a common thing no biggie. Then I thought, wow... that would be a really awkward way to try to start a conversation with someone. Hm... I wonder what other awkward things there could be. So I made a list.

I see your second toe is longer than your big toe.

Are you wearing Dr. Scholl’s gel soles? Because you look quite relaxed right now.

You remind me of my favorite character on Ice Age. Cid the Sloth.

Did you know that one of your eyes is bigger than the other?

I noticed you have defined calves when you were on the stair master.

I noticed your writes are very supple.

Here are my favorites from stake dances. These were actually used... often.

What’s your favorite toothpaste?

What color is your toothbrush?

And of course I had to put in the classic Dumb and Dumber quote:

"So, Big Gulps, eh?"

This is kind of fun. Put other ones in the comments section.

Ultimate Showdown

2009-07-19T10:53:00.001-07:00

Well it’s been an interesting week. I think I will devote this blog to last weekend. So I’ll start with a funny story from work. About a year and a half ago I was talking with a coworker named Nicki about our dating lives. This is a common topic that comes up at work. She related the fact that it seems like every boy she had gone on a date with got a girlfriend soon after that date. I had just gone through a slew of dates where the girls had all gotten boyfriends shortly after. We were cursed. So in an effort to try to counteract the curse we figured we would throw a curve ball back at the curse. We decided to go on a date with each other. I can just see the curse now, “oh crap… they are together! What am I going to do?! Er.. uh… syntax error…. Kaboom!” So to make a long story short, Nicki and I went on a date and then she met a boy soon after and started dating him. She just married him a month or so ago too. Apparently the curse sneaked away in one piece by making me more powerful. So a few months later I took out another girl from work a few times. After those dates she met the guy that she just married a few weeks ago. Then fast forward to spring term. Another friend from work, Ceri, and I spontaneously went to a Chinese restaurant. Well then she ended up getting a boyfriend short after that. So we were joking about this at staff meeting one day and Jessi said that she wanted in on this beneficiary curse and that she had experienced the same thing. So we agreed to go on a date.

The day of the date we ended up setting up a tournament bracket to illustrate the effects of the curse.

So on that note we went on our date.

First we went to Rippley’s. It’s a burger place here in Provo that was featured the acclaimed church movie “The Phone Call.” which can be seen here. It’s a funny movie. After that we headed over to Color Me Mine. It’s a nice place where you pick out a cup or a bowl or some other kitchen piece and then color it. Then they gloss it and put it in a kiln and give it back to you a few days later. So it was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of our creations.

Yes, that is a frisbee player that highly resembles me.

And the gnome was a nice touch I thought.

Dinosaurs and Thai!

2009-07-05T11:34:00.001-07:00

So on Friday I went on a date to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. It was a lot of fun! I remembered that I really like dinosaurs. It brought me back to the old days of playing with Craig and all our dinosaur action figures that he had. We learned all the names and what kind of dinosaurs they were. We could tell you if they were carnivores, herbivores, or even a rare few omnivores. We even knew what periods some of them lived in (i.e. Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous). I remember one time when Craig remarked that certain dinosaurs from the movie “Jurassic Park” weren’t even alive during the Jurassic period. What an atrocity! Of course, I don’t really remember all that much now. But I still remember the names of the basic dinosaurs and the general families of different kinds. The names of some of the lesser known ones came right back too. So we walked around the museum, me like a nerd in his element, talking about all the dinosaurs, her… well I think she was enjoying it too. It’s hard for one to tell. But she didn’t look bored or annoyed. And I did my best to throw in more interesting conversational topics too. There is a nice place for kids to dig around in dirt there too. Like they are real paleontologists! I was kind of tempted to play around in that mud… but I passed. So bottom line, dinosaur museum = cool.

We also went to the Thai house. It’s a nice little classy restaurant. You get quite a bit of food, and it’s not wildly expensive. They have good fried ice cream too. That was yummy. The food seemed like it could have used a little more flavor, but maybe I just picked a slightly bland item. It was a really healthy dish though. Many vegetables and stuff. I like vegetables and stuff. I’d recommend it as a good place to go for anyone looking for a date place or just food.

Hair Cut!

2009-07-02T09:47:00.001-07:00

So I got decided to get a haircut yesterday. I had been thinking it was about time, but hadn’t yet planned a time to actually go get it cut. Well I happened to be walking past the barber place from a friend’s house on the way home and I saw that it wasn’t busy and it was cheaper on Wednesdays. So I walked in and sat right down to get it cut. The girl cutting my hair was the same as last time. She remembered my hair. Apparently there aren’t too many people who come in with thick curly hair that poofs into an afro when you comb the gel out of it. So now I have quite short hair. A bit shorter than I would have preferred, but my hair can roll with the punches. It’s versatile like that. I did notice something interesting though. Every time I get a hair cut my hair seems to acquire some interesting quirk. The latest one is that there is a tuft of hair in the back left side of my head where the hair is straight now and just kind of sticks straight out. Who knows, maybe the rest of my hair will follow suite and I will have a head of straight hair that won’t do anything but stick straight out like I’ve been electrocuted. So that’s my most recent bout of quirkiness.

Dear Santa...

2009-06-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

I was chatting with my friend Mena and she randomly sent me this message.

Dear Santa,
I've been a pretty good girl this year. I've tried not to be too mean to anyone. I passed my classes. I even kept in pretty good contact with my family. Can I please, handsome, please have some new eye candy in the ward and everywhere else, too, while you're at it? Oh, can they be decent guys and not d-bags, too? And, while we're at it, I prefer (naturally) dark hair, Southern manners, hard workers, good senses of style, great senses of humor, tolerance for others, and respect/admiration for me. Thanks so much!
Love, Mena

So here was my reply.

Dear Mena,
I understand your plight and would love to give you this present for Christmas seeing as how you have fulfilled all the requirements on the “good girl list.” However I am currently very occupied and must over see my elves up here in the north pole and therefore I am unable to move into your ward to provide the proper eye candy that would be needed. I apologize for my failings and will send something sparkly or shiny this Christmas.
Ho ho ho,
Santa

Man Lunch

2009-05-31T13:37:00.000-07:00

I like food. In fact… I depend on it. It keeps me alive. On top of that, I like good food and large quantities of it. Most things that you would expect a stereotypical college guy to eat don’t do it for me. I like frozen burritos, ramen, nachos, and all the other things I should be eating to destroy my health, but none of those things ever fill me up or satisfy me. And if I go too long only eating those, then I start to get depressed. So I generally like to cook decent meals for my self. I have become a semi decent cook actually.

So my roommate David and I have started a tradition. On Sundays after church we have started to have a “Man Lunch.” And it has turned out to be, as David would put it, “not even a bad idea.” Basically we periodically have a wonderful steak meal, grilled on the barbeque. David takes care of the grilling while I cook up all the other stuff. Today we had some fresh asparagus to go with the steak and mashed potatoes. To be honest I’ve never cooked asparagus before. But it’s no different than any other vegetables. So I sautéed some onions and threw a bit of garlic in there. Then threw the asparagus in, and as a last minute brilliant idea, my roommate had some lemons. So we put in some fresh squeezed lemon juice. It gave it a wonderfully tasteful zing. Anything that can be described with the word “zing” has got to be good. Basically man lunches make both of us instantly giddy and happy. The steaks have been very high quality lately too. I don’t know if I just got lucky with the cut, or David’s grilling skills have greatly improved, either way I’m certainly not complaining. It leaves both of us happily satisfied in a blissful daze for hours afterwards.

The life of Bryan

2009-05-17T22:19:00.001-07:00

Well not much has really changed. Last time I wrote about what my life is like it went about like this. Frisbee, work, nerdy econ stuff, and… well… that’s about it. So now that summer has started my life consists of: Frisbee, work, nerdy econ stuff, and… a little soccer. Intramural season is underway. I’m on a Frisbee team with some people from the BYU team and on my ward soccer team. I also had the option of joining the softball and kickball teams, but since I also have normal BYU Frisbee practice twice a week as well as Frisbee games every Thursday for the Orem City Frisbee League, I figured it might be a good idea to take it a little easy.

So the run down on all the sports teams. Our Orem City league turned out to be a fairly solid team. They try to even the talent out between all the teams, but it is really hard to do that sometimes. The people assigning teams are on the BYU Frisbee team so they know most people who play competitively around here. Then you get a lot of people that they don’t know. You are supposed to rate yourself, but self ratings are extremely subjective, especially since it is hard to compare yourself when you don’t know what other people are rating. For example, I think I barely made it into the top 50 in rankings. I probably am really somewhere in the top 25 skills wise, but it’s just hard to rank yourself. For me it was fine because the people know me so they can put me where they need, but for others they have no idea. Well it turns out that a number of the unknown people who were assigned to my team are from BYU-Idaho and have played semi-competitively there. So we have a solid team. We are undefeated so far, but we have only played two games.

BYU Intramurals is going well. We put together an upper division team. It is a team of mostly mid range players from the BYU team. We don’t have any “handlers” but we all are competent enough to play at an intramural level. It turns out that we run an extremely smooth offense. It works and flows really well. The only problem is that we often drop easy catches. It is silly. But that’s what happens. We’ll see how the rest of the season turns out.

The BYU Ultimate team is going well. We changed our name to “Destroying Angels” a little while back and got new jerseys. The jerseys are very nice and are made of wicking fabric. We have a tournament coming up in June. It is actually the Utah Olympic Games. They added Ultimate to their list of events last year. It is one of the few 2 day tournaments that we actually get to play on both days (Usually the 2nd day is on Sunday so we skip out on those games). I’m looking forward to that. Hopefully we can take it all again.

Now for soccer, this is the first time in 3 or 4 semesters that I’m not playing goalie. I like goalie, but it’s fun to run around as well. I usually play defense or mid. I prefer mid. I like to be able to run on both sides of the field. There is a lot more running, which is good for me.

So that’s the run down on my sports life.

Maybe we are morally detached

2009-05-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

So every once in a while I come across something that I find quite amusing. However, when I show it to someone else they find it less amusing. I have had reactions from disgust to thinking it is some sort of social heresy I came across a blog entry that one of my former professors happened to write on Times and Seasons. Now before you go and freak out, I think he does raise some interesting points, and it does have some societal implications that add a very logical side to the debate about abortion. So here’s the link. It turns out that using this kind of analysis we are definitely not at the socially optimal level of abortions, even when you throw morals out the window it still comes up that way. So anyways, one of the reactions I got to this article when I shared it was “Sick! He's putting a value to a fetus!" My thoughts were... well yeah. Maybe I'm just morally twisted and detached like all other economists. Or maybe I just make a difference between measuring a monetary value that a life has to an economy vs. what real value is. I don't know if that made sense, but I'm going to stick with it. We can debate that further if you so desire.

For any other social scientists/economists out there, he also wrote this article which I found amusing. Just do yourself a favor and don’t take things so seriously.

My Nickname in High School

2009-04-19T11:35:00.000-07:00

So last night I was on a date and I doubled with Josh Sillitoe. Josh and I ran cross country together in high school. We hang out and do things from time to time. Anyways, while we were driving to one of our destinations at one point in time during the night Josh ended up calling me/introducing me as Chester. That was my nickname in XC and so that led to me telling the story about how I got the nickname. So I figured I would just share it and put it out there for the whole world to see. By the way… only Josh, Troy and maybe some other XC peeps are allowed to call me Chester. The rest of you are going to have to find another nickname for me if you really want to call me something.

So one Saturday during my senior year we didn’t have practice, but Coach Burgess gave us instructions to run on our own. I believe it was just a 50 minute run. So Josh Sillitoe, Troy Steadman, and I got together Saturday morning to do our workout. It was a cloudy overcast day and sufficiently chilly, at least to us desert dwellers it seemed cold. We ran for a good 50 minutes and when we got back we decided that it was cold enough to get hot chocolate at the Texaco down the road. Hot chocolate seems like a strange thing to get after running 6 miles… but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Besides, they had these creamers there, like “Italian Crème,” that were delicious. When we got there a Club from the high school was hosting a car wash. So we decided to support and get our cars washed. They were even vacuuming the inside, so that was a plus. Well when one of the cars finished this girl hollered over at us. She was black so imagine a black girl yelling this, “Hey! You over there! Chester! Your car is done!” So Troy thought that she was talking to me and said “AAAHHAAA! She called you Chester! I’m gonna call you that from now on!” So I went over and it turns out that it was Troy’s car that was finished. HE was the Chester! So I went back and made fun of him because he was really Chester. But he said he was still going to call me Chester. From then on we were both Chester.

Incidentally, about a year and a half ago I was watching TV while making lunch. The new story was about how the FBI had just caught a child molester who had been on the run. They put his picture up with his name under it and it turns out that his name is Chester Stiles. I did a double take on that one. What are the odds? I just did a quick google search and he also is from Nevada! Later that day I got a text from the other Chester that said, “Chester! They got you!”

Proof I'm a nerd

2009-04-16T00:12:00.000-07:00

So my nerdiness has been flourishing unchecked lately. I guess I could try to classify it as an occupational hazard, but since economics isn’t my occupation yet maybe I should consider it an educational hazard. For all you out there who hate economics, well… you must hate me then, and we are enemies. One day we will meet in battle and only the strongest will survive. I patiently await that day. I will put three asterisks in front of the really boring paragraphs so you can skip them if you want. Anyways, on to my nerdiness!

So economics is all about models. We observe something that happens in the world and then work up a model to explain this. Then we empirically test the model to see if it works and go from there. So as a result, I have started observing things and try to explain them in terms of models in order to understand life.

So here we are with nerdiness incident #1: My mind was wandering during sacrament meeting and I was thinking about Frisbee. Then I got to thinking, has my behavior in Frisbee changed since being single? Have I started to play in a more risky manner? I don’t really think I have if you control for change in weather and the reappearance of grassy fields. So I decided to work up this model. I didn’t put values to any of these variables so it’s purely theoretic.

***So what that means is there are two equations that measure the value of making a risky play in Frisbee. They are both expected values because it’s not a 100% probability of getting hurt, there is only the chance (p) that you will get hurt and (1-p) that you won’t get hurt. The “hurt” is the value you get if you are hurt when you take the risk, “not hurt” is the value you get if you aren’t hurt and you take the risk. Then there are the glory points that you get whether you get hurt or not. The first equation represents the value you get from a risky act when you are single. Equation two is the value you get when you are dating someone. You’ll notice that there are two negative values added, “nag” and “sense of responsibility”. So since the value of U1 > U2 then a person should take more risks when they are single. So that’s my first musing.

So another story, I was brushing my teeth one day and thinking about a conversation I had with a friend the night before. The topic of my white suit came up and that led me to think about when I went with my friend to buy the suit. Then I thought, why didn’t I ever try to date her? She was really cool and fun. So I brought thought up these equations.

***Ok so in this one the first equation is the happiness you get out of being friends. It’s the happiness of being friends minus what you consider the opportunity cost of forgoing dating them would be. In the second equation it’s another expected value since it’s not a sure bet that trying to date someone will result in a successful outcome. The letters p, q, and r are the probabilities of each outcome. So the first outcome is the successful one, the benefit of dating, minus the effort put out there. The second one is when it doesn’t work out but you still stay friends. You get the benefit of being friends, minus the effort, minus the inevitable period of awkwardness. Then the last one is when you try, get shot down, and then things are never the same again and you aren’t friends anymore. Then you put forth effort and lose the benefit of being friends as well. So when if comes to decision time of what to do it depends on which is greater than the other. If U(Friend) > E[U(Dating)] then it’s best to stay friends.

So I’m sure many people will disagree with me on that last one. But this is just random musings of mine. Chill out. So on to the most recent one which has nothing to do with dating or girls. I had a French choir concert on Tuesday and I played two accordion solos. During the first one there was a part where I got nervous and my right hand started to shake. It was a fairly technical part so I ended up making some mistakes. As I was thinking about that, I realized that my performance level could be modeled by a variation of the Solow Growth model that we learn about in Macroeconomics. Here is a picture.

***So basically this is a model with multiple equilibrium points. The lower left dot is the dot that signifies a low level of performance and is correlated with a low level of confidence. The upper right dot is a high performance level and a high confidence level. The straight line at a 45 degree angle shows the direct correlation between confidence and performance. The curvy line is a function of your own practice and confidence. The place where the two lines cross is where the level of performance is. If you practice a lot then you will start on the upper right dot. However if something happens to ruin your concentration of give you a shock then you will drop down a bit on the line and it has a downward force becuase you get nervous and then mess up more and get more nervous until you hit the lower left point.

So there you have it. My nerdiness!

Eye Contact

2009-03-16T15:27:00.001-07:00

So I was talking with one of my friends about the difference between guys and girls and how they interact. It had something to do with eye contact and how we position ourselves and random things like that. I don’t really remember the specifics about it, but it serves as a good intro to my blog about eye contact.

Eye contact is a funny thing. If you happen to find yourself in a pack of gorillas, (or is it a herd? a posse?) then you would want to avoid making eye contact with any gorillas, especially the alpha male. You’ll get yourself a good pummeling if you do. So we as fellow members of the primate group seem to have a natural aversion to eye contact as well. This kind of a subject came up in a conversation with a girl I met last week. Ironically, at first I found it difficult to keep decent eye contact with this girl at first. She was attractive and had very striking eyes. So for some reason there was something that made me not want to keep eye contact for very long. I got over it after a little while though.

So in our conversation we were talking about how we had been making efforts to be friendlier on campus. I personally have been making efforts to talk to people when I’m walking on campus. She had been making efforts to try to smile at more people. I found that it’s hard to actually find people that are available to talk to. They are either on cell phones, listening to their ipod, or in groups. She found that it’s hard to simply make eye contact with people to smile at them.

So this brings me to stake conference over the weekend. I’m sure many of you have found yourself on the stage at church or in some position in front of a group of people. Well there are two situations that you can run into. Sometimes you’ll find someone out there that just catches your eye. And your gaze on the crowd will end up reverting to that person. Other times someone will be right in the default range of your gaze. So you will end up looking at them often with out realizing it. It is quite funny when you are on the receiving end of the person on the stand. Well over the weekend in the two sessions of conference I found my self on the receiving end of one of those situations. It was the first counselor in of the stake relief society presidency. On both Saturday and Sunday we kept making those awkward glances at each other. So on Sunday I started making a game out of it. I decided to see how long I could hold eye contact and see who would break eye contact first. I think the record was about 8-10 seconds before she broke eye contact. That is actually an eternity when you are staring a stranger in the eyes. It’s amazing how many times in 8 seconds you will have the urge to look away. Needless to say, it was a funny game, and who ever that was probably thinks I’m really creepy. But it’s all in fun! And in my defense I would only keep the eye contact when she was looking at me first. I didn’t initiate it, she did. I just held it.

Rock Climbing, North, Accordion, and Frisbee Scrimmage

2009-03-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

I went rock climbing on Friday night. It was a lot of fun. I came to an interesting discovery though. Normally people use their arms to much and after a while their arms get so weak that they can’t climb anymore. Well I made a very conscious effort to make sure that most of the climbing was done with my legs. Rock climbing really isn’t that much different from climbing Grandma and Grandpa’s trees, so I didn’t have too much trouble. The thing is that after about an hour my grip was totally gone. The rest of my body was fine, but I just could not old onto the hand holds anymore. So now I can feel soreness in my forearms when I clench my fists. My arms and legs are fine though. Maybe if I do it enough I’ll have ripped forearms! Woohoo!

I drove up north yesterday to visit with Melanie, Mathis and Aubrey and then headed up to Syracuse to see the Moodys. I haven’t seen them for four years since I got my visa and left Syracuse to head out to New Caledonia. The Moodys were just great to us during out mission so it was really nice to see them again and catch up with them. I had to take a round about way to get to their house because the only way I could remember how to get there was to start at the place I stayed as a missionary and then track the path as if I were walking there. But even after four years I still remembered the way and found it even though it was dark. It was fun to drive past places and take a trip down memory lane. The Moodys are still as wonderful as ever and it was a very pleasant trip.

In the past few weeks I have become an accordion player! I borrowed an accordion from my boss so that I could play a solo in the French Choir concert that I’m in at the end of the semester. It’s been a lot of fun. It still makes me smile every time I bring it out of it’s case. I decided to name it even though it’s my boss’s accordion. I think “Tito” is an appropriate name. It’s a Titano brand accordion, so it was just a short jump to get “Tito”. We are going to have some good times together!

Our Frisbee team drove up to the U of U on Wednesday and played a friendly scrimmage with their team. They have improved a lot since last year. It was fun to play against some new people and not just teammates. We were also able to see what we could work on and have been trying to improve in those areas. The best part of the night was when my team was lining up on offense and the U team was setting up their defense at the same time. One of their players was assigning who would guard who. So call a player on his team and the point to player on our team. Well when he assigned someone to cover me he called out a player on his team and said, “You take wheels,” as he pointed to me. That is pretty much the ultimate compliment, which is appropriate since we were playing Ultimate Frisbee. (He he, Get it? Yeah? Ok sorry, it was a bad pun)

Well that should do it for a random update in my life.

The 25 things thingy

2009-02-16T17:46:00.001-08:00

1. When I was 12 I flew off the trampoline and landed on my face on a pile of dirt and rocks. The whole right side of my face was scabbed like two face!.... I got better.
2. I have 4 pillows on my bed. One memory foam pillow for my head, one to cuddle with, one to put between my knees, and one to put between my feet.
3. I also have a particular sleeping routine at night. I lay on my left side for anywhere from 2-10 minutes, and then switch it my back for a couple minutes, and then I end up on my right side and fall asleep.
4. I often have crazy dreams that include ninjas, terrorists, or other action packed themes. However last night my dream included hamsters and computer fans.
5. I play on a collegiate ultimate Frisbee team. We go to tournaments and play other colleges and everything.
6. We also have a disc golf course memorized on campus that we play late at night.
7. Last summer I wrote a musical about where I work. I wrote out the script, lyrics, and music. It was great!
8. I’ve never dated someone shorter than me.
9. I sang in the background choir for “You Raise Me Up” at a Josh Groban concert. He’s a small guy.
10. I have a bad habit of psychoanalyzing myself. It’s probably my dad’s fault. I’m never right though, which is why it’s a bad habit.
11. I have two USB missile launchers. They are awesome.
12. I ate kangaroo once.
13. I have a white suit and a whole disco get up.
14. I feel very strongly about homemade salsa. When it spills I have strong emotions that at times have been known to transfer into music!
15. I have 12 pairs of shoes. Two pairs of cleats, two pairs of Sunday shoes (one in Henderson back home and one here) four pairs of casual shoes, two pairs of running shoes (One in Henderson and one here), a pair of brown bowling shoes, and a pair of snow boots.
16. Chocolate milk is my happiness.
17. I have a bad habit of losing my watches
18. My favorite colors are green… and blue. They’re both favorite. But green is more favorite.
19. When I was 5 I was in a singing and dancing group called Sunshine Generation. I sang a solo called the “Ice Cream Song.” It was cute.
20. I knocked my two front teeth out when I was three and four. One when I was running around like a crazed toddler, tripped and hit my mouth on the water bed. The other one when my sister elbowed me. They didn’t grow back till I was 9 or so.
21. I generally only cut my hair every three or four months. It just gets curly as it gets longer.
22. In the summer when I was a kid my cousins and I would spend our time play time out in the desert lizard hunting. You have to get out somewhat early before the sun heats up because the lizards are slower then.
23. One day I want to own an accordion.
24. My car’s name is Riley.
25. One time while looking for trouble with the Trio we used a water balloon launcher to launch a balloon at a couple making out at the bell tower.

Random updates on life at the moment

2009-02-02T22:12:00.000-08:00

Ever since I was 5 I've been told by older people that the older you get and the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know. I agree with that statement. However, I would like to add a little addition to that. The older I get and the more I learn, the more I realize how much other people don't know.

I took my first ever dance test today, for dance 180. It was on the foxtrot. Nothing too difficult. He said I have nice posture, but sometimes my elbows dropped a bit. But have good leads. Woot.

We went to the bishop's house for FHE and they fed us Crepes. However, they called them "Norwegian Pancakes" because Sister Bishop served there... or lived there... or something along those lines. Apparently the ward record was 9 crepes (He feeds the same thing to every FHE group that visits). And the most he'd ever seen eaten was 15 by a missionary who is now on the football team. I was going plenty strong at 8 when we cut things short and went on to the lesson. I think I could have taken out the football player. Another kid got to 10. He was closer to the middle of the table and had first access to the crepes. Anyways, the record will have to go for another day.

I'm heading down to Vegas on thursday for another frisbee tournament. It is the "Trouble in Vegas" tournament. One of the biggest tournaments in the nation. There will be about 80 colleges there. The best in the nation will be there. It is quite a site to see.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

2009-01-30T17:15:00.000-08:00

I just came across this link and I wasn't sure what to think. So I googled the title to see if it really was legit. Apparently it is a real book. Amazon is selling it and The National Post has a small article on it. I kind of doubt that it is very good and considering the fact that I haven't read the real Pride and Prejudice, I don't know if I'm allowed to read this one. Well the premise gave me a kick anyways.

First Week

2009-01-07T23:46:00.001-08:00

So the first week of winter semester is almost done for me. I don’t have classes on Friday. Woot! In fact I barely work, which just means I’ll be studying all day. As far as classes go I have three Econ classes: Game Theory, Labor Economics, and Economic Development. They all seem pretty interesting. They are all applied to the real world now. I spent my time drudging through all the courses that taught me all the skills and now these classes are an application of those skills. All 3 Econ professors are quite interesting too.

My game theory professor has an extremely dry sense of humor, and I don’t even get most of his jokes. I always felt pretty comfortable around dry humor, but this guy loses me a lot. That, or he isn’t very funny… Possible. My labor economics teacher refers to himself as coach. Which isn’t a bad thing… I kind of like the guy so far. We’ll see how long that lasts. We do have a paper due next week. Which reminds me… I need to get an idea and start running regressions… Oi! My economic development teacher is a hoot. Unfortunately I can’t really explain it. But… well he’s really funny. I don’t have to worry about falling asleep in that class.

Apart from those 3 classes I’m also in Dance 180. I have three reasons for being in that class. One is I always meant to take that class while I was here at BYU. I was going to take it freshman year, and then I didn’t for some reason or another. I think maybe the girl I had a crush on and had planned on taking it with opted out last minute or something… I don’t know. Anyways I didn’t take it then. Then every other semester I would have had time to take it I opted to take a sports class like jogging (I hear your snickering!), volleyball, or racquetball. So alas, I had never taken the class. Well last semester I found out that this would be my last full semester of school. I lack only one class after this, which I will take spring term or possibly summer term. So I have to take it this semester. Another reason is because I happen to be dating a ballroom dancer who, if I were any less willing to take the class, would probably find ways to threaten me and coax me into the class. So, I guess girls still have the same power that they did my freshman year. And lastly, I barely have 12 credits this semester. I need some filler classes. Another one of those filler classes is French Choir. I just found out last night that one of my friends in the ward will be the director for the choir. I’m not sure how he landed that gig, but it should be pretty fun.

Just random thoughts

2008-12-28T17:28:00.000-08:00

So it’s December 28th, and the year is coming to an end. You all know what that means? Dave Barry writes his annual "Year in Review" article! Woohoo! Thankfully for me and for you who feel an obligation to read this due to family ties, friendship ties, or possible blackmail I will not be review my life in the past year, but I will at least try to catch you up on something that seems interesting.

Christmas time is always exciting. Except for the fact that it wasn’t really all that exciting… I was still in a final exam induced coma by the time Christmas rolled around and missed out on all the anticipation for it this year. Luckily the Christmas break has served as an effective remedy to my coma. As it is I have taken a very anticipated break from school and read a couple of books, an online comic, caught up on some sleep, visited with family (haven’t quite gotten to the friends part yet, that’s on this week’s to do list), sang in a Christmas cantata, watched half of season 1 of 24, and slept some more.
Emily and I have discovered Google video chat. I remember trying to get into the video chat world years ago but it was too slow and the voice chat was even worse. Now it is much faster. I am anticipating the end of the week when my girlfriend ends up down here in Henderson. As well as the middle of the week when Melanie, Mathis and Aubrey stop by on their way down to San Diego. Who knows what other exciting events lay in wait for me this week!

At the beginning of December I bought a pair of scissors. I found it mildly amusing that I needed a pair of scissors in order to order and use these pair of scissors. I have discovered that this effect only increases. My mom got a pack of 5 kitchen style scissors for Christmas. It took some pretty heavy duty scissors to make that extraction.

We went to Arizona for a few days before Christmas. I stayed pretty busy up there too. The first Grandpa, Dad, and I played golf and then we headed over to the rec center and played racquetball. My dad and I found ourselves locked in an epic duel of something epic. Last year Dad smoked Chris and me. I have since taken a class and Dad and I are at pretty much the same level. So I took an early lead in the game and was looking good but I have a knack for being a choke artist (In pool as well, ask Uncle Ken or Alex). That and my dad figured out his backhand swing. So He made a run and took the lead at which point I started to score again and it was head to head until my dad finally squeaked away with a 16-14 win. We didn’t play another game to say the least. Apparently we are both getting out of shape.

Freakonomics at work

2008-12-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

I have been taking a class called Econometrics this semester. We learn how to do statistical analysis on any data that has numbers or can have numbers put to it. Most of the book “Freakonomics” uses econometrics, at least in part, to arrive at the conclusions they have. I’m working on a project that is somewhat akin to that. Basically what I’m doing using data on the price of baseball cards and testing to see if there is racial bias in the price for a baseball card. The price of a baseball card is the result of the demand for that certain card. The demand for a card is usually based on how successful that player was. So using the career statistics for every baseball player in a card set I’m testing to see if there are black baseball players that have high career stats but a low priced baseball card. It should be interesting to see what the final results are. Perhaps I won’t find anything. Perhaps I will. Who knows.

On a related note, I had a professor last year who was involved in a project with Justin Wolfers to test for racial bias in foul calls by referees in the NBA. They used box score data from the 1993-94 season all the way to the 2003-04 season to test for any racial bias in foul calls. The media went up in arms, the NBA criticized it and individual basketball players took their own shots. When you look through the comments from the media and then actually read the study you realize how oblivious some people really are. The comments from NBA players were amusing. But none of them read the study, just heard about it. Charles Barkley was my favorite. He said that of course black players receive more fouls than white players; there are more of them in the NBA. Then he said "The thing that bothered me most is these guys didn't even go to the game. They looked at box scores." I don’t think that in order to crunch numbers, you have to go to every single game for 10 years just to get the “feel” for it.

I think I found something that people who report on studies get wrong often. When you read statistical studies you will find the words “significant” and “not significant” attached to the numbers reported. Real world significance and statistical significance are to different things. Significance in statistics means that the data is consistent enough to confidently say that there is an effect. Let’s say we find that the average price of a specific bag at a normal store is $30. Now the average price of the same bag at stores by the beach is $50. So we can say that beach stores sell bags for $20 more. Now what if the price from each store looked like this: Store 1: $10, Store 2: $70, Store 3:$20, Store 4: $30, Store 5: $90, Store 6: $80. The average is still $50, but the prices vary so much that it isn’t very significant. In the case of the NBA study a player receives 0.18 fewer fouls from referees of his own race than another race. This is during 48 minutes played. The results are “significant” meaning that the variation is small enough to not just pass it off as random variation. However, to a basketball player that means that assuming he plays 48 minutes in every game and that all 3 referees were a different race for all those games, he would get about 1 foul call race every 5 games. Who is going to notice that? No wonder the basketball players haven’t noticed any bias. For all practical purposes, there isn’t much. The study shines more of a light on the fact that on split second decisions, the subconscious part of our brain can have an effect.

Well this is getting long and it’s probably extremely boring to everyone except me. And maybe my Uncle Ken… and Craig… and perhaps Danielle… Sorry to everyone else!

Priorities and more!

2008-09-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

Well August passed away with one lonely blog post and September looks like it is trying to get away scotch free. But I shall not be conquered by the likes of laziness. (That statement is going to come back and bite me I know it!) So it’s been a good month or so. School has started up and I’m doing my best to prioritize my life with good priority orders. Of course once I started doing that everything shot up to the first 2 or three priority categories. There’s only so much room up there. :) I wish I had like 10 first priority spots! So here’s how things are going. School is definitely a high priority. Even higher this semester than it was in past semesters. I would like to show school who is boss! Of course there is Frisbee. That is so big I even have to split that up into different priorities: the BYU Team, then Orem Ultimate, then BYU Intramural Frisbee, and lastly casual pick-up games. As it stands right now the last two don’t make it onto my list and consequently are non-existent in my life. So then you can add most musical activities into a priority which, while important is not too high up there this semester. Church is of course quite a high priority. I’m the Family Home Evening Coordinator for my group here. I just got called to it today. Again. Even though I already had that calling and never got released from it. I hope that doesn’t mean that I’m the dad and the mom. That would be silly.

BYU football is quite the excitement of the semester. We are four games into the season, and it’s been a doozy! We have won all four of them so far and our winning streak keeps getting larger. Shutting out UCLA and Wyoming was a treat. Even though some people don’t like shutouts because they get boring, I’m a die-hard. So that’s all peachy for the moment.

And one last slightly unexpected but highly welcomed incident. I have a wonderful girlfriend now. We started dating two weeks ago. We have known each other for about two years now and pretty much accidentally started dating each other. Since most of you who read this have probably already heard the story I’ll not put it on here. But you can always ask me if you want to know. I’ll tell you the real story of how it went. She won’t tell the whole truth, but I knew what was really going on! :)

Frisbay! Trio! Olympics!

2008-08-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

Frisbay!

So if you haven’t seen this already then you need to now.

http://vimeo.com/358109

That said, I had a Frisbee tournament in Park City last Saturday. It went well. We actually only went 2-4. We lost 2 games by 1 point and another one by 2 points. They were all really close. What we didn’t expect when we first arrived was to play 6 games in a row. After the first game our team captain came over and said that we had 6 games in a row and no bye times. So what does that translate to? Well, it’s about 9 hours in all. So 9 hours, 10 miles, 100+ jumps, and 30+ dives later we all hobbled off the playing fields feeling…. great! Some would say that we have some mental problem. I don’t think any of us would disagree with you.

I visited home this weekend which meant a couple of things. I got to follow the Olympics more closely. I went to a couple of wedding receptions. And I hung out with the Trio! The Trio is slightly altered since I last left it back in January. Both of them have girlfriends now. So that meant that while we were in all our awesomeness Dallin and Brock had girls in their arms. Luckily these girls don’t put a hamper on anything. And luckily Eliza was there to relieve me of my status as a 5th wheel.

To the Olympics. I saw two historic things happen this weekend. Both were impressive, but one was tainted. We’ll start with the perfect one and then I’ll step on to my soap box. Michael Phelps as we all know won 8 gold medals. That is a feat. Pure and simple. The crazy thing is that in 7 of those races he set a world record, and in all 8 he got a personal best. That means that every race he raced in the finals was the best race of his life. Talk about pushing yourself. I spent my whole senior year trying to best my personal record in the mile and only managed to break it once. By one second. And that was it. This guy did it 8 times in one week! Wow. I need to get some of whatever he ate in the morning.

The other amazing thing that happened was that the world record in the 100 meter sprint was broken. Usain Bolt broke his own world record bringing it from 9.72 to 9.69. This was a stacked race as well. 6 of the 8 runners ran under 10 seconds. Now, here is my problem with the race. Bolt started out a bit slow. He was the 7th man out of the blocks. Then his long legs kicked in and he blew past everyone and with 20 meter to go he had a good 10 foot lead on everyone. So what does he do? He spreads his arms out, looks around, pounds his chest and starts gloating as he cruises in to a 9.69 finish ahead of everyone else. That’s just bad sportsmanship. And think, what if he had run all the way through. He may have been able to run in the 9.5’s. He could have eclipsed the world record. But it was more important to him to gloat and receive praise and glory. So as he danced around the track, millions of kids watched and started idolizing and taking mental notes about how one should act towards other people. So here are the rules that have been taught: Rule one: Make sure everyone knows that you are better than them. Rule 2: When you have established that you are better than everyone else, make sure that your conduct afterwards brings all the focus to you and at the same time rubs it in the face of everyone else.

So much for sportsmanship. Track and Field just barely got out of the cross fire from doping scandals and now when people start looking at it again as a respectable sport we have this. Well congrats to Usain Bolt, it was an amazing race regardless. So much for class though.

New Car

2008-07-14T23:07:00.001-07:00

So I finally did it and got a car. It’s a classic college car. You know… 10 years old, fairly high mileage. But the sucker is a trusty one. It’s an Acura Integra. So it’s made well and reliable for another 100,000 miles or so. Anyways when I tell people that I got a new car they always ask what color it is first, then what kind of a car it is and then say something like “Welp, you’ll be married in no time now.” Funny sort of. One of my good friends is engaged to be married next month and he had the same reaction. I told him that everyone says that and he said, “Well I struggled with girls for a long time and then I got a cell phone and a car and now I’m married.” Are all girls materialistic like that? No I don’t think so. But there is a slight looked down upon-ness there. Whether it’s an unconscious thing in the back of you mind or something else, it’s definitely there. It seems like you can just tell. Which is kind of lame. But I guess all of Bugs Bunny’s foes had a way of dealing with that. It’s the old classic saying “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Is that what I’m doing? Well I guess I am. Yet part of me still wants to be stubborn. Really stubborn. And I would be it if I had any idea how to be stubborn in this situation. But alas, I haven’t the faintest idea of what to do or refrain from doing to be stubborn. I guess I could refuse to use my car on dates. Maybe that would do it. That seems, bitter… and not very flattering to anyone though. Or at best silly. No sense in doing any of that. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some pictures up of the car. I’m not a very good picture taker so I usually don’t have pictures on hand to just throw on a blog.

Last Comic Standing

2008-07-05T23:48:00.001-07:00

The other day I was flipping through the channels on the good ol’ tube and I came across the Last Comic Standing program. I thought, well hey this could be good. I was also watching about three other things at the same time, so I would only flip back to it periodically. But I was able to watch a couple of comics. What I found interesting was the reaction of the judges. I don’t really know who the judges were, but they seemed like they were important and that they knew something about comedy. I’m going to start with the second comedian I saw. He was a high energy guy and his routine was basically a re-enactment of a plane fight during world war two. He wasn’t the funniest guy ever, but I think it was more the fact that his material was poor than him being a bad comedian. Even though his material was somewhat lame he still pulled some funny stuff out of it by being a good comedian. During the routine he impersonated a Japanese fighter pilot and he would put on these outrageous looking glasses that played up the Japanese stereo-type. They did look pretty funny. When he did this it showed the judges reaction. They looked at each other with a look of “Oh, this is lame.” At the end of his routine they told him that Japanese jokes are a thing of the 50’s, people did that thing already, it was time to get some new stuff. The crowed booed what they said, apparently they liked the routine.

Now, back to the first routine I saw. This guy was pretty funny, but it didn’t look like the judges were taking to him much either. They had that look on their faces of, “yeah yeah I’ve seen this all before.” So I think he pulled out his trump card. He started to crack jokes making fun of President Bush. At that the judges started rolling, like it was the funniest thing you’ve ever heard. Yeah, the jokes were funny, but it wasn’t as funny as his earlier routine. But these guys loved it. I don’t really know why, they railed on the other guy for using “old material.” Well I have only seen one modern comedian that hasn’t made fun of President Bush in his routine. That’s Brian Regan. Every other comedian that I’ve seen in the past 8 years has always railed on Bush. It’s like comedians don’t know any other way to be funny. I don’t really care what your political stance is or how much you love or hate Bush, but come on, you would think that you could think of something else to make people laugh. But apparently the “Elite” have ordered that only making fun of Bush is funny. If you don’t make fun of him you don’t get to jump into the elite club and you won’t be recognized as an “acclaimed comedian.” So I guess these judges are really pushing their own agenda. It’s OK to make fun of the President, but don’t make fun of the Japanese because then you are a racist and a menace to our Brave New World Society.

Moving

2008-07-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

So I just moved from West Cambridge #8 on Condo Row to the infamous Monticello White brick apartments by the duck pond. So I was actually feeling quite down about moving. And then I checked the apartment out and realized I had forgotten how small it was and things started to fall down on me. I started to really want to go back to my old place where I knew everyone and life was predictable. Then I walked into the bathroom and saw that we have a spiderman shower curtain. So there I thought, “I think it’s going to be alright.” I met my new roommate as well. (Really tall guy!) I saw his shoes before I ever saw him and it was obvious that he is a big guy. He’s pretty chill. Slightly introverted, but quite nice. We get along quite nicely, which was a good thing for a worried mind. In any case, the move went nicely and I’m settled in. The place is smaller, but there are more drawers and closet space than the old apartment. It makes me live a bit more compactly and organized. I just barely got my piano in. It took me a few days to figure out a good spot to put the piano. It is now in my room sitting majestically to my left. Her name is McKenzy. I like that name.

Thank you

2008-06-05T19:00:00.001-07:00

So yesterday at work I was talking with the lovely Nick Erickson. We have heart to heart talks whenever we get a desk hour together. On this occasion we were having a wonderful discussion and she asked me what the ideal response from a girl would be if I told her that she looked pretty. What sparked the question was an experience she had the previous Sunday. She was walking with a guy in her ward who told her, “You’ve been looking good these last few days.” She replied with a smile, “Thanks, it’s a curse.” She asked me if that was a good response. I honestly didn’t see anything wrong with it. Yes, it could be seen as conceited or something to someone who’s really critical. But who wants to be critical. She accepted the complement, but she added to it as well. Anyways, that got us to thinking. What would be some good responses of the same manner to a compliment? We came up with a few.

1. Thanks, it’s a curse. (Already mentioned)
2. I know, I planned it that way. (More useful if someone says they like the way your clothes match)
3. Thanks, I wore it just for you.
4. Thanks, I try

Well that’s all I can think of right now. But the funny part is that just after we thought up those responses, another coworker came out of the back room, and Nicki said, “I like your shirt, it’s very yellow!” His response was, “Thanks, I wore it just for you.” He hadn’t heard any of our conversation. It was just a first class coincidence.

Lesson

2008-05-27T00:21:00.000-07:00

So I had the FHE lesson as I mentioned in the last post and I also mentioned that I would write about it. So I gave myself about 2 ½ hours to prepare it before hand. I figured that would be enough time. I don’t know what kind of effort other people put into things like that, but that’s how much I put in. So the first 30 minutes consisted of me wondering what the heck I should talk about for the lesson. Classic and probably happens with everyone. So finally I looked up and saw a notepad and thought. Well maybe if I start writing something down I’ll have some more inspiration. So I pulled it out and it had writing on the first page. It turns out it was notes I had jotted down to give a talk for a seminary orientation. I talked about what I had learned in seminary. So then I thought! Ah! Inspiration from above! And I pulled the notepad down and received the inspiration. So I decided to talk about remembering back to things that we actually had learned, and thinking of ways that we can actually keep those things with us instead of forgetting them. It was a nice chance to look back and think of the things in my past that I actually have learned from and benefited from. It’s interesting. Almost like going back and reading in your journal. So anyways, those were my thoughts in a nutshell.

Tact?

2008-05-26T18:11:00.001-07:00

It’s Monday night and I just prepared the lesson for FHE in 30 mins. My roommate asked me to do it yesterday and said he would have done it but he wasn’t sure if he’d be back in time to prepare it. I didn’t really ask him where he would be, I had no problem preparing a lesson which has turned out to be an interesting experience that I may blog about at a later time. Well I don’t know what he had planned yesterday, but right now he is watching a movie with a cute girl in the living room. I assume that’s what he had planned. For a split second when I realized that that was his “excuse” I felt a tiny bit of annoyance that he put the lesson on me for that. Then I thought… ha ha I’m silly. But then I thought, well if he had just asked me to give the lesson with no excuse as to why he couldn’t do it I wouldn’t have cared. He’s the FHE coordinator, that’s what he’s supposed to do. Delegate. And then I thought, well if he had said, “I would do it but I have this date with this girl that I really like right now” I would have been more than happy to play cupid and allow my roommate a wonderful chance to court a girl. However, it’s the “I may not have time” excuse that was almost annoying when I found out that it was a date. How strange is that? I imagine that a freshman who has never roomed with anyone before may very well have been annoyed by that. What’s the difference? They all have the same outcomes for me. Why were two completely fine and the other one only fine because I’m easy going? I guess this is why some people have tact when dealing with others and some don’t. It’s like having a roommate ask you to do the dishes. If he does it one way you’ll have no problem with it, but another way you will. You still do the dishes the same way but somehow it’s different. The brain is strange.

"Goodbye" and FHE

2008-05-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

So there have been 2 instances in the past two days where I haven’t said goodbye to someone. One was quite comical. The other one I just got a text saying, “Hey you didn’t even say goodbye.” Except I didn’t know who that was from. I had just come from our ward Dessert Night and so I figured it was someone there. It’s happened before that I’ve gotten a text from someone after dessert night saying hey you didn’t even talk to me or something. So I figure it was that. After browsing the ward directory for this number I came back with no luck. I tried to have my friend call and act like she had stolen my phone and ask who it was out of fear that if I called I wouldn’t recognize the voice, but no one answered and the answering machine was of no help. It was a generic one that just said the number, no names. Finally this morning I realized that the text had been sent before I even got to dessert night. I realized that it was someone from work with whom I had been chatting with online. When we were closing up I didn’t bother to say anything I just shut the computer down. I guess she was really hoping for a goodbye. My mistake.

The other instance was even better. This was on Monday after FHE, which I will take a little segue and talk about the FHE for a moment. It was a combined ward FHE and we played a game called Bigger and Better. Basically we divided up into groups and each group got a water bottle. Then we had to trade that for something bigger and better and who ever came back with the biggest and best item won. Well our first trade was for a can of vegetables. Then we headed up the hill and looked for the biggest house we could find and knocked on their door. They said that they didn’t want the vegetables, but they would still give us something. The dad there said to meet us downstairs and he’d give us something that would win the cake. So we walked down and what did he have? A foosball table! Yes he gave us a foosball table to keep. Apparently he and his wife had been praying for an opportunity to get rid of it. Well I’m glad we were able to be an answer to their prayers. Other people didn’t get the whole trading concept and ended up “borrowing” items. So they had cars and bikes and all that stuff. I still think ours was the coolest. Who gets a foosball table for a can of vegetables?

Ok I’ll start a new paragraph to get back on track. So after this FHE I was standing in the parking lot talking to a few girls in the ward. I don’t really remember what we were talking about, but in the middle of that conversation a guy from the ward came walking down the street with a big group of people and he yelled over “Hey Bryan, wanna play ultimate?” So my natural reaction was to yell back “Yeah!” and then I just walked away, I didn’t even turn back to say bye, or acknowledge the girls I was talking to. I had just completely forgotten about them. I didn’t even realize what I had done till halfway through the Frisbee game when Jim told me that it was hilarious and everyone was laughing about it. I guess I have a one track mind when it comes to Ultimate Frisbee. Oh well.

So long Elder Stiles

2008-04-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

Today my family came into town. It is the first day of Chris’s mission. So we dropped him off at the MTC today. It was interesting. It was the first time I have been beyond the front room of the MTC since my mission. We went to the whole orientation meeting and watched ‘Called to Serve’ and then Chris…or now, Elder Stiles went out the back door and we went out the front door. That was it. Now he’s probably exhausted and sleeping in his bed as I write this. He better be because it’s past the bed time that he will soon have for the next 2 years. When I walked through I had a lot of flashback moments. It was interesting. I guess it was the start of one of the most significant parts of my life to this point. I thought back to all the things I learned the troubles I had, the spiritual experiences, so many things. Now Chris is going to go experience all that. But at the same time his experiences will be unique to himself, while at the same time being extremely similar to those of every other missionary. We it’s a strange thing. But he is going to have the best time of his life.
After we left Elder Stiles we saw Uncle Ken outside. He was a bit late, but we talked to him for a while. Actually everyone else talked with him and I got to play with Aubrey and keep her occupied the whole time. That girl started running around and must have covered a full mile! So much energy! She’s just an adorable little girl though. I love it when Melanie and Mathis come down, or I get to go up to Bountiful. I can just play with my little niece and it’s sooo fun. And now to make it better, my nephew lives up here too! Who happens to love his uncles! I certainly don’t have a problem with that.

Festival of Colors

2008-04-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

For the final installment of this weekend’s activities I’ll talk about the Festival of colors. And this time there will be pictures! Joy. So there is a Hindu temple in Springfield or American Fork or some town down South of Provo. Every year at the beginning of spring they throw a party at the temple to celebrate the first day of spring. They let people look around the temple and then they sell colored flour. Yes flour that is not white. It comes in the assorted colors of blue, pink, orange, yellow, and red. So when the place is packed and the flour is all sold, they take a witch that they made and light it on fire. I guess that’s supposed to scare away the witches that come by in the spring. Well the minute that they light the witch on fire, everyone grabs those bags of flour and starts throwing the flour everywhere. Up, down, sideways, diagonally, and at your friends. It’s a blast. So within seconds you are covered from head to toe in all these beautiful colors. It’s quite the site. I had the lucky opportunity to be in the line of fire of some random guy running by who landed a big puff of blue in my mouth. That stuff tasted really gross. I was spitting blue spit for 5 minutes, really dark blue as well. It was interesting. It was perhaps the dirtiest show that I’ve ever taken when I got home. All the colors mixed together to make a gross brown color in the shower. It was quite gratifying to become clean though.

Ward Talent Show

2008-04-02T21:42:00.001-07:00

This last weekend was a busy weekend. I already mentioned the Frisbee scrimmage that we had. There were some other amazing events as well. Friday night was the talent show. It turned out to be a hit. We had about 20 numbers and they all were pretty cool, everything from people balancing books on their heads to a dude singing Brittany Spears ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’. I got to be the “tech guy” for the night too. I just took care of all the sound bytes that people needed and everything else of that manner. It didn’t go completely without problem but it all worked out. I also had two numbers that I was involved in. One was planned well in advanced. I played a song that I wrote called ‘No More Salsa’. It’s got a story behind it actually and I shared the story before I played the song. So I’ll share the story here.
It was a warm summer night in late August. Conditions were perfect and excitement was in the air. This night was to be a night of a legendary first date. The activities were superb and both parties got along with each other great. (Switch to 1st person). We made homemade salsa to start the date of. Straight from fresh tomatoes, onions, green onion, cilantro, and other secret ingredients that are only secret due to my lack of memory. So we made this salsa and it was a bowl of celestial goodness. Let me tell you. We were both in heaven and the best part was that there was leftover salsa. So we had some other plans that night, like horseshoes, and some Brian Reagan greatness. And my plan was to send the remaining salsa to her at the end of the date. Well we both forgot about it at the end of the date and I took her home. The next morning I realize my error and figured, well at least it’s a great chance to see this cool girl again and drop the salsa off. So morning made its appearance on Sunday and I popped out of my bed and went to the refrigerator to retrieve that Tupperware of sweet delight and bring it on over to that girl’s house. Well much to my dismay, upon opening the refrigerator, I discovered that there was no more salsa left. How could this have happened?! Did some little brother discover the addicting substance and devour it in a frantic frenzy? I hadn’t a clue, and my family was all gone to stake conference, so the mystery would remained unsolved for at least another 3 hours! What could I do?! So I went over to the piano to vent my frustrations about the loss of the tasty food and a perfectly good excuse to visit a cute girl. I started to pound minor chords and the result was this song, which has been appropriately named, ‘No More Salsa’.
Nice story eh? So I played the song and people seemed to like it. Or at least that’s what they told me. They probably felt bad for me after hearing about such a tragic event in my life.
Now I said I was in two numbers. The second number was even more fun. Here’s how it went down. On Wednesday morning I got a text from my friend Caitlin asking me if I had the music for ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia’. Well I didn’t but I logged onto music-notes.com and bought it right then and told her that I did. The wonders of the internet are wonderful! So she said that she wanted to do it for the talent show. Later on that day I ran into her roommate who it turns out was the mastermind behind this plan. She also had plans to get other people to act it out. So Thursday night came and Caitlin came over so that we could run the song through a few times. It turns out that this song is a whole lot of fun to play. We had Tricia and Emily singing harmony and John playing the devil with Neal as Johnny. So we got to have quite the shin-dig for the last number in the talent show. Caitlin and I decided that we had the coolest parts of everyone. We just got to rock out the whole time. It was basically awesome.

Frisbee Shenanigans

2008-04-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

So I’m a little behind and I’ve decided that in playing catch up I’m going to try to do many smaller posts instead of one larger post. Maybe that will work out. I’ll start with Frisbee golf. Basically that is one fun game. Well at least the way we play it. It turns out that the guys on my Frisbee team have a course that they have set up on campus. They have 18 land marks on campus that everyone has memorized and we go all around campus to hit these land marks with a Frisbee from a starting point. Every hole has a par and everything. We use some old junky discs because we wouldn’t want to ruin our nice ones by sliding them across the street. Well it turns out that I am not all that great at Frisbee golf. I’ve never been much of a long distance thrower when it comes to Frisbee. In fact I’m not all that great of a handler at any distance. But I’ve improved my short game a lot over the last few months. And my long game has gotten better too. However; I still have a lot of room for improvement. I was about 20 strokes worse than everyone else on the team. But that’s ok. I’m getting better, and I have other strengths in the game as well. Well… the Ultimate Frisbee game that is. Not really Frisbee golf. I’m all around bad there.
A little news from the Ultimate Frisbee team: BYU-Idaho came down last weekend and we we’re able to have a scrimmage game with them on Saturday morning. It turned out to be a lot of fun. And yes, we did win. A lot of the guys who came down were the guys who I played with a few months ago in the Vegas tournament. This time I was playing against them. It was fun to see the guys again. Even if we didn’t remember each other’s names right away.

I slept in and Frisbee

2008-03-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I had good intentions to come home from work and find someone or some people and go to the volleyball game and have a fun night. Well I got home from work and ate and then somehow I fell asleep and woke up well into Friday night, too late to get anyone to do anything, so I just decided to get ready for the Frisbee tournament the next day and go to bed early. I can hear all the priesthood figures around Utah cringing. It was a Friday night and I wasn’t on a date?! What was I thinking?!?! Well… er… sorry, I slept in…
So on Friday morning the team met at the DT field. Actually only five of us showed up at the field and the others made it up to SLC on their own, and just happened to forget to tell the captain till the last moment. But we all made it there safely none the less. When we got there we were informed that the tournament would be starting 30 minutes late because the U overbooked the field and there was a soccer game going on one of the fields. It was all good. After watching the soccer game for a bit we decided that they needed all the practice that they could get and so they needed the field for another 30 minutes. So at 10:30 the Young Guns took to the field, adorned in our snazzy Adidas Young Guns Jerseys and an assortment of wild shorts. Our shorts ranged from bright yellow flowery shorts to cow patterned shorts. We definitely won the coolest shorts award of the tournament. (For the record, my shorts were the bright yellow flowery ones. They’re awesome!)
The first victim of the day was Wyoming. I played this team when I went down to Vegas and played with the BYU-Idaho team. We beat them then and I figured that we would be able stomp them with the Young Guns team. Well I guess right because it was an old fashioned shut out. The poor guys never got a point. We waltzed straight up to 15 points with out a single problem. (The first team to 15 points wins.) It was good to start out with Wyoming because we were able to solidify how we were going to run our offense in the next two games. We run what we call an H-Stack Flow. I’m not going to go into the details of how it works because it’s somewhat confusing at first, which is good because it works really well against the other team because they don’t really know what is going on. So that was a good start for the day.
USU was our next opponent. We made quick work of them too. I enjoyed that because I got to play the last man on defense for a few points. Basically that is the equivalent of a safety in football. For those of you who don’t know what a safety is, it’s the person who stands far back to protect from any deep throws. What is means is that I don’t let anyone get behind me because I’m the last chance the defense has at preventing a point. It also means that when someone comes tearing down the field I have to be fast enough to stay with them and keep them from catching a long Frisbee bomb. So we wrapped this game up at 15-2 I believe. Or somewhere around there…
And finally we played Colorado. It was basically the same story. The wind picked up a bit during this game so we were able to practice a zone defense against them when they were throwing upwind. (Ask me about that later if you want to know why we only use it when they are going upwind.) I think the final score of this game was 15-4 or 5. So basically we demolished everyone. It was a good tournament all in all.
It looks like I have a decent sized entry here already so I’ll wait a little bit and make a new entry to cover the rest of the weekend.

Cross-country skiing, Tin-man and Ultimate Frisbee

2008-03-05T15:39:00.001-08:00

I had the joyful opportunity to go Cross-Country skiing the other weekend. I took my good friend Kinsey, who was a darling to go even though it was short notice (Extremely short notice for the record). It was my first time ever and it was at night time. That makes for an interesting formula. There are some things that I seem to catch on to very quickly and can perform fairly decently. There are something that I don’t catch on to period and I while I can’t perform very well at that task, at least I can entertain others while I’m at it. I would say that cross-country skiing is in the latter. Even though the name shares two words with something that I am quite good at, (Cross-country running) this does not mean that they are anything alike. None the less I made it out with out any bruises cut or broken things. For a while I thought that I had broken my phone due to water damage, but I turned it off and once it dried, the trooper was back to normal functioning. Way to go Sanyo. Well afterwards we went over to a friend’s house and Kinsey and I both discovered that we were swamped. I guess it was more physically taxing than I initially thought.
Recently it seems like I’m turning into either a tin man or an old man. In other words I’ve been ridden with minor injuries. It all started when I got lost while running a couple of weeks ago. The lost-ness resulted in an extended run far longer than I had intended. About 5 miles longer than I had intended, which all adds up to 9 miles total. But I did pass some very pretty houses on the way. So it was normal that I feel quite sore, but it worsened a slight injury I had gotten at Frisbee practice just before the run. We were practicing dives for the Frisbee and at some point my left quad collided with someone’s knee. That put me on a limp for a day. Well I got over the limp on Saturday for the next practice. At which I somehow managed to cleat myself in the knee while going up for a catch. I didn’t think much of it until I stopped playing at the end of practice; I mean really, how hard can one really kick themselves at that angle? None the less I felt that for a few days and then just as it was going away I went on a run and wasn’t anticipating the cold as much so that inflamed the knee up again. Of course once I get my knee feeling better I slightly strained my hamstring while playing Frisbee on a field with a slight uphill slope. So what is the result? Well I feel like I’m getting old or something. I’m sure it will pass though and I’ll be right back to normal.
Speaking of Frisbee, this Saturday I will be heading north to Salt Lake City to play in the Zion Curtain Classic Ultimate Frisbee Tournament. Other teams that will be there will include the U, USU, SUU, Reno, two Colorado teams, New Mexico, and Wyoming. It should be a good tournament.

Frisbee, Basketball and Snow Shoes

2008-02-18T22:15:00.001-08:00

President’s day weekend turned out to be a very active one. I will be feeling this one for a couple days I’m sure. On Saturday morning I was back on the DT fields with the Ultimate Frisbee team. They were in Vegas at a tournament that I was not able to attend last weekend so I hadn’t played any good Frisbee for a couple of weeks. Well the field was quite interesting. Earlier in the week the weather was beautiful. I was out in short sleeve shirts. It was great. The sun was out, the snow was melting and life was good. All up until about Wednesday or Thursday. Then Mother Nature decided to have her way with things and plop another foot of snow on us. The result was that the halfway melted snow from before turned to ice, and then there was a nice layer of snow on top of that. It made the Frisbee game very interesting. A layer of uneven ice covered by a layer of snow. Yet somehow we managed to make it through 3 hours of practice without any rolled ankles. This morning we also played Frisbee on the same field in honor of Presidents Day. The snow had firmed up quite a bit. In some places you could step on the snow and not even sink. So today there was a little more traction.

Another highlight was the basketball game. We had a rematch with UNLV, the only team in the conference who has beaten us. So this was a rematch with a vengeance. On the road BYU is a somewhat streaky team. You never know how they are going to come out and play. But at home they are a hard team to beat. And the last 44 teams to play in the Marriot Center can attest to that. So we had a fun time there, the crowd was pumped, the basketball team was pumped and UNLV wasn’t feeling it. Of course the UNLV fans that have a vendetta out for BYU still take solace in saying that when BYU played at UNLV they beat them 70-41 which is a 29 point difference, whereas BYU only won by 26 points. It was still a very sweet game.

So after running around in the snow playing Frisbee on Monday morning I put on some snow gear and headed up into the mountains with a couple friends to attack the Stewart Falls trail. We had snow shoes and everything. Let me just say, snow shoes are really really really really cool. It was a ton of fun! The trail was pretty blazed for most of the way, but when we got close to the falls the trail disappeared and we had to blaze our way there. Don’t worry Mom and Dad; we weren’t wandering aimlessly in the Utah Mountains. By the time the trail ended we could see the falls at the bottom of the mountain we were on. So we headed straight for it and tromped our way through the snow. Basically it was a blast. If anyone wants to go do something in the snow I highly recommend that. Skiing sounds like a lot of fun, but it’s expensive. The snow shoes cost me 8 bucks to rent for the day.

French music and word from the wise

2008-02-09T22:42:00.000-08:00

I just bought a few albums. I’ve been going through a French phase recently and so I have been getting some soundtracks to French movies and a few other things. I got the soundtrack to a film called Amelie. I highly recommend this soundtrack to anyone. It’s just quality good music. Most of it is either piano or accordion. It is very simple music, but extremely beautiful. Once I find the sheet music to this soundtrack it will be my primary lady-wooing tool. I also found the soundtrack to a movie called Banlieu 13. It's a cool movie where they use a lot of what is called Parkour in France. You can see a clip from the movie showing parkour here. Incidentally they also do parkour in the lastest James Bond movie Casino Royale. The soundtrack to Banlieu 13 is mostly rap. But it’s all in French and therefore makes me laugh, because the idea of French and rap together is funny in my head for some reason. Maybe it’s just me.
Word from the wise: Find out if someone is dating somebody before asking them out. Luckily I took this advice and waited till I had a chance to find out if she was dating someone or not. Turns out she was, and I found out because she got engaged the other weekend. That was a close call with an awkward moment.

Counter-Culture and BYU

2007-12-04T21:58:00.001-08:00

The 60’s was the age of rebellion. New ideas were brought and tried and people pushed against society to change it. It was the beginning of the “counter-culture” and the start of the age of acceptance and tolerance. It was like the Wendy’s commercials we have now. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, they show everyone doing something mindless just because everyone else is doing it. Such as kicking a tree, or running and jumping into an endless pit. Then it shows a guy with a red wig on who stops and says, “Hey! We don’t have to do this!” and he goes on to say something about some sandwich or something. Basically the point is that he realized he didn’t have to do this. Starting with the 60’s (ok I admit this did exist before, but I have to start somewhere) they broke out against the stereotypes and said “Hey! We don’t have to do this!” So they created a counter-culture.
Here at BYU there is a huge stereotype given by outsiders and insiders, visitors and alumni, and basically everyone. The stereotype is that everyone comes to BYU to get married. Do these people exist? Sure, somewhere. They usually aren’t quite so blatant about it though. And a lot of this comes from other people judging them to be that way. All that aside, there are also plenty of sources of pressure to get married. I can’t remember the last time I went to church or a fireside of some sort when I didn’t hear something about marriage. As a result there is a sort of counter-culture that creates itself. The memories of the 60’s come to mind and people say “Hey! This is a stereotype! Let’s push against it!” And so there’s this counter-culture that shoots for the opposite of the stereotype. Sometimes I wonder if some of these people have stimulus response reaction to the “norm” or stereotypes. Once they discover that a lot of people do something, they do exactly the opposite so that they are considered different and seen as someone who thinks for themselves, regardless of whether it’s a good idea or not. Going back to the BYU dating culture it seems that many people have over shot the mark and now there are guys who don’t date period and girls who think that getting into a relationship means the guy is thinking marriage. It makes an interesting situation. Girls want to “go on dates” with guys, but they don’t want to get involved with them at all because that “means” marriage.
Isn’t there a happy medium? We don’t have to decide that we’ve found “the one” after the first date, nor the second date, nor the third, nor after two people are exclusively dating each other. Going on lots of dates with different people is healthy because it allows one to get to know many people, but there also comes a point where dating someone exclusively helps too. We learn different things on a different level about relationships. And guess what! We don’t have to marry that person. Dating is really the preparation for marriage, but that doesn’t mean that if we do it we are going to have to get married right away.

Languages, Personalities and "I love you"

2007-11-27T21:41:00.000-08:00

I had a conversation with my good friend Sariah about languages and how people are different in different languages. Not just that other people from other countries who speak different languages are different, but I noticed that when I speak French I literally have a different personality. I act differently, I think differently and I speak differently. Perhaps this is because the culture I was in was different as I immersed myself into the French language. There was only one missionary I knew in the whole mission who spoke French almost the same way that he spoke English. He was the oddball I guess. Well we got to talking about the phrase I love you. She said that she can throw the words “te quiero” around and it doesn’t mean as much to her as the words “I love you.” I can throw the words “Je t’aime” around a little easier than I can in English, however I think that is because during my mission we were encouraged to show our love a bit more. So I had no problem telling that to fellow missionaries. I do remember though when I had a girlfriend and from time to time I would say “Je t’aime” and that definitely had a lot of meaning. Maybe it was amplified by the fact that it was one of my attempts to be romantic. But on the grand scale I was more comfortable saying “Je t’aime” in more situations that I am saying “I love you” in English. On the English side of things I rarely say the words. They are directed towards my parents when I talk to them. Every once in a while I will say it to a couple of my really good friends. However, we wouldn’t want to damage our manly egos so we find ways to cloak it as a joke somehow. Our manly image is very precious to us. Other than that I don’t use the words much else at all. However, to me that just means that when I do say it, the intended recipient of those words can know that it’s not just a casual spouting off of some clichéd words. I think that fits me better anyways.

Dumbledore

2007-10-28T23:33:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if many have heard, but the J. K. Rowling has shed some new light on the mysteries of Harry Potter. She announced recently that Dumbledore was gay. This was in response to a question that someone asked her in a conference about why Dumbledore had never fallen in love with anyone. From what I read from the article about it, a reader stood up and asked the question about why Dumbledore had had no apparent romance ever in his life. J. K. Rowlings cracked a smile and said, well Dumbledore is actually gay. Apparently the whole hall (this was in Carnegie Hall) stood up and erupted in ovation. Now I wasn’t there. But this would seem sort of weird to me. They applauded for something like three minutes. That’s a long time to applaud. And just for saying that someone was gay. Well that’s weird. Even if you think it’s some great statement to society and about tolerance. So I got to thinking about it. What could this really mean? She will be lauded by the media and Elite America and Europe for quite sometime. Everyone who doesn’t embrace this as the best thing to happen in the world since sliced bread will be branded as intolerant bigots and the world will go on. Perhaps next year J.K. Rowlings will win the Nobel Prize since all it is now is a ploy to advance the political agenda of some Elitists that run it.

I can think of something that could be beneficial. Harry Potter was doomed to never be a classic because it is basically a good book. Everyone likes it and people have read it for years. English professors around the world however will never let this book into their list of boring old classics because people understand it and can relate to it. Classics must be dry old things that make some sort of statement on culture or something that is really confusing. Basically classics are not for the common man, but for “intellectual” people to read and discuss to each other in language that no one else understands. This way they can remain smarter than everyone else and retain their status. Harry Potter is an attack on that. It is a well written series that is enjoyable to everyone. How could anyone let low-life Harry Potter readers into the discussion with Elitists?! Well now Harry Potter has something that the elitists will love. Dumbledore is gay and this is exactly the kind of commentary they want on society. So maybe Harry Potter now has the stuff necessary to break into the “classics” category. It has long been a classic in the minds of many readers, but not canonized by those who claim to know “Good Literature.” Well at least there will be some good books to choose from on the reading list of the mundane.

Here's a link to the newsweek article: Newsweek

Procrastination

2007-09-30T16:27:00.001-07:00

So last week I put forth much effort to stay on top of my studies. I tried to get them done early in the week thinking that if I did everything early then I wouldn’t have a crunch time at the end of the week. Well I don’t know how it happened, but I spent a lot of time in the library, and a lot of time being diligent and I still managed to have a crunch time at the end of the week. I don’t know. I’m trying it again this week maybe I just had some build up from the week before. So perhaps this week I will do better. Here is the thing though. I have learned that people will fill up the time you give them. Meaning if you give someone 3 hours to do something, then it will take them 3 hours. But if you only gave them one hour to do it, then they will finish it in one hour. I think there is some sort of name or term for this, but I don’t know what it is. So there is a balance to be found. It is obvious that if you procrastinate too much, you will be in a hole. But if you have too much time to do something then you will be in the same hole. What are crazy college kids supposed to do?

Tolerance, Open Mindedness and Stick it to the Man Syndrome

2007-09-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I took a trip down into the heart of Salt Lake City where I enjoyed the Utah State Fair. (Or something along those lines.) In any case, on the way home my good friend Dan and I had a nice little chat about the world. On thing led to another and we started talking about tolerance and open mindedness and eventually the "stick it to the man syndrome." Well here are my thoughts and how I think they came out that night.

Tolerance. I have come across many people and also read many articles and essays of people who are so called "tolerant." It seems like tolerance is one thing that the world loves to parade around on a banner when they think they have it. It's become it's own religion. And it is no less exclusive than any other religion ever to walk the earth. "I'm tolerant and you are not, therefore I am better than you." That is basically the message I hear. And it makes me wonder, with all this tolerance being passed around and celebrated like candy on Halloween night, where did all the tolerance go for the people who are "intolerant." Why are we so loving and accepting of everyone except those who we brand "intolerant." Perhaps we should start calling it selective tolerance.

Here in Utah we hear lots of moaning and whining about how people are "close-minded." This basically goes along the same line as the tolerance idea. See, people come here to Utah from other states and they see these "snooty prideful close-minded zoobies" and they instantly abhor them. Why do they abhor them? Because these are close-minded people who think they are better than everyone else. But we all know that pride is the worst sin of all and since we are not prideful at all and we are open to those who don't share the same ideas and culture that we do, we are better than those close-minded zoobies. They deserve to be shunned and we should not try to understand them, nor help them, nor befriend them because they look down on us.

Wait... who's looking down on who here. Well everyone! It's a big party.

Stick it to the man syndrome. For those of you who have not seen 'School of Rock,' I'll explain what this is. Stick it to the man syndrome is basically rebelling against any establishment. The establishment could be the status quo, or many people's favorite around here, BYU. Or the church, or anything that is a power symbol in people's eyes. Usually it's just for the sake of rebelling. It's a way to be different. A way to fight against the norm. This is becoming an increasingly popular thing to do in todays world. Especially among the younger generations. I guess it started in the 60's now that I think about it. So maybe everyone has experienced this. Well unfortunately the goal has been lost. Thinking on your own and not blindly following an establishment is great. However; most people who jump on this exciting bandwagon are just following a new establishment. They are all rebelling and all rebelling in the same way. So much for individuality. What ever happened to weighing both sides and deciding which was best on your own. Oh.. I'm sorry, that would be playing into the hands of "the establishment!" That's not good! Well if I was "the establishment" and I wanted these rebels to do something, all I would have to do was say the opposite of what I wanted done. Then they would willing rebel and do exactly what I wanted them to do in the first place. I wonder if that has ever actually happened. I bet parents have pulled that on their children before. Oh yeah... it's called reverse psychology.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could actually live what these ideals were? We could be tolerant, but tolerate those who don't tolerate others. We could be open-minded, and be open to those who are "closed." We could not blindly follow the establishment, but rather think for ourselves and actually make the best decision there is. Not base it on what the establishment said. Well... this is my soap box. I'm stepping off of it soon. In the end we are all hypocrites, myself included. But why do we have to constantly point out the hypocrisy in others? Can't we just love them anyways? I'll step down now.

Surreality

2007-09-15T14:57:00.001-07:00

So I had an interesting morning today. However I must jump back a bit to last night in order to get the whole story in. So I'll start with last night. I got off work last night at 10 pm. I work every Thursday night. It's a nice time. Actually, it is quite dull during that time. No one comes into the library it seems, so we spend our time trying to stimulate our brains in order to fight off insanity. But this really has no significance to the rest of my story so I will move on. So every Thursday night at 10 pm there is a group of people, most of whom I do not know, and all of whom I did not know till last Thursday when I first played with them. I went and played a wonderful game of Ultimate Frisbee and afterwards I jogged home. Well, I'm a runner and I always like to know how long of a cool down I am getting and what my average pace is and how long it takes to run from point A to point B and all that sort of stuff so I started my trusty stop watch and jogged home. I took a shower and went to bed.

The next morning was Friday morning. A glorious morning indeed. I have no classes on Friday and I don't work until 11 am. So I am able to sleep in and be lazy and all that great stuff for that day. Well I got up and went to work and things started to seem weird. First of all, I went to work at 11. Meaning I left somewhere around 10:50 to make the routine trek up to campus. As I was walking I was thinking that everything felt really surreal. Like I was in some sort of a movie. On top of that, there was hardly anyone outside on campus. This is weird because it was a school day and it was between 10:50 and 11, which is passing period. There should be thousands of people roaming those cement slabs and weaving in and out of each other. But it was deserted... kind of like in a western movie, which probably added to the surreality of the moment a bit.

When I got to work, my first shift was to shelve books that had been returned. So I did that for about an hour and then when it was about 12 I headed over the the reference desk where I would spend the next two hours before my lunch break. Usually when you show up for your shift the people there realize that they need to go find something else to do or some other place to be. But they just stayed there at the desk. But I was a few minutes early so I waited around a little bit and then 12 came... and passed. At about 12:05 one of my co-workers asked me where I was supposed to be. I said the reference desk and she didn't believe me so she checked the schedules and she said I was supposed to be shelving... but I had just finished doing that for an hour and at 12 my shift was the desk and she said "Wait, what time is it?" So I looked at my watch and said 12:10. Then she said "No, it's 11:40." So I looked and thought... wait a sec. I pressed the stop button and then the reset button and my watch went to 00:00. It really was 11:40 at that time. My stop watch had been running since 11:30 or so and was at 12 hours the next morning so it was close enough to real time to trick me, but enough to throw me off.

So I felt somewhat sheepish. I looked at my time stamps and I had clocked into work at about 10:35 thinking that it was past 11 that I was actually a few minutes late. No wonder noone was on campus as I walked to work. It was in the middle of class time.

So that was my story for the day. It looks like this is the first blog I've written in a while. Well that's tough luck. I know you are all dying to know about me, we can't have everything that we want can we?