Slick Shoes

Battle Enjoined

2011-09-19T22:40:00.000-06:00

Go ahead and google "enjoin", you know you want to.

Sorry it's been so long. I recently traveled to California with my dad, who said, "You need to write a blog. But not about taxes. I'm tired of those." It was then I realized that my last three posts were about taxes. My opinion on the matter hasn't changed, but I realize that you all don't care.

So here's something new and interesting. My house is under siege from wasps. (Well, probably they're wasps. I honestly don't know. I haven't gotten close enough to ID them.) On the corner of my house they've been trying to build a little paper nest thingy. I first noticed them when I got back from said California trip. Right there, under the corner of the house by the garage, where I keep my garbage cans.

In contrast to my tax policies, I'm very lassez-faire when it comes to insects. They can do what they want, as long as they do it outside and don't eat my food. Stay outside, and I generally will not stomp, spray, swat or otherwise harass you. (My policy for home teachers and solicitors also.) These bugs, however, are intent on breaking the peace. My first day back, I go to throw something away. Right as I lift the lid, I notice the nest and a few dark specks dart towards me. I immediately run backwards and do that crazy arm waving jig characteristic of suburban white guys and Justin Bieber fans.

The sight of this flailing white monster must have frightened them, since one dove right in and stung me right on the arch of my eyebrow. It immediately swelled and got stiff. Fortunately, I have pretty bushy, almost Muppet-like eyebrows, so instead of having to explain a big red zit looking thing, I just walked around looking very perplexed for about a day.

It was that sting ended the peace. I broke out my reserve of spray, doused the monsters from a good 10 feet, and watched with a certain grim glee as they perished. I also went inside to research wasp killing techniques. These mostly consisted of people using lighters and hairspray to flambe' the insects. But, as much as I would have enjoyed making wasps foster, I also didn't want to burn down my house. So, I left the spray to do it's work. Kill the nest, and the wasps will flee, right?

The next day, though, the wasps were back. This time it became apparent they were climbing under the siding -- doing who knows what under the skin of my house in a clear violation of our accord. So, more spray. And then a different spray. And then a powder. And then a high pressure water/soap spray. It's been a few weeks, and the body count is steadily rising, but they don't seem to be giving up. And, I have to do battle at night, since they're disturbingly active during the day.

Internet research hasn't been that helpful. All it's really led me to the Japanese wasp, which is something like 3 inches long and attacks beehives. EEK! The only thing I really have going for me is that eventually it's going to freeze and they're going to turn into wasp-cicles.

Another thought on taxes...

2011-06-21T22:28:00.000-06:00

The rallying cry of most conservatives these days is that we don't want to raise taxes on the "job creators". I mean, that was the point of Bush tax cuts right? But where are the jobs, then?

I actually think we have our logic wrong. We assume that lowering taxes on the wealthy will spur economic development because the wealthy then have extra income to invest in the economy, either by buying goods and services, or by growing the businesses that made them wealthy in the first place. But, everything that's happened in the last decade makes me think this doesn't actually work.

I don't know where the tax break money is going. I suspect it's going to Wall Street -- my irritation with which is it's own post entirely. What we can say, however, that the tax break money isn't building roads or paying soldier salaries.

So, let's consider the alternative for a moment, which is higher taxes on the wealthy; something more in line with what we had in the 80s and 90s. If I'm wealthy, and I know that I'm going to lose a portion of my income every year in taxes, how am I going to protect my wealth? I'm probably going to do the typical things, like look for tax shelter and loopholes, but isn't one of the best ways to perpetuate my wealth to re-invest in my own company? If my business is bigger next year than it was last year, isn't that the best way to ensure my continued wealth? Re-investment is probably one of the biggest and most effective tax breaks of all. Giving an actual tax break really just creates more disposable income. Which, in the hands of someone who already has all their needs met, provides little ancillary benefit.

I don't know, maybe I'm out there. Kinda makes sense to me though. And I actually found out that there are groups of the wealthy that feel the same way:

"Our country faces a choice – we can pay our debts and build for the future, or we can shirk our financial responsibilities and cripple our nation’s potential.

Our country has been good to us. It provided a foundation through which we could succeed. Now, we want to do our part to keep that foundation strong so that others can succeed as we have.

Please do the right thing for our country. Raise our taxes."

http://patrioticmillionaires.org/

If I were in charge

2011-06-10T21:20:00.000-06:00

If I were charge, I would raise taxes. And yes, primarily on the wealthy. The fact is that we enjoy an amazing amount of freedom in the US, and that simply doesn't come cheap. The wealthier you are, the more you benefit from living here. Don't get me wrong, I think we should also cut spending, but the reality is that both the marginal and actual tax rates are crazy low. So low, in fact, that we're heading down the same path as countries like Spain, Portugal, and Greece. If that's not a wake up call, I don't know what is.

The one thing the charts below don't show is that some 50% of Americans don't pay any taxes. At all. I also think that's unacceptable. Everyone should have to pay something, even if it's just a little tiny bit -- a symbolic amount.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/06/low_tax.html

If I were in charge...

2011-05-31T22:57:00.000-06:00

If I were in charge, I would end farm and ethanol production subsidies in the US. They upset the price of goods the world over. It's not a big deal in the US, where we tend to spend little of our income on food. (If the price of a loaf of bread goes up a nickel, we can probably handle it.) But if you live in a poor part of the world, even a small increase in the price of rice, corn, or wheat may mean the difference between life and death.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/may/31/global-food-crisis-guatemala-system-failure

www.oxfam.org

Skeptics, Scientists, and Christmas

2010-12-27T23:20:00.009-07:00

"Why are you such a skeptic?" Was the question I was asked, and not without a little consternation. As if skepticism was an illness, or at least a dirty word. I didn't have a good answer. I'd never really thought about it. "Why aren't we all skeptics?" seemed like the better question. The benefits of practicing healthy skepticism seem to outweigh the problems a hundred to one. (Never tempted to buy something from an infomercial? Check. Not wasting money on the lottery? Check. Saving time and sanity not listening to Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity/Glen Beck? Check.)

When did skepticism become such a bad thing? Without skepticism, would we still be doing lobotomies and letting blood? Would we have any of the advances of modern science? It's been hundreds of years since Galileo was branded a heretic; why are we still fighting the same battles?

But I digress. The answer to the original question is that I am a skeptic because I've seen the evidence and I don't know how else to be. Based on evidence, I believe in tachyons, mesons, and gluons. I believe that the universe is 13.75 billion years old and earth is about 4.74 billion years old. Based on the lack of evidence, I don't believe in intelligent design, ghosts, horoscopes, aliens, crop circles, homeopathic medicine, or chiropractics.

If you believe in one or more of those things, I don't think you're an idiot. One of the realities of being a healthy skeptic (at least one with any friends), is to accept that people might have beliefs that run counter to your conclusions, even if you've seen the same evidence. Even ardent skeptics may allow powerful non-skeptic elements into their lives. This is healthy; this is normal. This is how we survive a violent, harsh world, and have done so for as long as we have existed.

Chiropractics is a good example. I have a lot of friends and co-workers that swear by their chiropractors and their every so often back adjustments. For those most part though, I don't think these friends buy into the core chiropractic tenet that all health problems can be traced problems with the spine. At the same time, as a skeptic, I can see, rationally, how spinal massage by a trained specialist could, if not improve health outright, positively affect a person's perception of their own health to the point that they do in fact feel better. I'm not going to begrudge anyone a belief that improves their overall quality of life.

Besides medicine, the other area that tends to get skeptics in trouble is faith. Skeptics who are tentative about belief are ridiculed for having too little faith, while skeptics who are faithful are mocked by the hardcore skeptics who reject the "opiate of the masses." It's sad on both accounts. Believers should remember that their faith was probably founded by a skeptic -- someone who challenged the traditions and status quo of their culture and their time. Similarly, The ardent skeptic should remember that the world is scary place, and those that look for comfort in a spiritual place aren't doing so out of delusion, but because human wisdom is finite and progresses at a finite pace, leaving many questions unanswered. While some people believe out of tradition (and could benefit from a bit of skepticism themselves), most of the faithful believe because of the balance it brings their lives.

Think of the Christmas holiday, for example. This is a skeptics favorite holiday, because it abounds with logical discontinuities. Christ wasn't born in December, He was born in the spring. There weren't three wise men, and it took them years to reach the Christ child. Christmas is mostly likely a pagan holiday re-purposed by early Christian churches. Many Santa Claus traditions are scary and somewhat racist. And on, and on, and on. But you know, what? Who cares? What's wrong with giving gifts to those you love? What's wrong with a little celebration during what are some of the darkest and coldest days of the year? What's wrong with reflecting on the previous year and looking forward to the next? Even if you're a skeptic and wholly reject the premise, you'd be hard pressed to say that we'd be better off without Christmas.

Overall, the reality is that faith and skepticism can readily coexist, despite those on both sides that angrily suggest otherwise. The two really can't be compared. My own faith is led by individuals of very significant intelligence, who no doubt approach practical matters with healthy skepticism -- and yet I know they have no doubts with respect to their religion convictions. As for me personally, my own skepticism has led me to enjoy the beauty and the mastery of the world through science. Knowing why a sunset produces such brilliant red hues does nothing to diminish its beauty.

If one looks over the millenia of recorded history, it may seem that science has answered the bulk of the important questions. I imagine that skeptics and scientists in every enlightened age have felt some sense of triumph of reaching the pinnacle of understanding. If there's anything we have learned, though, is that there is so much that we do not know, and may never know. This is perhaps the greatest challenge of skepticism, to accept that what you know today may not be true tomorrow. Science gives us the means to survive the world, but it is by faith that we persevere.

(comics linked from xkcd.org)

What's fair about it?

2010-12-05T21:20:00.003-07:00

I hear the word "fair" a lot in politics and the news lately. Mostly when it comes to taxes. So, I'm wondering, what is fair? Is it fair for someone who makes more than a quarter million dollars per year to pay proportionally more taxes than those who earn less? You know what, I think it is.

Less than 2% of tax paying households earn more than $250,000. Less than 2%! You know what that tells me? That those 2% are very hard working, but they are also benefit quite a bit from living in this country. How many people in the word earn that much money annually? A tiny, tiny, TINY amount. Undoubtedly, such wealth is attainable, in part, because we live in this country, and we enjoy the benefits and protections of it. I don't think we realize how much our system of government enables the generation of wealth. It only makes sense to me, then, that those who have benefited so greatly should also return some of that wealth to bolster the system that enabled their success.

I understand that high taxes can be a detriment to business and a healthy economy. I get that. But the reality is that if you earn a quarter of a million dollars a year, a slightly higher tax bracket isn't, in any appreciable way, going to interfere with your happiness -- unless, of course, it's all about the money. And, if you do make that much money, and you are unhappy with how the government would spend it, you are encouraged to give it away yourself, to the causes and the people that you think deserve it the most.

I know that no one likes to pay taxes. And I think it's a healthy battle to try and keep tax rates as low as possible. But at the same time, the incessant whining is getting old.

Thanksgiving with the Vissers

2010-11-24T20:22:00.003-07:00

Me: "How big is the turkey?"
Dad: "22 pounds?"
Me: "22 pounds?!"
Dad: "I got the smallest one they had!"
Me: "Where'd you go? The mutant turkey store?"
Staci: "It's a teenage mutant ninja turkey!"

-----------------------

Mom: "Will you let the dog out?"
Me: "No, she doesn't want to go outside."
Mom: "She looks like she does."
Me: "It's 5 degrees outside. She only thinks she wants to go out."

-----------------------

During thanksgiving dinner:
Kelly: "You spit all the time."
Bryan: "I only spit if I'm outside."
Kelly: "You make that same snotty noise, though."
Bryan: "I don't spit, I just swallow."
(collective moan)
Dad: "Okay, we're not talking about this!"

-----------------------

Weston (1.5 years old) was covered in blue frosting from Mom's birthday cake:
"It's like he ate a Smurf!"

---------------------

Me: "What sound does a doggy make?"
Weston: "Meow"

----------------------

Me: "Do you think Kelly and Bryan will name their other children after towns in Southeast Idaho?"
Staci: "You mean like Preston?"
Me: "How about Malad?"
Staci: "Or Virginia if it's a girl."
Me: "Portage!"

----------------------

Staci: "I've never heard this song before."
Me: "It's got Kanye in it."
(pause)
Staci: "I was just trying to imagine a conversation between Jared Leto and Kanye."
Me: "I'll bet they didn't say much."
Staci imitating Kayne: "George Bush hates me."

Orrin Hatch is an idiot.

2010-11-23T20:41:00.001-07:00

Orrin Hatch, Senator of Utah, is an idiot.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/10291211924/the-19-senators-who-voted-to-censor-the-internet.shtml

Button, Button, Who's Got the Button

2010-11-21T17:59:00.003-07:00

Sometimes my job is absurd. I end up doing things that I shouldn't be doing. Take, for example, the process of picking out computers. As the software guy, I figure that my job is to tell the system engineers how fast a computer I need. It's their job to figure out how to mount in the rack, what kind of cables they need to plug it in, if it needs a UPS, and everything else. As far as I'm concerned, the computer could be banana shaped and use a platoon of gerbils for power. That's not good enough for the engineers, though. They seem to want my opinion on everything. Plugs in the front or in the back? How many connectors? Which company should we buy it from?

I DON'T CARE.

So, for 6 months, I wrote e-mails to that effect every time they asked me. I would repeat my performance specs and say, "that's all that matters to me." Well, six months later, and they still haven't picked the computer they're going to buy. Maddening, I tell you. In the end, I ended up calling a vendor I liked, asked for a demo machine, and after I saw what the manufacturer could do, I told the engineers exactly what I wanted.

What's even more maddening is that sometimes they don't ask for my input at all. The latest issue was the joystick. Our customers use a joystick to send commands to the software that I write. It's a pretty important piece of the system. A few months ago, I got an e-mail that they had picked the joystick. "Great!" I thought. Then I opened the pdf. It look like something you'd see at an arcade, and it only had 2 buttons.

We'd had the button discussion before. I told them we needed at least 8 buttons, and 10 or 12 would be better. So I call up Mr. Engineer:

"Why does this joystick only have two buttons?"

"Because that's as many as the vendor can put on it in our schedule."

"They don't make any other joysticks with more buttons?"

"They might, but they can get this one to us fast."

"But, we talked about this, we need 8 buttons!"

"Sometimes we have to make compromises."

"I AM compromising, I wanted 12 buttons. 8 buttons in the bare minimum."

"Okay, let me talk to them."

He calls back a few days later:

"I can get you four buttons easy."

"But I need eight."

"How about six? They said that with a little work they can do six."

"Then why didn't you just say six to begin with? Wait ... nevermind... I need EIGHT."

"The company is in Britain. They're worried about export problems if they make a new design for us. They said they can do six."

"Sounds like we need to find another vendor to me..."

And on and on. So, what did end up doing? I searched the web for another vendor. Turns out there's another one, NOT ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, that was really eager for our business. They even flew out and had a whole bunch of demo units for us to look at. Sigh. Now I'm developing a rep for being a PITA. All in a days work.

Combat Landing

2010-10-11T04:08:00.004-06:00

Like most people, I complain about my job. I complain about our customers, management, IT (especially IT), the general ratio of work to pay, and pretty much everything else that come to mind.

In reality though, my job is pretty damn cool. One of the cool things about it is that I get to work in, on, or near various airplanes from time to time. Sometimes, I even get to fly in them as we test our software, and that's always an adventure.

As routine as air travel has become, flying on these airplanes for work reminds me of how truly remarkable it is every time one one of these metal beasts lunges into the air at hundreds of miles an hour. On these work flights, my job is usually to sit and observe and not touch anything. I do get to wear a cool headset, though. One that blocks out the roar of the propellors but lets you listen in on the chatter between the pilots and the tower and crew on the plane. It sounds kind of like the trucker talk you'd hear on the Dukes of Hazzard, just a lot more sophisticated -- and, as a side note, they really do say, "Roger" and "Copy" quite a bit.

On this last flight, they had installed satellite internet on the plane and were testing it out. For some reason, they thought it was important to see how far they could bank the plane before they would lose the connection. I lost my connection with reality at about 50 degrees of bank. It didn't help when they swung it around to bank at 50 degrees the other way. The only thing keeping me from throwing up was my intense fear of throwing up.

The fear intensified when I heard the pilots talking about doing a "combat landing." In a typical landing, the plane slowly decends and makes a couple of nice gradual turns to line up with the runway. In a combat landing (well, this one at least) the plane flies over the tip of the runway at a ninety degree angle to the way it should land. To the untrained eye, this might look like the plane is trying to land on some random airport building. But, as the plane crosses the tip of the runway, they immediately throw it into a steep bank and make a tight 270 degree turn. At the end of the turn, the plane levels out, and it should be going a lot slower and be lined right up with with runway for a landing. Of course, I didn't know any of this before they did it. At the time, all I was aware of was being really low to the ground and the wing tip pointed straight down.

I survived though, breakfast and honor still intact. Commercial air travel doesn't seem all the bad, now that I think about it.

Unmitigated Disaster...

2010-07-31T21:40:00.005-06:00

This week has been just ridiculous. Simply absurd.

Last Sunday afternoon I left for Roswell, NM, yet again, because my customer "didn't have time" to install the latest version of our software. I was there for less than 24 hours. I landed at 8:00 pm Sunday and left on the last flight out at 3:45 pm Monday. I sat down at their computer at 7:00 am Monday, installed the latest version, and it worked without a hitch. I was so mad about being there that I couldn't even be excited that it worked. After all, I had spent days and days in our testing lab making sure it worked, but they couldn't even bother to install it to test it themselves.

When I got back, I had three days to write some code for a HD video capture card (it was supposed to be more, but I wasted all that time getting ready for and traveling to Roswell). In this case, the capture card came with a software development kit (SDK) from the manufacturer that we had to pay 5000 bucks to use. For 5000 bucks, I figured that it would probably be the easiest thing I'd ever done. Well, the SDK consisted of about 40 pages of documentation and about a dozen sample applications -- none of which came close to doing the very simple thing I needed. On top of that, the sample applications very devoid of any useful comments. The comments that were included said things like, "//bill was too lazy to fix this, so I'm going to hack around it too", and my personal favorite, "//NOTE: convert ignored for now do [sic] to excessive laziness."

It took 3 twelve hour days to get it figured out. Talk about cutting it to the wire. On Friday afternoon, the co-worker who needed the capture card stuff spent the afternoon in my office as we integrated his code with mine. He left at 6:00. I left at 10:00. Enough said about that.

And then, something not about work at all. This afternoon, I decided to fix my bathroom sink. About a year ago, the puller that raises and lowers the drain stopper stopped working. In my own extreme laziness, I just pulled out the stopper altogether and have been operating without it for about a year. Not a bad deal, really, except that I've dropped a lot of pills down that drain that I might have been able to rescue. I'm guessing the fish downstream of me are well medicated.

So, for whatever reason, I picked this afternoon to fix the stopper-puller-thingy. I remove all the junk from underneath the sink. I fiddle with the stopper mechanism for about 30 minutes, and then it's off to Lowe's. I find the part I need. I buy said part and return home. At home, said part does not work with my old drain stopper. "Universal" my eye. Shoot. I go to Dick's Hardware (yes, it's really called that), and find another stopper. I buy said stopper. This one works. Whew.

I am reassembling the sink drain, specifically the p-trap, when one of the pipes breaks. This isn't cheap plastic crap people, it's chrome plated galvanized drain pipe, and it cracks and splits apart as I am tightening the connectors. Sigh. As sewer gases waft out the open drain pipe, I realize that I have to go to Lowe's again. In contrast to the stopper, which you can live without, the sink is basically unusable if the drain isn't hooked up, and I'm going to need to buy a new p-trap.

Fortunately, the new p-trap installed without incident. I'm still not sure it was worth it, though. Why is it a universal law of home repair that every task will require at least 3 trips to the hardware store? Well, I hope the world sleeps better knowing that I now have a functioning drain stopper puller thingy.

Lying, Cheating, and Stealing

2010-07-05T00:59:00.007-06:00

Have you ever met someone famous? Yeah, you probably have. Up until 3 weeks ago, the most famous person I had ever met was this guy:

No, not ALF, the other guy. I was twelve, collecting money for Primary Children's Medical Center, something they called "Pennies By the Inch." Man, I hated that fundraiser. You were supposed to go around and suggest that people donate a penny for every inch of their height. Not only was it mathematically challenging for someone with a weak command of the twelves time-tables, but there's also no heavier way of donating to a charity.
Anyway, we were knocking doors like little Amway people in a local trailer park. Behind one of those doors was Alf's grouchy owner. Surprising to say the least. Apparently his mom lived there. Unimpressive on many levels, I know.

Then, I met someone truly remarkable. And I don't mean met as in "saw at Sundance" or the "he came and spoke at my ward once". I actually sat down and had a meal with Dick Rutan:

I can tell you're impressed. Old guy in a flight suit, real cool, right? Well, this is one serious dude. A real life John Wayne of the airplane world. He flew jets in Korea and Vietnam. In the latter conflict, his job was to take out gun emplacements. Meaning that he would fly around until someone was stupid enough to shoot at him, and then he would dive in and blow them to bits. He did get shot down once, but he was able to nurse his plane to the gulf of Tonkin before he ejected so that he'd be picked up by the Navy instead of the Vietcong.

When that was all over, he left the Air Force and kept flying. It worked out well because his brother designed and built airplanes. In 1986, he was the very first person to fly around the world non-stop. Then in 1997 (at 59!) he did another around the world flight in a plane he had built himself back in the 70s.

He's now 72 years old, and he flew his plane from LA to Portland to meet with a group of us doing a demonstration of some pretty cool airplane stuff that I'm sure you're not interested in. After the demo, we all went out to dinner, where he regaled us with even more stories from his life (definitely not PG). He also offered a toast:

"A toast to lying, cheating, and stealing.
If you lie, lie only to keep a friend.
If you cheat, may you cheat death.
If you steal, steal the love of a beautiful woman."

Cheesy? Under normally circumstances, most certainly. But from someone like him, I'll allow it.

I Pity the Fool

2010-06-12T17:55:00.003-06:00

I pity the fool that goes to see the A-Team and expects and sort of adherence to any of the laws of physics. Normally I'm a stickler for such things. (Which is one of the main reason's I loathe Die Hard 4.) But for some reason, I was completely unbothered by a flying tank, millions of bullets flying but no one getting shot, and Liam Neeson in yet another role very beneath him. Basically, the A-Team lived up to every expectation one could have of an 80's action tv show.

Oh, and Jessica Biel was in it, which wasn't bad either.

I Have a Quota

2010-06-06T16:37:00.003-06:00

Some people enjoy receptions. Generally we called them "women." I have a quota for the number of wedding receptions I will go to in a year. The quota is currently set at two. Yes, two. How did I arrive at such a number? Well, it's an average of how many receptions I end up attending each year. It's kind of like going to the dentist. More than twice and you should be taking better care of your teeth.

It's not that I don't like the people that are getting married. If they were having a BBQ, I would probably come. I'm also not trying to get out of buying a gift, since I generally like giving gifts. But, getting dressed up on a Friday/Saturday evening and then walking through a long line saying hello to people I don't know isn't on the list of favorite activities. Actually, that sounds suspiciously like a funeral. Except funeral food is frequently better. (Funeral potatoes, people?)

So, which receptions will I attend? Relatives' and roommates'. But I've already been to two this year, so if you want me to come to yours you have to get married in 2011. But, don't be sad, it's just one less hand to make and one less awkward hug. So that you can get on to more fun activities.

What Have I Done?

2010-06-01T23:39:00.002-06:00

I was really hungry when I got home from work. Too hungry. I did something I shouldn't have. I made Macaroni and Cheese. And then, I did the unspeakable. I added sliced hot dogs.

And I liked it...

You've had too much to think...

2010-04-15T18:59:00.010-06:00

One of my best friends, Nathan, is getting married in a few weeks. That's pretty remarkable because he was perhaps the most commitment phobic guy I've ever known. On the other hand, watching him be single made me wonder if being single forever would really be that bad. Despite the level of our raucousness, Nathan's kept himself surprisingly marryable. Ashley hasn't had to do much work to get him into husband shape -- if he were a house, he's basically just needed window treatments and a little paint. The whole process has made me wonder about my own marryability. (Yes, I know it's supposed to be written marriageability, but it's my blog, ok?)

If you haven't gathered, marryability is basically the credit score of a single male. It's a function of age, status, income, maturity, spirituality, hair follicle density, fashion sense, culinary talent, waist size, horsepower, fuel economy, taste and everything else you can think of. The younger you are, what you lack in maturity and income, you can make up for in potential and sheer fun. The girl sees you and says, "Ah, I can work with this."

As you age, what you loose in some areas you gain in others. Your hair thins, but now you've been on cross-country road trips, you have a degree, and your clothes still mostly match. At this point, the girl says, "Well, I'm going to have to train him to not do a, b, and c, but his car is paid off and he only quotes The Simpson's about half the time." Of course, this process continues until you reach the riper ages of male singleness. At this point, you've been single so long unless you make a conscious effort to stay marryable, you may acquire so many odd quirks that no one can put up with you.

For example, around age 30, every male loses whatever instincts they had once had to change my sheets regularly, do the dishes, wipe the counter, not be flatulent, avoid wearing sandals with socks, shower daily, eat vegetables, vacuum periodically and every other thing your mother insisted you do for the first 18 years of life. Basically, if left to your druthers, you'll turn into your father, except as becomes when your mom goes out of town for several weeks: unkempt, jaundiced from a canned chili/Mountain Dew diet, and wearing 90's era Doc Martin sandals with a t-shirt tucked into jean shorts.

To prevent this from happening, you have to at least make an effort to keep up appearances, even if just seems like a bunch of hassle. I say at least because if that's all you do, your marryability will still go down. The reality is that we age, we get weird. We get weird because the world is constantly changing around us, and we simple can't adapt to everything. Some stuff we readily accept, like switching to MP3 players instead of CDs. But you know there's some dude somewhere caressing his collection of Aerosmith cassettes/Bee Gees 8-tracks/Pink Floyd LPs and wondering how the world got so off track. That dude's marryability index is plunging fast.

The reality is that the older you get, to stay as marryable as you were at a younger age, you have to bring more to the table. This is not just to make up for what you've lost, but also to offset all your extra baggage that someone is going to have to put up with. I'm not saying you need to grow biceps the size of your thighs or read the Divine Comedy in the original Italian to woo a mate (such pursuits are actually non-stop detours to Douche-ville.) But you've got to keep yourself up to date, as inane as it appears sometimes. Returning to the house metaphor, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a house built in the 70s, but selling one with the orange shag carpet and faux wood paneling is going to be tough. They're fun and quirky, but remodeling is a huge hassle and can take forever.

Yes, yes, I can hear the chorus of, "But I want someone who accepts me for who you I am." Well, that's baloney. You don't want anyone whose standards are that low. And as for the fairer readers of this blog, I have no comment on your marryability. I am, after all, trying to keep my own marryability index high as possible.

Land of enchantment...

2010-04-11T21:51:00.004-06:00

I just rolled into the house from a week of work travel and a weekend of vacation. Strange how you can not have a care in the world, and the next, you're surrounded by piles of bills and laundry, simultaneously trying to find something for dinner while contemplating the week ahead. Sigh.

I spent the week in Roswell, New Mexico. Yes, the alien place. And no, my visit was completely terrestrial. Even so, there is something a bit off about the place in general. There are only two flights there daily, and the nearest town of any notable size (Albuquerque, Lubbock, or El Paso) is more than 3 hours drive away via US highway. With a population of about 45,000, this is the kind of community that really feels the effect of a down economy. People do what they can to get by. Little restaurants spring up everywhere, long established business get shuttered. Everything seems tainted by the malaise of disaffection.

I've seen a lot of these places in my travels. I thought I knew what to expect. Roswell was something else, though. I was struck by it the moment the airport was visible on the horizon. The airport was covered in commercial aircraft, parked wingtip to wingtip. Dozens and dozens of DC-10s, A-300s, 737s, and even a huge contingent of colossal 747s sat in the dry desert wind, doing nothing, and airline ghost town. Over the next few days as I worked around the airfield, I never really got used to seeing all those hulking birds parked around the runway, like used cars waiting for buyers.

I had high hopes that a week in Roswell would be a nice escape from the fickle Utah spring weather. In some ways it was, as the sun was out everyday, but the nights were bitterly cold, and my spring jacket wasn't nearly insulating enough for 40 degree weather at 8:00 am. Finally, on Friday, I even broke down and bought some hand lotion for the last 24 hours of my time there, because my hands simply couldn't handle the dryness anymore.

Roswell strikes me as fundamentally an agricultural community. From above, you can see that the town is surrounded by large green circles of crops, marking quite a contrast against the beige desert floor. The town itself is stretched out along the single main street, like something out of American Graffiti. On the outskirts you have the modern accoutrements of modern civilization, Subway, McDonald's, Walgreens, but as you near the city center, the stop lights are 200 feet apart, and the streets are lined with classic buildings, which you imagine were once soda fountains and barbershops, but are know struggling to be eclectic boutiques and coffee shops.

This is where Roswell takes another turn for the odd, since a disturbing number of these stores have alien paraphernalia hanging in the windows. On Friday, with my work completed, I walked a few blocks of main street and stuck my head in most of the shops. Most were simply trying to lure people, and the aliens painted on the windows had nothing to do with the incense or indian jewelry inside. Others were clearly local people trying to capitalize of the dumb tourists looking for a silly memento to send home. A few places, though, were clearly run by true believers. In one store, I picked up a few shirts for my little nephews, and the proprietor was quick to suggest that I pick up a recently published children's book about UFOs, so that I would be able to explain to them all about aliens.

It wasn't all weird though. Roswell had some surprisingly great food. Though the places were really run down, the food and the service was excellent. As you may have heard, New Mexico is known for it's chiles. I had green chile enchiladas and a relleno one day, and liked it so much that I had red chile enchiladas with another relleno the next. And in perhaps the biggest surprise of the trip, I had really excellent chicken saltimbocca that rivaled anything I've had in SLC.

All in all, it was probably one of the more interesting trips I've had. Roswell has a lot of personality. I still don't understand why they call it the land of enchantment, though.

Best 3 out of 5?

2010-04-04T02:32:00.003-06:00

This afternoon I was in the backyard, trying in vain to cut down this shoulder height wild grass stuff near my fence. It's not actually a weed, but some sort of tall ornamental grass that serves to at least partially obscure the 87 Pontiac rusting away in the neighbor's backyard. As I hacked at the mound of grass for 10 minutes with the hedge trimmers I thought to myself, "Do I know anyone that has a scythe?" No one came to mind. But then I remembered my favorite scythe wielding movie character:

I'll bet reaping burns a lot of calories.

We've Reached an Accord

2010-04-02T12:29:00.004-06:00

I bought a new car last week. And that's not "new" in the sense that I bought a 3 or 4 year old used car which was new to me, but "new" in the sense that I drove off the lot in a car that only had 32 miles on the odometer. When my friend Nathan found out I had bought a new car he said, "I didn't know you were in the market for a new car?!". I replied: "Neither did I."

Well, that's not true. My old Honda Accord was ten years old, so every few months or so, I would think about what it would be like to drive a new one. When I got an e-mail from the dealership advertising 0% financing (which hadn't happened in the past, well, ever), I thought maybe it was a good time to take a test drive. So I did, and when I saw the final price for the car I wanted with all the necessary accoutrements, I bought it. So yes, it was technically an impulse buy, but maybe a little less impulsive than it could have been.

Of course there has been some buyers remorse, particularly when several thousand dollars of value disappeared as I drove off the lot, but that remorse very quickly evaporates when I slide into those heated leather seats and climate controlled environment.

Here's to you, 2010 Honda Accord, may you serve with the same distinction as your predecessor.

Worst Travel Weekend Ever

2010-02-17T00:22:00.001-07:00

Up In The Air

2010-02-14T05:50:00.003-07:00

Boy, what a debacle this week has been:

Wednesday:

Boss walks into my office at 1:30 PM. "I know you're busy, but can you travel to Akron Ohio?"
"When?"
"Today."
"Today? They're two hours ahead of us. That means I need to be on a plane, like, now..."
"True..."
I'm in Layton at this point, so I race home, pack a bag, and haul to the airport. I get all the way to the TSA check in when I realize that I don't have my wallet. So, I run back out to the parking garage and somehow, amazingly make the flight.

Thursday:

My flight from Atlanta to Akron leaves at 8:30 AM. I get to work around lunchtime in Akron, and spend my day working in a freezing cold aircraft hangar.
There are basically no flights back home, so I'm booked on a 6:30 AM flight Friday morning, but the folks I'm working with want me to come back in Friday, which I decided I should probably do.

Friday:

Another day in the freezing hangar. I was supposed to fly home early that Morning, so the secretary does her best to get me rescheduled to leave that night. Well, the east cost is buried in snow, and the travel system is a total mess across the board. The best they can do is to move my flight to Saturday morning.

Saturday:

I wake up in a panic at 5:50 AM, 30 minutes before my flight. Luckily, I checked in the night before, and I make it to the airport with enough time, I hope, to make the flight. Except there's one problem. Atlanta was "buried" in three inches of snow, and both flights to Atlanta that day were canceled. I get my rental car back, get my hotel room back, and spend most of the day catching up on the sleep I missed.

Sunday:

Not wanting a repeat of yesterday's near miss, I wake up at 4:50 (ungh!) I get to the airport promptly at 5:40. (I remember, I checked.) I get to the check in kiosk, and it won't let me check-in. WTH? I look at my itinerary, and I realize, with total dread and disbelief, that the Sunday flight leaves 16 minutes earlier than the Saturday flight had been scheduled to leave that day before. Of course, if I had checked in earlier, that wouldn't have been a problem -- one thing, though, the agent who rebooked me the day before had told me check in with him in person. Bah, if only I hadn't listened.
Well, I try to make a gamble. I have a copy of Saturday's boarding pass. I figure that if I can get through security somehow, they might still be boarding (It's 5:55 now.) Well, in what is surely a sign of the competence of TSA, my boarding pass from the previous day totally gets me through somehow. I get to the gate, but just like the ticket counter, NO ONE IS THERE. (What airline is this?) After about 10 minutes, someone finally wanders by. I milk my situation for all it's worth, and they get me rebooked, With only one extra stop now.

So, there you go, a total mess. Some of it caused by the airline, some of it because of the weather, and some of it, my own fault (though I still really think that airlines need to list the check-in time on the itinerary instead of the flight time - especially if no one is at the gate.)

Hopefully I'll be home sometime today. Happy Valentine's Day all!

Why I Don't Own a Mac.

2010-02-12T20:22:00.002-07:00

I might be what you call a computer expert. I don’t mean to boast in saying that, but I imagine that others would find it to be true. Here are my credentials to see if you agree: I have two degrees in Computer Science. I’ve been writing software professionally for 5 years. I’ve taught computer classes at the college level. Every computer I’ve ever owned (5 so far), I’ve built with my own hands. I worked for a school district, providing network and desktop support to teachers and administrators. Basically, if it can be done with a computer, I’ve done it.

I am also a Windows user. That’s actually kind of odd when you think about it, because I grew up using Apple IIs and Macs in school. I used to sign up for “computer camps”, where I would spend two weeks of the summer going back to school so I could have unfettered access to the computer lab. In Junior high, I won desktop publishing and computer aided design competitions, both using Macs. I even still organize my desktop icons like I’m on a Mac (hard drive icons in the upper right corner, trash in the lower right.)

So, why don’t I own a Mac now? There are lots of reasons; none of which really matter to you probably, because for what I need a computer is different than for what you need. In my situation, I have issues with Macs’ cost, hardware variety, software availability, and tweak-ability. And as I figured, none of those things matter to you (except for cost, probably.)

The really big problem I have is with the attitude of superiority that seems to exude out of Apple lately. I think that’s always bad news. The best thing that happen to Windows was the explosion of Linux and the development of OS X, because that led Microsoft to develop a truly worth competitor in Windows 7. The other problem with superiority is that is breeds the attitude that “our way is the right way”. This does a huge disservice to the users of their devices, because they end up being oblivious to the alternatives. When I was a kid, I loved the Apples and Macs because they helped me to do things I had never done in ways I never thought possible. They opened up a whole a new world. And now, I expect that freedom with any device that I spend a lot of money on or use on a daily basis.

The really odd thing is that I don't think I can find that freedom in a Mac anymore. Sure, if I want to do something that's included in Apple's wonderfully designed suite of programs, I'm set, but what if I want to do it differently? What if I want to do something else entirely? My options are then really limited. It seems a far cry from Apple's "1984" ad.

In case you were wondering, here's a list of the things that vex me:

Why do songs in the iTunes store have DRM? Why do they cost more than those on Amazon? Why can I only use iTunes to put songs on my iPod? Why can't I take songs off my iPod using iTunes? Why did Apple reject the Google Voice app from the iPhone and hundreds of other useful apps? Why is it so hard to troubleshoot Mac problems? When a new version of iTunes comes out, why do I have to download a whole new 100 MB app instead of a few megs up program files? And why do the old versions stick around and clog up my hard drive? Why do mac laptops require expensive connectors to be hooked up to standard projectors and TVs? Why do Mac users believe they can't get viruses? Why can't I use whatever hardware and peripherals I want with a Mac? Why can't I use whatever language I want to write Mac applications? On what planet does it make sense to drag a CD to the trash to eject it? When I plug a non OSX drive into a Mac, why does it create all these extra useless files? Why can I tell when a movie has been made using iDVD, an album made in iLife, or a Facebook profile pic taken from a mac laptop? Why does Quicktime still insist on the horrible .MOV format that isn't compatible with anything other than Apple devices? Why does so much software stop working when Apple upgrades OSX to the next version? Why does Apple think anyone will be satisfied with the iPad?

2009, A Year in Review

2010-01-31T23:59:00.001-07:00

So, 2009 was a banner year. So great, in fact, that it took the better part of a month to get started on this post because I didn’t want to do all the writing involved. Finally I thought, “to hell with this, I’m just going to post pictures.” So, here you go.

January: this time last year, I was recovering from a post Hawaii hangover. It was rough. My sister had lived there for only a few months at that time, and it was good trip. As you can see, I was unhappy about leaving:

Around Martin Luther King Day, which my company doesn’t give us off, was the annual trip of debauchery and chicanery to Bear Lake. Photos of the sauna omitted for everyone’s sake:
After the Superbowl, we destroyed gingerbread houses using various pyrotechnics. Thus, the ginger shrapnel tradition was born.
In February, in an effort to evade the long winter, we headed south for Febtober-fest. No beer steins involved, just plastic yellow construction hats we found in the trash.
The big news in March was the arrival of the first nephew/niece in the family. It was a nephew in this case, Weston. I was able to screw this up royally by comparing his appearance to that of the young (old?) Benjamin Button. Let’s be honest here folks, it takes a few months for them to really “cuten” up.
As always, winters in Utah are generally epic, and the snow last year bore that out.

Unfortunately, while I was busing enjoying the powder, my roommate of the last 2 years was hatching his escape. He bought a house, and in early May we threw the last house party of that era.
I was so distraught that in May I fled again to Hawaii, were I began to turn into a tomato.

I don’t really remember what happened in June. I spent most of it moaning about how I wished I was back in Hawaii and traveled for work to the hell hole that is Palmdale California. I did manage to replace the two roommates with a new one. He knows his burgers:
In July I spent my first 4th of July in Salt Lake Valley. (I was seriously spoiled by the Idaho Falls firework display growing up.) It was a good time in the SLC, particularly because I discovered how to smoke BBQ spare ribs on my grill. I also learned that I need to go back to sparkler school.

Soon after the 4th, we traipsed to NYC for a week and had a truly fantastic time. Broadway, Statue of Liberty, Coney Island, Little Italy, we did it all in the span of about 6 days. The highlight was definitely sharing a double bed with a groping snorer.

We returned, and summer resumed it’s normal pace. Rafting with the ward, demolition derbies, and another year of Lagoon Season passes. Our motto? “I’d Bump That!”

Then finally, in late August, it came. The day of days. My 30th birthday. It was basically a roast. In fact, I think I made ribs again. The running joke all year was how I was in all the pictures because I didn’t take any of them. (Hey, it’s not my fault my camera was broken during the cankle debacle of Havasupai ‘07). So, my friends immortalized me by illustrating me.

After that, it became costume season. And I happened to come up with the greatest costume ever. And one that probably sent up a few red flags at NSA. The dance you see is the “terrorist shuffle.” The red heels help with that, but are not required.

After Halloween, things got pretty quiet, with a lot of trips home to visit the family. And I’ll admit I mostly came for this little guy. He is the clear winner in the battle for “Coolest of 2009”

Work Follies

2010-01-18T21:30:00.001-07:00

Some may think that writing software is a joyless enterprise. In reality, it’s far from that. Unfortunately, the humor is pretty nerdy, like below:

Someone in our software department found a bug in our software where one of the buttons was turning read instead of green. The person who sent me the bug thought he knew how I should fix it, but after I asked him some questions, it became totally obvious that he wasn’t paying attention when the button turned red (which is his job, btw). So he was basically worthless in explaining how I could reproduce the bug.

So, I did what we usually do and asked him to send me the software log files. I poured through the logs and quickly found several potential problems, completely unrelated to what he had told me hours before. I copied the pertinent lines from the log into an e-mail, highlighted the important part in red, and sent the e-mail off.

A few minutes later, I got this response:

Good info you found in the logs. I will talk to a software person in the morning to see if we can make sense of why of those items are red in the log. I’ll let you know what I find out.

I was going to reply that it was me who made the lines red, but I didn’t have the heart, and I’m kind of interested to see how this turns out.

The Year in Film

2010-01-03T18:57:00.001-07:00

The 2009 cinema year was a lot like my life, not particularly noteworthy or remarkable, except for a few really amazing films which saved the year from being entirely mediocre. Looking back a year ago, I remember thinking that 2009 could be a really amazing year for movies, with some of my favorite franchises getting new attention (Star Trek, Wolverine, Terminator, Harry Potter) as well as new movies from great filmmakers like Tarantino and Michael Mann. In the end though, it was the quiet movies we didn’t know much about at the time that ended up saving 2009.

Rather than trying to order every film (an impossible task when you get to the best films of the year), I thought I’d split them up in to three groups: disappointments, honorable mentions, and the best of 2009. In the comments, I fully expect you to lambast me for my poor taste and act outraged for neglecting your favorite film of 2009.

Disappointments

These films are not necessarily bad, but they failed to live up to expectations, much like my dating life. And just like my dates, these are movies that I wanted to like (because of the cast, director, or source material) but I was left wanting.

Public Enemies – Johnny Depp made a very dapper John Dillinger, but the on and off again documentary style shooting of this movie proved distracting. Bale was also good, but very one dimensional compared to what we have come to expect from 3:10 to Yuma and Batman (raspy voice aside.) I really don’t think I’ll ever see this movie again.

Wolverine – Jackman reprises his role as my favorite X-Man, but he spends the whole movie being angry and/or confused. We end up missing that wry humor and his interaction with the other characters that made X-Men 1 and 2 so great. Despite it’s problems, this move has it’s fun parts and is entirely watchable. I imagine I’ll see this one in the gym occasionally or at a co-ed movie night where people are trying to appease the masses with a little violence, a little love, and no R rating.

Terminator: Salvation – For someone who has had so much experience with Terminators, you’d think Bale’s John Connor would have figured out the plot to this move in about 5 minutes. But that’s not the problem with this movie; the real tragedy is that we don’t get to spend more time with Sam Worthington’s character as he struggles with his own identity as a man/machine, which I found very compelling. It was also nice to see this movie with a PG-13 rating to expand the visibility of the franchise, but this is very certainly no Terminator 1 or 2.

Men Who Stare At Goats – This movie has the who’s who of ensemble casts: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey, but was released at the end of August where movies go to die. It makes sense when you realize that everyone is playing a character from a previous movie (George Clooney as seen in Burn After Reading, Jeff Bridges as The Big Lebowski, Kevin Spacy from 21, and Ewan McGregor as a Jedi.) That would have been fine, but the supposedly true parts of the story are simply too unbelievable and confusing.

Honorable Mentions

Not every movie can be the best, so these are the ones that surprised me by being much better than expected.

The Blind Side – I’m really tired of the “overcome all odds” sports movie. I realize that sports can be a good vehicle for life lessons, but in the end it frustrates me that we are so entertained by the stories of athletes, whose struggles, in the grand scheme of things, are significantly less meaningful than the struggles of our artists, scientists, teachers, and public servants. And I guess that’s why I enjoyed the Blind Side, because it didn’t try to make some grand statement out of Michael Oher’s story. Sure, there are Hollywood elements, like the horribly miscast younger brother and the ruse that Michael Oher was a gently giant that didn’t know how to play football. (The reality is that he was a natural athlete born with that killer instinct required to play pro football.) There are also the cliché elements of racism and classism, but the core of the story is about a family taking in a young man and helping him succeed. The love they feel for each other is truly genuine, and the director wisely does not toy with that emotion. From beginning to end, you know that things are going to work out, and it’s wonderfully satisfying when it does.

Star Trek – After watching how Terminator and Wolverine both fumbled their respective franchises, I was worried that the same might happen to Star Trek. Fortunately, that was not the case. The casting is excellent, and the special effects are really amazing but still believable. (For once the engine room of the Enterprise isn’t built around some miscellaneous glowing orb.) All in all, I would say that this movie is a great revival of the Star Trek universe, despite Abrams retcon trick and the fact that this film seems to be much more action oriented than Roddenberry might have intended for his franchise.

The Hangover – My sister will be upset that The Hangover is listed here instead of I Love You, Man, but I have to go with my gut. I saw I Love You Man with Staci in the Spring and cried I laughed so hard. Then a few months later, the roommates and I were excited to go catch Public Enemies, but when it was all sold out we ended up seeing the Hangover on a whim. We were expecting some juvenile gross out humor, but what we got was that and so much more. We haven’t laughed that much since 2008’s Tropic Thunder.

The Best

Zombieland – Finally, the US has produced a competitor to Shaun of the Dead. Sure, this movie contains nothing that hasn’t already been done in the zombie genre, but it does it with so much more heart and humor than all of its competitors. Woody Harrelson is a lovable hic (I generally hate hics), Abigail Breslin has come a long way from Miss Sunshine, Jessie Eisenberg plays Michael Cera as well or better than Michael Cera, and I would totally make out with Emma Stone. Toss in a zombie clown and perhaps the best celebrity cameo ever, and you’ve got a film that I will watch every Halloween season.

Avatar – I had serious doubts about this movie. Like most people, I’m wary of too much CGI, (ala Polar Express), and I’m equally concerned about anything that is released in 3D (flashbacks of Captain EO). Avatar overcame my fears however and is honestly the only movie this year that can be accurately described as an experience rather than just a movie. It’s also fair to call it “Dances with Smurfs" because the story is instantly recognizable and the characters are, well, blue. Despite this, I was still totally sucked in. Because the story is recognizable but still well told, you can spend the bulk of the experience immersing yourself in the world that Cameron created. The planet Pandora is breathtaking in its complexity and completeness, showcasing Cameron’s attention to detail and desire for scientific accuracy. His use of technology to produce hyper accurate facial expressions and movements of the CG characters draw you deeper into the story rather than being distracting. You also end up feeling a real connection to Sam Worthington (making me wish, again, that we had seen more of him in Terminator.)

District 9 – I’m a total sci-fi junkie, and this movie scratched exactly where I itch. This movie had a small budget by today’s standards, and yet blew it’s competition out of the water. Everyone makes the inevitable connections to illegal immigration, apartheid, and segregation, but the message of the movie is far greater than that. I never expected that any film would make me sympathetic to 8 foot tall insect-like aliens, but this one did. It also reminded me that sci-fi movies are supposed to have a conscience. This movie would have made Badbury, Roddenberry, and Asimov proud.

Inglourious Basterds – Great movies require great villains. Inglorious Basterds has the best in years in Hans Landa, “The Jew Hunter.” The first 30 minutes of this where he is introduced, if released on it’s own, would win every award offered for short films. Despite the occasional art-house feel, the film is both entirely fun and quotable while clearly on par with the likes of the Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape. Sure, Brad Pitt is over the top, but he plays an alternative Steve McQueen to a ‘t.’ I’ve already seen this movie three times and I think several more are in the future.

The Hurt Locker – The Iraq war has to be the most politicized war of the last decade, and yet this film provides an honest look at the war in Iraq without a hint of political message. Set in the early days of the second Iraq war (when we didn’t know there weren’t any WMDs and Saddam was hiding in a hole), we follow a bomb disposal unit during the last few months of their tour of duty. The movie uses a cast of relative unknowns to provide an unflinching look at the high stress work these soldiers engage in every day. The first time I saw The Hurt Locker, I basically held my breathe until the movie was over. The second time, I was even more impressed that anyone would volunteer to put themselves in harms way the way these men do. The Hollywood elements of the movie are few and far between, and most of those are added to protect the actual tactics of soldiers that work to diffuse IEDs every day. What Band of Brothers did for the American experience in WWII in Europe, The Hurt Locker does for our modern conflicts.

**I know, I know, there are some glaring omissions on this list. Live with it. I’m still getting around to seeing “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”, “500 Days of Summer“ (taking applications for a young single female that would like to watch it with me), “Up” (same offer applies), “Moon”, and “Up in the Air.”

Classless

2009-11-29T21:25:00.003-07:00

I was going to write a huge post about Max Hall's post rivalry game comments. But my friends already have here and here. And I agree with them, so we'll leave it at that, except for one additional comment. In general, I think that many fans throughout Utah have a lot to learn about being classy, regardless of who they cheer for. If you don't believe me, ask one of our college athletes what the fans are like at any football school in the south or a basketball school in the east.

Still I reserve the right to go off on a diatribe about it means to be a good fan.

Literally

2009-11-06T17:00:00.002-07:00

It's a pet peeve when people misuse the word literally. It started when I misused it on a paper in junior high. Like most people, I had mixed it up with figuratively. I wrote something like, "He literally killed him," when I meant to say was that the character had the crap kicked out him (which is also a phrase that should probably never be accompanied by the word literally.)

Of course, there are some times when using the word correctly is far worse than using it incorrectly. It happened to me a few weeks ago on one of these Indian summer Saturdays we've been enjoying. I was outside picking up the apples all over my backyard and cursing the tree bombarding my lawn. As I worked along the back fence, near the grape vines and pear trees (yes, my yard is the produce section), the back neighbor was out here picking the grapes (which have seeds the size of small pebbles.) She saw me flinging these apples into the trash and asked, "Are you just throwing those away?" Why yes, I was just throwing them away. As a matter of fact, that spring I liberally doused the tree with a fruit inhibitor, hoping it would keep me from having to do the picking up in which I was currently engaged.

"Well, if you're just throwing them away, can we come pick them up?" I eyed the worm riddled specimen in my hands and replied, "I guess?". So, this middle-aged woman and her mother came over with a couple of boxes to get the rest off of the lawn. I didn't really feel right leaving them out there alone, and the accompanying three year old seemed a little mischievous, so I stayed outside and worked/supervised. This of course, lead to conversation. Turns out that this woman wasn't actually my neighbor as I had thought (don't judge me), but someone who had run into my neighbor and found out about the grapes. (What that conversation was like I can't imagine.) So, she was in the backyard to pick the grapes, because, as she put it, "My kids are anal retentive, literally."

Wait, what? Really? I shuddered. She went on to explain something about the juice being good for kids or whatever. Which is fine...but I definitely didn't need to know anything about anyone's bowel movements. Literally.

Daylight Savings and the Human Rotisserie

2009-11-05T22:16:00.002-07:00

When you live this far north, the end of daylight saving time means that the sun abruptly starts to go down at 5 pm. If you're like me and can't even open your eyes before 9:00 am, that means that you're awake for maybe 6 or 7 hours of naturally lit sky. And, unless you're also a vampire or WoW addict, it can be a struggle to maintain your sanity. So, I have a confession to make; I go tanning. Those few minutes of high intensity simulated sunlight really do a ton for my mood, and actually very little for my Robert Pattinson-esque winter pallor, so no one knows that I'm cheating on winter.

Tonight was my first visit since May or so, and I have to say that it was wonderful. A truly guilty pleasure. And I do feel guilty because I know full well the risk I'm taking by laying down in that big UV cancer taco. And yet right now, thousands and thousands of Americans are probably doing the same thing, like so many rotisserie chickens sweating under cellophane and heat lamps. I know that sounds gross, but UV radiation is really awesome at killing germs and the like, so tanning is actually pretty hygienic. Even so, you walk away with an unmistakable scent when you're done. I imagine it's half leftover tanning lotion, half sweat, and half dead skin cells sloughing off by the millions.

It's a habit that started when I was in college. Logan winters were brutal. My dr. suggested that some light tanning might help with some of the winter blues. The risk they, they say, is not so much in the tanning but in the burning. But to me, that's kind of like saying that it's not cigarettes that kill, it's TOO MANY cigarettes that kills. Still, it's a risk I'm willing to take to a little bit of e-sunshine.

Sponge

2009-11-02T22:50:00.006-07:00

I'm a sponge. No, not that nearly lifeless sea floor inhabitant (though there are similarities, I suppose), but a figurative sponge. I remember stuff. Tons of stuff. Stuff not really worth remembering. For example, today I read an article on the different types of electrical outlets around the world. And I know that some years from now, in some random conversation, I'm going to remember that it's only North America and Japan that use 110V-60Hz power. And people are going to look at me funny for knowing that.

It's my curse.

Of course, you're saying, it's really not that bad. In fact, it could probably be a talent. Well, I suppose you're right. But you see, I don't seem to have much control over what I remember. You'd think I'd never lose my keys or leave the milk out on the counter over night, but I do that kind of stuff all the time. There's no assurance that what I remember is going to be useful in anyway.

But the real problem is when I'm NOT supposed to remember stuff but I do anyway. It happened a month or two ago at a party. This girl walked past and I said, "Hi Abby!" She looked at me suspiciously and said, "How do you know my name?" At which point I had to explain that I wasn't, in fact, some sort of stalker, but that several years before we had lived in the same apartment complex in Logan. We only talked a handful of times back then, but for some reason, I remembered her name. What I didn't realize though, was that I wasn't supposed to remember her name. Instead, I should have pretended that she looked somewhat familiar, and asked if she went to Utah Sate then if she lived in the complex, and then me recognizing her wouldn't have been weird at all.

And the situation is totally exacerbated by Facebook and Twitter and blogs. Now people are posting all sorts of things online about themselves. And if I happen to read it, it may just stick in there, connect itself with other random facts, and tumble out of my mouth. So, I have to remember to filter what I remember. And I still can't find my keys.

Soy un perdedor….

2009-10-06T23:05:00.001-06:00

Actually, I’m not, but the company I work for is. Well, sort of. It’s not so much that we lost as that we didn’t win. Is that the same thing as losing?

We were competing for a rather large contract; working double time for the last several months to try and convince a bunch of people that we don’t know with a bunch of money that isn’t theirs that we’re the right people for the job. And well, we didn’t do that.

It happens all the time in my line of work. The thing that’s interesting is how people react to the bad news. Some took it really personally. Others of us, like me, really didn’t care. (Well, not too much.)

Sure, it’s hard not to rejection personally. But it happens. The thing is that it’s really not personal. It just means it wasn’t a good fit. Either that or they’re idiots.

Maybe there’s a lesson there?

In either case, it’s nice to not have to work late. If rejection means getting more sleep, I’ll take it.

Rick and Robbie

2009-08-27T13:00:00.002-06:00

It was a brilliant mid-July morning when the shrill chime of the door bell woke me up. It was a Thursday, around 9:00 am. I should have been at work already, but the siren song of my king-sized and memory-foam topped bed had overpowered me. Any other day I probably would have ignored the bell, but even in my addled state I seemed to remember that I was expecting someone.

So, I drunkenly donned my bathrobe and stumbled down the stairs to the entryway. The frosted glass in the front door blazed in the morning sun as I opened it and stuck my head out. I squinted hard; my pupils narrowed in the blinding light, and the fuzzy image of a man standing on my porch slow came into focus.

He was six feet tall, skinny as a rail, and tan as a leather belt. A dingy wife beater hugged his wiry frame, and oversized coke bottle lenses enlarged each eye, the lenses joined along the top by a horizontal bar spanning the forehead that was popular in the 80’s. There was a slowly smoldering cigarette in his left hand hand, and as he reached up to take a drag, I noticed that he was missing his two front teeth.

And that’s when he said, “I’m Rick. I’m here to install your windows.” He then pointed over to another smoking companion underneath my crab apple tree. “An’ that’s Robbie. He’s helping me.”

Domo Arigato

2009-08-25T21:09:00.001-06:00

Right now, at this very moment, I am mopping the kitchen floor. You may wonder if I somehow cloned myself ala Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom, or if I am perhaps exercising some little known property of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. But the only somewhat less exciting reality is that Steve is actually mopping the floor.

Who is Steve you ask?

This is Steve:

Steve is a Scooba, and he’s awesome. Fill him with cleaning fluid, put him in the middle of the kitchen, and in 15 minutes you have a sparkling kitchen floor. Which is great, because I really hate mopping.

So now I have two floor cleaning robots. I’d really like a lawn mowing one too, but Steve’s manufacturers have obviously thought through the implications of an autonomous robot wielding steel cutting blades more than I have.

Helluva Time

2009-08-10T22:46:00.001-06:00

In case you were wondering, it’s been a helluva summer. Hawaii, LA, Portland, New York, and last week, San Antonio. Fireworks, dutch oven, smoked ribs, Rick the toothless window installer, ladders in the freeway, church vomit, the list goes on and on.

Those are the things you have to look forward to.

Are you ready?

Ode to the Recirculate Air Button

2009-08-02T16:19:00.001-06:00

Dear Recirculation Air Button,

Once the the car has been infiltrated by odors unknown, one must decide to press thee. To press ensures recirculation of such fetid smells, to not press risks inundation by odors far worse.

I hate thee.

Death to engagement photos...

2009-07-16T22:30:00.004-06:00

I don't know if Mormons realize this, but the engagement photo, like the word "fetch" is pretty much an invention of our subculture. And the reality is that nearly EVERY (yes almost every) engagement photo is horrible. The funny thing is that everyone thinks that they are are the exception to the rule, and that the two-headed/face sucking pictures of them will be wonderful.

Stop it. Now.

If you don't believe me, take it from a Mormon female with considerably more blog fame than me:

How not to pose in your engagement.

As for me, I've decided that my 500 bucks spent in engagement photos would be better appreciate by mailing out coupons for free ice cream.

The People in Your Neighborhood

2009-07-01T14:00:00.002-06:00

It's taken some time to accept that I live in a very less than normal neighborhood. I realize that every street has it's share of crazies, but I think we may have exceeded our quota.

It started with these two:

According to them, every person in the neighborhood was a character out of a TV show or movie. So, I thought I'd immortalize them as the same. They moved out about a month ago, and I terribly miss their chicanery and debauchery. However, the pain has been assuaged by the arrive of a new roommate:

He brought with him a Love-Sac, dome-wax, an extensive movie collection, and a love for my vacuuming robot, so I think we will get along quite well.

Below is the back neighbor. From my 2nd story deck, which I love, I can see the entirety of his backyard, which I do not love. Early last fall, two huge mounds of dirt appeared in the backyard. Either he was channeling is his inner Richard Dreyfus or building a miniature moto-cross track. He assured me that the dirt would soon be gone; he was putting in a new lawn. He was true to his word, but the mound of dirt was hiding some sort of portable hot tub, which, along with it's occupants, is now plainly visible from my deck. I think I want the dirt back.

Then there's Dr. Spaceman. He lives kitty corner from my house, and has produced a brood of a half dozen red-haired and freckled spawn that looks nothing like him whatsoever. They play basketball ALL the time, though they are built like offensive linemen.

Next door we have the martial art hicks. One Sunday, I came home from church to find two of my neighbors shirtless in the backyard, throwing spears into targets jumbled together from boxes and styrofoam, all the while yelling at the dogs to stay out of the way. Then, two weeks later, there were more shirtless martial artists in the backyard, this time doing some of stick-wielding synchronized Tai Chi, with lots of extra grunting.

The coupe de grace, however, is the new kids across the street. Two bespectacled pre-teens brothers that bear an unfortunate resemblance to Christopher Mintz-Platz. One day after work, I walked across the street to get the mail, and they were in the driveway jumping around and saying things like, "My dragon launches fire!" and "I activate the ever-shield!". And then there was some writhing around on the ground when one of them was defeated by the other. Apparently they didn't notice me walk up, because once I reached the mailbox, they stopped and stared at me, standing very still, and didn't resume until I had retreated to my own driveway. (Warning to you naturalists, the nerd startles easily.)

So, there you have it. Just wait until I tell you about the characters in the local ward.

Aloha

2009-05-25T01:12:00.002-06:00

I am 1500 miles into a 3000 mile journey, at 35,000 feet somewhere over the inky blackness of the Pacific. There’s a baby crying a few rows ahead, which I can clearly hear through my less than capable noise canceling headphones. I’m tempted to offer it a xanax, but I have no idea how to how to dose psychoactive medications for toddlers.

I’m also in a race against time…the über laptop I am using for this composition destroys batteries as quickly as this flight is draining my will. A five hour delay will do that to you.

I’ll spare you the cattle analogies, but at 5:00 PM, 250 of us found ourselves in herded onto 767 at LAX waiting to take off. The airplane never moved. Instead, a platoon of mechanics started to disassemble the right engine. Nothing too serious, we were told, just a diagnostic failure. Still, parts of your aircraft on the tarmac is, at best, disconcerting. The flight crew was not unsympathetic, but not terribly informed. They did their best to keep the masses appeased while coming up with various ways of explaining that the thing is broken and they don’t know when it might be fixed. Here’s the timeline:

5:30 pm. on the ground beverage service: 12 oz plastic cup with far too much of that magic hollow ice and not enough ginger-ale. The irony of participating in this ritual while buckled into a multi-million dollar stationary object is not lost on me.
6:00 pm: free movies on the seat back cinema. We are informed that they have identified the broken doodad, but it doesn’t actually appear to be broken, and they don’t know why it keeps saying that it’s broken. Apparently it looks fine to them.
6:30 pm: they let us off the plane. Are they admitting defeat? Doo-dad is still reporting broken. They’re going to be turning the power off and on in the aircraft; this is strangely reminiscent of me rebooting my computer when it stops behaving. So if you want to watch the first 5 minutes of Yes Man over and over, you’re welcome to stay aboard.
7:00 pm: food vouchers for dinner. Want to know what you can get in the LAX terminal for 7 bucks? I got an ice cream cone. A lot of other people got drunk-ish. My traveling companion bought his food BEFORE the vouchers were offered. Delta seems unconcerned about his seven dollars.
7:30 pm: they do finally admit defeat, and report that we’re changing planes. Everyone that’s left on the plane exits, bringing their luggage, while those of us without our luggage wait to get back on. When everyone is off, we line up in shifts to go into the empty airplane and get our stuff. This is at least 20 times slower than the initial boarding process.
8:00 pm: stuff retrieved, new gate located. We realize that we are now going to arrive in Hawaii at midnight or later. Rental car places closes at 1:00 AM. Disaster looms. There is a large woman seated across from us who whips out her book of Sudoku and stares at it with a ferocity that might set it aflame. She is slightly cross-eyed. It’s all we can do to not laugh.
8:30 pm: located seat near new gate with the all important wall outlet. I plug in the laptop, and promptly fill every USB port to charge our techno junk. One blackberry, one cell phone, one iPod, all sprawled out in the terminal, while I yearn for an open WiFi hotspot.
9:00 pm: our plane lands. A flotilla of empty wheelchairs arrives at the gate. Disembarking passengers seem slightly confused as to why they’re being hustled off the plane. (Again, cattle metaphor omitted.)
9:30 pm: we board the plane, looking at our watches and finding it rather difficult to compensate for flight time and time zones in our calculations. Are we going to arrive at 3? Or is it 11? Apparently we need to repeat 2nd grade. The pilot reports our landing time as right at 1, so it looks like we’ll make it. This is an odd sensation – worrying that the plane leave on time rather than hoping that it leaves late so that I'm on it.
9:50 pm: Plane leaves LAX. Passengers clap and cheer. A little over dramatic, really. It's not like we cured cancer or anything.
1:00 am: The rental car shuttle picks us up. A huge Hawaiian rumbles to the door. He kindly shakes his head and says, “You know, normally we close at 1:00.” He repeats this at least twice more before dropping us off at the rental counter.

Welcome to Hawaii.

Everything is better with bluetooth...

2009-04-24T23:00:00.000-06:00

Seriously, it's true. Everything is better with bluetooth. Sure, you may look insane when using it in public, but we're one step closer to real life Star Trek, right? Okay, so I'm teasing, but I really do love bluetooth, and most technology in general. Well, not so much technology as gadgets. If you don't believe me, you should see the list of junk I've bought from Woot.

That's why, three weeks ago, a Woot really caught my attention. It's something I've wanted for some time, but never could really justify. Something that seemed to be the perfectly blend of geek and utility, something that would simultaneously impress the ladies and win adulation from my peers, the iRobot Roomba.

No, it has nothing to do with the Will Smith movie -- the Roomba is a vacuum cleaning robot, about the size of manhole cover. He's extremely intelligent, as far as vacuum cleaners go. Push one button, and he goes to work, driving around the floor, sucking up all sorts of junk. When he comes to a wall, he slows down until he touches it, and then turns and heads off in a different direction. He remembers where he has been, has sensors to keep him from falling down stairs, and an electronic eye so that he can find his charging station when he's all done. And yes, it's a "he". (A vacuum robot doesn't have to be a girl, you sexist.)

With the purchase of a roomba, my nerd cachet has nearly doubled. The day he arrived, the guys in the office insisted we unpack him, and then we watched in awe for nearly a half hour as he motored around an empty office. You could see our nerd pride swell: this is the epitome of American engineering, to design a robot to perform what is probably the simplest of household chores. Watching him zig zag around the carpet made me think about all the hours that were spent writing algorithms and figuring out navigation based on infrared beams. It's enough to make a grown nerd cry.

Maybe you think I'm crazy, but I'm far from the only one that has fallen in love with the Roomba. He's clearly entrenched himself into popular culture:

Of course, there is one really ironic thing about the Roomba. No bluetooth. But I'm sure they're working on it.

A Soggy Nation

2009-04-22T08:22:00.004-06:00

I'm in DC again for the 5th or 6th time. This trip, I was optimistic about being able to catch a glimpse of the cherry blossoms around the mall, which is probably the only touristy thing that I've wanted to do but been unable to enjoy in my previous trips here. It's a little harder than it sounds because there is a two week window of fragrant white, pink, and purple blossoms framing white marble monuments, and the exact time changes every year.

This year I'm about a week too late. Though some trees are still blooming, and they are magnificent, this week so far has been much more soggy than blossomy. Being from the desert, I'm not sure we appreciate real rain like they have out here. It's like God throwing little watery javelins at you. Fortunately I was ensconced within my POS rental PT Cruiser, which, despite many flaws, did prove capable of keeping out the rain.

Driving around the soggy capitol, I made a few observations:

It seems like everyone runs here. At every intersection, along with a bunch of people in suits, is at least one or two people jogging in place like they're auditioning for Jazzercise.
It also seems like everyone has a dog, too, and some people try to run with them. This includes this very small Asian gentleman and his 3 month old black lab pup. At first, all I saw was a man's head jerking violently every few steps behind the row of parked cars. Then I saw the dog on the leash. Good luck dude, that dog is going to weigh more than you in about 3 months and then he'll be walking you.
Few things are more miserable looking than a group of wet tourists. Unlike me, they paid their own money to traipse around the national mall in the rain. They are also probably more than a little miffed by having to wear a 2 dollar gift-shop poncho. Can we say "not flattering?" At least it keeps them fresh, like meat under cellophane.

Politics Shmolitics...

2009-04-15T19:59:00.002-06:00

I hate talking about politics sometimes because that topic seems, too often, to immediately descend into vitriol and tired party lines. If there's anything that's wrong with politics today, it is our intolerance for differing opinions. Punditry has so largely displaced discourse that the moderate voices no longer have place. Ideas are not judged on merit, but mocked or lauded by party leanings. This is why I begrudgingly write about politics at all, because I can handle the partisanship.

It is this hesitance that motivates me, because I realize that if I am weary of the political process, there must be countless other thoughtful voices that are also stifled. If we collectively remain silent, then the quiet moderate majority will constantly be held hostage by the political pendulum. With this in mind, I have some thoughts on current economic situation we face in the US.

So, sure, deficit spending didn't cause our current problems, or de-regulation of the financial markets, or the Fed keeping interest rates too low to avoid inflation, or sub-prime lending destroyed by the housing bubble, or an ill-timed and expensive conflict in Iraq, or a ballooning national debt, but surely it's some combination of all of them... which was in turn caused by some combination of Presidential administrations, Congresses, and greedy/stupid people.

While preventing any one of those problems might have mitigated our current situation, that doesn't change the fact that we're here now. Everyone is looking for the straw that broke the economy's back to assess blame, but there isn't one. I happen to think that GWB's admin has perhaps a majority of straws, but Congress and previous admins have their share, too. In the end, we have to assess each problem individually and find the best solution.

The big news right now, is, of course, President Obama's new 3.6 trillion dollar budget for 2009-2010. Yes, it is huge, and yes, numbers of that size frighten me. But then again, I'm not so sure it is as egregious as we might think.

The thing to remember about debt is that it is not bad in itself. While it is generally to be avoided, there are times when taking on debt allow us to invest in things that pay long term dividends. Home ownership and college education are two classic examples. I think national debt should be viewed in the same way. When we agree to take on debt, we have to consider where we are investing those dollars. Is out debt going to pay out long term dividends that exceed the long term costs?

So, what's the purpose of this new debt we're taking on? From what I understand, it appears to be more focused on infrastructure, energy, and health care. To me, these seem like no-lose investments. Frequently, this country has gone into debt primarily for the national defense. Unfortunately, this is less of an investment than it is an expense. Certainly we reap the benefits of a strong national defense, but the expended money seems to have little long term effect on the economy. The one notable exception to this, I think, is the success of the GI bill in growing post WWII America. That massive investment in American education largely created the modern middle class.

Back to current times, I would prefer that my tax dollars not be used for stimulus spending, but my point is that IF there is going to be stimulus spending, I want that spending to be in areas that will have tangible results after the money is gone: a new road, or new rails, or more scientists, or better pre-emptive health care to reduce costs later, etc.

If we look back to the last huge stimulus package, the New Deal, I will agree that a lot of FDR programs did not help the situation in the immediate term (poor monetary policy and counter productive price controls are two that come to mind) but the effects of the other programs can still be seen all around us: rural communities gained electricity or irrigation systems and I was educated in buildings that were constructed by the WPA some 75 years ago. Sure, it's not ideal, but if there's going to be spending, I think it should be spent in a similar way.

Mostly, I'm tired of the knee-jerk reaction to everything President Obama does, whether its pirates, budgets, or bailouts. Such vitriolic responses do little but make the conservatives seem increasingly out of touch. Though they may not be the party in power right now, the conservatives can still have a powerful voice in shaping how President Obama's agenda is implemented, and I hope they don't throw away that chance.

Newton's 1st

2009-04-05T21:20:00.006-06:00

I've always liked math. There are few greater evidences to the underlying order of the universe than the fact that so much of it can be eloquently explained by mathematics. It's too bad that everyone questions the applicability of their math classes. Math is problem solving. Life is also problem solving; adjusting for variables, determining relationships, solving for unknowns.

Subconsciously, we do really complex math all the time without even thinking about it. Even the simplest motion requires the calculation of inertia, accelerations, centers of mass. A quarterback heaving a football 30 yards to a receiver on a fade route is solving the equivalent of a physics final in a matter of a split second.

Sometimes, though, we get the math wrong. Sometimes the equations have too many unknowns, and we have to guess... Snowboarding last week as an example. I was enjoying a wonderful spring ski day. The sun was out, but the snow still had good feel. Halfway down the run, we happened upon a middle aged couple skiing somewhat slowly down the trail. She was following in his tracks, about 5 seconds behind, such that when one was on the right side of the trail, the other was on the left, a lot like two particles on a sine wave.

And thus begins the math. Visibility good? Check. Pass her or him? Him, he looks more predictable. Where to pass? My friend is to my left, I should go right. When to pass? About 3pi/2, where he's at a local minimum and turning to his left. Slope grade sufficient to gain passing speed? Check. Go to pass? Check.

Well, he didn't turn left. I realize all too late that this was more of statistical quantum mechanics problem than a classical mechanics one. As we collide, Newton's first law takes over. For a second we're just a mass of limbs and equipment, and then I'm cartwheeling down the mountain. (I've actually found cartwheeling to be a pretty good way to avoid injury and makes the crash a little more entertaining for the spectators.)

He comes to rest about 10 feet above me, fit to be tied, but physically unharmed. In a situation like this, when your math skills have failed you, you tend to feel pretty sheepish. The tongue lashing was unnecessary, but not undeserved. I was a little surprised neither of them seemed to care if I was okay, but I'll get over it. What I can't get over, though, was slow-skier's wife accusing me of not paying attention. Though guilty of many things, not paying attention was not one them. My math was just off.

But that's the thing about real life math. You can't account for all of the variables. And if you did wait until the equation was completely solvable, the moment would surely pass. That's the hardest math of all, making a decision despite the unknowns. Even though it doesn't turn out the way you expected, that doesn't necessarily make it a bad decision. Next time I'll have to show my work so I can get partial credit.

Phone Impairment

2009-03-25T20:15:00.000-06:00

I hate the phone. I hate how it rings and startles you when you're doing something important. I hate waiting for people to call back. I hate it when people call incessantly. I hate that my phone makes more noises than R2D2 on crack. I hate it when people leave a message that says, "Call me back." I hate how your ear gets all warm and sweaty after you've had the phone up to your ear for 20 minutes. I hate paying 45 dollars a month so that I can reached and tortured by any one, any time. I hate worrying about the brain cancer it may be causing. I hate that my mother can hear me rolling my eyes on the other end of the line. Did I mention I hate the phone?

Why do I hate the phone? Because I am phone impaired. Perhaps not Homer Simpson impaired, but impaired nonetheless. My calls are punctuated by awkward silences. On work telecons (which combine TWO awful things: phones and work), I'm always talking at the same time someone as someone else such that we probably sound like geese at the reservoir. I know that the valediction should probably depend on who I'm talking to, but everyone gets the standard, "So, uh, yeah ... talk to you later", even if it's a telemarketer from India.

As far as I'm concerned, the phone is a means to an end. Get in, get out, get on with your life. You have a question, you make the call, you get it answered, you get off the phone. I think I learned this from my dad. You can always tell when he's done talking. They best is when he tells you point blank: "Well, I'm out of words." Yep, I'm out of words, so don't judge me.

The hiearchy of Sandwiches

2009-03-22T17:31:00.008-06:00

Growing up, I think I ate a sandwich nearly every day. Peanut butter and honey was a staple, as was peanut butter and mom's strawberry freezer jam. Tuna fish was rarely acceptable because it didn't age well in your backpack from 8 am until noon (fish + mayo + lettuce + room temperature = soggy and smelly).

The real travesty, though, was the cold cut sandwich. I'm not sure how it happened, but I never learned how to make a proper sandwich using sliced meats. For starters, we used margarine instead (no mayo) and "kinda" cheese (Kraft singles, which are only "kinda" cheese). Forget any lettuce, tomatoes, or mustard. It was just 3 or four slices of pressed chicken product between two slices of white bread. And, to be honest, I liked it! Sometimes I'll still make one when I'm feeling nostalgic. But this is not the kind of sandwich that will win adulation and affection.

Fortunately, I discovered the real sandwich when I started working. It was then that I realized that I don't tolerate fast food anymore. I have a once per month quota on anything from McDonald's, Burger King, Arby's, Taco Bell, etc. (Well, that's not true, I could probably eat Five Guys several times a week, but that's another post entirely.) What, then, is a hungry young professional to do?

Become a sandwich snob, that's what. If you go easy on the milk based condiments, its damn hard to make a sandwich unhealthy. I used to eat at Subway 3 or 4 times a week. At least. Grilled chicken breast on wheat with spinach, tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, vinegar and oil. Awesome, totally non lethal, and 5 bucks. Life was blissful.

And then I ate at the Subway Shop in San Diego. You've probably never heard of it, probably will never go, either. But, they make the best sandwich ever. Hot pastrami on 2 inch thick marbled rye with provolone and mild peppers. This is when I realized that Subway was really no better than the cold cut and margarine sandwich.

Since the Subway Shop, I've been on a quest for the perfect lunch sandwich. It must be inexpensive, tasty, easy to pick up (in both ways), and not so full of triglycerides that my Dr. can buy a new pool based on my future medical bills. And I think I found it at Jimmy John's:

Tasty: French bread that is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Bread is the KEY to a good sandwich. A JJ sub, filled with toppings together well enough that you can eat it while driving on the freeway with a manual transmission. Not that you should... They also have something that a lot of places are missing -- the avocado!
Inexpensive. Less than 5 bucks for most sandwiches. To be fair, the sandwich is 4 inches shorter than at subway, but what sense does it make to measure food by the inch?
Easy to pick up. Online ordering people! ONLINE ORDERING. Get on the web and you can tell them EXACTLY how you want your sandwich. No line, no sandwich artist with a tenuous grasp of the English language, and then you walk in and and walk out. With online ordering, you don't need a drive through.
Healthy. Sure enough. They advertise 4 sandwiches with less than 5 grams of fat. I would guess that most don't have much more. As always, you've got to avoid the mayo for that to work. Not a problem for me, because the bread isn't sandpaper-ish.

Well sheesh. This turned into a stupid advertisement. Lame. Sorry about that, but I really do like a good lunch sandwich. If you're like me, and you want to grab a quick lunch you can eat in the office, where do you go?

Constantine's Sword

2009-03-06T22:16:00.006-07:00

Sometimes, despite my better judgment, I abandon the usual episodes of 30 Rock and The Office for something more cerebral. This time, it happened by total accident. I downloaded a movie called Constantine's Sword, thinking it was some sort of sequel to the the guilty pleasure movie Constantine. (Yes, the lame one with Keanu Reeves ... don't judge me...)

What I got instead was this semi-documentary exploring the violent origins of Christianity in modern western civilization and the intolerance. Immediately, I was intrigued; violence and intolerance are not attributes that I associate at all with Christ or His believers in any age. Certainly, I was familiar with the mixed role the Catholic church (the source of Christianity at that time) played in Europe throughout the middle ages, but I always assumed those trespasses to be part of some malignancy introduced by corrupting and later was excised by the renaissance, the reformation, and the enlightenment. Constantine's Sword however, shines a much brighter light on the history, makes some very interesting and disturbing observations about where modern Christianity comes from, the dark symbolism of the cross, the actual role of Jerusalem's Jews in the crucifixion, the growth of antisemitism, and the as the subsequent role (or lack thereof) of the church in inquisitions, crusades, wars, hateful evangelism and even the Holocaust.

I hope it doesn't seem as though I accept everything in the film as historical fact, because I do know that the the film shows only one perspective and takes liberties in compressing 2000 years of history into two hours. That said, the film makes a genuine inquiry into some of modern Christanity's flaws, which have suprisingly ancient roots.

For me, personally, the lessons from the film revolve around two of the two great balances of Christianity in the United States: how do we balance church and state when the majority is Christian, and how do we balance evangelism and a desire to prosylite with religious tolerance? Difficult questions indeed. We'd like to believe that we are philosophically light years away from the church that went on crusades or told Jews to convert or die, but we must acknowledge that these wrongs are in our past and avoid any modern day incarnations.

Ward Ski Night

2009-02-20T23:42:00.005-07:00

Being a single Mormon in Utah has its share of peculiarities above and beyond the general oddities of LDS life. Take, as example, the church sponsored and oddly named activities in which we are expected to participate. Activities such as "linger longer", "ward prayer", and "etiquette dinners" are cleverly engineered to get us together so that we can merrily and married-ly copulate and torture a new generation of young Mormons with unrealistic expectations.

Tonight, my ward is engaging in just such activity; the ward ski night. And I, suffering from a minor cold and severe writers' itch, am here to mock it. Like so many church activities, ward ski night seems full of promise but is in fact fraught with peril. We live in Utah, home to the greatest snow on earth, and so it seems serendipitous that we are able to gather at a local ski resort one or two nights each winter with our ward-mates. Surely this is the perfect recipe for the Mormon marriage martini: one measure ward boys, one measure ward girls, shaken well with food, physical activity, and a "For the Beauty of the Earth" moment in all of nature's frozen splendor.

With that combination, surely the engagements will start sprouting up. But after years of Ward Ski Nights, this is the reality:

Many people don't know how to ski, even in a place like Utah. While this travesty warrants another separate post, it also has the odd side effect of making it so that very few people actual ski at Ward Ski Night. It all comes down to this: if you give a skier a choice between skiing on a bitterly cold night or watching non-skiers learning to ski, they will probably opt for watching the non-skiers learn to ski -- not surprisingly, watching beginners fumble about on 6 foot planks is far more entertaining that skiing in the cold dark.

Night skiing is cold. Seriously people, IT'S COLD. Right now it's 6 degrees on the mountain. (I am not making that up.) And guess what? Girls don't like cold generally. They especially don't like the snotty noses and the freeze dried mascara tears that result from such tundra like temperatures. And, on the male side, night skiing requires cold weather foods like chili, stew and sloppy joe's, which may be among the pantheon of Mormon and Scout Camp foods, but they certainly raise intestinal issues in mixed company, particularly if the resort area is location up some winding canyon road.

Finally, Skiing isn't really much of a couple's activity. It's at least as mutually torturous as it is mutually edifying. Sure, there may be moments of cuddling on the lift (depending on sloppy joe consumption), but what about the ride down? Odds are that one person will be much better than the other person, so the slow person worries about slowing down the fast person, while the fast person doesn't want to seem insensitive by going too fast. Or, alternatively the beginner silently curses the intermediate for depositing them on the top of K2 with the admonition, "It's not that bad...", while the intermediate mentally screams, "What is SO HARD about the the making a pizza/french fry?" Don't believe me? Two weeks ago, I was riding a lift at the Canyons with an older gentleman and his recently engaged son. They were talking about the mechanics of skiing as a married couple, when the father wisely counseled, "When you're married, you can't just tell her to meet you at the lodge at 4:30. That'll get you in trouble. That's also why the happiest day of my life was when your mother decided she didn't want to ski anymore."

So, I tip my glass for another Ward Ski Night and bid it farewell till next year. I can't wait for the Ward Etiquette Ski Linger Longer Auction.

Land of Curmudgeons

2009-02-08T18:29:00.005-07:00

My grandpa is in Rehab. No, not that kind of rehab. A few weeks ago, he got sick and went into the hospital where they discovered an infection in his left artificial knee. (How does a fake knee get infected?) They operated to clean it up, and now he's in a facility to get his leg strength back so he can get back home. Visiting him in rehab has been a real experience.

On my first visit to the curmudgeon compound, I managed to get myself lost and inadvertently toured most of the facility. I'll be honest, it seemed so wonderful that I thought I wouldn't mind living there myself. There's no shortage of people to talk to, they don't seem to care how loud your TV is, and the week is filled with activities like "Sit and Dance with Carol", "Valentine Craft Hour", and regular viewings of Lawrence Welk. Afternoon naps are encouraged. They also have tons of animals; cats, dogs, birds, and rumor has it, an adolescent kangaroo. So, basically, it's half kindergarten and half petting zoo. You can tell that everyone is comfortable with a certain level of chaos.

Adding to the fun is the fact that many residents have varying levels cognitive function and hearing loss while much of the care staff speaks some form of accented English. Hilarity often ensures, as happened today with my grandpa's roommate Earl. The caregiver brings into Grandpa's room halfway through our visit.

She says to Earl: "Dis es your hroom."
Earl: "Eh?"
Caregiver explains: "You whas en de hwrong hroom."
Earl repeats: "Whas???"
Caregiver repeats with emphasis: "You WHAS en de hwrong HROOM."

At this point, it's all I can do to not laugh. I'm not sure what caused the breakdown in communication: Earl's hearing, the sweet caregiver's accent, or that he is very concerned about proper subject-verb agreement.

I also think that there may be an ulterior motive with all the animals wandering about. Shortly after lunch in Grandpa's room, in wandered an enormous bloodhound. (I'll be honest, I love dogs, so I thought this was awesome.) He adroitly sniffed about the room, let us pet him, and proceeded locate and lick up every crumb on the floor. I'm seeing some serious savings in the custodial budget if you had enough bloodhounds.

Even though the facility is very well kept and the staff is awesome, it's hard to visit because Grandpa doesn't really fit in. Mentally, he's years ahead of his "fellow inmates." (His description.) Inmates is also a pretty apt description, because they've got that place locked down tight. I've seen important government buildings with weaker security. Doors with electronic keypads are scattered about the place, both to keep the old people safely inside and to keep the surly old people away from the well behaved ones. It wouldn't surprise me too much if they had riot gear in case "Sit and Dance" gets out of control.

Adding to the prison feel is the fact that Grandpa has only been there a few days and doesn't have much in the way of room decoration. I joked that I should get him a wall poster, like Andy Dufrense did in Shawshank Redemption. Grandpa has always had a wry sense of humor and appreciated the irony. Of course, maybe that explains why Shawshank is Grandpa's favorite movie; just like Andy, he's been wrongly imprisioned, not for a crime, but by an aging body.

I wonder if grandma would be upset if I got grandpa a poster of Rita Heyworth?

Hecho en Mexico

2009-01-15T23:58:00.002-07:00

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they shop. This evening, I was rushing through Costco, trying to get all the requisite items before they closed. For some reason, this is hard for me in Costco. Stick me in a Wal-mart or Target, and by the time I leave, I usually have a headache. But let me wander aimlessly through aisles of merchandise basking on pallets under warehouse light, and I feel completely at ease, and I seriously consider buying things that I wouldn't normally.

Take tonight as an example. Even though I was in a serious hurry, I stopped for several minutes in front of the Mexican Coke. You know, the stuff made from cane sugar instead of that miscarriage of culinary science that is high fructose corn syrup. And, if that wasn't enough, it comes in GLASS BOTTLES. And not just glass bottles, but glass bottles with REAL CAPS, not the twist off kind.

Immediately, I have foggy memories of drinking an soda out of a similar bottle at a barber shop as a child. I remember my dad taking me to get my hair cut on a summer Saturday and marveling over what was probably one of the last bottled soda machines in existence. Totally mechanical. Two quarters in, turn the knob, and out rolls an ice cold bottle of hyperactivity. And to be completely honest, I don't if that's a real memory or several different ones spliced together with perhaps a little bit of the American collective unconscious. Regardless, the pallet of Mexican coke is really a mountain of bottled nostalgia.

And that explains why I'm drinking a Coke at midnight.

The Anti-Holiday

2009-01-01T04:31:00.007-07:00

I'm pretty ambivalent about New Year's. For a holiday with so much promise, it ends up being awfully anti-climatic. You gather people together, you play games, you eat unhealthy food, and then at midnight you watch a ball drop while Carson Daly freezes to death and inebriated couples kiss awkwardly on national television. If you're lucky, you might have someone to smooch with, or be drunk enough not to care, but if you're a single Mormon, it's more likely that you'll have your annual glass of sparkling cider, mumble some words of Auld Lang Syne, and then switch back to the Wii to finish a song on Guitar Hero.

Basically, New Year's Eve is like much any other party evening, except you make a bunch of noise at midnight and drink carbonated apple juice even though you'd really prefer a less pretentious soft drink. In general, I think it's safe to say that the best New Year's Eve you've ever celebrated wasn't that much better than the worst New Year's Eve you've ever celebrated.

I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's because of how we celebrate New Years as children ... anxiously waiting until the age when we're old enough to stay up with the adults until 12:01, only to become teenagers with bedtimes routinely later than that so that the idea of a party that climaxes at midnight seems ludicrous. Or maybe it's because we put so much pressure on the New Years kiss, hoping to not be single on the 31st and that you make it count.

New Year's ball, or harbinger of party awkwardness?

For me, though, I think my disenchantment with New Years has a lot to do with resolutions. Instead of celebrating and being excited that we have a whole new year to look forward to, we muck it up with a list of things that we want to change or need to be better at. This isn't a bad thing in itself, but it means that you have to look back at the past year and honestly evaluate your life. And seriously, how does that level of personal introspection get anyone into a party mood?? I know I can't think of anything that makes me happier than ticking off a list of all the personal faults I'd like to correct in the next year ... which are often faults that rolled over from the previous year.

When we were kids, our New Year's tradition (along with the Martinelli's and almond slivered cheese ball) was to write down resolutions for the next year on a piece of paper and then share them with the family. Those were simpler times, and I think my list primarily consisted of things like "get over 200 lines on Tetris", "stop hitting my sister so much", and the obligatory goals related to adequate school performance. And then, for some reason that made sense to us all at the time, we would seal our goals up in an envelope, to be left undisturbed until the next year

Needless to say, the "time capsule" method of goal making is probably not recommended by self help gurus, but it was always interesting to open up last year's goals. More often than not, you realized that: 1) you totally forgot about a goal because it was totally unimportant, or 2) you knocked the goal out of the park, but it didn't really matter because you had moved on in life. Of course, there were those rare instances where you wrote something down and genuinely thought, "ouch, I could have done better with that."

In hindsight, I wonder if unconsciously we new what we were doing in writing down our goals and squirreling them away. That way, they didn't pester us in the new year, and we were free to make the best of whatever life had to offer. We wasted very little guilt on the things we hadn't done, and left everything to look forward to. That in itself is something certainly worth celebrating. Regardless of what we been through, we get a new year: a new chance to live, to be together, discover ourselves, and shape the future.

Now I've just got to find a place to hide my envelope...

A Good Dog...

2008-12-26T00:46:00.003-07:00

Everyone knows at least one good dog. Even if you're allergic, a devout cat lover, or generally petrified of canines, you know a good dog. And the reason that you know a good dog because nearly every dog is a good dog.

I think it's because dogs are fundamentally happy. You come home, and they're happy to see you. You take them for a walk, and they're happy to go out. You hear them bark and let them in, and they're happy to come in. They're happy to eat, sleep, run, and play. All they need is someone to be with, and they're happy. We can learn a lot about happiness, I think, from our dogs.

Dog Rules for Happiness:

Work everyday. Every dog's work is different, but equally important. Some play catch, some herd sheep, some run in the cold, and some have to guard the house.
Play everyday. Do something other than work for at least a little while. Even if it seems really stupid to everyone, like chasing your tail, or disemboweling a stuffed animal, go for it.
Sleep as much as possible, just remember to wake up for all the important stuff: kids going to school, dads coming home from work, and, of course, when you need to go to the bathroom.
Watch out for strangers, but be willing to love everyone. Sure, dogs may be wary at first, with a little sniffing and pawing, but dogs will warm up to anyone who is kind to them. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the car you drive, how much you make, or what you look like, a dog will love you.

In spite of these admirable traits, dogs do have their detractors. I've heard it all before: they're too smelly, they make inconvenient messes, and can be unexpectedly expensive. But, the reality is that life is smelly, messy, and expensive more often and not. And if there's anything that we can learn from a dog, it's how to be happy and loving in spite of circumstance.

The hard part about having dogs, though, is that they is inevitably die before their owners. When the time comes, it's incredibly hard to say goodbye to such a selfless friend. I could cite countless amounts of personal anecdotes, but I don't think I have the emotional strength for it. In the end, that's the the greatest proof that everyone needs a good dog, because even though we know that we will outlive them, we take them into our homes anyway, because we know that we will end getting far more than we give.

Empty...

2008-12-22T23:35:00.002-07:00

My brain is just, empty. I can't think of anything to write. Probably not a bad thing. I am in Hawaii, after all.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-16T00:25:00.002-07:00

I wish I could take credit for this piece of holiday goodness, but my roommate is the one who will win the Golden Globe.

Over the river and through the woods...

2008-11-27T21:51:00.010-07:00

Two weeks ago, I made my annual pilgrimage to Idaho for Thanksgiving. Along with my Utah residency, it has become part of my holiday routine to get into the car Thursday morning for the lonely three hour schlep, salivating all the way.

It's an interesting drive, mostly because the interstate is a completely different experience. Instead of semis barreling cross-country, it's flotillas of mini-vans and SUVs loaded with children descending on grandma's house in Blackfoot or Rexburg. Occasionally, you'll see one of these Mormon assault vehicles pulled off to the side of road, adults scurrying about frantically. It's quite easy to guess that some sort of bodily fluid emergency has occurred. And then there are the typical car shenanigans, like the little girl who had crawled up on the rear dash and was making fish faces against the glass.

The pinnacle of the Thanksgiving tomfoolery, however, was my father's recent purchase: A TURKEY FRYER, because nothing says Thanksgiving like a medieval apparatus that boils oil to sufficient temperature to cook a bird the size of carry on luggage in under an hour. Of course, any device imbued with such great power must also come with great responsible, and the turkey fryer is no exception. And like a toddler with super powers, the turkey fryer has been known to to do the following in the hands of your average trailer park chef:

This is why the turkey fryer is accompanied with all sort of warnings:

Don't operate the fryer indoors. (For those of you who thought it would be cool to boil 5 gallons of oil on the kitchen stove.)
Make sure the turkey is completely thawed and dry. (Remember how water an oil don't mix? Now picture water and boiling oil.)
Turn off the flame before lowering the turkey into the oil. (See figure above.)
Do not operate the fryer barefoot. (Really?)

Fortunately, we followed the directions, and our frying went without incident. Looking back, though, I must think about what an odd sight it must have been, the three males of the household, my father in a lawn chair, solemnly gathered around the aluminum pot that contained our Thanksgiving. Rest assured, also, that frying does nothing to diminish the turkey's tryptophan content. I was still quite able to sleep through the football game.

Stuff I like...

2008-11-18T22:33:00.014-07:00

My last post was unintentionally whiny. To make up for it, I'd like to highlight a few things that make me happy -- which seems very appropriate this time of year.

Sleep: I am the king of sleep. Few things make me happier than sleep. Though I have a hard time reaching unconsciousness, nothing short of an air raid siren can wake me up. I set all my alarms (clock radio, cell phone, and atomic clock) to wake up in the morning. On Saturday morning, I love waking up and realizing that I can go straight back to bed. And I don't think I am ever more contented than when I curl up on the downstairs sofa and fall asleep in front of the afternoon football game.

King size beds: With one of these, it's no wonder I love sleep so much. The ability to lie in bed with nary a hand or foot dangling over is the first step to sleeping nirvana. The great irony is that I only sleep comfortably if I confine myself one side of the bed. If I sleep in the middle, I lose all frame of reference and can't remember where things are when I wake up. Odd, I know, but there's a hidden benefit in that the unused side of the bed is great as a laundry staging area.

Fresh sheets: does this really need an explanation? Every king size bed needs high thread count sheets, freshly washed. Speaking of, does anybody know which side the scrunchy sides go? I never get it right.

Grape Nuts: when you stumble out of your king sized bed, you need breakfast. And though I know they are neither grape nor nut, I always have an industrial sized box of Grape Nuts in my pantry. The great thing about Grape Nuts is that they are three different foods depending on how long you leave them in milk. In stage 1, the pea-gravel stage, they function as mouth exfoliant; in stage 2, the soft outer coating lubricates the crunchy center enough so that they slide in between your teeth so that you have a snack for later; and in stage 3, the Grape Nuts and expand and fuse into some sort of impenetrable wheat lattice that is impervious to water and most soaps. (I discovered stage 3 by accident after leaving a bowl of Grape Nuts in the car all day. I envision potential aerospace applications.)

Costco: Where else can you get an industrial sized box of Grape Nuts, a gallon sized can of semi-liquid nacho cheese product, and those really great uncooked flour tortillas that are just as good as Cafe Rio's? Costco people, Costco. AND, they have an unheard of 90 day return policy on electronics that lets you take back your perfectly good iPod for the new one that costs 100 dollars less? I like Costco so much that I have begun to call it "The Costco" in casual conversation. Don't fear, though, I refuse to say "Wal-Marts"

Sunday Dinner: I am blessed with a mother of no small culinary talent who frequently dazzled on Sunday. She mastered the oven timer with such prowess that the smell of the roast as you came home from church was enough to bring you to your knees. And when I went off to college, she endured countless calls in my quest to recreate that perfect Sunday dinner. I have achieved a measure of success, and now I realize that Sunday seems eerily incomplete without some form of gravy at the afternoon meal. We may have traded the gravy boat for a Pyrex measuring cup (much easier for mass application), but the spirit of Sunday dinner is alive and well at my new house. Even though we're just a houseful of single dudes, there's something sublime about sharing roast medium well roast beef with friends before you go fall asleep in front of the football game.

More randomness...

2008-11-11T21:10:00.013-07:00

Lately, my mind has felt like Boggle. Every few minutes someone shakes my head, turns over the little egg timer, and I'm left trying to make words from random letters until the last grain of sand finally falls.

I think that If I were a boggle game, these would be my latest words:

TEAM (1 point): I hate the word team. I hate it because people use it all the time at work. A group of software developers doesn't constitute a team; it's just a group of poorly dressed nerds with questionable social skills. If I'm on a "team", then I demand a lucrative endorsement contract, an offseason, and the ability to break the law without repercussion. Team is one of the original business buzzwords, way before things like "synergy" and "paradigm shift", and people like to use it to promote camaraderie and give everyone warm fuzzies about working together . For me, though, the word team makes me think of Initech and impending TPS reports.
MAYBE (2 points): Let's face it people, Jack Johnson was right: "maybe" pretty much always means no. It particular, it means, "No, but I'm not brave enough to say no, so I'm going to be disingenuous and suggest that I might do something when I really have no intention to do it at all." I'm guilty of it too. Beware the maybe. If you really do mean maybe, then find a different way to say it.
LEAF (1 point): My yard is covered with them; beautiful yellow, orange, and amber maple leaves larger than your hand ... which have now been rained on, so they adhere themselves to everything in the yard with the force of some invisible industrial adhesive. They also smell like wet dog. Blech.
DOG (1 point): My neighbor has the coolest dogs ever. One looks like a wolf, and the other, well, might actually be a small bear. They never ever bark. A few weeks ago, we were watching these little tiny Yorkies, and every time we'd left them out back to do their doggy business, they'd tear up to the fence at full speed and start barking furiously. Wolf and Bear would then trot over to inspect the ferocious Ewoks. They were pretty unimpressed, despite the fervor of the barking. Then, on Saturday, I went outside with the leaf blower to try and pry the leaves off the lawn. Wolf and Bear came over to see my new Toro leaf blower with cast aluminum impeller. I got pretty much the same reaction as the Yorkies. I'm pretty sure the neighbor dogs think I'm some sort of Labrador that uses power tools.
WEIRD (2 points) - Jodi just declared that I am weird. This shouldn't be news to anyone. I only come in one flavor: weird.

And ... time just ran out. Shoot. I'll bet everyone got those same words, too. Oh well, seven points isn't bad.

No Room for Moderation?

2008-11-04T22:36:00.008-07:00

Finally. It's over. The election is finally over. I am sick and tired of polls and talking about politics. Now maybe I can get some work done at the office without some coworker lamenting the end of civilization if so-and so wins. And, finally finally, we can finally start talking about the most important event of fall: college football.

The thing that I hate about politics is that it is so polarizing. Instead of healthy debates and pragmatism on the issues, every position is either totally right or totally wrong. Can't we see that this is an extremely hostile environment for anyone that wants involve themselves in the political process?

To see what I mean, consider the fundamental social need of human beings to belong. Unconsciously, many of us will tone down our personal beliefs if they don't quite match up with the predominant views of the group we wish to join. We do this as a survival mechanism; no one wants to be an outcast. If you don't believe me, just think about the times when you've been found yourself surrounded by people with significantly different viewpoints than you. What was your reaction? Did you express your true views and risk being an outcast, or did you soften your stance to try and fit in?

This desire to "fit in" isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it helps us to empathize with others and understand their position. If, however, we limit ourselves to cliques that share our own points of view, our views will inevitably become more extreme, as each group member suppresses their individuality and prove their membership through a voracious defense of the group's position.

The best example of this, I think, is the worthless vitriol spewed by both liberal and conservative pundits. As de facto leaders of their respective groups, their views are always the most extreme because they constantly have to solidify their position as group leader. As a result, we see the loudmouths of each party become louder and more obnoxious as time goes on.

Given enough time, our desire to fit it can result in an unwillingness to consider alternate views, making conservatives more conservative and liberals more liberal. We have to break this cycle and realize that just because you understand how one group arrives at a particular position doesn't mean that you'll end up agreeing with them. Similarly, it needs to be okay to change their mind on an issue without being labeled as weak.

Interestingly enough, I would have voted for McCain in 2000. He seemed like a moderate voice in increasingly partisan times. Unfortunately, his primary loss to Bush took all the moderate out of him. This time around, he played the party games to secure the nomination, but then tried desperately to define himself as a maverick without alienating the party base. Who knows how things might have turned out if he had been brave enough to run as a true moderate.

What I really want to see in American politics is the candidate who is brave enough to be a true moderate, to think on his or her feet, and acknowledge all points of view. Ultimately, I'm ready for pragmatism instead of platforms.

Clothes make the man...

2008-11-01T23:06:00.008-06:00

I was never a huge fan of Halloween growing up. I blame it on the fickle Idaho weather. It seemed like every costume was foiled by snow or sleet or wind. It's a little disheartening as an eight year old to have to cover your awesome Superman costume with a puffy winter coat. Superman never had to wear a coat on his trips to the the Fortress of Solitude, so it seemed really ignominious to have to have to wear one to just to walk around the block.

This year, though, I was actually looking forward to Halloween, mostly because I rediscovered the power of the costume. This time last year, the roommate and I were lamenting the onerous task of attending costume parties and trying to come with a suitable costume at the last minute, but this year, we planned ahead and decided to go big. And it totally paid off. Who you gonna call?

So, let this be a lesson: the awesomeness of Halloween is directly proportional to the awesomeness of your costume. I'd even call it the first Law of Halloween. I'll let you know when I develop a formula that captures the complex interactions of the differing variables, but it'll probably be something like this:
The Ghostbusters costume is awesome because even though it's not very intricate, it's a great 80's pop culture reference and I totally look like Dan Akroyd. The formula also explains why the girl wandering around with a framed picture of a Freud hanging from her neck wins the award for lamest costume ever. Being too clever can definitely kill a costume. It can also redeem it, as the guy in the AIG bathrobe and slippers proved.

So, Happy Halloween! Remember to never cross the streams.

My father, a Jedi?

2008-10-08T22:02:00.014-06:00

Jedi's are known to eschew technology.

Okay, this post really is the conclusion to the "Chronicles of San Diego", since it gestated while while I was there, but it's a fresh news cycle now, and I'm not above intimating that my father has supernatural powers in an attempt to garner readership. The truth is that if my father has the Force, he's probably not a Jedi, but a Sith like Darth Vader. Not the kind of Sith that chokes people or shoots lighting from his fingertips, since that's just not his nature, but the comic henchman type Sith, one who uses the Force to make the toast pop before its done or loosen that particular bolt in your 2000 Honda Accord every few weeks so that there's an intermittent and unlocatable rattle at freeway speeds.

To understand why he's like Darth Vader, just sleep in the same room with him. I had this chance as he tagged along at the tail end of my week in San Diego. His sisters live in SoCal, so it made perfect sense. I was happy to have the company, but there was one thing I forgot about him, and that is that when he sleeps, he looks and sounds like our favorite Sith lord, thanks to one of these:

Disclaimer: I'm about to make fun of a relatively serious medical condition. Get over it.

My dad has sleep apnea, which is why he wears a mask similar to the one above. Sleep apnea is where you basically forget to breath while you sleep. While this combination of no breathing and sleep is normally characteristic of a medical condition called "death", a victim of sleep apnea only stops breathing for a short period of time -- basically just long enough for the brain to realize that "death" might actually occur if the lungs fail to resume their normal function. The brain then wakes the person up enough to start breathing again, resulting in, needless to say, really horrible sleep. (In some of the worst cases, a sleep apnea sufferer may stop breathing for up to a minute and wake up 30 or more times an hour.)

The mask and apparatus is known as a CPAP, or continuous-positive-airway-pressure machine. The mask is attached to an air pump, which forces air down your throat so you keep breathing. In layman's terms, it's like running a shop-vac in reverse and sticking the hose in your mouth. Fortunately, it's not quite that loud, more like a dust buster drowning in deep shag.

Looking at the sleep apnea mask, it's pretty easy to see why Darth Vader had his encased in a black enamel shroud. It's much more intimidating that way. Your average CPAP user *might* be able to pass for some sort of fighter pilot, if not for the flannel pajamas and characteristically non-fighter pilot type build. (Sleep apnea is MUCH more common in people of a particular size.)

When my dad first brought the CPAP home, and my fits of laughter died down, I actually gave it a try. It's kind of like wearing an octupus, in a not too unpleasant way, and the air being forced down your throat does actually ease breathing. This is all great, until you open your mouth, at which point all the air being pumped up your nose flies out this new exit and turns your nasal passages into a sort of booger wind-tunnel.

Sharing a room with dad using the CPAP is interesting to say the least. The machine, for the most part, produces pretty much white noise, but the person tethered to the machine will inevitably do sleep type things like roll over, swallow, mumble, etc, which now produce all sorts of interesting gurgles and whistles, much like the geothermally active areas of Yellowstone park. That said, the CPAP is definitely worth it. My father sleeps so much better, and has tons more energy as a consequence. And, now that we know my dad has sleep apnea, it explains all those nights when I would come upstairs and find his 6 foot tall body scrunched into the 4 foot wide loveseat, snoring away.

I wonder if he found a home remedy for his undiagnosed condition. Still, I think he prefers the CPAP to the flower print loveseat. I think he's relatively proud of the cachet this little medical device gives him, even if the TSA always assumes that the hose/pump apparatus is nearly as likely to blow up an airplane as my laptop. The first time I took him to San Diego, in fact, he tried on the CPAP in the middle of the day to show my aunts how it worked. They laughed nearly as hard as I did. Go Darth Dad. And leave my Accord alone.

The Chronicles of San Diego, Part II

2008-09-27T17:16:00.007-06:00

Business travel is frequently vexing because you spend so much time alone when the work day is over. It's hard not feel like a social pariah when you walk into a restaurant and say, "Table for one." Consequently, it's tempting to take get carryout or take delivery in your room every night, but your waistline will definitely suffer. Truth be told, the only perk of company travel is dining on the company dime, so you ought to enjoy it even if you travel alone.

Nearly every part of the country has some regional cuisine that is done really well, so there's no reason to suffer through the generic chain food, regardless of where you are. Inevitably, company meetings and such will be at Chili's or some other place you've been a million times, so don't eat there unless you really feel the need to eat something you've already eaten before.

Still, it can be hard to travel and eat alone. Here's what I do:

Use the web. Type in your current location and see what local restaurants are well rated. There are gems in most places. I had amazing shrimp in Sunnyvale and excellent lamb chops in Harlem because I did a little searching.
Order a beverage. I don't drink, but I always order a beverage of some kind. This automatically ups your check just a little bit and gives your server an excuse to visit your table. You'll inevitably get better service.
Don't be afraid to sit at the bar, even if you don't drink. I usually get great service from the bar, and there are almost always TVs or music or something that is much less alienating than sitting in a booth by yourself.
Stretch out the meal. When you dine alone, you'll notice that your food arrives much faster, and you finish quicker because there's no one to talk to. Even at a really nice restaurant, you can be in and out in well under an hour, and then you'll inevitably feel unsatisfied. Besides making a deliberate attempt to slow down, I frequently order a soup or an appetizer with dinner, just because it makes the meal more of an experience.
Ask about the specials. Unless you're at the Cheesecake Factory, the specials are usually actually special. They're the freshest ingredients, chef's specialty, or whatever. Your server will definitely know what most people order.
Get used to the alone-ness. Relish it. Once you go to a movie by yourself, you'll wonder why you ever try to corral a group of people to try and go to a movie. Dining alone can be the same way.

This week in San Diego has been a culinary masterpiece. I come here often enough that I have some of my favorite haunts. First is Point Loma Seafoods: a fresh fish market that also serves lunch. They have AMAZING chowder. Warning: they only take cash. Second is Phil's: Texas style BBQ, great blues. Beef ribs that would satisfy Fred Flinstone. Warning: closed on Mondays. This time, I also visited the Chart House at Dana Point, and it was simply amazing -- great view.

The Chonicles of San Diego, Pt1

2008-09-22T15:37:00.004-06:00

Once again, I find myself on a work trip. When people ask me about what's new in life, the thing that usually comes to mind is my latest or upcoming travel, because so many people seem interested in the novelty of getting paid to travel. Sometimes I think people assume that it's exotic and exciting; lots of power suits and power lunches and really intense motivational speeches in high rise buildings. I hate to dash any illusions you might have, but right now I'm sitting in a mostly empty office in jeans and a t-shirt, blogging.

Still, I thought it would be fun to chronicle this trip on the blog. I'm going to see if I can come up with at least one good story for every day that I'm here.

I landed in San Diego at 11:30 this afternoon. I swear that we taxied FOREVER. It made me wonder if the airport is really like a big mall parking lot on Saturday, and the pilot tooling around in his 737 looking for a spot that's close to the food court but still doesn't make him walk through the lingerie section of JCPenny. In my mind I can hear the co-pilot yell, "Look! You passed a perfectly good spot right back there! We can WALK."

Still, the day has been good thus far. I enjoyed lunch at Point Loma Seafoods; a seared Ahi sandwhich and bowl of claw chowder. I'm sure we'll talk about food later, so I'll leave it at that. The highlight of the day, though, was this guy panhandling in the median of the street. He was walking up and down past the cars waiting to turn left. He held a sign that said: "BET YOU CAN'T HIT ME WITH A QUARTER."

How's that for a challenge?

I'm a victm!

2008-09-17T23:37:00.011-06:00

In today's edition of "What I Learned", I'm taking you back to 1991, when cinema changed forever. This was the year that Hollywood proved three things: 1) that no film is too asinine to justify an even more asinine sequel, 2) acting skills are entirely optional in film making and 3) Death is really funny.

Now wait, did you think I meant that death, as in dying, was funny? No, no, I meant "Death" with a capital "D" is funny. Specifically, this guy:

Figured it out yet? Yes, we're talking about this trio:

In case you forgot, the first time we encountered Bill and Ted on their Excellent Adventure, they used a time traveling phone booth to collect historical figures (as in actual people) for a report so that they don't flunk out of high school. In the end, we learn that Bill and Ted's totally non-heinous band is critical to the history of the world, and that's why they couldn't flunk history. (Nevermind the fact that they could have used the time machine to study, but whatever.)

Well, in 1991's Bogus Journey, evil robot versions of Bill and Ted are sent from the future to kill the good Bill and Ted and prevent them from playing in the battle of the bands. (MTV's take on the Terminator, if you will.) Good Bill and Ted meet a totally egregious loogie filled demise and then have to journey through limbo, hell, heaven and challenge Death to make it back to San Dimas in time to save the babes and rock the show. Sound awesome? Totally.

So awesome, in fact, that me and my nerdy high school friends suspended our traditional bickering about the plausibility of time travel to quote the movie incessantly. These were our favorites:

[Bill and Ted are falling to hell.]
Bill: Dude, this is a totally deep hole.

Ted: I can't believe Missy divorced your Dad and married mine.
Bill: Shut up, Ted.

Bill: Hey, you wanna play 20 questions?
Ted: Okay! I got one!
Bill: Are you a mineral?
Ted: Yeah!
Bill: Are you a tank?
Ted: Yeah!

Bill: Dude, there's no way I can possibly do infinity push-ups.
Ted: Maybe if he lets us do them girly-style?

Ted: Dude!
Bill: What?
Ted: Hell sucks!
Bill: Definitely!
Ted: We were totally lied to by our album covers.

Ted: Who's that?
Bill: Ted, it's the Grim Reaper, dude!
Ted: Oh. How's it hangin' Death?

Bill: Ted.
Ted: Yeah?
Bill: If I die, you can have my Megadeth collection.
Ted: But, dude, we're already dead.
Bill: Oh. Well then they're yours, dude.

[Bill and Ted beat the Grim Reaper at Twister]
Bill: You played very well, Death, especially with your totally heavy Death robes.
Death: Don't patronize me.

Death: Don't overlook my butt, I work out all the time. And reaping burns a lot of calories.

In fact, I say that we quoted these movies just a little too much. I totally blame them for my gross overuse of the words "totally" and "dude". I promise I am not a surfer stuck in 1988, just a victim of the most non-non-non-non-non-heinous Bill and Ted.

Laissez-"fair"?

2008-09-07T23:32:00.004-06:00

Anyone else feel like they've been sucker punched in the groin by Adam Smith's "invisible hand" lately? The fall of Fannie and Freddie this weekend was the last straw. I was righteously indignant when my taxes were spent on artery clogging government pork, but I'm unconsolably incensed when they are spent to rescue profit mongering shareholders, home flippers, and people with irresponsibly large mortgages.

The thing that irritates me most of all is that I have to admit to myself that the government MUST step in. They have no choice. We can't let the two mortgage giants twist in the wind as they rightfully should, because there are lots and lots of honest, hard-working people who want that part of the American dream that is home ownership, and they need Mac and Mae to help them with their loans.

How did we get in this mess? I think it goes back to Adam Smith. Like many American industries of the late 80s and 90s, the banking industry experienced a fair amount of deregulation. Then, in the mid 90s, the economy picked up steam, and everyone was doing well. It seemed like deregulation was the way to go. Soon, the number of investment firms ballooned and everyone was getting into stocks and securities. It seemed like easy money. The problem was that companies were now beholden to very fickle shareholders who primarily wanted a higher stock price regardless of what it meant to the company. Executives were replaced, CEO salaries skyrocketed, and the temptation to satiate shareholders was so great that many companies start to post paper profits.

This all ended when the dot com bubble burst and Enron et al collapsed. At this point, the government had to step in like it had in the past. Sure, the market was free with deregulation, but too many people were too greedy. The markets and the companies that traded on them simply HAD to be more closely monitored. After all, a lot of honest hardworking people were hurt when their pensions and 401k burst along with the dot com bubble. In the end, it was the regular folk that were most hurt. The venture capitalists/investor types were only shaken up. And since there would be no more lucrative IPOs and acquisitions, they needed a new place to make their money. Unfortunately, they settled on the mortgage market.

Soon, the mortgage market heated up along with the real estate market. Interest rates were low, and everybody was getting into real estate. People starting flipping homes. Home ownership became a short term investment vehicle rather than a means to a permanent domicile. Investors loved it. Banks loved it too because they could sign people up for terrible variable rate mortgages which they could then sell to investors, who actually expected to see that 10 or 12% interest after the two years were up on the ARM. With deregulation, banks could be more aggresive in marketing mortgages to consumers, relaxing lending requirements, and could become very creative in how they bundled up the mortgages to sell to investors. Suddenly, "second mortgages" somehow became "home equity loans" and people could afford the cabin/boat/RV that they always wanted. It seemed like everyone was winning.

It was inevitable, though, that prices would fall. The market was saturated by real estate gurus, flippers, and investors clamoring for share price -- which had all speculatively inflated the market. Meanwhile, interest rates had been too low for too long. This had weakening the dollar, making US investments look bad in general, and causing general instability in the markets. When those investing in mortgages started to realize that there really is no such thing as a free lunch, they jumped ship, just like the home flippers and the family earning 100k a year and living in a half million dollar home on the bench.

The companies did their best the massage the numbers, hoping to hold out until the market rebounded. Mortgages were fundamentally sound, risk-free investments, right? Well, it turns out the Freddie and Fannie were counting some mortgages as capital assets, as if it was an absolutely sure thing that they would be repaid at the full interest rate. Well, who in their right mind is going to pay a 12% interest on a mortgage that is now upside-down? No one, that's who. The people buying the mortgages should have known it, too, as should the people trying to profit off of the hot market. Why people were willing to take such risks with something as important as a family's home, or millions of homes across America, I will never know.

So, are you mad yet? I hope so. Our tax dollars are going to be used to keep these companies afloat. In our efforts to be more laissez-faire, we end up being tens times less so, and exactly because we have to protect ourselves from all the capitalist asshats that assured us that a more market freedom would be better for us all.

Sotally Tober!!!

2008-08-20T00:14:00.005-06:00

My dear friend Travis scored some free tickets to see Jack Johnson on Monday. I wanted to see Jack anyway, so this was a major windfall. What could be better than spending a warm summer night sitting on a lawn with a bunch of your friends and listening to cool island tunes? ...Doing all of that for FREE, of course. Add to this the fact that concerts are probably the third best venue* to people-watch, and you have a recipe for an enlightening evening.

We saw dudes that looked like chicks and chicks that looked like dudes; guys toking up and a girl really upset that the guys has toked up without her; lots and lots of drunk people and one guy who started his drinking by pouring the rum for his rum and coke out of his sandal.

The coup de gras, though, was the bear woman. I call her the bear woman because her size and look reminded me of a bear walking upright. She was also rubbing up against this very tall and long haired male in a way that remarkably reminiscent of a bear scratching against a tree. She was also very hammered. The whole thing looked an awful lot like this:

The highlight of the whole evening, though, was when the bear lady started to get her freak on a few yards in front of us. It was very a Woodstock-esque flailing sort of dance. In her hammered state, she meandered all over this couple's blanket and knocked over their overpriced soft drinks. As they reached down to prevent the beverages from soaking their blanket, the bear lady had the audacity to slur, "You guys should really put those somewhere else, you know..."

We looked at each other in dumbfounded amazement. They needed to move their drinks because she danced into them? Well, someone took as much umbrage to this as we did, and it was this pint sized gal next to us. She stood right up and accosted the drunk lady. I didn't hear most of the conversation, but the sight of a young 5' 2" and very clearly Mormon woman scolding an indignant, overweight and drunken hippie was something to behold. What was even funnier was the way the woman's husband very calmly watched the whole interaction seated on the blanket until it looked like it might turn into a poking and pushing match. At this point, he calmly stood up behind his wife, put his hands on her soldier, and said, "Dear, let's not forget that you have a 2 year old and a 5 month old at home..."

Well, the cooler heads prevails, the drunk hippie wandered away to scratch her back against the tree again , and we applauded the pint size defender as she settled back onto her blanket. One of my friends said, "We were so close to getting up; good for you!" And she replied, "I kind of wanted to go to Relief Society with a black eye." Her husband is probably still rolling his eyes and shaking his head in disbelief.

*My poll data indicates that state fairs and airports are the two other venues ideal for people watching.

Sometimes, I hate being right.

2008-07-26T17:20:00.004-06:00

Eight years is a long time; about 1/10 of an American life span, and I'll bet you already know where this post is going. As I look at this year's Presidential race, I've spent a lot of time thinking about past races; specifically the ones in which I've voted. With the benefit of hindsight, it's enlightening to look back at what I thought then and compare it with how things have gone.

So, the 2000 election reminds me a great deal of the 2008 election. The outgoing President was unpopular, there were economic rumblings on the horizon, and I wasn't wowed by either candidate. In fact, I was downright worried by both of them. One seemed stiff, and out of touch, the other a bumbling country boy. In the end, I marginally favored the stuffy guy, despite serious reservations. In the end, it didn't really matter who I liked anyway, because my state was only going to go one way.

So, eight years later, it is interesting to look back at some of my misgiving about the man who would eventually become President. It's sad to say that I was right about some of them:

Nepotism and cronyism: coming from an entitled upbringing with the attached good ole' boy mentality, I was concerned that Bush, rather than picking the best person for the job, would select advisers that most agreed with him. A certain amount of this is to be expected with any political office, but I think that a truly savvy politician will also bring in people of differing opinions and skills to create a well rounded administration. When Collin Powell, an internationally respected individual, departed as Secretary of State and Condoleeza Rice, a mediocre NSA chief, was selected as replacement, I realized that Bush was surrounded himself with "yes" men. Bush's failure in this area reached its apex when he nominated the woefully unqualified Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. I think that the WMD debacle resulted largely from Bush's cronyism, as well as a woefully unprepared FEMA after hurricane Katrina.

Ties to oil: the Bush family is well known for its ties to the oil business. Ties to any industry don't inherently make anyone unsuitable for office, but you have to accept a certain amount of deference to that industry while they're in office. In this case, Bush's oil and related energy policies have recently proved disastrous. The industry is enjoying record profits from record prices, which are contributing to the overall slowing of the economy. A more enlightened policy regarding energy, like updated mpg requirements and tighter environmental controls on electrical production might have actually spurred development in alternative fuels and energy as world oil supplies became inevitably tight.

Foreign policy: as governor of Texas, one's foreign policy experience is limited largely to Mexico. And, to his credit, President Bush has does well, I think, with our neighbor to the south and immigration policy (though Congress wasn't helpful.) Worldwide, though, gaining a reputation as a bully was certainly not desirable. Though I think we must always act in our own self defense without waiting for international consensus, we must do so considerately and conscientiously. The younger Bush could have learned a great deal from his father in this area, who very delicately handled the collapsing Soviet Union and the first withdrawal from Iraq. Back then, Cheney as Sec. Def., provided a compelling analysis of what would happen in Iraq if Saddam was deposed: sectarian violence and political instability that would require an occupying force. I don't understand, why, then, we were so unprepared for what was going to happen. Needless to say that greater international support might have drastically altered the course of the conflict, particularly given the massive civilian casualties that have resulted in Iraq.

Church and State: while I admire President Bush for being a man of faith, I saw his use of the evangelical vote as a double edged sword. I feared that his mixing of religion and politics could have undesirable consequences. This was realized by the failure of many of his faith based initiatives. Though a cause and effect relationship is certainly hard to establish, I find it extremely interesting that teen pregnancy rates have increased (abstinence only sex ed, anyone?) and abortion rates have not fallen. Meanwhile, the Republican party has become significantly more conservative as it has to court the increasingly vocal and fickle evangelical vote.

Fiscal/Economic policy: though Republicans are generally thought to be fiscally conservative, their hawkish natures and continual desire to cut taxes frequently have the opposite effect. Bush seemed to fall right in line in this area. It was amazing to me that facing a recession, he elected to increase spending while cutting taxes and sending the nation to war. This ballooned the deficit, lowered confidence in American industry abroad, and began to slow the economic engine of the country. Couple this with the deflation of the housing market, and I think that the current administration shoulders a great deal of responsbility for our current predicament. It wouldn't suprise me too much if we soon find that laissez faire enforcement of the housing market contributed to our current situation.

Intelligence: simply put, I thought Bush wasn't smart enough to be President. I'm not talking about his minor gaffes that made for comedy routine fodder, since those things happen to everyone, but I do think that being President requires a truly significant intellect. The economy, foreign policy, and budgetary matters are extraordinarily complex. No amount of bravado, charm, or humor can mask a failure to understand the issues. I think Bush's failings fundamentally stem from this, particularly in dealing with the economy and the budget deficit.

So, this may sound like a huge round of "I told you so", but that's not my intent at all. Nor am I trying to jump on the Bush bashing bandwagon. Instead, these are the things that genuinely concerned me about the candidate. There's no doubt that a similar list could have been made had Al Gore been president. In the end, your concerns regarding a Presidential candidate will almost certainly manifest themselves when the person is in office. Though the extent of such manifestations are totally unknowable, we can at least look at the curent state of the nation to see which flaws would hurt us the most.

Totally random...

2008-07-25T10:00:00.003-06:00

I don't understand lactose intolerance. By which I mean, why is called lactose intolerance? Who was that first person that said, "No! I refuse! I WILL NOT TOLERATE LACTOSE!" Somehow it seems like a misappropriate of a word that already has context in much more distressing issues like racial or religious intolerance. I think we should come up with a different name for lactose intolerance. Something like: "My parents failed me genetically because I can't eat ice cream or cheese without my stomach acting like Mt. Vesuvius."

Where do my hangers go? I have acquired no additional clothing, and yet I do not have hangers enough for the clothes I have. The situation gets worse every time I do laundry. As a child I used to stretch hangars over my head and wear them around the house, but my head is of such a size now that they generally break, so I stopped doing that.

Growing up, we never could find lids for the Tupperware. We had a whole drawer fully of lids (and twist-ties, thumbtacks, and junk), but apparently the lids went with some OTHER Tupperware. Now that I have my own house, all I have are lids. Seriously. Who is using all this lidless Tupperware? I did use a bunch once to measure how much water my sprinklers were putting on the lawn, but I'm pretty sure I gathered them all up.

Why do Americans take perfectly good entrees and turn them into salads? Tacos, burritos, pizza, buffalo wings, etc. All these things are great foods by themselves -- how does serving them on a bed of lettuce with a lime/chipotle/raspberry/vinaigrette/sun dried kumquat dressing make them better? It certainly can't make them healthier...

I'm convinced that most of the problems that women have with men result from women assuming that men are much smarter that we actually are. But rest assured, we REALLY ARE that stupid. Need proof? Tom Cruise: divorced Nicole. Tom Arnold: married Roseanne.

We see a lot in the news about the dangers of leaving children and pets in cars in hot summer days. (Seriously people, DON'T DO IT!) But what about old people? The other day at Dick's market, there was a very surly looking 80 year old sitting in a sweltering Camry. The window was rolled down, but he looked like he was getting grouchier by the minute.

I'm pretty sure that Wal-Mart wishes that the department of homeland security would scale back airport security so they can have their employees back.

The Dog/Cat Debate

2008-07-19T04:08:00.004-06:00

I know that people feel strongly about their choice of pets. Me, I'm a dog person. It's not that I don't like cats, but they don't seem to like me. Growing up, my best friend had a Siamese named Rosebud. I was never anything but nice to that cat. But, every time she saw me, she would hiss like I was the undead:

So, I'm not a cat fan. I don't really dislike them though. I'm a sucker for the purring and all that, like anyone without cat allergies. Cuddle factor aside, I think it's pretty clear which animal is superior in the dog/cat debate.

My roommate, Dane, and I had this argument all the time. He thought that the cat's independence and cleanliness made it the perfect pet. He thought dogs were dumb -- primarily because they hung around with people, which Dane also thought were dumb.

And Dane was right. Dogs' have a weak point in that they are slaves to the affection of their humans (and vice-versa). But when it comes down to it, there's one argument that trumps them all in favor of the dog: There's no such thing as a "seeing-eye cat."

Rockets' Red Glare

2008-07-06T00:52:00.005-06:00

I love the 4th of July. I live for the 4th of July. It has everything I need: staying up late, BBQ, and pyrotechnics. I only have one problem with the 4th of July, and that is Lee Greenwood. His song "God Bless the USA" drives me crazy. Now, before you brand me some unpatriotic jerk, let me explain:

The song, to be frank, is trite drivel. All the great patriotic songs, the Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, etc, were written by poets; psalms to the hopes of a young nation. There's no way that a pop song, much less a 60's-esque country song, can really capture the majesty of a country that grew from 13 rowdy colonies into a country that became a haven and hope for people the world over.

Greenwood's song, instead, plays off of sentiment -- trying to kindle patriotic support by invoking remembrances of those who paid the ultimate price. The end result is that I invariably feel an odd sense of guilt, because there are times when I'm not proud of what my country has done, and that this somehow dishonors the fallen. I don't think anything could be further from the truth, though. This is a country built on dissent, after all. Jefferson himself said, "a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing."

Ultimately, I think that those who sacrificed didn't do it for any as abstract as a flag or nationalistic pride. When I think of a GI storming the beach at Normandy, I can't imagine visions of eagles and patriotic bunting are in the forefront of his mind. Instead, I see him thinking of his family, his home, and the good things of this life. And that's why he fights, because he thinks that other people should have the right to those good things as well. In the end, it is his hopes and ideals that define him, and truly define what it is to be an American. This is where the flag gets its meaning. America is a reflection of his sacrifice, not the other way around.

When I stand and sing the Star Spangled Banner and my eyes mist, it's not so much because of the flag or even the song, but because I realize that I share the same ideals as those who did sacrifice and am indebted to them. I am humbled and honored to be counted among those that paid the ultimate sacrifice or the sacrifice of a life dutifully lived. In the end, my duty is to live according to the principles of freedom on which the country was founded, according to the dictates of my own conscience. Sometimes this means that I may not agree with everything that my country has done or will do, but it doesn't make me any less patriotic.

Owl

2008-07-03T23:21:00.006-06:00

I bought an owl two weeks ago. And, as Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

....But he looks less like this:

....And more like this:

He's hanging from a branch in my cherry tree, swaying and turning gently in the breeze. You probably wonder if it felt odd to buy an 18 inch plastic owl. Yes, a little. I figure that's why they invented self checkout.

But my sheepishness has yet to be rewarded. The birds that are raping and pillaging the tree for freshly ripened cherries seem completely unbothered by my owl. When I come out of the house in the morning, it sounds like some sort of deranged sale, a cacophony of shrieks, chirps and flapping, like women fighting over the a pair of discount shoes. And then, as I approach the tree, the birds explode out of it, sometimes a half dozen of them. So, this leads me to believe that they are completely unafraid of my plastic bird of prey. Maybe they have a grasp of physics and realize that he's essentially floating in mid-air?

I'm even pretty sure they pooped on him. As if being plastic wasn't hard enough.

Upgrades

2008-06-19T23:43:00.003-06:00

I complain alot about traveling. Not the fact that I travel, but the process of traveling itself. Everyone knows what I'm talking about, right? Terrible airlines, being poked and prodded by security, unbelievably lame rental cars, middle seats, unintelligible drivers,

So, somehow, somewhere, I must have done something right, because this trip has been surreal in it's splendor.

Here's the evidence:

1) Flight leaves at 11:00 AM. Can you get a more perfect time than that? You don't have to wake up early to make the flight, the airport is wonderfully empty, and you still arrive late enough in the day that no one expects you to go work.
2) Plane not close to full. I got my OWN ROW. I sat in the middle so I could see all three TVs. One tuned to the PGA championship, one for random flipping, and one for the news.
3) Rental car: Dodge charger! (If you've heard my rant about the PT cruiser, enough said.)
4) Hotel upgrades. I arrive at the hotel just having achieved "Gold" status. They tell me that they've upgraded my room. I'm in a wing of the hotel I've never stayed in the before. I open the door, and I realize that I have a 3 room suite. No, I am not making this up. I have two king beds in two separate rooms, two bathrooms, and three total TVs. I feel almost guilty about it.

So, there you go.

Karma?

World Perspective II

2008-06-05T23:37:00.007-06:00

Okay, so my post about organic foods causing the apocalypse might have been a bit alarmist and a bit of a slippery slope argument. But I think it still makes the point that the trends and policies in first world countries (that's basically anyone who might read this) may have unintended negative consequences on the world at large. So while we think that we are very benevolent and magnanimous, we are also at the same time hurting those less fortunate than us. Need proof? Here's another example...

In the 1962, a book called Silent Spring was published that questioned the side effects of DDT. DDT was, at the time, an inexpensive pesticide that was used widely to control insect pests, particularly mosquitoes. There were questions, however, about the overall healthiness of DDT as well as its effect on the environment. One of the most disturbing claims was that the catastrophic collapse of eagle populations in the US was caused by the thinning of their eggs' shells, which was, in turn, caused by the birds' food sources being contaminated by DDT.

Indeed, Silent Spring was a wake up call. We realized that we could wreak havoc on the environment through inappropriate chemical use. This led to a complete ban of DDT in the US. European and other developed countries followed suit. The environment responded positively to the ban, and bird populations recovered when we switched to newer, more targeted, and necessarily more expensive pesticides. In most respects, the DDT ban appeared to be a great success -- proof that we were willing to pay the price to do the right thing to care for the Earth.

The thing that we forget in this story is that by this time malaria was really no longer a problem in the US. What used to be a common and debilitating illness was pretty much eradicated in this country draining swamps, lots of spraying, and high standard of medical care. Ironically, we ended up banning DDT about the same time we no longer needed it.

But what about the rest of the world that still suffered from endemic malaria? For them, the reality is that DDT remained (and remains) an excellent repellent with little environmental impact when used to for home treatment rather than general mosquito abatement. Despite this potential, many Western aid organizations working in malaria prevention refused to fund DDT use, despite its very low cost. Can you imagine trying to solicit donations from charitable Americans to use a banned pesticide? In effect, the ban had stigmatized DDT.

It's a bit revisionist to claim that DDT use might have impacted malaria, but the statistics from the CDC and WHO are telling regardless. Every year, there are nearly half a billion cases of malaria, causing more than one million deaths -- the vast majority of them being children. It doesn't take a calculator to realize that even a very small percentage of half a billion remains an enormous number. In the US, we happily paid the cost to eliminate DDT -- an inconsequential sum for a wealthy nation -- but was there a global cost?

To be continued...

Perspective

2008-05-30T22:20:00.007-06:00

I know this isn't news to anyone, but how we experience life is largely dependent on the angle from which we approach it. What interests me more, however, is my recent realization that the global experience is also subject to the same laws of perspective that apply to the individual. That is to say, given time, distance, or point of view, the accepted reality of any society, culture, or nation may in fact be invalid from an alternate, and usually larger, perspective.

We know this to be true, because some perspectives are flawed from virtually every exterior angle, like cultures that oppress women or participate in genocide. But even a democracy like the US, in spite of our potent ideals and position in the world, is not exempt from these problems, and I think our perspectives can be flawed in much more subtle ways.

There's a high ironic example, I think, in the rapid growth in our consumption of organic foods. The perspective causing this trend, I assume, is the belief that foods grown without chemicals are more healthy for us than those foods grown using pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. On it's face, this seems like a sound viewpoint -- natural is healthy, right? The interesting point to me, however, is that while organic foods may be healthier for those that consume them, they may actually be less healthy from a global perspective.

I realize this probably doesn't make any sense, so let me explain. Consider, for example, that organically grown foods typically have 50% lower yields than traditional crops. In other words, if you have two equal sized fields, the organic one will produce half as much crop as the traditional method. This shouldn't be a surprise, since this is the whole reason that pesticides were developed in the first place. This also explains why organic foods typically cost twice as much or more. This isn't a big deal in a wealthy nation like the United States, where people typically spend less than 10% of their income on food, but what effect might it have on world food prices if even a modest number of farmers produced half as much crop as before? And what's the subsequent effect on people who spend nearly all their income on food?

In general, I wonder if organic foods are grown successfully because the general crop population is rendered disease free through treatment -- much like a child in the US who skips a vaccine, but never catches the disease because 99% of the other children did get the vaccine. Such a child would almost certainly catch the disease if the general populace weren't vaccinated. I have to wonder if the same principle applies to organic crops? Are they at higher risk for wholesale failures, like the potato famine?

Am I saying that organic foods are bad? No. Certainly the resurgence of organic food can teach us that perhaps we are too dependent on fertilizers and pesticides, and there is probably a good middle ground and certain crops that can be grow very well organically. But a global perspective should make us think twice about launching headlong into the organification of everything we eat. After all, the vast majority of the world population is much more worried about having enough to eat than the particulars of how it was grown.

In the end, it's all a matter of perspective. What are the hidden costs of ours?

...to be continued...

What I learned back east...

2008-05-23T16:36:00.004-06:00

It's good to be back -- back from visiting the east coast for work. It was a whirlwind tour, involving 6 different airports, 4 different hotel rooms, and 2 different rental cars (neither of which were PT cruisers!) After a trip like this, there are two things I like to do:

Sleep a ton. Seriously. My clock gets SO messed up when I travel. I'm already a huge night owl, so it doesn't take much for me to slip entirely into the schedule where I sleep all day and work at night. I woke up today at 2 PM.
Reflect on what I learned this trip. That part follows:

What I learned:

Cleaning before you go on a trip is totally worth it. When I got home late last night, it was so wonderful to walk into a clean room with a freshly made bed and no piles of laundry around. I think this is because when you travel, every time you step into your hotel room, that's how it looks... Now, if I could just train my roommates to clean up after themselves...
Connecticut feels like a Norman Rockwell painting -- farmhouses in lush green fields separated by towering but still welcoming forest. I could totally live there. It was quaint and rustic, but still only 2 hours from Boston and 2 hours from NY, and they still had really great high speed internet.
DC traffic has to be the worst traffic EVER. On my way out of town, I decided to drop by the national cathedral (see item 4). I was near the new Nationals stadium just south of the Capitol. Google tells me that the distance I covered was 7.6 miles, but it took the better part of an hour. (And no, this wasn't rush hour or anything, it was 10:00 am!) DC is this hideous mess of one way streets and roundabouts. I'm sure that L'Enfant designed it this way because the all lines made cool shapes on the paper. I'm also convinced that our Senators and Congresspeople arrive in DC full of hope and ready to work, but are completely embittered and partisan after their first week because they spend 50% of their time in a car.
The national cathedral is AMAZING. The 6th largest cathedral in the world, and it took 80 years to complete. The craftsmanship is exquisite. One thing I did find very interesting is the names of the benefactors that were carved into various places around the cathedral. I worry that this might have started the insane sponsorship craze that we see today. Someone we went from, "This alcove dedicated in holiness by Frank and Deborah Sneddlesmith," to "INVESCO field" instead of Mile High stadium. C'mon people. Isn't God going to know that you funded this pillar, or paid for this pew? Why does everyone else need to know too?

Well, I'm tired again all of the sudden. To much thinking about work, I guess.

Humor .. in a galaxy far, far away....

2008-05-13T15:03:00.011-06:00

Can you count how many times Shakespeare, Homer, Austen, and the other great literary minds have their works retold, spoofed, and lampooned? I can't. If it's true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the surest measure of a work's popularity is in its number of imitators.

If you accept this premise, then I have no choice to conclude, despite every line of George Lucas' dialog, that Star Wars is clearly among the pinnacle of film. It's been 30 years since it came out, and in spite of Jar Jar Binx, Hayden Christiansen, and the world's craziest numbering scheme ( 4..5..6...1..2..3), fans are still turning out an absurd amount of material in homage.

And, fortunately, you don't have to be a nerd to enjoy it (though it mights help):

This Soundtrack is OSHA approved.

Paper or Plastic?

I'm just glad Dog the Bounty Hunter hasn't spoofed Boba Fett

Do to think Emporer got his MBA?

Most Interesting Use of a Golf Ball Retriever

Which one of those buttons calls your mom to come pick you up?

Even the Brits get it!

If you can tolerate a little dirty mouthed British comedy, then check this out by Eddie Izzard.

Soledad

2008-05-06T23:05:00.005-06:00

Last night, I ate dinner at the San Diego harbor in a restaurant perched at the end of pier that extended over the sullen pacific. I enjoyed fresh tilapia with mango salsa while watching the crimson sunset coax sail boats back to their slips. Afterwards, I took a leisurely drive up the coast to Mt. Soledad, where I enjoyed an amazing view of the San Diego temple, La Jolla, and the pacific coastline stretching into the inky horizon.

As you might suspect, it was a spectacular evening...perfect in nearly every way...except that I was with 3 other dudes from work.

This, my friends, is the irony of the business trip.

The Buck Stops

2008-05-02T23:07:00.005-06:00

I loathe group projects. Despite the years that have passed since I was in school and forced to work with a smattering of half committed nincompoops, I remember well the pain of the group project. I thought I'd left those those days behind, but I have sadly learned that the group project is alive and well at my work; not because of the people I work with, but because our company frequently has to work with other companies on the same project.

Just this last week, I was in the room as members of three companies sat down to discuss the less than stellar performance of our jointly produced project. It was then that I started to have flashbacks. There was finger pointing, blame shifting, spinning, and every other tactic you'd expect from an under performing group member suddenly being assessed by the professor. We all suspected that one of the companies hadn't done its job (thankfully, not mine) and was circling the wagons to deflect blame -- as the simplest cause for the failure was a component for which they were responsible. But, they insisted that there were software defects, that the installed parts weren't that different form the specifications, and their engineers had done the necessary calculations to prove it on paper.

This went on for days. With our collective reputations on the line, my company painstakingly discounted every possible defect in the system, one at a time, until finally, the delinquent group member had to admit, begrudgingly, that they had NOT done their job, and it WAS THEIR FAULT. At this point, were we relieved that the problem was solved? No! We were frustrated and angry that four days and a dozen people's time were wasted in chasing down nonexistent problems.

Of course, we do deserve some blame for not being more insistent that they own up to their responsibility, but there is only so much you can do do motivate an ass that refuses to budge -- and you end up shouldering the load yourself to make any progress at all. This is what I really hate about the group project, being held hostage by one's own work ethic in the face of uncooperative and lazy group-mates.

Truman was right: The buck stops here. No one is ever served, least of all ourselves, by avoiding responsibility. Not only do we invariably look bad, in the end, we accomplish nothing.

N-Stage Facebook

2008-04-27T01:31:00.006-06:00

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I'm on Facebook. I think it was the post Christmas coma, induced by excessive food and football, that made me susceptible to the virulence of this internet illness. It's been four months since I was infected with Facebook but I fear my case may be terminal. I outline here the progression of my illness as a cautionary tale so that you may avoid a similar fate.

As first, Facebook seems harmless enough -- nothing more than a simple way to re-connect with old friends. It's almost like a game, remembering people that you once knew but were too busy to really keep in touch with. Soon, you're "friends" with all your old college roommates, neighbors, and ward members. You're thrilled! Compiling your acquaintances from the last several years can give you anywhere from 50-100 friends. You had no idea you were so popular ... but apparently you are awesome.

It's this initial realization of e-awesomeness that gets things rolling. Once your Facebook roster is full, the fever becomes hard set, and you start looking through your friends' friends and photos of people you don't know at all. When you run into real people, you ask, "Are you on Facebook?" And then you realized that you're already "friends".

At this point, you realize that you've become septic, because you're actually talking about Facebook in the real world. It even gets so bad that when people ask you how so-and-so is doing, you repeat things that you learned by reading so-and-so's wall -- not by actually talking to them. That's when I realized that I have N-stage Facebook, a chronic condition that can be ameliorated but never cured.

If you can get past the hypnotizing allure of having 100's of "friends", you realize that Facebook is such a strange phenomenon. It boggles the mind that millions and millions of people are documenting their lives in this huge online forum. The sheer weirdness of the thing really hit me during a spate of friend's updating their relationship status' in the last few weeks. People breaking up and getting together all over the place. Am I the only one that thinks this is really weird?

Irony Redux

2008-04-17T22:46:00.006-06:00

The day that I canceled-my-credit-cards-just-hours-before-my-wallet-was-returned had even more ironic surprises for me. That morning, out of concern for the lost wallet and identity theft (or at least having to explain to some credit card company employee that I did not, in fact, buy a go cart, a goat, 20 inch rims for my Honda, or whatever it is that identity thieves buy), I woke up early, earlier than that night's sleep should have allowed. Given my fatigue, I threw a warm can of Dr. Pepper from the pantry into the freezer's ice bin. The goal was rapid cooling, so that when I left for work, the can would be prepped for the mid-commute consumption. I was well aware of the potential consequences.

In case you have never frozen your favorite canned and carbonated beverage, let me explain the physics* involved. First Fact: Water is magic. It expands when it freezes. This expansion is what makes ice float. Second Fact: The main ingredient of any soft drink is water. Q.E.D: when you freeze a can of soda, the can will expand. Since the contents are already under the pressure of carbonation...viola, the can may well explode in an icy inferno.

I know this. I've done this. I've gleefully watched it happen to the unsuspecting. I specifically told myself, when I put the can in the freezer, that I needed to remove it before I left for work, or the consequences would be dire.

Imagine my shock and self loathing, then, when I was greeted with the following site when I returned home that night:

Yes, gentle reader. I am an idiot. What you see is indeed frozen Dr. Pepper sprayed everywhere. And I mean EVERY-WHERE: in the gears of the ice maker, all over the frozen vegetables, and the ice cream in the door. As you can see, the poor ice maker took the brunt of it.

And this is what happened to the can:

To be honest, the whole situation was so hilarious that I couldn't even be mad, even though it took probably half an hour to chisel frozen soft drink from my freezer walls. Why wasn't I mad? First: I knew better, and remembered that I knew better, but forgot anyway. And second, how can you be mad at physics? The outcome was inevitable. It's like being mad at gravity. There's no point. And, look at what happened to the can! Isn't that COOL?

*Yes, I oversimplified. If you can endure some nerdiness, here's some thought into exactly what happened with the can.

WARNING: SCIENCE FOLLOWS

At first, I was surprised that the can exploded quite so violently and stuck to the walls. I mean, if you freeze a bottle of water, it doesn't explode, it just distends. The key, I think, lies in the combination of sweeteners and carbonation in the soda. The sweeteners lower the freezing point of the water, just like anti-freeze. This means that the can must cool below 32 degrees before much expansion will occur. Most freezers are at 0 F or colder, so no big deal there. What this means, though, is that the liquid is super cold when the can ruptures. When the can finally does rupture from expansion, the carbon dioxide that is dissolved in the water (the carbonation) quickly "boils" out of the water. The CO2 is very anxious to escape because of the additional pressure of expansion. It is this rapid release of gas that sprays the soda everywhere. Finally, as the C02 evaporates, it takes energy with it, leaving the soda even colder than it was in the can. This means that the soda hits the freezer walls as a nearly frozen slush, explaining the artful and rock hard Dr. Pepper all over the freezer.

Irony

2008-04-13T20:19:00.006-06:00

Ever have a string of bad luck? You know, those times when the fates combine and life just gets weird? Now, I'm not talking about truly bad stuff -- that kind of stuff is just hard. What I'm talking about are the random things that are equal parts irritant and divine humor.

My latest bought started last Tuesday at work. Being last to leave, it was up to me to lock up. I had just armed the door when I realized that my wallet was still on the desk. The alarm system gives you a minute from the time its armed until the door needs to be locked. For that minute, it beeps incessantly like a movie bomb, which really added to the suspense as I rushed back to get the wallet. But I made it! Door locked and wallet retrieved, all without the security guards dispatched.

Several hours later though, I couldn't find the wallet I'd pseudo-heroically retrieved. I didn't think much of it, since wallets usually go AWOL for a few hours at a time, all the time. But Wednesday morning, wallet still missing, I began to wonder if I had imagined the scene from the day before. At work, I still couldn't find the wallet, and after two hours of searching, I decided to face facts that somewhere in the 10 feet from the door and the car, I'd lost it. Resigning myself to fate, I made the call to cancel my cards, and realized that for the next 3 to 5 days, I'd be trying to survive without plastic.

On the phone with the banks, I had this surreal sense that my wallet would be returned only if I canceled my cards. You may think I'm a pessimist, but I'd prefer to think that I have a highly developed sense of irony. Well, my ironic sense was completed vindicated when, less than two hours later, some random guy walked in off the street with my wallet. Contents completely intact.

Oh well, such is life. I guess I'll have to remember how to write a check.

A question to my readers. Should I have given some cash or other reward to the person that returned my wallet? What would you have done?

Why I Live Here

2008-04-13T17:04:00.003-06:00

I sometimes wonder why I live in Utah. There are lots of things I don't really like about it: extreme conservatism, poor education funding, night life that shuts down at 10:00, gun nuts, urban sprawl, being part of the religious majority which seems at times to abuse its power, and, well, Utah county in general.

But then, there are times when I remember why it is that I do live here. Yesterday was one of those days. Even though the high was going to be in the 60s, I woke up at 7:00, left at 8:00, and by 9:00 was snowboarding on that famous Utah powder. It was phenomenal -- a cloudless sky, no lift lines, and well groomed runs. And just two days before, on April 10th, I enjoyed one of the BEST powder days all season (and there have been a LOT of good ones this year.)

I love to live in a place that has real seasons, instead of just varying degrees of rain and heat. Partially, I think it comes from growing up in Idaho, where the culture is, at times, still very tied to the land and farming. Don't get me wrong, I didn't grow up on a farm, I grew up in a suburb, but I went to high school with the children of farmers. My friends took a week off of school in the fall for the potato harvest and moved irrigation pipe in the summer. Life for them is inextricably tied to the seasons. Spring for planting, summer for growing, fall for harvest, and winter, well, winter is for snow.

Without the snow, everything else grinds to a halt. At church, we fasted for snow and talked solemnly about the prospect of a wet winter. And I think that's why I tolerate winter, because it's essential. Though I dislike the short days, long nights, and cold as much as anyone, I have to appreciate it. And, if winter really is so important, then I might as well enjoy it.

The Cleaning ... uh .... Person

2008-04-04T00:45:00.006-06:00

I work in an office of all men. We are all heterosexual, but we're also well mannered. It's not at all like scout camp. There's no farting, scratching, belching, or jokes about such. We do have a problem, though. We can't keep a cleaning lady for more than a month. Oh, excuse me ... cleaning person. (It just so happens that all our janitorial services have been provided by women.)

We're nice to the cleaning lady. We don't make big messes, we say hi, and we don't make outrageous demands at all. The worse thing she'd ever have to clean up is the chili that someone exploded all over the microwave (wasn't me!) That's why I don't understand why we're on our third cleaning lady in as many months.

The last time I recall a similar track record in driving people away would be the Sunday School instructors of my youth. In that case, however, I completely understand why we went through all those instructors. In fact, I'd say that one of our goals WAS to drive away the teacher. The collective efforts of four or five 12 year old boys at misbehavior would overwhelm Mother Theresa herself. Summarily deposited at a classroom by our parents, we thought we were prisoners of war. The instructors probably thought the same.

The key to most Sunday School insurgency was to "go to the bathroom":

A twelve year old can play outside for hours without any personal evacuations, but sit them down in front of a chalkboard with scripture references, and either his bladder will shrink to the size of a peanut, or he'll say he thirsts like man trapped in the Sahara for weeks. If you make the mistake of letting him out of the classroom, chaos may well ensue. His friends will clamor for similar release, which he'll try to facilitate by ringing the "5 minutes remaining" bell. If this fails, don't be surprised if he runs outside, darting past the window to the delight of his still incarcerated mates. If caught, he'll convince you to detour past the drinking fountain. Don't fall for this trap, his goal is to return to the classroom -- fully laden with cheeks full of water, ammunition for his next attempt at chaos.

I could go on, but sufficeth to say we were terrible. Don't worry, I've no doubt that I'll get my chance to teach Sunday School someday, and justice will be served. I just wonder what we did make the cleaning lady abandon us every few weeks.

Yad Vashem

2008-03-29T03:21:00.011-06:00

Something has ruminated inside me since my return from Washington DC. It has been hard to capture into words. Thinking back over the many patriotic places I visited during that week, my memories have been accompanied by a faint sense of discomfort and unease. I think I finally understand why.

Our nation's capitol is a place of memorials and museums. From Lincoln's marble seat to Washington's towering obelisk and from the Unknowns' tomb to the eternal flame of the Kennedys, every step you take is steeped in history and patriotism. You ponder heavily the weight of that ultimate sacrifice and wonder what it truly means to be a hero.

With these sentiments, it's easy to leave Washington bathed in the solemn glow of nationalistic pride, but if you are paying attention, you are also confronted with the fallibility of our patriots. Take President Washington as an example: though is said to have abhorred slavery, it was only after his death and in the execution of his will that they were set free. Perhaps this does little to dim the star of a man who tirelessly and selflessly served a fledgling nation, but it does remind us that our heroes are human.

Beyond the disquieting revelations of individual flaws, there are times when the monuments as a whole seem strangely hollow. Though each exists to honor sacrifice, they also serve as an indictment and quiet rebuke of our collective inability to realize the dreams of the fallen. In no place is this indictment more powerful than the United States Holocaust Memorial.

The holocaust memorial, in contrast to the other memorials, exists because of what was not done. The museum exists because we failed -- all of humanity failed -- the Jews, the gypsies, the Poles, the infirm, and countless others under the Nazi regime. It was an atrocity of unspeakable magnitude; so terrible, in fact, that some might even deny it's occurrence. Eisenhower, then leader of the US liberating forces, said:

"The things I saw beggar description...the visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda."

Similiar to Eisenhower sentiments, I found it hard to walk through the holocaust museum, but you feel like you must, that you owe it to the victims to remember. And with that remembering, to prevent it from ever happening again.

Through four stark floors of history and artifacts, you watch the retelling of the rise of the Nazis to power and the implementation of Hitler's Final Solution. There were hundreds of us in that exhibit, and never have I seen such a large and diverse group of people act so reverently. Doubtless, most of us were shocked, horrified, and deeply saddened. I wondered, how could we have failed so egregiously at protecting our fellow man? For me, this feeling reached its silent crescendo in the "shoe room" -- which contains nothing but an enormous, ghostly pile of empty shoes. There are hundred and hundreds of them -- each worn by a victim of the holocaust. Here, the gravity of the atrocity reaches full force, leaving you with nothing but somber solemnity.

And yet, just when you are so heavily burdened by the darkness, yearning for even the tiniest bit of redemption for humankind, you come to Yad Vashem, a glimmer of hope in a memorial of suffering and sadness. Yad Vashem is the remembrance authority dedicated not only to the many victims of the Shoah, but also to the few who risked standing up to the Nazi regime and saved a life. They are called the "Righteous Among the Nations" -- those people that helped to save a Jew (many saved hundreds) from the holocaust. Their names are inscribed on a white wall, some 5 feet tall and 15 feet long. These names serve as flicker of humanity; proof that even in the darkest of circumstance and risking the harshest of penalties, some people will do the right thing.

The names are organized by country. I wondered if my family name might be on that wall; my grandparents had survived the Nazi occupation of Holland. So, I traced along the wall, passing Belgium, Britain, Denmark ... and kept looking, looking, looking, seeing names but no country marker. I walked around the back of the wall to see more names but no country. Confused, I walked back around and realized that I wasn't finding the country marker because ALL the names in that section were from the Netherlands. Hundreds and hundreds of names -- names that saved someone's shoes from that heart wrenching collection.

And though still heavy from the ghostly images of liberated concentration camps, emaciated bodies and burned corpses, my heart lifted to see that so many people, from this one very tiny nation, had tried and risked so much to make a difference. And though their contribution might have been small compared to the whole that was lost, I've no doubt that it made all the difference to those that were saved.

And yes, the family name is on the wall. Perhaps we're relatives. Even if we're not, I hope that I would have taken the same risks and made the same sacrifice. The message of the holocaust museum should always resonate with people everywhere. Never Again.

Don't Worry About a Thing...

2008-03-24T23:38:00.006-06:00

What do you listen to when you're feeling down?

Here's my list:

Bob Marley - Three Little Birds
Billy Joel - You're Only Human (Second Wind)
Billy Joel - And So It Goes
Iz - Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Yo Yo Ma - Bach's Suite 1, Prelude
Coldplay - Yellow
Dashboard Confessional - Hand's Down
The Used - Blue and Yellow
Eric Clapton - Layla (unplugged)
Green Day - Good Riddance
Jack Johnson - Flake
Legiao Urbana - Eduardo e Monica
Pearl Jam - Yellow Ledbedder
Red Hot Chili Pepper - Under the Bridge
Staind - So Far Away
Sublime - Santeria

You'll notice that they're not really bubbly upbeat dongs. Those never work for me. They just seem to trivialize the reality of life. Instead, I think you have to let yourself go a little and accept the sadness/loneliness/melancholy/whatever for what it really is. And somehow, once you've let yourself feel bad for a moment or two, you realize that it really wasn't as bad as you thought after all, and you'll be okay.

The Right Stuff

2008-03-18T20:59:00.009-06:00

I've always been fascinated by aviation. There's something about the combination of technology, science, and extreme velocity that is enamoring. Take, for example, the SR-71 in the picture below. Built more than 40 years ago, it was designed to fly in excess of Mach 3 (that's three times the speed of sound) and more than 15 miles up (twice that of your average passenger jet.) There were more than 4000 recorded attempts to shoot this aircraft down, and what did the pilot do to avoid the missile? He simply pushed the throttle all the way forward to outrun it. This plane earned a speed record by flying from Los Angeles to New York in 68 minutes. How is that not unbelievable cool??

Last week, I saw the actual SR-71 that set the record. It's at the Air and Space Museum near Dulles in Washinton DC. I was there with the family, and I'm sure I was boring them to death with all the minute details that I find so fascinating. (Like the fact that the aircraft leaked fuel while on the ground...)

What's even more amazing about the SR-71 and every modern aircraft is that it has been only about 100 years since the Wright brothers made their first flights. Since then, every single challenge to flight has been summarily conquered through persistence and innovation. We now fly faster, farther, and higher than people ever thought possible. The amazing growth of flight is a towering testament to the power of unbridled human ingenuity.

When you contrast this, the storied history of flight, with the current state of commercial aviation, the mediocrity of the airline travel becomes readily apparent. I had a lot of time to think about it as I waited and waited and waited in Reagan National airport yesterday. I also thought about it as I literally ran through the cavernous Minneapolis airport so as to not miss my connection to SLC.

What's the deal? We can put men on the moon and fly across the globe in hours, but we can't get a single 757 to the airport on time. Nor can we make coach seats wide enough so that I don't have to touch knees and elbows with the guy next to me. And why, oh why, can't I have a WHOLE can of soda? And who thought of the "hub?" What a terrible idea. It may work for buses and packages, but not for people traveling cross country. Buses are a lot cheaper than planes, so you can have a lot of them to compensate for schedule problems, and well, people are not packages, people actually complain when they are left overnight in some intermediate location.

And I could go on, as could most traveler. I know I'm not the first to complain about air travel, nor will I be the last. It just makes me sad that something as miraculous and majestic as flight has been reduced to ferrying grumpy people around the country. It's no wonder that the smaller innovative airlines are the only ones really doing well in this market. The big guys seem to be circling the wagons, trying to merge and cut costs and pack more people into planes, but every cost cutting and money saving initiative seems to only further ruin the experience.

Frankly, I'm to the point were I'm willing to choose a marginally more expensive flight if I know that the service is going to be better. And, if there are others like me, then the major airlines better be quaking in their boots. Until they wake up, I'm going to keep dreaming of flying cross country in my SR-71.

Learned from the 7th Row

2008-03-09T15:48:00.004-06:00

Things learned from the 7th row:

My life would be unbelievably awesome if I had two blonde backup singers.
If you have so much back fat that it hits my knees when you sit down in the row in front of me, you could have what some might consider to be a "weight problem."
NASA should investigate the super-cohesive properties of beer in plastic cups. I don't understand how clearly inebriated people can carry overfilled glasses to their seats without spilling a drop.
No one looks good in a tube top. There are no exceptions to this rule. Anyone you think might be attractive in a tube top will instantly become a skank upon it's application.
I don't see a problem with you taking your teenage daughter to a concert; in fact, it could be a good way to connect. However, you should definitely NOT try to out-dress her.
No, the blue-ish glow from your cell phone is not as cool as an actual lighter.
I love it when a band refrains from using the tired old lines : "You guys are the best crowd all tour" and that "We love coming to [wherever]" We know that touring is hard, and we're thrilled you stopped by.
It's awesome when band-mates are clearly enjoying their own show. It's a great to see the grins, laughing, and joking around on stage. Everyone should enjoy their work.

Avoidance

2008-03-02T19:37:00.006-07:00

The more I grow and learn, the more difficulty I have in escaping the notion that we are little more than a human wrapper over a largely animal interior. Try as hard as we might to escape our base selves, that animal core is inevitably expressed at the most inopportune times. The example that has plagued my mind this week is in our attempts at relationships and the communication that they require.

I arrived at this thought after a friend made the exasperated comment about a semi-relationship: "Why can't we just tell it like it is.?" My canned (and hilarious, I thought) response was, "That's the rule. You can't tell it like it is. That would make it too easy."

Thought patently fatalistic, my trite response made me think genuinely about why it is that we're so fixedly self-destructive in relationships and communication sometimes. The most basic answer, I think, is that the animal in us avoiding pain. Sometimes its our own, and sometimes it is to avoid causing pain to others, which would in turn result in our own pain (called guilt.)

Pain avoidance is an important survival mechanism. Fearing physical pain is both healthy and natural. It is largely this fear that has kept me alive through 5 years of snowboarding, since heaving a body like mine into the air inevitable results in pain. The question though, is: how does fear of pain apply to our emotional lives? In this, is it counterproductive?

We remain in unhealthy relationships until we can no longer stand it. We close ourselves off to avoid having trust violated. We steer clear of making the first move to avoid rejection. We shun talking about our relationships to avoid unearthing grievances. We tolerate unrequited love and ambiguous friendships to avoid validating our fears that our would-be significant other does not, in fact, feel the same way we do.

In general, we somehow we convince ourselves that not being straightforward is better, that it softens the blow, lessens the shock, and that people can't handle the truth. We're programmed to avoid pain, to avoid causing pain to others, and to fear pain in general, and so this fear colors our relationships and attempts at communication. We think it's better that way, but only in hindsight do we realize that we were wrong; that we've either prolonged the inevitable or missed an opportunity.

The truth is that avoiding pain now only makes it deeper and more potent later. So why do we consistently trade some pain now for more pain later? I think it's the animal in us being blastedly shortsighted. To an animal, all pain is equally bad, regardless of source or duration. But being human teaches us that (1) some pain is worse than others, (2) all pain fades eventually, and (3) emotional pain doesn't have to leave scars like physical pain might.

If we could remember these things the next time we feel relationship anxiety swell within our chest, how much healthy and whole would we be? ... Here's a toast to being human.

Nothing is certain but

2008-02-24T23:27:00.001-07:00

I've been doing taxes for a little over a decade now. In doing so, I'm always torn between my desire to be frugal (cheap) and a fear of the IRS. When my taxes were uncomplicated (i.e., I had one part time job and was my parents dependent), I could handle a 1040EZ myself and even filed over the phone for a few years. But since I've moved out on my own, gotten a real job, and bought a house, I began to seriously doubt my ability get all the details right, and yet I also balked at the thought of paying someone a hundred bucks to do it for me, since it didn't seem quite that complicated.

The result? I have filed my taxes online for the last several years. Online, I think you get the best mix of low-cost, ease of use, and accuracy. (This year, I filed my Federal and state taxes online $25 dollars in about two hours.) What's more, you get your tax return in less than 2 weeks, and the web-site you use to file your taxes will retain your records from year to year, greatly simplifying next year's return.

I'm not going to tell you which site I use, since I don't want this to be a big ad, but I will say it is one of the top two or three tax preparers in the country. I have been quite pleased, and I would imagine that the other top companies have websites that are just as easy to use.

A few other tax time tips:

File for free! If your adjusted gross income is less than 54,000 dollars, then you are entitled to file over the internet for FREE! Check out the IRS website for details: http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00.html.
If you file in Utah and don't itemize, there is NO NEED to pay extra money to e-file your state tax return. Utah already has a very easy to use website at https://secure.utah.gov/taxexpress/taxexpressweb. All you have to do is take 2 numbers from your federal tax return, fill them in on the Utah Tax website, and then you can easily file your taxes and get your return electronically deposited in just a few days.
Despite what you may think, you DO NOT want a huge tax return in April. If you have a huge tax return, that means that your company has been withholding a lot more of your earnings than are needed. This frequently happens to those that make large charitable contributions (like Church members) or first time home buyers (mortgage interest is a deduction) . The way to reduce your withholding is to file a new W-4 with your employer. The IRS has a convenient calculator that you can use to fill out a W-4 that will safely allow you to minimize your federal tax withholding. The calculator takes into account charitable contributions you plan on making, interest you'll pay on your house, 401k contributions, how much you're going to earn for the rest of the year, and how much in taxes you've already paid.
Know when to use a professional. If you own your own business, have lots of deductible expenses, inherited a large amount of money, or do a lot of investing, taxes can get very complicated very fast, and a professional is most certainly worth the money. My parents filed their own taxes for years, and the very first year they went to an accountant, they saved several thousand dollars; not just for the current year, but for previous years as well.
Plan for future taxes. Your tax liability will always be changing, but you can make decisions now to reduce your tax liability in the future. For example, if you're single with a high paying job, then you might consider contributing heavily to pre-tax retirement accounts, or buying a home instead of renting -- as these will effectively reduce your taxable income.

I suppose I should close this post with the obligatory quote about death and taxes, but I'll refrain.

Anti-Valentines

2008-02-20T11:17:00.004-07:00

I thought these Valetines posted on Woot.com last week were hilarious! I even handed them out at a ward activity. They were actually a huge hit! Only one person accused me of being bitter. Since when is tongue-in-cheek being bitter?

People are like...

2008-02-19T22:59:00.004-07:00

People are like:

ants. We spend most of our lives making piles of things, building places to keep our piles, and then moving those piles around. Example: We make piles of dirty laundry. We move the piles downstairs to wash them. When clean, we pile the folded clothes back into the dresser. When our piles get to big for the house, we get a bigger house.
hamsters. Put us on a wheel, and we'll run for hours, going absolutely nowhere, and for no apparent reason. We even drink out of plastic water bottles, though they are rarely affixed the side of gym by old bread bag twist ties.
dogs. We look like we're listening intently, but the moment you turn your back, we'll probably go do the exact opposite of what you told us to do. We also chase our tails and love people who might be mean to us.
cats. We love to be petted when it suits us, but pretty much want to be left alone the rest of the time. We tolerate your presence only because you feed us.
goats. We'll eat anything.
pigeons. Scatter around an incentive, and we'll flock together in a chaotic frenzy. When it's all over, we don't care where the poop lands.

Reddyville

2008-02-10T20:26:00.001-07:00

This house above belonged to my great great grandfather. (Specifically: my mother's father's mother's father.) He was a dry farmer in southeast Idaho. My grandpa spent his childhood summers at this house. Every year, soon after Salt Lake schools let out, grandpa's dad would take the whole family up, and they would spend the summer living there on the farm.

It's hard to imagine what it looked like back in those days. Grandpa reports that It was probably 20 feet by 30 feet altogether. They stayed up in the attic, which was divided into two rooms by blankets hung from a line: boys on one side, girls on the other. They played in the creek, despite the admonitions of their aunt. They searched for lost cows and occasionally milked some. They rode the plow team with long willow switches at the ready to keep the team working together.

Sounds idyllic, doesn't it? Though I dearly love my modern amenities: plumbing, electricity, internet, a big part of me yearns to have spent my summers on a farm like that.

The very real irony for me is that I've driven past this house hundreds and hundreds of times, barely cognizant of its existence. My extended family mostly resides in Salt Lake, while I grew up and consider myself from southeast Idaho. Every single time I've made the trip from Idaho to Salt Lake and back (and in my adult years, the reverse trip), I've passed that house at 75 miles an hour without any thought.

I suppose that intellectually I was aware of its presence, as my mom told me about it on more than one trip while I was engrossed in my GameBoy or some book. It wasn't until I actually sat down with Grandpa and saw this picture that I really thought about the connection of this land to my own life. Driving past it now, you'd think it was unremarkable; the farmland lies fallow and desolate along perhaps the straightest 30 mile section of interstate you've ever seen. And yet, this very land kept my grandpa entertained for months on end.

You can never overestimate the value of knowing where you come from.

Phone ... Bill?

2008-02-05T23:04:00.001-07:00

When I first moved into my new house back in June, I did my best to anticipate all the little things that would need to be taken care of. I filed change of address forms, updated my driver's license, and made sure that the power and gas utilities were changed to my name.

It was no small surprise, then, that while I was traveling on business in California that I received a phone call from my panicked roommate. There was a notice on the door that the water was going to be shut off for the unpaid water bill. I had assumed, erroneously, it turned out, that the city would just send me a bill, at which point I would pay it and go on my merry way. Not so...

Trying to make sure that this most essential of utilities would not be deactivated, I called city hall:

Me: "I got a notice that you're going to shut off my water."

Lady: (after some clicking on a keyboard) "Yes, we're going to shut it off on Friday if you don't pay the outstanding bill before then."

Me: "I had no idea I had an outstanding bill. You haven't sent me anything."

Lady: "You don't get a bill until you come in and sign up."

Me: "Can't you send the bill to the house? You guys obviously know where I live."

Lady: (simply) "That's not how it works."

Me: (honestly perplexed) "Okay... If you'd like, I can fax or e-mail you the sign up form and pay the bill over the phone."

Lady: "Um... I don't think we can do that."

Me: "Well, I'm in California right now for work. I can't be there until Tuesday."

Lady: "But, we're going to shut off the water on Friday if you don't pay it."

Me: "Can you just NOT shut off my water until I can get there to pay it?"

Lady: (impatiently) "... you're using water that no one is paying for..."

Me: "I understand that. I'm not trying to steal the water, I just don't know how this works. I'm more than happy to pay the bill right now. Do you take VISA?"

Lady: "Uh, we only take checks."

Me: "Then you're going to have to wait until Tuesday. Until then, can you tell your water guy to NOT shut off the water?"

...

Finally, she relents and decides to leave the water on. She does, however, take my name over the phone. On Tuesday, I go in, sign the form, pay a deposit, the outstanding bill, and fully legitimize my use of the city's water. At least, I thought I had everything legit until I got my first bill. The name on my first bill? "Don Viffer."

Appetite for Destruction

2008-01-27T19:29:00.000-07:00

Winter sports seem particular insane to me. Maybe it's because our minds are addled by the lack of sunlight, but somehow we become convinced that snow is actually a soft and forgiving substance, forgetting the rocks, trees and general hardness of the underlying surface. Just ask the freestyle skier who just head-planted on national television exactly how soft the snow is.

We decide to hurl ourselves down a steep incline on some device that serves to reduce the life preserving friction that normally exists between man and mountain. At least in the case of skiing and snowboarding, we have some control over the sliding that necessarily ensues, but not so in sledding. Of course, none of this would be a problem, if it weren't for gravity.

Let me illustrate.

Before: and After:

Or, in a similar fashion:

Normally I refrain from sledding, because I don't want to get hurt in the middle of snowboard season. I relented this time, and I must say that there's something particularly wonderful about screaming your way down a mountain with reckless abandon.

The coupe de drace, though, wasn't captured on film -- and a good thing, too because I'd never live it down. On the day's fastest sled, I took a running start and jetted down the white surface. I deftly avoided the bigger bumps that would threaten to separate me from the sled. (Odd, isn't it, that we clutch so tightly onto the thing that is responsible for our rapid descent?)

I sailed past my friends at the base of the hill with surprising momentum. It was then that I noticed the four wheeler parked directly in my path. Thinking that I'd slow down now that I was on the flat, I contentedly watched the driver taking pictures of his kids. Totally unaware of my speed, I closed the gap much fast than I anticipated. I rolled off to the side, but much, much too late. My shoulder collided with the front left tire of the ATV with more force than I care to remember. It was then that the father pulled his face from the camera's viewfinder, looked down at me sprawled and moaning, and said, "Oh! ... I thought I felt it move."

The Single Male and His Girl "Friends"

2008-01-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

In this post, I want to give any female readers out there a little insight into the male mind: As a general rule (and it makes me sad to say it) guys do not have “girl” friends. There is almost always some ulterior motive to friend-like behaviors exhibited by a single male.

Itemized and numbered according to frequency of occurrence, these motives are:

He wants to date you.
He wants to date your roommate, friend, or sister.
He wants you to help him find people to date.
He won’t ever want to date you seriously, but knows you’ll make a good backup date and help him understand the girls that he does date.

You may think I’m oversimplifying, but men really are simple creatures. The next question becomes, why are men this way? Well, to put it simply, girls make complicated friends. When two guys are together, they can scratch, grunt, play video games, watch excessive amounts of football, talk very little, and things are great. These activities are rarely sufficient for the fairer sex, not to mention that they really frown on any humor in the “bodily function” genre, which is a staple of typical male to male friendship interaction.

If having a female friend is going to stifle the male’s true nature, there must be some ancillary benefit for him to want to be friends. Most often, this is some form of dating. I figure that men have adopted this passive aggressive tactic because it can significantly reduce the fear of rejection. So, don’t be surprised when your “friend” suddenly starts hitting on you, or seems disconcertingly interested in your new roommate, or simply falls of the face of the earth. All of these seemingly odd behaviors fall neatly under the umbrella of the single male’s inability to simply be friends with a girl.

Okay, so know that we all have another reason to hate my gender, let me say that I’m trying to escape this paradigm. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that keeping only male company would lead to my complete social de-evolution. And not surprisingly, keeping female friends seems to be much more suitable training for relationships than perpetually hanging out with the guys. That said, it still takes extraordinary effort for the typical single male to be genuine friends with a female, though I have found it to be quite worthwhile. (But I still reserve the right to ask you out.)

Things that scare me...

2008-01-17T00:05:00.000-07:00

As a male in his late 20s, few things scare me anymore. My capacity for rational thought has made it possible for me to watch pretty much any scary movie, eat medium-rare steaks, and drive 80 mph on the Utah interstate, all without being paralyzed with fear. There are a few things, however, that still scare me. Some of them are more rational than others.

Things that frighten me:

Cheese in a can. Especially disconcerting if mixed with aerosol propellant. Note that I eat it anyway.
Sitting next to someone with a 6 month old child on a cross country flight.
The "people" in computer animated cartoons. For some reason, they always look like Chucky to me.
Wal-mart greeters: if this is what happens to the elders of our society, then we all have reason to be concerned.
Catching the heel edge of my snowboard while traveling at high speed. The feeling you experience as your body's momentum whips the back of your head into the mountain is not soon forgotten.
Huckabee or Clinton as president.
Being alone.

Weird Science

2008-01-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

For some time now, there have been repeated attempts to blur the line between religion and science in public schools by suggesting that Creationism and Intelligent Design (CID) are philosophies that should be taught in science courses. Though I have no personal qualms with either of these philosophies (and, in fact, agree with parts of them), the thought of them being passed off as legitimate science terrifies me.

As I have thought about the science that I have studied and the historical context under which scientific discoveries were made, I have reached the conclusion that true science must satisfy the following Laws:

The Law of Observation:

True science is based off of observation, or, in other words, the process of doing experiments and collecting quantifiable data. Every attempt is made to remove bias from this process so that a scientist elsewhere can repeat the experiments and obtain the same data. One might say that this is the greatest challenge in all of science: to isolate and remove bias.

Where is the experiment, data collection, and bias removal in Creationism? Personally, I can look at a tree and say, "I see God's hand in this tree," but this is not a valid scientific observation. Not only is it unquantifiable, but someone with a different bias may make a different observation that is entirely valid from their perspective. In science, an accounting must be made of every observation -- and it is actually the differing observations that tend to lead us to the greatest discoveries. Creationism discounts these contrary observations automatically based on the religiosity of the observer.

The Law of Utiltity:

Science is useful. The laws and theories produced by science provide us with increased understanding of the world around us. This additional understanding may serve to further the pursuit of the science in question, but also frequently leads to the development of technologies or predictive models to benefit humanity.

The philosophy of Creationism supplies no useful observations about the world that apply outside of their religious contexts. If we simply assume that things are "created that way", then what conclusions or predictions can we attempt to make about the physical world? In contrast, the theory of evolution helps us to understand how organisms adapt to their changing environment. How does Creationism help me to make predictions of the world around me?

The Law of Supersession:

The most basic tenet of scientific theories is the understanding that the theory represents our best understanding at the current time. A theory may be superseded by another, more complete theory. The history of physics is a perfect example. We started with Newtonian mechanics, which were eclipsed by relativity, which is, as we speak, being augmented by quantum mechanics and string theory.

The problem with Creationism is that it precludes the possibility that any additional data could change the theory because virtually everything is evidence of Deity's involvement. If you contrast this with even the most robust and well tested theories of science, one will find that EVERY scientific theory is open to review and adaptation as more experiments are performed and more data is collected.

The bottom line:

Creationism is not science and simply shouldn't be taught in school as though it were. The debate surrounding Creationism, though, is a lively and relevant one, so I do think it should be included wherever possible in government, history, and whatever classes it might come up.

The thing that must also be remembered is that science is amoral. Science in no way suggests what we should do, or whether one thing is right and another wrong; it merely provides data and predictions for which we have the responsibility of interpreting and acting upon. This is where the religious principles at the core of Creationism and Intelligent Design come into focus. Coupling accurate scientific observations with the moral tenets of religion can guide us to make decisions that are satisfying to both the soul and mind. Pretending that these philosophies are science does nothing to strengthen them, and may in fact, sully their potency.

Letter to the Editor

2008-01-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite rituals when I visit the family homestead is to peruse the unintentionally quaint and humorous local paper. The funniest part is frequently the Opinion page, which is filled with "letters to the editor". These are almost always some disjointed rant about religion in government/school (both for and against), liberals (always against), gun control (similarly always against), unruly livestock, and how all these things are causing the inexorable decay of western civilization and democracy.

One letter I read championed the cause of teaching creationism alongside evolution in school. And while the letter itself was sufficiently "out-there" to give me a chuckle, the fact that the letter was written at all gave me significant pause. I wondered, "Why are we having this debate at all? It's been 500 years since Galileo and 80 years since the Scopes trial. Why are some of the religious still threatened by science? Haven't we learned what science really is?"

I guess not.

Simply put, creationism is not science. The explanation of why I firmly believe this is more than I want to write this evening, but the words are currently forming themselves in my head. For now, let it suffice to say that I DO believe in creationism and intelligent design, but I still feel it has no place in a science class. Furthermore, as a religious person, I see no dichotomy in accepting scientific theory while simultaneously believing in a Higher Power.

The Vomit Comet

2008-01-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

There we were, pulled over on the side of I-15 on that clear and starry Idaho night, (it really was an amazing view), with spew everywhere and on everything. Fortunately, it was so frigidly cold that my nose utterly froze, making it possible for me to suppress my gag reflex as we went about the unfortunate business of cleaning my car. You'd think I'd be more bothered by this whole thing, but, to be honest, I had nothing but sympathy for my sister. There are few things worse than throwing up. Combine that with throwing up in an enclosed space, all over your clothes/brother's car, when you're supposed to be on plane in 4 hours, and you easily have the trifecta of vomiting.

It's times like these that I am simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the digestive processes (or lack thereof) of the human body as well as the sheer volume of your average stomach. How is it that certain foods (hot dogs, anyone?) can exit the stomach looking pretty much the same as when they entered? In this case, it was garden salad and thousand island dressing. The thing is, I was sitting next to my sister when she ate that salad six hours earlier. It was a very small salad, but it had easily tripled in volume. I'm also pretty sure that carrots are indigestible.

In the end, it cleaned up moderately well. (Note to self, keep paper towels in car at ALL TIMES.) The rest of the ride home was a little awkward/smelly, as she sat in the back while I sat next to the thousand island dressing stain. I tried to cover up the smell with a vanilla tree I had stashed in the glove box, but resultant odor was only a marginal improvement. Through a little cajoling and three calls to Delta, she was able to get her flight changed. So, she got to crash at my house and get a good night's rest instead of jetting across the country in what would have certainly been the most uncomfortable flight in history as the stomach flu made it's inevitable transition into two-ended intestinal torture.

In the end, I'm glad I was there. Had she been alone, or gotten sick on the plane, that would have been much worse. And as for the car, I let the guys at the detail shop take care of my fry sauce colored seat. Let's just say that the seat and mats were still wonderfully wet and pungent when I delivered the car to them the next day.

New Years

2008-01-02T23:03:00.000-07:00

The transition from 2007-2008 is one that will go down in infamy. I'm moderately surprised by this; New Years is traditionally one of the most lackluster holidays. Even holidays that offer zero vacation time (like Halloween) easily trump New Years. In general, I wonder if instead of comparing New Years to Christmas or Thanksgiving, we should compare it to something like Arbor Day to keep our expectations more realistic. At least then you'd be able to say, "Yeah, that was a great New Years -- almost as good as the Flag Day of '99."

But, let's face it, the best New Years you ever celebrated wasn't that much better than the worst New Years you've celebrated. When you're young, you were so excited to stay up late and eat junk food that you tired yourself out well before the ball dropped. And when you get old, you're so tired that you celebrate New Years in EST even though you live in MST. And of course, let us not forget that News Years is second only to birthdays in marking the relentless march of time, just without the presents.

So, how do you celebrate a day such as this? Do you go to a dance? Ick. To a party? How passé. If you do go to these places, you'll inevitable find that one third of the people there are hooked up and anticipating that triumphant New Years kiss; the other third are looking for someone (anyone) for that New Years kiss; and the other third don't know why they are there (in the case of a Mormon party), or just realized that they were only invited to be designated drivers.

That's why I celebrate with the family every year. They've never let me down. Dad slices up the Pepperidge farm beef stick from his stocking, mom makes a veggie tray with enough olives to cover our fingertips, and the sparkling cider flows freely, while we bicker our way through the dice game, Settler's of Catan, Uno, and Scrabble.

This year, however, was a little different. I arrived home the day before New Year's Eve to find the family in various stages of illness. A virulent stomach flu was ravaging the clan. Yet, we soldiered on with our dry toast, green jello, and gallons of sprite, and ended up having a good time in spite of ourselves.

And all was well until the evening of the first day of 2008, when I, the healthy one, was attacked by 2007 while driving home from the holiday. It was terrorism in it's worse form: sudden, unexpected, and demoralizing. It was then, at 85 MPH, on that frigid and clear winter night, somewhere near the Idaho/Utah border, that my sister ralphed ALL OVER the passenger side of my car.

Happy New Year! (to be continued...)

King of White Elephants

2007-12-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

Our Christmas Eve tradition involves the typical fare: excessive food, do-it-yourself gingerbread construction, lots of family and friends, and a white elephant gift exchange. For several years, the gift exchange has developed into a war of attrition to see who can bring that one wonderfully terrible gift which is simultaneously appalling, clever, and hilarious. One year, it was a box of potatoes. The next, a 3 foot tall plastic doll accompanied with a bottle of root beer, which was supposed to be a "date." (I ended up with that one...everyone thought it was quite funny -- I humored them.)

Last year's winner was from my brother. He gave, in a very elegant brushed stainless steel frame and signed "Best Wishes", a black and white version of his senior picture. Audacias? Yes. Completely worthless? Yes. Best gift ever? Yes. The fact that it landed in the hands of a recently married 19 year old woman? Priceless.

But, by far, the best gifts are the ones that last from year to year: this is "re-gifting" elevated to the sublime. The plastic doll was one of those. And, in a great irony, my brother's narcissistic picture survived the year in someone's trunk to again be passed around the white elephant circle and land in the hands of my brother's wife -- who is, in all honestly, the only person that might enjoy it.

We all thought that was the coup de grace; the gift of the year, until we we saw this year's gift from my brother, the following weighty tome:

Bryan, you are king of the White Elephants.

90 seconds...

2007-12-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

While I was enjoying the Christmas program at my parent's ward, my cohorts in the singles ward were anxiously engaged in giving 90 second talks. Apparently, they do this twice a year, the premise being that you are limited to no more than 90 seconds to share whatever message you think most important. So, if you had to forgo the lame jokes, humorous anecdotes, weak analogies, faith promoting experiences, and the recitation of moderately applicable song lyrics, what message would you share with everyone?

At the ward Christmas dinner on Friday night, I noticed a lot of fretting by the ladies who were asked to speak. (The guys would probably be worried, too, but we're just not that self aware in the first place...) Listening to their concerns, it made me wonder what I would say in my 90 seconds, and so I present my 90 second list:

Remember that time is money. Every dollar you earn and every item you buy costs a measure of your time that cannot be replaced. Hard work is necessary for happiness, but at some point the money is not worth the time. You will always arrive at this point earlier than you think, even if it seems that only a little bit more of your time would bring significantly more money.
Never take yourself too seriously and don't let others take you too seriously either. Nearly every situation can be improved by a good sense of humor.
It's the little things that make the largest difference. Never underestimate the power of a sunny day, a passage from a book, a great hug, or a classic song to change your day.
Never stop learning. Your body will age, and you will inevitably loose your looks, voice, jump shot, killer serve, and wicked carve, but you won't stop progressing if you continue learning.
In life, focus on the things that extend beyond mortality: the depth of your commitment, the service you've performed, and the relationships you've made. In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. (Thanks John and Paul -- Beatles lyrics are pretty frequently applicable.)

Papercut

2007-12-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

I just finished wrapping Christmas presents. My tongue it really dry, like when you fall asleep with your mouth wide open. I think it's because I stick out my tongue when I wrap presents, kind of like Michael Jordan driving the lane. For some reason, the act of wrapping requires an inordinate amount of concentration and patience for me. To make it easier, I even put everything into boxes this year, but I still managed to mess a few up. When you see the box with the patch over the torn corner, that's my handiwork.

Maybe I should take a page from Dad's playbook: make my sisters do it. My dad has these big gorilla like hands, so the thought of him trying to crease and tape a roll of flimsy paper over some box really makes me laugh. That's why, every birthday, Mother's day, and Christmas, dad's gifts were summarily deposited into a basement room and the favor asked, "Hey, can you go wrap those for me?"

Now I'm beginning to understand why.

Subtle Signs

2007-12-16T22:38:00.003-07:00

If you look around my house, you will see the subtle signs of bachelorhood. I say subtle, because the roommates and I keep a pretty clean and well ordered place. There is no pyramid of empty soft drink cans, pile of empty pizza boxes, or any hint of locker room smell. The carpets are vacuumed, pantry well stocked, kitchen well outfitted, and you won't find a TV in the living room. The furnishings are a little sparse, but still comfortable. Despite this, things are still slightly amiss, and I think that any off the following would clearly show that you are indeed visiting a bachelor pad:

The university sticker in the bedroom window.
The plant growing out of a nalgene bottle (I've been meaning to plant it, I really have!)
The plastic darts stuck on the kitchen window.
Reading material in all the bathrooms.
The Christmas tree with only one ornament.