Hiking Mt. Nebo

Today was an awesome day. Laura and I started a little bit late, partly because I woke up late and wasn't even ready until 8:15, and partly because when I went to go start the car the battery was dead. This is the 3rd time this month--each time its been after Sunday, when I don't use the car much so I guess the battery gets drained. Anyways, I'll have to figure it out tomorrow. I didn't want it to die on me down in the middle of nowhere, So I called Laura and asked her to drive. She arrived at about 8:45, and after a quick stop to get water (we originally only had a bottle a piece), we hit the road.

I had been up pretty late last night researching Mt. Nebo, and first of all I was shocked by how long of a hike it was--a minimum of 10 miles, and many people recommended taking 2 days (I wonder if Laura knew it'd be so long). There were also several different versions of the hike, and I chose the route to the north summit. Starting at the Nebo Bench Trail. This was the shortest hike that had clearly marked trails. Upon reflection, I sure wish I hadn't left my PocketPC/GPS unit in Salt Lake on Saturday, because it would have been a lot nicer to just blaze our own trail--the Bench trail wound around and around forever.

We took I-15 down to Nephi, and then went up and around to the Nebo Scenic loop, where after about 5 or 6 miles, we found the trail head. By the time we got there, it was almost 10 AM. So we were definitely starting late. We also discovered I had been a little misled about the length of the hike. It was 11 miles, one way. As opposed to the two ways I had been thinking. So we were pretty much resigned from the beginning to falling short of the summit.

The first mile or two were fairly easy, although I did get slightly winded on our first uphill climb, but that stopped once I broke a sweat and got my heart rate up. We had cloud cover all morning, and we were a little concerned about a storm, but the sun came out around noon. Even then it was the perfect temperature. I wore shorts the whole time, and I took off my sweatshirt about the time the sun came out.

The trail and scenery was beautiful, alternating between meadow, rocky slope, and woods. After 2 or 3 miles, you could tell that it wasn't an extraordinarily well-traveled trail, but there were lots of markers to help out. I really wish I had brought my camera.

Laura brought some trail mix, so that gave us energy until about 2:00. About that time, we could see the trail starting to go downhill for a while, and we just looked at our watches and realized we'd probably have to go right back up it in less than half an hour, so we stopped, climbed up a nearby hill and sat down for lunch--PJ&B sandwiches. It's been forever since I had one. We had a great view, but the rocks we sat on weren't the most comfortable.

So after a brief bathroom break, we headed on down. This seemed to take forever, I guess because I had lost track of just how far we had come (I'm guessing we were 8 miles up). We passed the time by talking and singing. About a mile away from the end, we met our first and only hikers of the day--a dad with three small children. I want to do that with my children some day. I don't have enough memories of dad doing that with us.

Finally, exhausted and out of water, we returned to our car. After giving a scouting report to a couple of archers (no deer to be seen anywhere on the trail), we drove back home, this time going up north on the scenic loop trail.

We stopped at Subway to get some fruit drinks and water. These hit the spot, though didn't fix our hunger. But we had to hurry home to FHE. So she dropped me off at my place, which by that time was already crowded with people for BBQ. FHE went great. Tons of people came over, and all of the house was full of people until very late. I set up volleyball outside, which got pretty competitive, but I was too exhausted to play, and plus I needed a shower. Natalie came by from nowhere with her fiancée (we were all shocked--hadn't seen her all summer). Mark got introduced to all the new people. It's nice to have him back to help entertain with parties. Things should be even more livelier now.

Anyways, what a great Labor Day. But my body is very burnt and tired. I'm going to enjoy sleeping tonight.

Posted 10:55 PM | Comments (1)

I broke Laura's laptop

My work day got off to a very late start on account of me taking care of the battery all morning. I originally intended to take it into Sears, but I looked at all the corrosion on the negative terminal and I decided perhaps that was the source of my problems. So I spent a while cleaning that up. All I can say is baking soda and water does really cool things to battery acid. Our driveway has this really cool looking green spot on it now.

Work was, well, work. Finished up the newsletter articles and started playing around with the 6.0 restructuring.

Then it was Frisbee time. First of all, I should mention that I found out what city league team I'm on. I'm on Neal's team, and we have a lot of the Randalls again (third season in a row for me, it's like I'm adopted). That gives me two really great targets downfield in Matt (Chunky) and Neal. We also have another handler who's name is Mark. Don was telling me that when I got drafted, he was ticked off because only two more picks and he would have had me. Guess he got the last pick or something. Most of the captains I've talked to let out a big sigh when I talk to them about what team I'm on. We are apparently the stacked team this season. Myself, I'm not entirely sure yet. I think it will all depend on how well this Mark guy and I can handle the backfield together. From talking to Neal, one things for sure, we're probably the only team where everyone has been cast typed in positions already. And it's a good thing to have an understanding of your role on the team.

Also, I signed up for an intramural team. It was the only team that asked. The team's probably not going to be good enough to win a championship (teammates include Jared, Spack, Abe, and a lot of other decent players, but no stars and no real experience, per se). But it'll be fun. It'll be interesting to see how well we mesh together. We've got 5 games to figure it out though, since the only schedule they could get was in the lower division.

But back to the pickup. It was crowded. Lots of people back to school, and lots of them new. We really needed to set up two fields. A couple of guys went off and started a hot box game. I lost my keys on the playing field and had to go kicking around the grass in the dark for 15 minutes to find them.

So I went home, showered, changed, and went to visit Laura. Her laptop screen was blinking funny, so I offered to fix it. Now this where things start to get funny. I was doing a windows update, and it was taking a long time to reboot. So I figured it had hung up or something, so I turned it off and back on again. This time, Windows ME (what a lousy operating system...and a really don't see too much a difference between it and Windows 98) had a critical error and asked me to reinstall Windows. Well, at the time Laura was playing a game of chess with her friend and so I'm trying to act all casual about it (I get this all the time), trying to recover things. First of all, I figure, I probably turned off the computer while it was updating things, and corrupted the file system. So I'm trying to fix that, but the .dll files are all corrupt, so then I try to use some of the Compaq CDs to do a system restore. Except about the only thing these CDs do (because the computer hadn't been setup for a restore) is completely wipe out your hard drive, or split the partition and create a backup. There was a significant lack of "Are you sure?" prompts, so I ended up doing the latter. This took forever. The entire time I'm talking to Laura of course, and explaining that first of all, I'm an idiot, and that second of all, I can fix it. I think, though, that my problem began with thinking "oh, there's a problem and it needs to be fixed."

Anyways, about midnight, I told her I could fix it tonight, but would have to take it home to avoid Honor Code problems. Besides, I couldn't even run a scandisk because Windows ME makes things so damn inaccessible. I needed some of my troubleshooting software. So I brought it home, promising to return it tomorrow afternoon. I was going to take it apart, back up her files, and reinstall Windows ME, but stupid Compaq put the hard drive in a really weird place and also uses proprietary screws, so I couldn't get the hard drive off. So instead I got to thinking that ME is very similar to 98 and I wondered if I could use the libraries off of an existing Windows installation to replace the corrupted files. To my surprise, it worked. Well, at least got things to a more bootable state. Then I got to looking at the sys.ini file, and remembered the shell setting in there that was pointing to explorer. It was just a hunch, but I wondered if I could use a regular program as the shell—in particular the ie6setup.exe file (all of the corrupted libraries were related to ie6, which I had been installing in the Windows Update). To my delight, it worked, and so after I ran setup, everything worked fine. Almost. Right now I'm running a scandisk to fix a few other problems, and I'd also like to merge the partitions again. And of course, if possible, I'd like to fix the screen glitch. But it's late and scandisk is taking forever. Maybe I'll do that at work tomorrow morning.

Posted 11:08 PM | Comments (1)

Campaign Finance Reform

So I was listening to NPR this afternoon (actually, RadioWest, which is produced locally, but it comes on the NPR station), and there was this debate about campaign finance reform. First off, let me say this was a very well argued debate. Secondly, I have an idea. Haven't had too much time to think about it, and I won't have much time to think about it today, anyways. But I thought I'd just throw it out there so I don't forget.

First off, I pretty much agree with the idea that corporate money and lobbyist money and whatever else all represent a conflict of interest. That money should not be going directly towards politicians, no matter what the case. It should be spent on advertisement to the people who tell their politicians what to think, so that these people can make decisions. If it goes to the politicians themselves, yes you could look at it and say, well, it's just buying his time so he has a chance to consider their position. But there's too much of a risk that the politician would be swayed by the money, especially if he's concerned about being able to advertise himself to voters and keep his job. And for a lot of the corporations, these contributions represent investments that they expect returns upon (why else would a corporation contribute to a campaign, if they didn't expect returns). So anyways, in an ideal world, politicians should never ever accept contributions from an entity that expects him or her to act in a certain way, which, no matter what people say, is exactly what happens now. (By the way, I've decided that money really is the root of all evil. In that it embodies self-interest, not public interest. The trick, of course, is determining public interest).

But, what about a politician's need to advertise him or herself to voters? If there's no advertising, it's impossible for a voter to understand a politician's goals, viewpoints, etc. And it'd be detrimental to society to make uninformed choices. Let me just go out on a limb and say that political debate is in the interest of the American public, since it is only through political debate that we can reach a consensus on the most appropriate actions to take to better ourselves. In such a case, isn't political debate a "public good"--one that we as a people should be willing to provide for ourselves through some organized system. (Can you see where I'm going here?)

Why not fund political campaigns entirely from taxes, or from a collective pool of contributions? This would ensure that individuals who are interested in the betterment of society don't use their money to dogmatically insist upon a certain viewpoint--rather they use their money to fund debate about the issues. Any individual or entity must recognize that their viewpoint may or may not be the correct course of action. If they really care about something, they should be willing to contribute to a publicly controlled system that researches and debates about whether or not their viewpoint is correct, not to a system that assumes that since they have money, they must be right.

Hmmm. I can already think of counter-attacks on this proposal though. Still a lot of room to manipulate things, especially if we let people contribute as much as they want to this public forum of debate (i.e. politicians might feel a need to please the biggest contributors to the fund, so that they'll keep contributing. But it'd still be less of a problem than contributing to individual politicians). Maybe we should just fund campaigns off taxes. But how does a person gain a voice to begin with? And on top of it, how do we determine who gets to use the money to campaign with? A playoff system of votes?

Well, it's an idea at least. I'll have to think things through more in the future.

Posted 05:30 PM | Comments (1)

I fixed it

Hmmm. I should have learned from yesterday not to mess with things even if I think I can fix them quickly. I tried to merge Laura's partitions this morning with a utility from her Compaq stuff. That was probably my biggest mistake—I should have just started with PartitionMagic. Anyways, that utility somehow failed and left things in a very weird state. A very long scandisk later, I tried PartitionMagic to merge them. That short of worked. Of course, this was all taking a lot of time—I was doing it at work, and working in between tasks. PartitionMagic sort of worked—it seemed like it was in a closer state, but it wouldn't boot. So then I went and ran scandisk again, and the file system's all messed up. First the two FAT tables are disagreeing, which means that a lot of files out there got corrupted in the merge. So I ran scandisk again, and by now it was pretty late in the afternoon (these things take a lot of time—I just passed the time by working and changing utilities to my name). In fact, it was way passed the point that I was supposed to deliver the laptop to Laura. And on top of it all, it was getting pretty close to the time for ward sports night. So I decided I'd take the laptop home, hope it'd finish on the drive home, and get ready for sports night. Laura was suppose to have a meeting of some sort at 7:00, so I figured I'd just bring it by later. Only when I got home, my internet connection was down because of having changed the account to my name. I had to set things up again. This kind of sucked because I wanted to try windows update again before I gave the computer back to Laura (this time, no turning the power off while it's updating). I tried to fix the connection, but apparently Comcast didn't give me all the information I need. So I called them up and asked for the information, only instead of just giving it to me, the tech decided to walk me threw the process. Well, to make a long story short, my desktop computer crashed hard and my laptop couldn't permanently acquire an IP from the cable modem. It'd acquire it, but not be able to do anything. Two hours later (yes, this ate a lot of my daytime minutes), and a tech support lady later, I figure out to my embarrassment that I'm using a cross-over cable to connect to the modem. I'm still a little frustrated about having spent all that time on such a stupid problem. It never occurred to me that it was a crossover cable, though. I thought they weren't supposed to connect at all. Anyways, Laura called during all this asking me where I was and so as soon as I got this all figured out (about 9:30), I rushed over there and gave it to her. I also did the windows update over there. We did discover that her video on Windows Media Player is a little messed up—some videos play fine, but some have no video (just audio). So I need to figure that out. I really wish I hadn't screwed up her computer, though. There's so much other stuff I need to get caught up on right now. And I'm sure it inconvenienced her a lot.

Posted 11:13 PM | Comments (1)

Friday Nights Watching Simpsons

Well, it's Friday night. I'm at home, doing nothing but watching a lot of Simpsons with Mark (he got the third season DVD for his birthday yesterday). We got some Papa Murphy's pizza when I got home about 7:30. But that's about the extent of the excitement tonight.

Let's just back up to yesterday for a second. I went to work as normal, then went to play Frisbee. Again, it was very crowded, and again we only had one field. But it was still fun. Then I just chilled with Mark and Krista for the rest of the evening.

And so I'm doing nothing tonight. And probably tomorrow night as well. I've got a lot of stuff to catch up on anyways. Like cleaning my room and hanging up pictures in the basement and organizing things so Mark's band has a corner to practice (his corner will be the northeast corner, and all the fun stuff goes in the northwest corner. I think this leaves things a lot more open—no more feeling like I have to squeeze by the band equipment to get into the room).

Anyways, first game of city league tomorrow morning. Got to be stoked about that.

Posted 10:17 PM | Comments (1)

First Day of Ultimate Season

Our game this morning was supposed to start at 11:30 (first games start at 10:00, and they're setting up 3 fields. Guess they had a schedule conflict with the football people). I got there about 10:45, got my shirt (our color is tan—which I don't mind too much, but drives Neal crazy; all sorts of wisecracks), and started warming up. Our team name is Cement Shoes (half a joke about speed, half a joke about almost everybody on the team being related). As expected, I know just about everyone on the team from the last couple of seasons. Mandy, our female captain, is apparently a cousin to the Randall family. I didn't know that. We have about the perfect number of people on our team—3 guy subs and 2 girl subs. So none of this not getting into a groove stuff that was going on last season. The Mark guy is pretty good. I recognize him from the league in the past. I don't know who's the better handler between us. Judging from the game, I may be a little better at long distances (or a little less hesitant to throw), but he might be a little better with the short game. Anyways, about the game. It was against Brady and Kristie's team. They really didn't have too many people who could play—at least not that I could recognize. Except for Quinn. So when we went up 4-1, I wasn't very surprised. But then they started giving us a tough time, and that surprised me. A lot of it was Brady and Quinn running a slow but steady offense. Everybody was dumping back to Brady, which meant less possibility of a non-experienced person making a bad throw, which meant less turnovers, and us getting tired. So we just barely took the half, 8-7. And by the time a hard cap was called, they were up 9-8. I guess right then we decided we had had enough, because we scored the next 3 points and won.

But a couple of observations. One, the me-to-Neal deep throw is going to one of our biggest assets throughout the season. It was unstoppable the couple of times we threw it. I think the only reason we didn't do it more often was because a lot of the time when Neal and I were out there at the same time, Mark was sitting out and so Neal handled. And also I think he didn't want to abuse the system, so he wasn't running a lot of deep routes. Two, our A-team combination of Me, Mark, Matt, Neal, and whoever kicks butt. We only put the whole A-team out twice, but it was awesome. Three, Brady is really hard to cover. And if you do try to cover him, you certainly aren't going to have enough energy to run the offense on a turnover.

After the game, I immediately drove up to Sharla's to get my PocketPC (finally, it feels good to have it back). Then I sped back down because Lori called and said some girls in the ward needed help moving at 3:00. But I didn't get back until 3:30, and nobody called asking where I was, so I decided it was time to shower and nap instead. When I woke up, it was time for the BYU football game, which strangely enough ended up being pretty good. We went down 21-0 really early and I was tempted to turn it off, but then we started clawing our way back. I got dinner from Fazoli's at half, and Mike and Nick came over about then as well. Payne had some killer FGs, one from 52 and another from 53 yards. We outplayed them from the second quarter all the way until we had about 5 minutes left in the game. Then we had some stupid turnovers again (unnecessary deep throws from our backup quarterback, and then a bad call from a ref on a fumble), and we lost it. But USC was ranked number 5. I was surprised we did so well. Maybe BYU football will be worth watching this season after all.

After that, I just watched TV for a while with Mark. Then I tried to go to sleep, only I couldn't. So I came out here to write this entry, and then started writing some other things, and it's 5:00 now, in the morning. I really should get into better sleeping habits.

Posted 11:21 PM | Comments (1)

I woke up late for a meeting!

This morning I was 15 minutes late for Presidency meeting. I really need to start doing better with time management. We spent the entire presidency meeting taking care of home teaching assignments, and spilled over into Ward Council a little as well. Ward council was very large and mostly a getting acquainted with your calling thing for the chair people, so there wasn't a lot of point to the Elder's Quorum being there, other than to just show support. Then came sacrament meeting. President Pinegar came and bore his testimony at the end. He's a really interesting and motivating speaker, you know. Strange sometimes, but definitely interesting and motivating. I spent all of Sunday School meeting new people and finishing up home teaching. Elder's Quorum was long enough to hand out home teaching assignments and sustain Ryan as our secretary (I still can't say his last name), and then we broke into committee meetings, during which I spent most of my time doing laps around the halls making sure everybody had something to go to. After that came choir. There were only two girls besides Monica and the pianist (whose name is Loralee). But we had tons of guys. Anyways, that didn't last very long. From there I went home and got the house ready for the CES fireside. We had a few people drop by. Then I went to ward prayer, and afterwards we did the standard Sunday night festivities. We actually had a lot of new people tonight, or rather people we hadn't seen in a while, such as Tiffany and Brandy from the old ward, Kim and Maria (Jilleen's roommates), a new guy named Darcy, and Danika. She and Monica stayed over till Midnight, watching Legacy downstairs. Monica, like me, was writing in her journal all during the movie. I promised to mention her in my journal if she promised to mention me, so that's what I'm doing. So anyways, Mark and Mike and I are grabbing some food from Wendy's now, because I have a headache from not eating all day. I imagine after that I'll be going to sleep. The end.

Posted 11:26 PM | Comments (1)

Frisbee Party at Mel's

Nothing much happened at work today. After work I went over to Becky's for a while to try and install the programming software. But there's still a lot of problems with her computer. I wonder if the CPU overheated and was damaged.

The only interesting event of the day was the party at Melanie's (from ultimate). It was her birthday/house warming party. They live at the basement of this really nice house up north of the Temple. It's a huge basement. There's four sisters living in it (apparently there's a fifth sister and another brother, also in the family). Anyways, the party consisted about 50% of Frisbee people, and the rest were other friends from various places. Bart from the King Henry ward was there. I had forgotten that he knew Melanie. As for Frisbee people, there was Don, Phil, Nate (who apparently is pretty serious about Melanie), Curt, Vance, Kristie, Wendy, and Jessica. Bryan showed up late. As did Laura. The party was pretty fun. A lot of talking at first. Vance was looking for people to join his intramural volleyball team, so I may be doing that. Everybody looked really different in street clothes—I had a hard time recognizing people at first. After a while we moved all of the couches put all the cushions on the floor, and had people dive for the Frisbee through a hula hoop. That was pretty fun. Took me a couple of times to get used to jumping through a hula hoop, but after a while it was easy. There were some pretty spectacular catches. I really wish I had brought my camera. I ended up tossing the disc most of the time—something about a growing reputation as a handler. I'm not an extraordinarily accurate thrower—I think I just have pretty good instincts for how to make people and a disc come together at the right spot at the right time.

Posted 11:28 PM | Comments (1)

Dreaming about Math

I did a lot of work on readying the automated build process for 6.0 today. Besides that, of course, I went to play Frisbee. It was very cold and rainy. In fact, there's snow at the top of the mountains. I still played in shorts and a t-shirt, but I had to keep moving or I got cold. Before the rain started, I was playing really well. It's kind of sad, but I was honestly the best out there. After the rain fell, things were a little different. Rain and wind are great equalizers. I guess I've gotten too used to summer—I need a lot of practice in bad weather.

With the rest of my night, I cleaned my room and rearranged things to try to compensate for the loss of the fake plants in there (and also to set up speakers and power and whatever for putting my laptop on my desk). The biggest change was moving the bed over to the south wall. I think it helps out a lot. I still need to rearrange pictures and decorations and stuff, though.

Since I don't have much in the way of happenings, maybe I should mention that I had two very weird and similar dreams in a row last night. First off, I was at an impromptu class reunion in Mrs. Mott's class. It was good times for all, and I met a whole bunch of people I vaguely remembered, but none of my really close friends were there. It really didn't feel like high school at all—more of a social event. But there was definitely some teaching going on, and even some homework. At one point, I was trying to write an essay on why I was back at school doing Math, and my answer was basically that numbers are fun and beautiful. Except it was a really elegant and long essay. I don't know what my subconscious is saying here, but it's weird. After that, we all went to tour a military installation. Then I woke up with a very stiff neck.

Posted 10:33 PM | Comments (1)

Phooey on fusbol

At work, I got a lot done on changing all of the macros and stuff over to 6.0 naming conventions. But I had to run straight over to ward sports night from work. Ward sports night was pretty fun. It was way cold outside, so I played in pants and wore my basketball shoes on the sand court. I don't think my basketball shoes were too happy about getting wet, though. I played pretty well, although my spikes are having problems. I was trying to get some good playing in before tomorrow's night intramural game. Anyways, that lasted until sunset, about 8:15. Then I came home, showered, and played fusbol with Mike and a couple of girls who were over at the sports night (Heather & Tina—they're cousins. Mike & Tina won 4 out of 5 games against me and Heather.

Posted 11:52 PM | Comments (1)

Pie to commemorate 9-11?

I'm tired, so let's keep this brief. I woke up and got to work at a reasonable hour this morning. Then I spent most of the workday doing some minor website/marketing editing and prepping the macros/conditional text in the documentation for 6.0. One odd thing about today—we had pie in "honor" of 9-11. I'm not too keen on that. I can understand talking about things or even putting flags at half-mast. But I think honoring or commemorating the day is exactly what we should not be doing. Anyway, at 5:30 I went to Kiwanis for a little bit of throwing and two or three points of ultimate. I had an awesome backhand today, by the way. I think I'm getting it back, and actually my mechanics are a lot better because of my focus on it lately. Then it was volleyball time. I'll tell you what, it's not often that I admit to being the worst player on the field of anything. But I was today. These guys are all really good, and Vance was a better setter than almost anyone I've ever played with. It was definitely upper-division play. I think my contributions to the team will be limited to making sure they have enough people to play. And I guess I can stay back and be ready to dig out a few spikes. My serves generated a few oohs and ahhs, so maybe that's another strength I can offer. Even with me being the worst out there (and I'm not saying I totally sucked, I just made about 5 or 6 very blatant errors), we lost. 15-10, 15-8. Oh well. It's still going to be fun. And maybe I'll get my volleyball skills back. I saw the Crandall brothers from the ward there, as well. Maybe I should ask them to help me get my skills back. After volleyball, I went to Pier 1 Imports and bought Laura a vase for her birthday tomorrow (yes I'll put flowers in it). It's kind of a translucent white. Not too loud, but still with personality. And then I went to Walmart, where I tried out one of those new McDonald's salads (I'm not impressed) before getting about $80 of groceries, miscellaneous cleaning supplies, toiletries, and plants (88 cents for each small plant—I'm decorating my whole room with them). Then I came home, and that wraps things up.

Posted 11:22 PM | Comments (1)

Laura's birthday & Fall Fling

This morning I was anxiously engaged in the process of writing documentation. Then came the company barbeque (I had a steak that I had been marinating all morning; it was good). Then came the stomach ache (I think it may have been caused by the lack of anything else to eat at the barbeque besides sweets and soda). Then I got distracted and started trying to create some browser plugins for our product (buttons that you can click on that convert the web page you are looking at to PDF, or that convert a table in the web page to a graph). It's a pretty cool concept, but it proved very distracting because I discovered that my personal website won't convert to PDF because it isn't xhtml compliant. So I spent forever figuring out why it wasn't xhtml compliant (there were a lot of reasons). Anyways, I decided to go home about 7:00 and try to fix my stomach ache with some chicken noodle soup. Then I went to Laura's birthday party. I got there on time—how crazy is that. She was still getting ready, so I met a few of her friends, then we headed up to campus. On our way over to the Wilkinson center we found a rock climbing wall and I proposed we should all get in line for it now instead of waiting all night. Laura agreed, but we soon discovered no one else was interested in climbing the wall. It took us about half an hour to get through the line. Laura went first and made it about 2/3 of the way up. Then I made it almost to the top—I needed half a foot. I think I could have done it too if I hadn't been barefoot—but my feet were burning like crazy with all the friction of the climb so after about a minute of struggling for the next grip, I just gave up. Laura also went barefoot, I might add. After that, we tried to find the group. But we couldn't. We ran into this Brazilian martial arts/dance group and watched that for a while. They were awesome. Really acrobatic. I can't remember what it's called (or even how to spell it). Then we left that and went to the Wilk, but couldn't find any of Laura's friends there, either. We waited in the Laser Tag line by the ballroom. That was alright, but it was a poor setup. It was really hard to figure out what was going on. Then we tried to get pizza and go dancing, but the pizza was gone. And after a short detour to watch some break-dancing (the break-dancers were pretty well skilled, but I was mostly interested in the improv rap that they were dancing to—one of the girls was really good), it was already 11:20. Which meant we had to get back to Laura's place for cake and ice cream. Michele gave Laura a big red ball for her birthday—you know, the kind you'd find in a bin at Walmart, and that Laura apparently plays with all the time when they go to Walmart. We took that outside and played tag with it. Which was a lot of fun. Then we tried volleyball, which was hilarious, especially since a power line runs right above the volleyball net. We finished at about 1:00, and I came home.

Posted 11:56 PM | Comments (1)

Ward Activity & India Fest

I got up around 9:00 so I could practice for our city league this morning. But of course by the time I got out the door, it was already 9:45. We did get a little practice before our game, but it was mostly because we started late. We only had one guy sub, but plenty of girls. None of the Randall guys were there on time, so it was just me, Mark, Neal, Dan, and a couple of new guys named Seth (who's pretty good—about like Dan), and Tim (who's never played seriously before, but did a pretty good job or running and catching). So without a lot of subs, and with game staying pretty close early, I decided to skip the intramural volleyball and ultimate games going on at 11:00. In the end, we may have won without me, but only because Matt showed up right after half. We were playing Melanie's and Nate's and Jon Jensen's team today. They had one really tall guy that we had to put Neal on the whole time—he wasn't extraordinarily good, but his height made him really problematic. They had another guy (named Darrin, I think), who loved to throw long. And that was their Achilles Heel in the end. We just barely took the half—they really exhausted us, but as we started pulling away in the second half, they became more desperate with their long passes, which only exacerbated the problem. And so we ended up winning 15-9. I played decently, with some really sweet passes, but was mistake prone towards the end, when we were under less pressure. Thus, it was a very long game (went til 12:00). As a whole, actually, that describes our team today. We showed a lot of athleticism, but we showed a lot of mental mistakes as well. Especially in dealing with the zone. But the fixes there may come with more experience working together.

After the game, I talked with Aaron Miller for a little while about law school, and he gave me some good advice. Actually, I gave him a ride home. He lives right over by the intramural fields, so I also stopped by there to see how our game went. They won, 10-3. Just as I expected. We're going to storm through this lower league, only to be unprepared once we get bumped up come tournament time. We've got to find some teams to scrimmage or something. Then I grabbed my camera from Becky and Wayne (who were painting at the HFAC), and drove up to South Fork Park for our ward opening social. That was fun, though I was a little disappointed when I got there to find there was no food. I was starved. So I ate some chips and drank some soda and then I got another stomach ache. I need to stop it with the soda, I think. Eventually, they fixed the food problem, but it the meantime I played a little volleyball and ultimate Frisbee a hula-hoop. It was fun.

I left the barbeque around 4:00, just after they pulled the peach cobbler out of the dutch ovens (this was an hour after the barbeque was supposed to have ended). Then I called up a whole bunch of people trying to take care of home teaching numbers, and by the time I was showered and ready to go, it was already 5:30. I sure wish I had had time for a nap. Luckily, Laura called and was running late, so I had a little bit of extra time to get ready, and also to talk to Erin, who had come over to visit Mike. I went over to Laura's at about 5:45. We went immediately to the Bombay House. I had lamb, and she had chicken. She went with the spiciest version of the dish, I went with medium. I can't believe she went for the super spicy. That nearly killed me last time I went there. Medium's fine for me. I don't think she realized how spicy it'd be, but even more amazing was the fact she finished it off. Completely. With only a minor amount of sniffling and crying. From there we went to India Fest, down at the Spanish Fork Hari-Krishna temple. (I had gone last year with Amber and Erin and Patrick and company). We ran into so many random people there. First of all, there was Amber and Monica, with whom we left our pillows and blankets as we went and explored the temple. Then we ran into Jared and Jake Taylor up in the temple. Then we ran into Becky and Wayne downstairs as we entered the gift shop (of course, I knew they were there, but it was an odd coincidence running into them exactly where we did). Then Michella from Austin (now this was way random. She had just moved up last week for a change of lifestyle). Then good old Tim Pearson from the freshman ward. Laura ran into her next-door neighbors, as well. I really don't think there were that many people at the event—I just happen to know a lot of people who'd go to that sort of thing. Anyways, when we got done looking at the temple and petting the Llamas (and using the bathroom—for which Laura had to wait in line for 10 minutes), we went down to where our blankets were as the show was about to start. And then we had a wonderful time watching the show. Then we got up and "slew" the demon—or a cardboard cutout of one. Actually, this involved everyone throwing rocks at it and then it catching on fire and then there being a lot of fireworks. At the end, as the cardboard burned, its still-burning ashes floated up into the air and rained down on us. Sure, on one hand ashes raining down on dry grass is a very bad idea. But on the other hand, it was magical. Afterwards we went down to collect our stuff and dance a little, but we soon left and went home to play scrabble. I won, but just barely. And then I took her home.

Posted 11:06 PM | Comments (1)

BYU 229th Ward Fall Opening Social

Kim with the Hula Hoop

The BYU 229th Ward held their Fall Opening Social today at South Fork park. We had a blast, playing water balloon volleyball, regular volleyball, frisbee, hula hoops, cards, and so much more. And,of course, there was the BBQ and dutch ovens.

Note: Something seems to have gone wrong with my camera--everything's looking green and oversaturated.

• Pictures
• Video (6:55)

Posted 11:26 PM | Comments (1)

India Fest

Just Your Run-of-the-mill Demon on Fire

Laura and I (and actually a whole bunch of people, but they weren't necessarily with us) went to India Fest tonight. It was fun. And entertaining. We got to slay a demon, and we had an official "hootinanny." Maybe I should have recorded the whole thing so you could see the hilarious cartoon bird chase scene.

For those of you asking who Laura is, she's the girl in the pictures and video. There. Does that answer that question?

• Pictures
• Video (6:28)

Posted 11:37 PM | Comments (1)

It's Sunday, and yes, the party's at our place

This morning I had to get up very early for a training meeting at 7:00. I also had to leave a little earlier than normal to pick up Ryan (who from our conversation yesterday, didn't seem to be familiar with the Orem Institute building, and that's why I offered the ride, but who I soon learned was only a little confused about where the meeting was going to take place). It was an alright training meeting. It's hard for me to be too excited about things that early in the morning. I was asked to bear my testimony about Family History, so I did that. Afterwards, we finished putting together home teaching stats (which were depressingly low) and attendance stats (which were impressively high). Then we had a presidency meeting, which we took back to the church so we could fix home teaching once again. That lasted until 10:00, at which point I went home and did paperwork while Mark cooked me some German pancakes (that was a lifesaver, I was way too tired to cook for myself). Then I had a 15 minute nap, which wasn't much, but gave me some more energy. Then I had to be back to the church for PEC. Only Lori and the Bishopric were there. But it was a pretty productive meeting. After that, there was church, which was kind of hectic because both Saia and Kevin were gone (Saia disappeared on Friday for a wedding in St. George, and Kevin acquired a bad headache after presidency meeting). Then came choir practice which was a little more relaxing, except now they're going to do it at 11:00, so I'm going to miss out on that. Then I came home and made a lot of pasta with chicken. Then I fell asleep for an hour before visiting Becky and Wayne briefly (like 15 minutes) for some cake. Then came ward prayer, which was not as relaxing as it should have been because I felt obligated to check up on a lot of people that I honestly really wasn't in the mood to talk to after so long a day. Then came evening festivities at our place, which after I unwound for a little while, proved quite entertaining. First we started up two-player Tetris, and that proved intense, everybody at the party watching it. Then I got into an epic fusbol match against Mark and Danica. Stephanie was my partner, and we killed them the first two games, lost a very close match the third game, and got killed in the last two games. It was truly a great and hilarious game. So those people as well as the Dorsey sisters and Candace and Darcy and Jake and Earl all stayed over until about midnight, at which point everyone except Darcy and Danika left, and I retired for the evening. Except, they woke me up just now (it's two o'clock) with the Simpsons. I can't believe Danika's still over. And now I can't sleep, so I'm writing. Hmmm. I might have to have a talk with Mark and Mike about this.

Posted 11:10 PM | Comments (1)

Monday = FHE & the Pretzel

Nothing much going on at work today. I came home about 7:00, grabbing a salad from Wendys. Then I went to FHE, which was with the entire ward at the church. Met some people, took care of some miscellaneous business, played the pretzel game. Talked with Danika for a little bit afterwards, who was upset about possibly being evicted from her apartment soon. Then I called up Laura and went over there to hang out for a little while. I'm going to cook her dinner tomorrow night. I stopped by Becky and Wayne's on the way home and ended up helping them set up a guestbook in PERL. Wayne knows a lot less about web programming than I had thought (HTML scares him), while Becky knows more about PERL than I had thought. After that I came home and started cleaning the kitchen and bathroom for tomorrow night (this was after midnight already). Also, talked with Mark. I hope he and Krista work things out, because it'd be a bummer to see them split up. Anyways, it's very late now. Good night.

Posted 11:12 PM | Comments (1)

Chicken Parmesan

At work today I spent most of my time distracted with trying to create an Excel plugin for PopChart. I've gotten pretty far, and I think it'll really help popularize our desktop version of Builder for 6.0. Anyways, about 5:00, I went to go buy the food for dinner tonight. Got stuff for salad and a few things I didn't have for the chicken parmesan (called up Katie & Chris for the recipe). Then I went to play Frisbee for a while. I really wasn't in a Frisbee playing groove today, I'm afraid—making mistakes all over the place, mostly because I didn't care that much. I left that early so I could shower and be ready for Laura at 8:00, when she came over. The food was pretty good. I'm going to have leftovers on the salad for a while. Afterwards, we played darts (she won, 2 games to 1) and fusbol (I won, 2 games to none), before going upstairs and having otter pops. The idea was she was going to leave then to go home and do homework, but instead we sat down on the couch and she met Mike. I had warned her about Mike a little earlier, and though he behaved himself for a little while, he was soon up to his mischief. Somehow this resulted in her singing "I am a child of God" and me singing, "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables," from Les Miz. Which went pretty well, though I started in the wrong key. The conversation lasted until midnight, when I made sure that Laura left. It's kind of strange having to remember that whole BYU Honor code thing.

Posted 11:16 PM | Comments (1)

Temple Trip

At work today I worked some more on the Excel plugin, then I showed a prototype to Mardell who seemed pretty disinterested, so I decided maybe I should just return to documentation for the time being. So I did that most of the day, though I have to admit, it was a pretty hard day to stay awake (no, I didn't get up at 8:00 as I had planned—8:45 instead). I also had to think about ways to keep the JavaScript embedder alive; Ammon and Josh have been complaining again about too many people using it and not realizing the consequences. So I've got to figure out how to better discourage its use, or try to do the documentation without it.

Anyways, I left work at about 6:00 for the temple trip. We met at the church around 6:15. Participants included Lori, Candace, Angela, Tina, Jenny (Morgan), her sister Lindsay, Becca, Roger, Darcy, Stephen, Jake Taylor, and perhaps a few more people I've neglected to mention. I rode with Jenny and Lindsay and so I got to meet them. We all got separated at the temple, which was really crowded. I got into a 7:20 session, while everybody else got into a 7:40 session, while the people doing the baptisms were done by 8:00. So they waited around for us for almost 2 hours. Afterwards we went over to Jenny's and Lindsay's house for treats (Heather made this awesome chocolate mousse pie), but I didn't stay very long (was hungry for some real food).

So I went home and ate the leftovers from last night. Then I talked to Laura on the phone for half an hour. I asked her out for Vietnamese food tomorrow. Then I helped Becky with her CS 240 program for a while (she was having problems with reading files). By then, it was midnight. Man how time flies. Good night.

Posted 11:19 PM | Comments (1)

Where's the Vietnamese food?

You know how every once in a while certain events or smells or sights or emotions will all align and you'll feel like you were in a past epoch of your life. Well, I got that feeling today. Felt kind of like Fall of 2001, which minus the whole 9/11 thing was actually a really fun time. I don't know why it felt that way—maybe it's just getting colder, maybe it's that I'm doing things at work that I haven't done in two years, maybe it's the fact that I cooked a meal for someone for the first time in forever, or maybe I feel more in control of my life than I did last year. But it was a good feeling. And somehow, today just felt like a very happy day. I wonder if it's connected to food that I'm eating, or lifestyle routines or something. I've also thought that it might be connected to going to the temple last night. I don't know. Whatever the case, I felt like I got a lot accomplished at work, and I was actually enjoying doing documentation for once.

Anyways, I had a volleyball game at 6:00. That, too, was fun, though I kept feeling like I was letting the team down. I made all sorts of stupid errors. But I also had flashes of great plays, so I don't know. Maybe it'll all come back before our season is over. We lost in two games, by the way.

After that I rushed home and showered, and despite trying to hurry I still managed to be 15 minutes late to pick up Laura. I've really got to stop being late. We went to Café Saigon, which had absolutely no customers by the time we got there (about 8:00). A little 10 year old boy had to come from out back to give us the menus and get our drink orders. After a little while the mom came out for our orders. We had steamed spring rolls as an appetizer and then Laura had pho bo, while I had crunchy roast chicken. I'm a little upset at their menu. Besides the pho and the spring rolls, there's just not a lot that's authentically Vietnamese anymore. Anyways, Laura got her pho about 15 minutes before my chicken came out, so I had fun laughing at her as she tried to figure out how to eat with the spoon and chopsticks. She could only finish about half the soup. Then she watched me eat the chicken, which was okay, but not spectacular. Some other customers came in after a while, but it still felt like we had the restaurant entirely to myself.

Anyways, after that we went home and played a little fusbol and Dr. Mario. We went 1-1 on the fusbol, and my endless hours of Dr. Mario playing shone through there (I won every time despite being on level 10 to her level 3). She had to leave about 10:15 or so. I let her drive my car home (with me in it, of course)—this stemmed out of a whimsical conversation about her stealing my car.

Posted 11:25 PM | Comments (1)

A Practice LSAT

Today was relatively uneventful. I got a lot of work done. We went to Habibs for lunch for the first time in forever. Laura emailed me shortly before she left for Logan (running a marathon), and I emailed her back wishing her luck. Mark and Mike were gone on dates by the time I got home at 8PM. So after doing a few odds and ends I decided to take a practice LSAT. That took about 2.5 hours. I did pretty well, with a 168. I think I could have gotten a 174 with a little better time management. Especially in the logic games section. So I think I should definitely go buy some more practice tests. Am I going to? Probably not. I tried to see how well the score compared to admissions stats at various institutions, but it's not really well published. One document suggested that it was higher than anyone who got into BYU last year. That doesn't seem quite right, but it does tell me that I'm in pretty good shape--but I'm still going to spend some time studying, because it'd be pretty cool to get a scholarship or get into Harvard. Anyways, that consumed my whole night.

Posted 11:28 PM | Comments (1)

An awesome game of ultimate, Seabiscuit

I woke up early this morning to take care of my car battery (I joked with Laura that it was to sympathize with her, since she had to be up at 4:45 for the marathon). It died Thursday morning, and then again this morning. So Mark, who needed a new starter, and I went to AutoZone right as they opened at 8:00. My battery only cost $65, so that was a relief. I was thinking closer to $100. I had it in the car by 9:00, and man it makes a world of difference—the car starts faster and seems to have a little more power.

As soon as I got the battery in I took off for the city league fields and warmed up. I figure I need to get more warming up in because last game it took me forever to get my second wind. By game time we only had five guys—me, Neil, Seth, Matt, and Jeff. So basically I was the only handler, and we had no subs to give us any breathers. At first, this didn't look like too much of a problem. We were playing Beehoompus (Tyler and Jamie's team). They had won both of their games so far, which was cause for a little concern, but we went up 4-1, so we were thinking no problem. Then we started to get tired (and they started to make fewer mistakes). We just barely managed to win the half, 8-7. The half had gone by so slowly, that they called a hard cap of 12. So here we were, all rested again, thinking we just need to duplicate how we started the first half. But no luck. They came out blitzing and wore us down, and pretty soon they were up 10-8. Things were looking pretty bad. But that's when I decided I had had enough. On the next point, Neil threw a pass to me that was a little high. I went up and managed to tip it, so as to stop the forward motion, and then as I and the Frisbee came down I lunged for it with my left hand and managed to catch it, while lying on the ground, with my outstretched left hand. It was awesome. And it caught everybody totally off guard because they were expecting a turnover for sure. Matt was quick to react and started streaking for the end zone. As I stood up I saw the route, and within half a second threw a perfect forehand to him. It was just an amazing play and it pumped us all up. So then we started playing some killer defense to make up for a less than stellar offense (I'll be the first to admit I had a bad day handling)—lot's of blocks all over the place. The next point was also pretty cool. I hucked it out to Matt from our end zone, and it was way short, but Matt was able to fool his defender and get around him for a play on it. Everyone else but Seth and I (we were the farthest back) stormed the goal, and I thought I don't need to run, it'll be over before I get there. But Neil got the disk on the right corner and as the count got high on him we realized he didn't have any plays, so much to the chagrin of our half-step behind defenders, Seth and I sprinted the full-field to give him a dump (credit Neil on patience there). Seth got there first, so he got the dump, and I was running down the center of the field, so Seth immediately dumped it to me, and I had been checking out the stack on the approach, so I knew I immediately had Matt and Jeff open on routes to the left corner, since they were forcing the right side of the field and hadn't had time to adjust their defense to our quick swings. So it was just another one of those quick catch, backhand releases that curved perfectly into Matt's hands. A great, fist-pumping play. And the next play was also pretty good. I got stuck on a high count on the right side of the field and really had no one open down the line. Then I caught Matt cross-field out of the corner of the eye and threw a perfect hammer to him—leading him back towards me just enough so that there was no way his defender could get it. Then I sprinted to the left side of the goal line, and I had just enough of a lead on my defender that Matt was able to throw me a great backhand that I followed right into the goal. As I emphatically pancaked the disk (it was loud), we went up 11-10. The next point, we again showed how tired we were. They scored pretty quickly on a dominator play, taking advantage of my lack of hustle on defense. So that left us all tied at 11. Game point. We marched down the field, but turned it over right on the goal line. Luckily, they turned it over to us immediately and Seth picked it up before anyone could get down there and threw it to Mandy for the win. So we got a break at the end, but it was an exciting game. And we did it without any subs. I was so tired at the end though. Luckily, our intramural game at noon was a non-game. I played a total of 5 points I think, all left-handed (didn't make a single throwing error). We won 10-1. Our intramural team could be really good, but we really need a challenge. So I'm thinking I should arrange a scrimmage with some of the better intramural teams.

After that I grabbed a drink from Jamba Juice. Then I went home and made me a tuna sandwich, and did some cleaning up around the house and yard. Then I took a brief nap. I had a slight headache I think from either too much sun or dehydration or maybe even over-exertion. But I woke up when Mike brought his mother's vacuum cleaner over, and we cleaned a little more for the BYU game party that was supposed to start at 4:30. Only no one came. Eventually Candace came, but it was at half-time and Mike had left to pick up Heidi and I think I was boring her trying to figure out what to do with Laura tonight. So she left for a while. Laura and I settled on seeing "Seabiscuit" at 10:00 (and having root beer floats at her house before). Meanwhile, Mike brought Heidi over and Candace returned, and around the fourth quarter Heather showed up. But that was it. No guys at all. Either we've become unpopular, or all the people who would have come were already at the game. It was a lame game anyways. We had a first and goal on the eight that could have won it, but got sacked twice.

After the game, I went over to Laura's. The root beer floats were good. Her marathon, by the way, went well. She finished in just over 4 hours. I'm amazed that she can do that. The movie was also surprisingly good. I won't go into to it much now, but I like the moral it espoused at the end—"we fixed each other." And you don't throw people's lives away. It's just beautiful—people whose lives are in complete disarray crossing each other's paths and somehow making each other whole again.

Posted 11:35 PM | Comments (1)

Ward Breakfast

Jake and Philip cooking up a storm

Here's some pictures from a breakfast some members of our ward just had on Sunday morning. I'm told it was a good breakfast, but unfortunately, I have to spend my Sunday mornings in perpetual meetings.

• Pictures

Posted 06:26 PM | Comments (1)

My throat hurts

I'm sick. That's why I didn't write anything last night. Plus it was such a long day. Even with starting at 10:45 instead of 7:00, I still felt exhausted. So I had meetings from 10:45 till 1:00. I grabbed some soup before sacrament meeting. Sacrament meeting was "interesting," mostly because the Bishop decided to give the morality sermon (even though that's still scheduled for next week). I was busy doing odds and ends all through Sunday School. Elder's Quorum was alright—we had to move into the gym because we have so many people. Which is fine by me. Shane gave the lesson and joked about how I was really good at volleyball (our team lost to theirs yesterday, while I was playing ultimate). Then he put me on the spot and had me bear my testimony about preparation and callings. It wasn't exactly the most inspiring testimony ever. By this time I was starting to feel a little sick, as well. Mostly, my throat was hurting. After church I stayed around to do some interviews, then sing in choir. Then we had a little bratwurst and sauerkraut party. Only, no one came. Again. The only persons from our ward who showed were Candace and Earl. Patrick and Erin came at about 6:30. Patrick, by the way, doesn't seem to be handling the break up with Shanta very well. He's stopped going to the 230th ward altogether. At 7:00, Ryan Webb and I went home teaching. First we saw Angela and Leah. We spent a good hour there. Then we saw the Dorsey sisters, and were there until about 8:45. Then there was ward prayer, and Mike, Mark, and I were spotlighted. Then came the evening mingling at our place. It was a small but fun crowd. Pretty much all of the usual people. Monica, Candance, Danika, Heather, Tina, Maria, Kim, Darcy, and Earl. Played a few games. Maria and I kicked Mike's and Kim's butts at fusbol. We played a little Uno and Cranium. Then came the blocking-in incident with Danika's car across the street. Our neighbors don't like anyone else to park there, so they blocked her in to prove a point. We had to knock on their door and ask them to move their cars (and of course they griped loudly about this) at 11:45 at night. After that Monica played some Tetris with us. I beat her, and then she beat everyone else in the room. By then, though, I was pretty exhausted, and definitely sick. So I retired for the evening while they played until who knows when.

This morning I woke up at 7:00 and my throat was killing me—something about the way things drip at night that just makes things so much worse on the throat. I got up and went to Albertsons for some OJ and cough drops. Then I came back, called up Derek J at the office and had him zip up the documentation so I could download it and work on it from home. I didn't get much accomplished before I fell asleep again, this time until 1:00. Then I started doing a little more work, but also tried to catch up on household projects such as paperwork on my desk and transferring all my home videos to my computer and setting up stuff on my desk for my laptop and redecorating my room. The room looks great, now, by the way. And is really organized. Somewhere in all of that I took another nap. I skipped FHE, and I spent the late evening watching a little TV with Mark before retiring at midnight.

Posted 11:40 PM | Comments (1)

Still sick

Well, I was sick again today. I woke up early and worked for an hour. Then I slept until 10:30 or so. Then I worked for a little while more before going for lunch with Mike to El Azteca. I worked for about an hour after I got home before I fell asleep again for two hours. Then I went to the law school to get some practice LSATs. Only they didn't have any. So I don't know what to do now. After that I decided I was well enough to play Frisbee, and did so for about an hour before I decided I was no longer well enough to do all that running, so I went to watch the girls Ultimate game (they're the only all girls team in the league). They did very well. Even though they lost 10-5, it was very obvious they were more talented. They just didn't have the height to compete on the deep throws. But they did only lose the second half by a point, so maybe there's hope they'll win one this year. Which after not even scoring last year is a major improvement.

Posted 11:43 PM | Comments (1)

I got better

I felt well enough this morning to go to work. Granted, a little Sudafed helped. I had the sniffles through most of the day, though. I actually got to work pretty early (before 9:00), which is way unusual as of late. Maybe this being sick thing will help me start getting to work on time. I really wasn't getting a lot accomplished at work, though. My brain was still fried from my cold. I ordered the PocketPC 2003 update for my Axim. I got off work at about 6:00. I was supposed to pick up Laura at 6:30, but she called and asked if we could do it later, at 7:15. Apparently she had to go roller-skating with her friend Michelle. Anyways, we went to Black Angus—a little expensive, I know, but I was in the mood for steak. Plus I got a coupon in the mail. We had a ton of food—I was so full I couldn't even finish my steak. Plus we had dessert. She suggested we do a hike up to Stewart Falls with her friend Michelle on Saturday afternoon. Then I came home and did nothing too terribly important for the rest of the night.

Posted 11:46 PM | Comments (1)

Controlled Burn? Yeah, right.

This morning was really smoky. A controlled burn up near Heber got out of hand on Tuesday, and has been making things really smoky down here in the valley. I'm having doubts about whether or not we'll be able to hike up Stewart Falls on Saturday. Meanwhile, nothing unusual going on at work. Late in the day I stumbled upon a lot of Atari and Nintendo roms, so I downloaded those. Now I've got even more games I'll never play on my PocketPC. After work, the smoke had cleared up enough so that I felt comfortable playing Frisbee. And so did a lot of other people. We set up two games, we had so many people out to play. I played pretty well, although my backhand was having problems again. After Frisbee I went to Becky's house for a little while. They gave me a little food and more importantly, some cookie dough. I helped Becky with her CS 124 homework. It was kind of stupid—it took more time to figure out their little program that emulated computer architecture than it did to actually figure out how to perform the basic processor commands. When I was doing the equivalent class, we did it all by hand. Sure, it took a lot of paper, but it was a lot simpler in my opinion. Anyways, I left there about 10 and came home to a house full of people. I guess Mike and Mark had decided to throw together a little dinner and invite some people from the ward. Smelled good, too. But it was all gone when I got there. Kind of makes me sad they didn't call and invite me. Oh well, I guess I would have been too busy with Ultimate anyways. Besides, I had the steak and stuff leftover from last night. To my surprise, my PocketPC update arrived this morning via Airborne Express. Talk about a quick delivery. So I'm backing up my system now, and if it finishes early enough I'll get to install it tonight. You know, back when I didn't have a girlfriend, this would have been the highlight of my week.

Posted 11:50 PM | Comments (1)

Guillotine is a game

I spent the first hour awake trying to finish installing PocketPC 2003 on my Axim. Then I spent most of work reinstalling all of my Axim software. Man, that took forever. Katie (who's in town for a wedding) called in the middle of the day and said she wouldn't be able to hang out tonight—she had a cold and sounded pretty bad. I came home about 7:30 and ordered some Papa Murphy's pizza. Then Becky and Wayne came over to play Mexican train dominos and help me eat the pizza. Around 8:30, Laura came over. We played dominos and some game called Guillotine (which I would have won had everyone not ganged up on me). Then Becky and Wayne left, and Laura and I went downstairs and played Flux until about midnight. Anyways, we had a great time, watching a few videos as we played and listening to music. After midnight I turned on some John Williams (the guitarist) and we sat on the couch and looked at some old pictures while I told stories about them.

Posted 11:53 PM | Comments (1)

Laura & I at Stewart Falls

Ladies and Gentlemen, Ms. Laura Cummings

Laura and I went hiking at Stewart Falls today. Her friends Michelle and Jeff also accompanied us. It was a beautiful hike. The leaves had changed so much since last month. There were all sorts of amazing shades of red and yellow and brown. And of course, the company couldn't have been better.

• Pictures
• Video (5:40)

Posted 05:46 PM | Comments (1)

Stewart Falls, twice in a month

We lost our Ultimate game this morning. I'm still ticked off about it. Neal showed up at like 11:15 or so (he was camping with his ward), and we only had one sub throughout the game. At first, it looked like we were going to win. We were playing Don's and Curt's team and we went up 4-1. The first play of the game was especially cool—Mark took the pull, threw it to me, and I launched a long bomb across the field to Mandy (who had a big jump on her defender) for a score. All within 10 seconds. And I had some other pretty good throws, but we soon exhausted ourselves, and we were losing at half, 6-8. After half, we played pretty even, and when Neal showed up we managed to bring the score to 11-12. So I was thinking that surely with Neal we'd win now. But no luck. In fact, we played worse. We ended up losing 11-15. That stunk. And I'm pretty sure a lot of the blame can be pinned on me. I got addicted to the long throw early, because that's how we went up 4-1, and I think I went back to it too often when we got past half-field. And at the end I also made 3 or 4 throwing errors that cost us big. So I've got to practice my patience this week. After the game, Neal and David and Johnnie all needed someone to help them drop off the SUV they were using at the campout and then take them to BYU campus, so I volunteered to help out. This ended up taking a lot of time, though, because traffic was backed up everywhere for the BYU game.

Once I got home, I had about 40 minutes to shower, eat a salami sandwich, and get dressed before Laura picked me up at 2:00. This was a little problematic, because I had nothing to wear. But then I decided it was a hike and I could wear smelly and mismatched clothes if I needed to. Which was a good assumption, because Laura hadn't even had time for a shower after her game. We went to meet Michelle and her boyfriend Jeff, and then headed on up to Stewart Falls. It was a great day for hiking. Not too hot, and Stewart Falls was in the shadows for the most part. All the leaves had turned red, orange, yellow, and brown. I felt like I was walking through New England. I was also surprised by the lack of smoke, even though the fire at Cascade Springs is still not fully contained. The hike was very relaxed, and as I said I got a lot of good pictures. I also got to play with my GPS unit—it has a very cool trace utility that I really wish we had had for Nebo a few weeks ago. The way back was a little tedious, first because I got a call from Brother Wood and he reminded me about home teaching stats, so I spent 10 minutes or so calling up people about that. Then Laura was in a real hurry to get back in time to shower and go to Relief Society meeting at the Marriott Center.

I spent the next two hours calling people about home teaching and other miscellaneous church items. Then I started watching a lecture by Edward Said on one of those public access university channels. It was about Palestine and U.S. Policy. Let's just say he's no big fan of U.S. Policy in Palestine, and he had a pretty convincing argument. That I can agree with, but his logic against our invasion of Iraq was less than convincing. I'm not going to get into it now, though. They're both such frustrating issues.

From there I went to go see Mark's band play at Muse Music. After that I came home and I've been fiddling around with my PocketPC for the last hour or so.

Posted 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

Barrel full of meetings

Today was another seemingly endless stream of meetings. Presidency meeting at 10. We spent most of that going through home teaching numbers. Presidency interviews at 11. President Earl was gone, so his secretary performed it. There was just enough time between this and PEC at 12 for a salami sandwich. Then church. I skipped Sunday School once again to make home teaching assignments. Also, Patrick Thomas came to our ward today and wants to transfer here to get away from the whole Shanta thing. They're gonna let him transfer. It'll be good to have him in the ward, but I don't think running away from the problem is the right approach. In priesthood, Brother Meredith gave us the "morality" lecture. This actually wasn't so bad as it usually is. Although the Bishop gave the lecture to the Relief Society and went 15 minutes over. We joked that it's because you can't do a lot to help the guys, so they were giving the girls advice on how to beat us off. After that we had munch and mingle. There wasn't much to eat. Someone made enchiladas and those tasted pretty good, but there definitely wasn't enough. I guess it did hold us over through stake leadership meeting, which started at 5:30. I picked up Amber because she asked for a ride. Leadership meeting was long but insightful. President Earl did most of the speaking, and he used football analogies everywhere, mostly because one of the first counselors in the Elder's Quorum of another ward is the current BYU quarterback, something-Beck. I can't remember the first name. After that I had about half an hour to make dinner (salmon with rice) before choir. Then ward prayer. And, of course, the evening festivities at our place, with the small and usual crowd. I played fusbol with Heather for a while. Then played Tetris with Monica.

Posted 11:03 PM | Comments (1)

Short and Simple

It was a pretty routine day at work. I got the tickets for "Man of La Mancha" on Friday. They'll be on the front row, which apparently isn't as desirable as the second or third row because of the proximity to the stage. But I'm looking forward to it. Then I came home for FHE. I had to give a thought, so I whipped up something quickly about faith. I really should have put more thought into it. And then we did the normal hang around the house stuff. Even ordered some pizza. I'm kind of bored with the hanging around the house stuff, though. We do it too often. Then I exercised and watched TV for the remainder of the night.

Posted 10:06 PM | Comments (1)

I think I'm underpaid

Today was terribly boring at work. So much so that I decided to begin looking at job sites and salary surveys and even posting my resume. I've decided that I am underpaid (the average wage for someone skilled in Framemaker is $61,000), underutilized, and in a position that isn't going anywhere very quickly. Add to it the fact that I disagree with our company's lack of aggressiveness, and I think maybe it's time I move on. Anyways, tonight I played pickup Frisbee until dark, then I went straight to our volleyball game. I was a bit hesitant to go since Vance hadn't emailed me about it or anything—thinking maybe they'd be better off without me. But it's a good thing I showed. We only had 6 until the last game. Besides, it's the tournament and we were bumped down to the level 3 tournament, so things should be a little easier. Nonetheless, we looked a little sloppy out there. Yeah, I made a couple of mistakes, including 2 or 3 bad serves, but I wasn't the only one. And all of my passes and digs were solid. So I don't feel too bad. We just barely won, 2 games to 1. And the last game was really close. Anyway, after that I went to our intramural ultimate game and we of course won that as well. 10-2. The other team was pretty upset about it, too. I don't blame them. But really, we were pretty easy on them. We were practicing a zone and stayed afterwards to perfect it. I wasn't doing too well on it myself (didn't play in the cup once tonight), but then again my primary function is to break the zone. Which I was doing pretty well. I think if we can get this zone learned, along with a couple of offensive formations, we might stand a chance of winning a few games come tournament time. Of course, Andy was telling us we might not even be in the top tournament, in which case we should win the whole thing. We'll see, I guess. Then I grabbed dinner from Dairy Queen and went home. Not much going on there, except a guy named Geoff randomly came by to check out a room. Another guy called me earlier about the room (he saw it on a sign I posted at the Wilk). And then there was a guy from roommates.com who contacted me yesterday. So that's 3 guys in 2 days. I don't understand why they hadn't been contacting us before. Well, hopefully this will get our house full and money back in my pocket.

Posted 11:09 PM | Comments (1)