Bri&Boy

Festival of Trees

2011-12-04T10:51:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we went with these people to the Festival of Trees:

(My apologies for the blurry snapshots. Brad, Janelle, Joseph, and Meagan were also with us.)
Classic Amy. She was the only one who noticed me taking pictures of them. Which is also classic Amy.

Sarah isn't in focus, but boy was she worried about those dancers' outfits:

Ha! Funny people. So the opportunities to take a nice photo of anything there were slim: dark indoor lighting the required high, noisy ISO for fast shutter speeds, crowds of people moving all around, and I was hand-holding a camera with a macro lens attached. Yikes! I still got a good one or two. I'll post a few others because there were some really amazing gingerbread houses, but for now all you get is a Christmas Owl:

Donut Falls in the Fall

2011-11-25T15:22:00.001-07:00

Here are some practice photos I took about a month ago during the brief couple of minutes of the Fall season that Utah gets every year. We drove up Big Cottonwood Canyon at just about the right time to catch the colors.

Besides getting to know the technical aspects of my new toys :-), including Lightroom 3 and the whole post-processing, ah, process, the first thing I'm trying to work on is framing. From what I can tell, the interaction of the picture's edges with what's in it is the most important part of how the image is composed. Landscape photography can be really super boring if you don't have the picture framed right.

Can you see the person climbing that rock? I didn't notice them at all until I got it full-res on my computer:

Totally wild what 18 Megapixels and a crisp focus will get you.

I'm not sure what I think about this one. Brianna thinks it's not crooked enough or straight enough, but I didn't like any of the more crooked versions I tried.

So, besides some nice fall colors, I discovered that water is really cool to take pictures of!

This one might be my favorite.

This one's more abstract than the others, without any solid subject or focus, but I think it looks really cool in this high-contrast black-and-white version. Colored it's kinda worthless. Brianna had a teacher that said if the color doesn't add anything to the picture, you should leave it out, and I agree. This picture is about freezing something in motion, and you don't need any color for that.

I took 36 shots from this exact spot. Here are the good ones. :-)

This and the next are exactly the same picture, but I thought it had value in color and black and white. Since it costs nothing to put them both here, that's what you get.

Well that was fun. I've got a bunch of other photo ideas to go work on some other day when I have time to. I'll share the good stuff, too. :-)

Oh, and here is Turtle:

This one was taken with my new macro lens. Thanks Brianna! I took 37 shots of him eating his vegetables and this was literally the only one that was in focus. Macro is a whole other world of photography that I am not very good at yet.

2011-10-30T13:11:00.003-06:00

Hey, I took a picture of a butterfly in flight! Cool!

I took this with my new camera (which is Brianna's old camera) and my new lens (which is actually brand new) that Brianna got me for my birthday.

I am so pumped. I have always wanted to play around with photography. There will be, like, a million other pictures posted to this blog in the near future, and some of them will even be okay-looking!

Goggles

2011-07-15T10:39:00.000-06:00

A few months ago, Nick and I did an "UP" themed photo shoot involving aviator hats and goggles. I realized I look smashing in goggles and needed to come up with more excuses to wear them. So who gets to wear goggles on a regular basis? Nerds. To make a long story short: I am going back to school to get a certified nerd degree: Chemical Engineering. This should provide ample opportunities for looking smashing whilst wearing goggles. I start at the University of Utah this fall!

Graduation!

2011-05-09T11:03:00.000-06:00

Nick is now a real Engineer with a grown up job and a grown up degree. In celebration of this we purchased approximately NINE nerf guns. Because that is what grown ups do....

We also had an epic party with food, and balloons, and nerf battles, and great family and friends.
Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us.
Also thanks to my lovely mother in law who had the presence of mind to take pictures on such an occasion - I completely spaced it. So check out her blog for proof that it was all real. http://jensenfamilyjourney.blogspot.com/2011/05/nick-is-grown-up-now.html

And biggest thanks goes out to Nick himself! Thanks for graduating boy! And since you've probably been told by a bazillion people that they are proud of you, I will just say- I love you.

UP!

2011-04-08T19:44:00.000-06:00

I Love the movie UP! My newest photo project is an UP! themed photoshoot of Nick and myself. Here are a few of my favorites. Go to my photography website to check out more.

MOAB TRIP!

2011-04-07T07:52:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago we stole the end of our weekend and went on a quick trip to Moab. I haven't really been to any of the national parks, and Nick had never been to Arches - so that is what we decided to start with. Hopefully we can go back again and see more of the parks and make it a longer visit, but we had a great time.

We stayed at a fantastic little bed and breakfast place called Castle Valley Inn. Here is a picture of the view from our room one morning:

And here is a picture of the flowers that were on our table.

And here are some pictures of us having an awesome time and some of the awesome things we saw:

Our trail mix was super yummy.

We didn't have time to do any of the big hikes, but the Broken Arch was our favorite hike that we did get to go on. So many cool views!

And of course I had to take some pictures of the giant windmills we saw on the drive home.

I love this tree when it snows

2011-02-26T20:59:00.001-07:00

I hope the snow doesn't last much longer, but it sure is gorgeous. This tree looks best in the freshly fallen snow.

Saltair Photos

2011-02-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

As I wrote earlier- I'm working on taking more photos that are not of people so I can learn some new things and get better at taking pictures of everything. Yesterday we went out to Saltair with the boys and had some good times.

Brian took pictures:

Chace played with a bouncy ball:

Nick stood very straight:

And I took some pictures as well:

Brianna's version - Oscar Nominations

2011-01-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

So I know most of you don't have the unhealthy obsession with movies that I do, but the Academy Award nominations were announced today, and just in case any of you were wondering- I thought I'd better make you a handy list of who and what I'd nominate if I were in charge of the world.

Best Picture
True Grit
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Tangled
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Best Dialogue (yes I made up this category)

True Grit

The King's Speech

The Social Network

Easy A

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Best Cinematography
True Grit - No sense in nominating anyone else. This was the best.

Best Actor
Colin Firth - King George VI - The King's Speech
Tim Allen- Spanish Buzz- Toy Story 3
Jesse Eisenberg - Mark Zuckerberg - The Social Network
Jeff Bridges -Rooster Cogburn - True Grit

Best Supporting Actor ( I decided not to limit this category- there were too many fantastic choices)
Maximus the Horse - Himself - Tangled
Matt Damon - LaBoeuf - True Grit
Andrew Garfield's Hair - The Social Network
Armie Hammer - Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss - The Social Network
Kieran Culkin - Wallace Wells - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
John Malcovich -Marvin Boggs - Red
Geoffery Rush - Lionel Logue - The King's Speech
Stanley Tucci - Automatically included because he is awesome - Easy A

Best Actress

Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit
Emma Stone - Easy A
The animators behind Rapunzel's Eyes - Tangled

Best Supporting Actress
Ellen Wong - Knives Chau - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Donna Murphy - Mother Gothel - Tangled
Marion Cotilliard - Inception

Goals

2011-01-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share a few of my goals for the year. Rumor has it writing them down is important so....

1. Continue to work on being healthy. Regular exercise. Eating fruits and vegetables. Drinking milk even though it is icky. Eating as few processed foods as possible.

2. Along with the healthy eating, we are working on spending our grocery budget carefully. Meaning- goal # 2 is to cook and bake more. I made homemade bread last night- this did not go well. Fortunately the cookies we made a few days ago turned out lovely. So lovely in fact that I took pictures. ( You can find more delicious looking cookie pictures at www.briannakristinephotography.com ) Unfortunately they are not as healthy for you as they are delicious.

3. Take more pictures of non humans (Hence the above cookie photo). I love people, and I love photographing people. I'm hoping to do more photo shoots this year and I'm excited for the ones I already have lined up. BUT I want to branch out a bit and try some other things. I'm hoping this will improve my creativity and my technical skills and also give me some fun cookie photos to hang in my kitchen.

4. Read more books. Particularly American Literature. I have avoided it up to now because I find it slow and depressing and overly descriptive. However, I also feel like an idiot saying I have a Bachelor's in English with an Emphasis in Literary studies but that I have never read Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, or Melville. So I'm working on reading at least something by each of them. I'm hoping I will appreciate them more than the other American Literature I have read. I just finished The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald and I quite enjoyed it. Right now I'm working on The Confidence Man by Melville. I also want to read more modern books. Since most of the books I read in school were classics, I sometimes feel behind on the new stuff. And for me new is relative so I will be reading all sorts of great stuff. Recommendations are more than welcome -but be advised, the list of books I want to read is already probably in the triple digits, so It might take some time before I get to everything.

What are your goals this year?

Because it is fun to make lists

2011-01-04T12:27:00.001-07:00

Brianna's Top Ten Movies of 2010

Tagged

2010-12-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

My super creative friend Khinna tagged me in her post. And since I am no good at coming up with things to say on my own, I thought I'd best take her up on the offer and answer some random questions about myself.

1. What's your all time favorite song and why?

Viva La Vida by Coldplay- because it is relaxing and energizing at the same time. Great listening.

2.What was the most memorable part of your wedding day and/or first date if you're not married yet?

The freezing cold shower that morning. Also being pleasantly surprised that I mostly enjoyed the reception. It was fun to see so many people, and some people who I never thought would have made it made a special effort to be there.

3.What do you want to be when you grow up?

When I was a kid I wanted to be a road construction worker among other things. Oh I was ever so smart. Now: I want to be an unqualified movie critic, someone who gets paid to read books and have thoughts, a photographer, and the best wife in the whole world.

4.Why do you blog?

As evidenced by the lack of posts: I actually don't blog.

5. What's your favorite attribute about yourself and why?

My ability to think analytically - because the idea of not being able to think analytically frightens me more than almost anything in the world. Besides spiders of course.

6. What's on your Christmas list this year?

I don't write Christmas lists. But Nick and I decided to get one big present together - a lovely Taylor guitar. Now we both need to re-learn how to play it.

7. What's your "signature drink"?

Water. It is my favorite. Once in awhile I swap it out to satisfy my hot chocolate addiction.

Tags: Anyone like me who has no idea what to blog about.

Family Pictures

2010-11-11T08:47:00.002-07:00

Since many of my followers are family members I thought you would appreciate this link.

http://briannakristinephotography.blogspot.com/2010/11/stamps-family-logan-utah-family.html

Sunday was Tyson's baby blessing and the whole family was there so we took some pictures. Here is the link! It was fun to see everyone. Thanks Grammie and Bruce for coming to help press some buttons!

Boy!

2010-11-01T20:57:00.001-06:00

Things that make Nicholas great.

He is good at the girly things I am not, such as clothes shopping and cooking and sewing on buttons.

He is also good at manly things like killing spiders and knowing things about cars and fixing random things that break.

He is witty and makes me laugh.

He watches all sorts of movies with me. Not all guys would watch "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" or "Bridget Jones's Diary" so willingly.

He picked a super hard smart person degree even though it is a lot of work.

Even though he is an engineer I can talk to him about literature. He even read Pride and Prejudice and Bleak House with me and liked them.

He is tall and handsome.

Today is his birthday! Happy birthday boy!

What Disney has taught us about the world and relationships

2010-10-20T11:22:00.005-06:00

Being asked to help around the house constitutes torture and abuse.
See: Cinderella

A woman's hair should be thicker than her waist.
See: Princess Jasmine, Ariel, Pocahontas

Prince Charming will come find you. In fact you can just take a nice long nap while you wait.
See: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty

Rodents are cute, not vile disease ridden vagabonds.
See: Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty

Women in other cultures have exactly the same rights and values as white women in the present day US.
See: Aladdin, Mulan, Pocahontas

Stealing is fine as long as you are poor or giving the money to someone who is.
See: Aladdin, Robin Hood

Everyone is missing one parent, if not both
See: Belle, Jasmine, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Cinderella, Snow White, Pocahontas, Ariel, and many others.

Step-parents are evil
See: Snow White, Cinderella

If you haven't met and married a charming prince by age 16 you are behind the times.
See: basically every Disney movie ever made.

Please feel free to add what you have learned in the comments, and please note, I really do love Disney movies, but they are a good reminder not to reference media and pop culture for important life lessons.

Where I've Been and What I've Been Thinking About

2010-09-22T09:34:00.000-06:00

Well I haven't blogged in a very long time. If you want to check out what I've been up to lately go to:

briannakristinephotography.blogspot.com

This is where I am posting all my photoshoot stuff. Nick got me some amazing new equipment for my birthday this year and it has been so much fun to start using it.

As for this blog- I am not abandoning it- I have just been pretty busy (like everyone) and haven't had much to say about it. However, I have been thinking of a few things I want to write about in the future, so here is a list:

1. What I have learned from Disney.

2. My feelings on Disney Princesses.

3. The Brianna Oscars- Because not everyone wants to give all the awards to the boring depressing musical biopics.

4. Why "chic flicks" make me angry.

5. Why I love Angelina Jolie.

6. Why Up! is better than Toy Story 3.

*My apologies for being primarily focused on movies. They are what I think about. You are under no obligation to read any of the posts :).

I used to play the guitar.

2010-06-27T12:34:00.001-06:00

That was back before I decided to work and go to school full-time to become an engineer. It turns out that combination doesn’t allow for much free time. Have you ever walked around a college campus when there are large parties outside in the springtime? Do you see any engineering students? No. Some people think this is because engineering students are anti-social, which is wrong. Most are, in fact, very social, we just don’t have any time at all.

That is what has happened to my guitar, and along with it my dreams of becoming a riff-shredding rock hero. My piano skills, too. No more forming my own jazz band with Billy Joel as a frequent guest star. Oh, well, I can match the impedance of a transmission line to a reactive load like nobody’s business.

(That diagram doesn’t actually have a reactive load in it, but it’s a good illustration, huh?)

But don’t think that my musical talents have gone completely to waste. I spend about an hour every day driving, more when I have regular classes, and I try to use that time constructively. To that end, I make my car mix-CDs as sing-along-able as possible. I have considerably improved my tone, air support, and range. (That last one is very important if you want to be a rock star. They sing pretty freaking high.) One day while speeding along I-215, practicing under the tutelage of Scott Weiland, I discovered that I had strained my voice, and I had to speak really softly the rest of the day to avoid injury. I was pretty happy about that.

I need to convince Harmonix that they should develop some kind of non-distracting, in-car version of Rock Band for us aspiring automotive musicians to practice with. Make a steering-wheel controller that you hit for the drums, add a microphone, and boom! you’ve got a video game that all of us already play every day, we just can’t boast about high scores or save our progress yet. Plug in a guitar controller for the passengers, integrate it with some of the car’s sensors so it can play more aggressive, intense music while under heavy acceleration, some nice cruising music while on the highway, etc., and it could be a hit! Or at least distract some people from their texting. Just think about the family bonding on long road trips…

I think what I really want is some way to legitimize my singing in the car, so I don’t have to quiet down in slow traffic when other people can see me rocking out. :-)

The Book of Mormon Needs a Metal Soundtrack

2010-04-25T15:36:00.001-06:00

I have long been a fan of the Book of Mormon, and I have equally as long been an anti-fan of pretty much every effort to put its stories into film. A couple of them have some emotional merit, but cinematically they are, without exception, embarrassing. With so much grand epic material, always involving the old-as-time (actually older) conflict of good vs. evil, plus lots of fascinating theological elements, culture, landscape, personalities, intrigue, treachery, combat, redemption, courage in the face of certain death, disguise, sneaking, spying, druggings, muggings, angels, wars, etc., I figure you’ve got enough material for at least 100 great movies, but so far 0 have actually been made.

So why not have a real studio take a story and make it into a real movie? After watching Rome back when I worked at Flick’s Club, I realized that HBO would be an excellent studio to do justice to a TV series based on some part of the Book of Mormon. They typically go way over-the-top when it comes to historically accurate and gripping detail, and they don’t shy away from the touchy stuff, so they’d be able to do the good job that it deserves. You could take like any 3 chapters out of Alma or Mosiah, extrapolate a bit, and have a whole season’s worth of story. It would be epic.

And what about a really good movie? Watch this trailer for Robin Hood and then tell me your spine doesn’t tingle thinking about a film titled Moroni directed by Ridley Scott. Cast Russell Crowe as Moroni, Mark Strong as Ammoron, Faran Tahir as Amalickiah, and someone awesome (I haven’t decided who yet) as Teancum, and you’ve got one amazing epic.

Of course, stories with that much energy deserve a soundtrack with comparable enthusiasm. I’ve been thinking a lot about the evolution of music in film (because we own so many older “classic” films), and there are so many good options and methods for filmmakers these days that the soundtrack has become a more vital part of the presentation than it was when an orchestra was the only option. Accordingly, I think that most of the Book of Mormon would simply need a good, solid, metal soundtrack. Something like this or that song by Muse were Brianna’s suggestions. I agree. Lay one of them over the epic duel between Alma and Amlici, or Moroni’s go-for-broke march to re-take Zarahemla from dissention, and you’ve got a scene worth watching. I’m picturing something like this in my mind, only not ancient Greece.

Should I count this post as my daily scripture study? Hmm… There may have been too much Muse for that…

If Google Took Over the Government

2010-02-13T21:33:00.001-07:00

So I was reading an interesting article in The Atlantic magazine called “How America Can Rise Again,” about how in certain ways we in American have many reasons to be optimistic about the future: our universities that people from all over the world come to study at, our cultural receptiveness to immigration, and our corporate culture of innovation and rapid adaptability. Nowhere in the world do you find a culture so condusive to invention and research as here. This is starkly contrasted with our antiquated and depressingly dysfunctional system of government. With the proliferation of democracies in the past century, not a one has copied our legislative pattern, because it doesn’t work very well. The citizens are barely represented in any part of the legislature, and the rules governing law-making are so illogical and convoluted that they just get in the way. The author’s prediction is that if there is a facet of our country that will lead to our demise, it is our inflexible government. To quote from Robert Atkinson: “Our companies and entrepreneurs are matchless in their power to adapt. We lead in many categories the private economy can handle by itself. But where you need any public-private coordination, we’ve become handicapped. I worry that our companies can adapt, but our system can’t.”

So, without launching into a long lecture about my frustrations with our system of government, I thought about a comment that the author made on NPR: If there’s a problem that one person, or one family, or one company can solve, we (Americans) can do it, no problem. But if there’s a problem that requires networked cooperation between large groups of people or especially the federal government, then we’re sunk. We haven’t solved a single problem that way in 30 years. So, what if we kicked everyone working in Washington out, and voted one of our highly successful, adaptive, flexible, and inventive American companies into power, instead? Here’s my brief analysis of what would result:

If Google took over the U.S. Government:

1. Zero taxes, as long as you could put up with ads everywhere.

2. Space exploration would be a priority again.

3. Open-sourced constitution, which would make developing amendments way cheaper.

4. New laws would be released in “beta” form for testing before their actual “release.”

5. Our national motto would change from “Don’t Tread on Me” to “Don’t Be Evil.”

6. China would kick our embassy out.

If Apple took over the U.S. Government:

1. Taxes would at least triple, but everything would look way cooler.

2. Each year the government would get slimmer, sleeker, smaller, more expensive, and have more “touch” features.

3. Our country would be 100% virus-free and have zero problems whatsoever (or at least that’s what we’d tell everybody).

4. “Laws” and “bills” would be called “apps.” (Example: “Today, Steve Jobs ratified a new app aimed at…”)

5. Apps would be released to huge fanfare, even though they lack many essential elements. Every year they will be updated to include things they should have had in the first place, and the old laws will look really stupid and useless.

6. Nobody outside of the U.S. will understand why we like it so much.

So far, Google has my vote. Let me know if you have any other nominations!

12 Months and a Thousand Years Ago

2010-01-02T11:19:00.001-07:00

Well, we survived 2009, both of us. Since we’re safely more than a day away from it, I think I can talk about it now without making it angry.

We knew it was going to be a different year when we signed up for it, because we had been planning to move to Salt Lake since at least October 2008, but fortunately we didn’t know exactly what was ahead. Brianna graduated shortly before 2009 began, and got a job in Salt Lake shortly after. In a period of three days we got an apartment in Salt Lake and moved, but I was still going to school in Logan.

During the next twelve months, we spent the first four living (mostly) 100 miles apart in separate cities; I lived both at my parents’ house and with Brianna in Salt Lake; towards the end of that last frigid semester at USU I was commuting 500 miles a week in our tiny, tired little Nissan; we put uncounted hours of talk time and uncountable thousands of messages on our new phones; Brianna quit her job (it wasn’t what they had made it out to be when she signed up); got another, quit it (also, not what they had made it out to be); enrolled at a prestigious art college that we spent tens of thousands on; cut her losses there, too, after it also turned out to be crap; I quit my job in Logan and got a marvelous job in my field in Salt Lake; transferred to the University of Utah and survived my first semester there; we gave our first car away, donated the second, and bought two new(er) ones within one month; taught Primary at church for half of the year in a dysfunctional branch; met some great new friends in Salt Lake; drove over 5000 miles in three months with one car (Thanksgiving and Christmas), over 2500 miles in 1.5 months with the other; and got a fish.

What a year! Probably the hardest of our lives. We were crazy. If we had known going into it what it would require, I don’t know if we would have gone through with it, but looking back, I’m glad we did. Being separated for four months brought us closer together than ever before. All the frustration and disappointment with the bad jobs and failed school have given rise to a greater capacity for happiness, and a more acute knowledge of where to go in the future. The beginning of my career is already laid, and Brianna will soon be debuting as a legitimate, trained, professional photographer. I’m one year closer to my Bachelor degree and a real position and salary. Brianna is starting out at a much better college to get her second degree. We aren’t living in our hometowns anymore but living in our own, which is hard for some to understand but very important for people like us.

Things worth having and doing all require sacrifice, and only mediocrity will be there at the end of the easy path. Failure is necessary if one is to become great. The hard times survived become both your greatest strengths and the moments that really define and shape you. It’s a good thing we can’t tell exactly what the future holds, because if we could, we’d never have the courage to go through with it.

2009 was a wonderful, terrible, irreplaceable year for both of us, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But if it ever comes back, I’m going to beat it up.

Do other people think about these things?

2009-11-21T07:36:00.004-07:00

So on Thursday I was sitting at work and I had been working on the same thing for a few hours when suddenly my mind, on its own, started to wander. I try to keep track of where it goes when it does this, but sometimes the things it comes back with make me wonder: Do other people think about these things?

I was thinking about the scene in The Incredibles where Dash is called with his mom into the principal's office because Dash's teacher thinks he put a tack on the teacher's chair. His evidence was a brief flicker on the video tape, but you couldn't actually see Dash do it, so he was acquitted. What I was thinking about was, how fast was Dash moving if the video couldn't capture more than a flicker?

North American TVs and cameras record/playback at a rate of about 30 frames per second (29.997 fps, more precisely), which means Dash got to the teacher's desk and back in less than 1/30th of a second. I don't know how far it was from his seat to the teacher's, but estimating it to be 30 feet one way, and converting to meters (they're so much easier), he went about 18.3 meters in under 1/30 seconds. What is that in relatable terms? Well, 549 meters per second, or 1,228 miles per hour. The speed of sound at sea level is 340.29 m/s, so if Dash had really got moving at Mach 1.6, there would have been a sonic boom, and everything in the room would have been pushed to the sides due to the explosive pressure built up on the front of Dash's body. Hollywood has failed me again.

Oh well, it's still an awesome movie. I'll try not to let it bother me.

I tried to keep working, but my brain wouldn't sit still. It kept leaving and coming back with more information that I didn't know before. How much of my recent raise would go to my 401k, other benefits, and taxes on an hourly basis? What does that mean in terms of a per-paycheck take-home increase? How many miles per gallon did I get on my last tank of gas calculated from the odometer and the gas pump, versus my car's onboard computer? I calculated 20.2 mpg, and it says 22.4 mpg. Does it not take into account idle time at stoplights or warming up in the morning? Or is it just inaccurate, like most mpg computers on cars? How many miles to I drive each day, and how often should I expect to fill my car up at 20.2 mpg? (Every 9-10 days, just so you know.)

The next time I go to the grocery store I'm going to get prices of all the ingredients needed to make bread, then scale them appropriately and figure out how much each loaf we bake will cost. Then I can figure out how much less that will be than the bread we buy now, and how long it will take to offset the cost of a $200-$250 mixer, because we are not mixing bread by hand. That's just too much work.

Eventually I didn't finish what I was doing at work, but it was a two-day project anyway. I got sidetracked again, chatting with Jason about my most recent endeavor to read the entire Affordable Health Care for America Act, H.R. 3962, because I'm sick of relying on biased interpretations to get an idea of what my government is trying to pass. I'm currently around page 300 of 1990. It's already fleshed out most of what the media has talked about; what can the last 85% possibly have yet to say? Well, I'm going to find out.

Do other people think about these things? Usually when I tell my wife one of these things that my mind has come back with, she looks at me, smiles, kisses me and says, "I love you."

I think that means no.

Windows 7 vs. Anything Else - my 2 cents'

2009-10-23T09:19:00.002-06:00

There's been a lot of media hype surrounding the release of Microsoft's new version of Windows, Windows 7, including some pretty pointed advertisements by Apple, which are, as with most things Mac, overly simplistic and exaggerated, but funny. (I particularly like the one with Patrick Warburton, but that probably has more to do with him than with the ad. Also, Mac's anti-7 ads are not nearly as cool as Verizon's Droid advertising, an impressively gloves-off anti-iPhone campaign.) As some of you may recall, I posted earlier this year that I was switching entirely to a pre-release version of Windows 7 on my laptop to see how it I liked it in the long run.

In the past, I've used every version of Windows (3.11, 95, 98, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, and 7), several versions of Linux (Knoppix, Ubuntu, and some others whose names I don't remember), Mac OS 9, X (several versions, including the latest Snow Leapord), and lots of older operating systems, of course. And here's the verdict on which on is the very best:

None of them. (Well, I do really like MS-DOS 6...) They are pretty much all the same; the difference lies in the user. Find one you like, and learn to use it. If you come across something you don't know how to do, rather than scream and say, "Baah! This new version of MacWinTu X is terrible and I hate it!" just type your problem in to Google and in about two minutes you'll know what you did wrong, and you'll be better at using your computer.

And the minute someone says, "Well, Macs/PCs/Windows/Linux/hardwood floors/Texas/Verizon is better than anything else," stop listening to them, because they no longer know what they're talking about. Mac and Linux users are especially bad at this. They're like a cult. They like to say that their computers don't ever have problems or get viruses; both of those assertions are false. I used a very nice PowerMac with OS X Leapord for almost a year, crashing it several times a day running Apple's own Final Cut Pro software. (I got so frustrated that I switched to Adobe's Premiere on my old Windows XP system at home.) The Linux computers on campus crash on me all the time, too. And viruses? Just be careful and use a few brains on the internet. Don't use file-sharing programs to get illegitimate media and software - of course they have viruses on them. Don't believe the pop-up that randomly says "XP Antivirus: Billions of viruses found! Click OK to scan now..." Of course that's fake. There. I just told you the two ways to eliminate all viruses from your Internet experience, regardless of what computer you're on. I have never had an anti-virus program or a virus problem on my own computer.

So that's it. The operating system is far less important than the operator. Like phones, cars, houses, and anything else, we all use our computers for more or less the same stuff, so just try your options out and get the one you like. They're all pretty much the same.

New Car! Again! (!)

2009-10-09T21:55:00.008-06:00

Last Saturday, we took the ol' Nissan in for a routine brake service, as they had been starting to squeal on me lately. Just a few minutes later the mechanic called and told us that the brakes were fine, it was the bearings that were shot on both front drive wheels. Together with new seals for all four wheels, the service would be just above $700. Until that got repaired, he was pretty insistent that I not drive it at all anymore, because the wheels were about to fall off.

Well that freaked me right out. I'm glad I brought it on on a whim that Saturday! Losing a front wheel at 70mph commuting to work = death. But, after some quick and easy math, we determined that it wasn't worth repairing, since it is a 20-year-old vehicle, and we've had to repair it regularly so far. (In terms I would use at work, the cost of repair and the MTBF became unsustainable. :-) So we set out to find yet another gently-used car to add to our fleet.

The original idea was to get another Cobalt, but we were pretty lucky to get the one we did. Most of them are kindof trashed once they depreciate to our price range. But, with lots and lots of searching and some dumb luck (blessings, for you religiously inclined), we found...

The G6!!

From Bri&Boy

It is awesome, and I love it! What a fun car... Keep in mind, I took and processed these pictures, not Brianna, so they look like crap compared to what they would if she had developed them, but the car looks beautiful. And it didn't cost more than the Cobalt, either. It needs a few odds and ends repaired, all low-cost and normal, and I'll get that done by the end of next week. I am pumped. The throttle is punchy, the handling is superb, the car is mid-size and therefore much bigger than I've ever had before, the features are extensive (keyless entry! fog lights! adjustable lumbar support!), the interior is flawless, the seats hug you tightly (meant to hold you in place during hard cornering :-)... It has a few scratches and dings, which is how it got to be in our price range. I think I was the first one to call about it, two hours after it was posted on KSL.com, and we bought it that night.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Brianna the Photographer-New Blog

2009-10-02T14:24:00.002-06:00

As you may or may not know, I am currently attending the Art Institute of Salt Lake City working towards a second degree, this time in Digital Photography. I am learning a lot and wanted to share what I am doing with all of you. So I have created a new blog just for photos. I will simply be posting some of my favorite photos. Be prepared for a barrage of photos, because I have a quarter's worth of projects to post!

Come check it out at :http://bkjphotography.blogspot.com/

Cobalt!

2009-09-26T16:02:00.007-06:00

I have titled my post today with the name of a period 8B transition metal (I'm taking a chemistry class :-) because it is also the name of our new car! Yay!

Also, some of you wishing to comment may notice this this post was authored by "Nick," rather than "Brianna," or "Bri." I mean, I'll answer to either, it's just a little weird.

The Buick ("Bluick") has left our stables to carry Bethany & Stetsen far and wide, with its all of its power, refinement, finesse, reliability, crooked driver's seat, and 208,000 miles of well-earned experience. It's still in the family, though, so we're not sad. But I felt very somber and momentous as we titled it over to them. Like, I should write in my journal or something.

Ha! That didn't happen. (The journal part.) But, we did replace it shortly with a wonderful 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt, the base model. I mean base model, except that it has a 4-speed automatic transmission (up 1 speed from the Buick, actually). It's even in brilliant fleet-vehicle white, as it was originally a fleet vehicle. It has 62,000 miles on it, and we paid about ten cents for each of those miles, so it was a very good deal, in my opinion. It's in perfect shape as much as we can tell, and it is so much nicer than anything we have ever had before that we are in love already. So, here it is, in front of our apartment:

Yay! Cobalt!

General Education

2009-09-15T08:27:00.004-06:00

One of the greatest annoyances to me about a college education is the necessity of "general education" requirements. Didn't I just spend 13 years going from Kindergarten to the 12th grade getting my "general education?" What about those who didn't graduate from high school, but paid money and spent time getter their "General Equivalency Diploma?" I understand that a lot of our high schools are pretty lousy (and it's mostly the students' fault), but shouldn't a university be more concerned with higher education, rather than general education?

Gen-eds really bug me. I am a very academically-minded person and have no problem studying and getting excellent grades, unless the subject I'm studying doesn't have any direct application to me. Then I really struggle just to show up to class, let alone actually contribute. I'm supposedly part of the most easily distracted generation in history. Probably true. But give me something interesting to focus on, and I won't even recognize my phone go off with a bunch of texts from people. If you're feeding me tripe, then I'm typing away on my phone, or surfing the net on my laptop, or sleeping. The class material has way more to do with my attention span than anything else. My latest challenge: General Chemistry.

The subject is interesting enough, but the emphasis here is on General rather than Chemistry. If this were a class for college-level smart people, it would only take 10 minutes a day for the lectures and we wouldn't need twice-weekly review sessions, thrice-weekly "supplemental instruction," and an hour-long lab prep. Does measuring the mass of an "unknown solid" and calculating its density (just once, mind you, with one singular solid object) require an hour of preparatory explanation? Measure its dimensions. Weigh it. Divide. Done. And I'm really going to drive all the way to campus at 6pm for a three-hour lab session to do that.

My favorite quote from today's lab prep: "When you put your hand over glass, if you feel heat, it's still hot." What an instructor. Now, I'm sure that there will be some moron who grabs the glass pipet straight off of the burner, says "Ow!" and drops it shattering on the floor, but that is, as they say, a personal problem. Last week's favorite comment from the instructor was her explanation of the process for checking equipment out of the stock room, wherein she defined "to check out" for us, as in: "to 'check something out' means that you take an item from the stock room and return it later."

Just how "general" is my general education supposed to be?

My other favorite class is called "Engineering Ethics," which has some interesting subject matter, but is mostly a class where we learn to "work in teams." Not a bad skill, and some people struggle with it, but do we really need an assignment that focuses just on raw team-skills? I mean, the assignment itself accomplishes nothing useful, we just have to get it done with a team. Can't we have a relevant assignment that happens to be done in a team, and skip this class altogether? Do we really have to take turns being the "leader," "note-taker," "moderator," and "timekeeper?" Somebody seriously over-thought this one. I don't even know what those mean in the context of a small team. We just get together and work together. There. We're now a team. Fortunately, my particular "team" thinks it's all as stupid as I do, and we are just going to get to work doing what we gotta do to get this thing in the past as quickly as possible. Which means that there are at least six of us for whom this is a complete waste of time, and we'll probably spend it chatting about something else, or texting, or blogging during classtime...

Adding to the ever growing list

2009-07-10T11:14:00.002-06:00

I'm curious. What are your favorite books? Authors? No promises I will get to reading everything anytime too soon, but I'm compiling a list of books I want to eventually read. Any recommendations are welcome! Tell me what you think!

Deterioration

2009-07-01T13:23:00.005-06:00

I noticed something alarming the other day.

I was having a conversation with someone via an online messenger service and was about to use the word "gauge" in my sentence when I realized I didn't know how to spell it correctly. This in and of itself is not particularly horrifying. Gauge is a tricky word with those vowels all mashed in there together. The alarming thing was my solution: I automatically compromised for a lesser word and went on typing.

I am not suggesting here, that we should all use the most complicated words we can think of. I believe communication should be as clear and direct as possible. However, sometimes one word has more force and meaning than another. In my case, "gauge" was a more precise representation of my thought. There are plenty of other synonyms out there: measure, weigh, judge, determine, estimate, guess- but I meant gauge. Choosing the very best word allows us to communicate our ideas more efficiently and gives them more meaning. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I took the easy out and it got me thinking. I had to ask myself: Am I getting dumber? and the scarier question...Am I getting dumber WILLINGLY?

It is so EASY to take the easy out. I no longer have to concern myself with the right way to spell an interesting word because everything automatically corrects it for me when I mess up-and I mean EVERYTHING. Predictive texts, automatic spell checkers in word processing programs. I just spelled processing with an extra 'C" and my internet browser underlined it for me. It has become very very easy to do away with thinking.

This doesn't only apply to spelling. I no longer know telephone #'s. They are automatically programmed into my phone. I never learned cursive because I could always print. I never learned my times tables and couldn't do long division if you paid me because I always let my calculator do the work. I don't know how to drive a car with a manual transmission because I have always had an automatic. Between Google and Wikipedia, I will never have to know anything ever again. I can just type in my query and the internet will magically tell me what I need to know. You don't even have to read books anymore. Spark Notes has you covered. And I will admit that I aced many a quiz based on my quick glance at the Spark Notes version of a play or book, when I hadn't made time to read the real thing. One semester in College I wrote every single paper the morning it was due- including term papers. Who am I kidding- that was all four and a half years. -And I still got good grades. I don't say that to brag, but to point out that I -AND my professors agreed to settle for adequate. We lowered our standards. I could have written much better papers, and they could have given me C's for the C worthy work I turned in. Mediocre was all that was expected and it was all I churned out. I told myself it was just not important enough. Maybe I hated Irish literature and didn't feel it deserved to be written about well, or maybe I thought that hanging out with friends was more important than really understanding the French Revolution. However...while I may have thought I was "sticking it to the man" by cleverly accomplishing a great deal with very little effort...I was actually shortchanging myself.

I could easily blame a lot of things for the deterioration of my intellect- all that technology that spells things for me, my professors who gave me undeserved A's, Calculators that do my counting, jobs that require no skill or thought, or hey, why not blame President Obama? He seems to be a popular scapegoat for everyone's frustrations. *As we must be politically correct I will duly note that Mr. Bush, and most other leaders also find themselves unfairly placed in the position of the scapegoat. However, as President Truman was man enough to admit with a bold declaration on his desk: "THE BUCK STOPS HERE."

I am entirely responsible for the deterioration or enlargement of my intellect. I could use the many avaliable resources to increase my knowledge, improve my spelling, and inform my conversations. I just have to make the conscious choice to do a little bit of work.

So... are you letting your resources improve your life or are you using them simply to make it easier? What do you do to stay intelligent and informed when it is so easy to "Google it"?

Amy also enjoyed her Creamy

2009-06-09T14:30:00.004-06:00

Meagan and the Orange Creamsicle

2009-06-05T09:58:00.011-06:00

Caught in the far corner of the picture..hence the blurriness. But I thought I'd post it anyway since we caught her in the act on film:
We gave her a new creamy....

But where is it?

Turns out she didn't like having her hands sticky... SO she had to wipe them off.. meaning:

Yep. She is picking it back up.

Don't even think about taking this one away. I will beat you up. If you don't believe me. Take a good look at my angry eyes.

Chowing down. Happy and gloriously messy.

I'm not sure my mother will ever forgive me.....

Pictures!

2009-06-05T07:26:00.012-06:00

We got Brianna's new Photoapparat, and it is beautiful and is a blast to take pictures with! I am excercising the utmost in self-control to keep my hands off of it most of the time. It it Brianna's camera. I will not dominate the shiny new toy. I can find peace without it... peace...

Brianna wanted to touch up/crop the pictures she took of her family before she posted them, so I thought I would go ahead and post a few of some flowers that I took at my Grandma's house. As Brianna has discovered that she really likes photographing people, I have discovered that I enjoy photographing flowers, plants, nature, etc. Who knows why.

Bleeding hearts have always been some of my favorite flowers, if you want to call them that.

It's a happy little honey bee!

Experimenting with focal points.

My Beautiful Frump

2009-05-24T17:10:00.003-06:00

This picture is over a year old, but it captures very well how I feel today. My wife is the most beautiful frump in the world, and I love her sweatshirted, smiley personality more every day!

This particular picture is of the day that I bought her those pajamas. She was pretty pumped. I'm not sure she wore anything else for about a week.

(I'm not sure that I'll survive much longer after posting this, but I hope you all enjoy it anyway!)

The Wall

2009-05-20T09:32:00.004-06:00

I am sure many of you are familiar with the wall. It usually abruptly appears in front of you whilst you are charging full speed ahead like a bull- head down, eyes focused, with no intention of stopping. And then without warning: you barrel head first into the aforementioned wall. Up to this point, you had convinced yourself you could just keep charging forever. Like a bull you were headed toward your goal at full speed, focused, determined, and ready for anything. The wall changes all that. You slam into it at 100 mph and come to a grinding halt. And now you have something much trickier on your hands. You can no longer reach your destination by barreling ahead on a straight course-now you have to get creative. And herein lies the complication. You see, slamming into the wall sucks away all of your creativity, drive and motivation. All you want to do is sit down in the shade with your back against the wall and sip on some lemonade. You begin to envy Ferdinand the bull, who sat down and enjoyed the flowers and told the man to stick it. This however, will not work. Ferdinand was happy, but he never progressed. If all you do is stop to smell the roses you will get nothing accomplished. This is letting the man win. The best way to stick it to the man is to succeed, overpower the man, and become the next man. But this means you have to get past the wall- and we mustn't forget, you are a bit banged up from running into it. So: I pose a question. How do you get past the wall? Do you go over? Around? Through? Or do you sit down and smell the flowers and decide wherever you were headed wasn't worth the fuss?

Another computer project

2009-05-17T15:20:00.005-06:00

So, my previous computer project, that most of you probably didn't even know about, was to install Windows Server 2008 on my laptop and use it as my main operating system. But I got lazy and never really used it, so although it was a cool project, I didn't really get anything from it. You have to do a bit of work to get it to function properly as an everyday desktop OS, so it fell by the wayside. Plus, the main advantage was that is was super-fast and reliable, and you could virtually run other OSes on top of it better than if they were by themselves (supposedly), but I don't have a 64-bit processor so that didn't work.

So now I've decided to buckle down and try something else, instead of just being lazy and staying with Windows Vista which I already have working just the way I want it. I'm installing the pre-release of Windows 7, which I've toyed around with, but which I am now running full-time. My laptop runs a little faster, much cooler (temperature), and looks way better with 7, plus it's fun to have the newest, shiniest thing, you know.

I really like it so far. Most of the improvements are visual, but that's where computers are headed now - visual appeal and ease, so the improvements are good. It's been really stable so far - in fact, my video driver crashed this morning, and Windows took care of it so I didn't have to restart the computer as with older systems. It doesn't take up nearly as much memory as Vista, it manages my wireless networks flawlessly, it multi-threads better (makes things faster), my battery lasts about 20% longer than with Vista (which was already a 25% improvement over XP), it starts up faster... it's not ground-breaking, but it's a good collection of incremental improvements that need to be made. It should also run really well on lower-power machines - at PCs Unlimited we ran it for several weeks on a tiny little Asus laptop with the Atom N270 processor and the GMA950 for graphics, and it was flawless. It made that little 7" screen look great.

And for all you who are still stuck on Windows XP, 7 will include a native XP core so that anything that worked with XP will run on 7. It's a much more thorough approach towards backwards-compatibility than they've taken in the past, and it should really work this time. At least it's worked for me so far, but then I don't have a lot of old programs sitting around.

So I'm taking a leap and using pre-released software made by Microsoft as my main operating system. :-S The pre-release is pretty much a finished product, though, they're just tweaking a few items here and there. There are several new interface issues that I'm going to have to figure out and get used to, but that's what I like to do anyway. And hopefully by the time March 2010 rolls around (when support for the pre-release runs out), the U will want to buy me a real copy. :-) We'll see.

So there's my latest adventure with my little laptop. We've been through a lot together, and I've put it though a lot that most laptops don't ever get to do at all, but we've held up pretty well. Probably none of you care, but I do, and this is my blog, so there.

Next time we buy a car, traction control is MANDATORY.

2009-05-13T19:00:00.005-06:00

Okay, this one was a lot scarier.

Some of you might remember that I wiped out in my little Nissan a few months ago on some ice - a nice, comfy snowdrift caught me, it was low-speed, no damage, no injury, etc. Not really scary, just some overcorrection that started my vehicle spinning off the road, rather than sliding off the road (either way, I wanted to go off the road to avoid the stopped cars in front of me).

So, today, driving home in the same little tin-can Nissan, I merge onto the freeway and catch up to traffic going 75 mph. I'm in the right lane now, and the shoulder is under construction and is all torn up. I decide to merge left, turn on my blinker, check my blind spot, see a big white van there, and so I don't merge. The instant my eyes return from my blind spot to the road in front of me, a brain-dead Mexican in a big, ugly brown van pulls out of the shoulder into my lane - maybe 20 yard or less in front of me! It was as close to right in front of me as you could get without being on the front bumper.

At 75 mph you cover 36.7 yards in a second, which means I had a little over half a second before I hit him (.545 seconds, if you really want to know). A 75 mph frontal impact in my car? Thank God that didn't happen. (That's not profane: I did actually thank Him.) I swerved in between the construction barrels, hoping nothing was on the narrow shoulder. Of course my car started sliding sideways, like it wanted to spin, and there was a huge dropoff that would have rolled me, too. Probably because I had alreay had some practice in the winter with that short wheelbase's handling, I managed to control the fishtailing and get the car stopped on a very narrow shoulder without even hitting a barrel, or spinning back into traffic, or rolling off into the distance.

So I didn't die. Or destroy the car.

But it was close. So, the next time any of you buy a car, opt for the traction control and all the airbags they can stuff in there. It's worth it. I promise. You won't fishtail, you can brake while turning, and you'll have a chance of surviving a roll. Until then, stay away from Mexicans in brown vans. (Come to think of it, it was a Mexican in a big brown van that ran a red light and slammed into Andrew a few years ago...)

Pirate Ship!

2009-05-10T20:17:00.001-06:00

Look what Brianna made!

Be Awesome

2009-05-08T10:30:00.004-06:00

That's what I said to my training group at work on Wednesday. They wanted to know how to improve their attitude, and that's the best way I know how: Be Awesome.

So work is pretty much the coolest thing ever. The 4-10 schedule is great; why haven't I ever done this before? Every Friday off? Permanent 3-day weekends? Oh, right, becuase I've never had a real job before. Well, I do now, and 3-day weekends are where it's at. I was worried that I wouldn't really know what I was doing and would feel really stupid there, but so far everyone has been really helpful and nice, and a few have just been happily overjoyed at the prospect of some help with their workload... Plus, this is what I work on every day:

That's the largest unmanned aircraft in the world. It's ridiculously complex, it takes four people just to remote-control it, and I bet it's way cooler than what you work on every day.

Of course, when I work on it that's not what it looks like. What I work on looks like boxes and cables, but it's still cooler.

So I have a job with a really nice, big company, working on a very cool project, and I'm starting to do what I've always wanted to. Life is great. (I might even get to work with some of the RF team, which is exactly what I want to do.)

I think we are starting to adapt to Brianna's insane workload from full-time work and school. The last week hasn't been overwhelming, despite harder projects, and there hasn't been any spare time, but she'll pull through. I like helping her out and doing things for her when she's so stressed about something she really wants to do. It makes me part of her efforts. One of these days I'm going to break down and buy her a secret present (or, as she would put it, a sneak-present):

It's just an entry-level DSLR, and it will need a better lens, but it's definitely high-quality and a lot of fun. And it's no secret, because she knows she's going to get it. But it's more fun if I say that it's a secret, isn't it? Of course, if I got her this one instead, it really would be a surprise, but not a happy one because it costs more than $5000 with the lens.

Someday, Nick, someday.

The only constant is Change...

2009-05-08T09:49:00.003-06:00

Big changes this week. Nick started his grown-up job Monday, and it comes with all sorts of great things. I will let him elaborate more, but a few things we are excited about include:
*4 day work weeks. He works 4 ten hour shifts and gets Friday's off. Today that means we get to have lunch together.
*Higher pay...always a good thing
*and drum roll please...HEALTH INSURANCE! For the first time in about 2 and a half years, we will be covered!

Turns out I had some changes coming my way too. As of Monday morning at 8:30, I am the Receptionist at work. They made a lot of big changes at work that involved getting rid of departments, closing entire offices, and making lots of other cuts. I was fortunate enough that they kept a place for me even though I have only been with the company for a few months. So my job now includes all of the receptionist duties, along with the administrative assisting stuff I was doing before. I no longer work in a gray box commonly referred to as a cubicle. I now sit by a nice big window in the front lobby and there are trees and grass and funny ducks outside.

School is still ever present and if I ever create something worth being seen by others I will consider posting some of my projects. For now, I am just happy to be surviving it. I have never been particularly artistic or creative so this is pretty hard stuff for me. Luckily in most cases, you can compensate for lack of talent with hard work and a lot of time. One of my projects this week involves recreation of a master painting. As Picasso was quite talented, I have a lot to compensate for and will be very busy :) Being the smart cookie that I am...I chose this painting to recreate:

Wrapping Up

2009-04-28T10:37:00.002-06:00

Well our four months of bouncing back and forth between homes, lives and cities are almost up. Monday was Nick's last day of work at PCs Unlimited. It has been a great job and he will miss it, but we are very excited for him to start his new job as a test engineer at L3 Communications. After this week he will really be able to say he lives in SLC-just a few more finals to take. As for me, I have enough art projects to keep me occupied till doomsday. Nick has been a darling. He has stayed up late cutting out paper, packed me lunches, cooked me dinner at 10:30 at night, made trips to Michael's for paints, paper, and special tape, given me back rubs, driven me about when I was too deliriously tired to operate a moving vehicle, and has tolerated living in a tornado. I couldn't do this without him, thank goodness he is such a good fellow. I am happy things will be a little calmer for him soon. Maybe we will be able to fit in some bike rides and trips to the zoo... :).

Time.....

2009-04-18T11:23:00.002-06:00

Well. Here I am in computer literacy class. Being computer literate myself, I am rather bored. Our quiz this morning that was supposed to take 10 minutes took approximately 30 seconds. I suppose this would be a good time to update my blog.
So..Update:
I am back in school. Full time work. Full time classes. Let me tell you the math just does not add up. I am stealing hours from nights and highly caffeinated energy drinks. On top of it being full time school, it is full time art school. This means I have numerous very time consuming projects. And as I am not an artist, they take me more time than your average art school Joe. For example, a teacher in just one of my classes assigned us a project that is due next week and she expects it to take about 20 hours. The good news is that it is all very interesting and I am learning a lot. Now I just have to survive it.
As for other updates...Nick moved in! That is very nice. He is spending a lot of time driving and on the train but it is so nice to see him every day. I really appreciate all the time he is spending just to come see me. He is a champ. Also a big thanks to his parents for putting him up at their house for a few months. It was a huge help. Things will calm down a tad bit soon. Nick starts work at L3 May 4th. So he will be down here all the time instead of commuting so much. That will be nice.
And for now that is about it. We don't really have the time to do anything else very exciting right now.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-03-25T10:08:00.002-06:00

Just in case you didn't see Nick's happy little blip of a post...we have very very good news: Nick got the job at L3!!!!

I am so proud of him and I am very grateful to have a husband who is smart enough to go get a difficult grown up job that requires hard work and intelligence. L3 will be lucky to have him! (But not as Lucky as me) This is a fantastic opportunity for Nick. He has always wanted to work for L3. They pay very well, work with school, give benefits-including tuition reimbursement, and he will get great job experience. We have been very blessed!

2009-03-24T16:08:00.001-06:00

I got it! Wahoo!

Sixth

2009-03-23T18:25:00.003-06:00

Sixth Folder Sixth Picture. Ect Ect Ect.

Tagged by Melissa

I tag anyone who has a cool picture they want to share.

Behold the beautiful half a birthday cake Nick made me for my half birthday one year. I came home from a long day of school and work to a lovely suprise. Who keeps track of half birthdays? I had no idea there was anything special about February 25th. But Nick being the lovely fellow he is thought it would be nice to celebrate my half birthday for fun. Isn't he marvelous? I'm sure you ladies are all jealous. You should be. I am a very lucky girl.

L-3 Interview

2009-03-23T13:45:00.004-06:00

I had a good interview at L-3 Communications today! I'm really excited about the job. The interview went well, two team leads took me on complete tours of their departments afterwards, and they all seemed... eager. The whole interview was over 1.5 hours, which is a good indication. They didn't think I was a waste of their busy time, anyway. Being interviewed by actual engineers who are working and have to take time out of their of busy, important day just to show me around at least makes me feel good. I should hear from them soon about the job. I would love it.

For those of you who don't know, L-3 builds the communications arrays for basically the whole Armed Forces, but especially the entire communications suites for the remote surveillance and air-support drones, i.e. Global Hawk and Predator, so if I get this awesome co-op job there, my job will be way cooler than yours. I'm happy just to have got an interview!

Also, much thanks to Brianna who coached me all last night. We went over all the tough questions that interviewers ask, and I think I did pretty well today. I was certainly very much calmer than I expected, because she helped me out so much. Interviewing for a job at your dream company - yeah, I felt more pressure than normal. But it worked out really well. Thanks, babe!

Brianna is going to art school!

2009-03-16T10:54:00.012-06:00

Prepare to be jealous: my most beloved and sexy wife is going to art school! After graduating with an admittedly useless degree in English Literature from an admittedly useless college and seeing her future unfold in a career of mindless office work, she decided that was too depressing. With some heavy prying on my part to get her to admit to her real ambitions, specifically photojournalism, and some strong support from a close friend, she has decided to go for it! It's kind of crazy, and she's been really shy about really wanting to become a photojournalist, or even talk about it, because it's not a "normal" thing for most people to do (especially for people from Tremonton), and has always thought it was an adventurous thing that "other people" got to do, and she would have to settle for something mediocre.

Which is not what I'm all about. Once she admitted that she's wanted to do photography for years, I wouldn't let up about it, and she found a really nice private art school close to Salt Lake (The Art Institute) that offers a full Bachelor of Science degree in photography. We met with them on Saturday, she was accepted (of course), and now we just have to figure out the details. It's going to be a lot of work and a lot of money, but who cares? You only get a few chances in life to really make what you want out of it, and most of those happen when you're young and don't have a lot of time or money, so we're doing it now! I'm really proud of her for refusing to sit down and do the sensible thing. :-) I'm going to school right now so that someday I can do something difficult that I love that contributes to society and to our family; why can't she do that, too? No reason. Or no good reasons, anyway.

So now you can all talk in awe of your super-cool friend/sister/niece/in-law/random person you read about on the Internet, who is going to an acclaimed private art school to become even cooler than ever before. I couldn't be prouder, and admit it, you couldn't be more jealous! (Except for maybe my mom, who's already a musician with an art degree, and therefore has no real need to be jealous: you can just be proud, Mom. :-)

2009-03-11T18:18:00.013-06:00

This post is dedicated to one of my very favorite places: The ZOO! I love the zoo very much and have a year membership. We have already been twice since I moved to Taylorsville-and we will go many many more times. For anyone who has never been in the winter or early spring you should definitely check it out. The animals are actually awake! Here is some documentation of our outing:

The Day We Met...

2009-02-15T22:21:00.005-07:00

...was today! Three years ago. We were at a party at Brianna's apartment for her roommate's birthday. One of my best friends was their home teacher (and had a thing for her roommate), so he went and he brought me along. I had been home from my mission for a good 38 hours or so. Anyway, at one point I started playing with her other roommate's camera and took this video clip; when we got engaged six months later I tracked her down and got it. So here it is: 13 seconds from the day we met! How cool is that?? Enjoy.

The Buick turns 200,000 miles old!

2009-02-07T16:04:00.010-07:00

We are closer and closer to being fully moved in! Of course, that won't happen until May when the semester ends and I can move permanently to our new apartment, but most of our stuff is put away, at least. We got new curtains for some of the windows today, and the smoke smell drifting in from the apartment above us is slowly going away.

By the way, living in two places at once is confusing, and I wouldn't recommend it. It sucks.

But that's not what this post is about. What this post is about is: The Buick is 200,000 miles old! Our beautiful first car ever, purchased in December 2006 with 183,000 miles, today rolled over the Big 200. I watched it happen with my very own eyes, right as I turned the corner to our street. Our car is as healthy as ever (mechanically), and as soon as we drive it out of our parking lot, it will have lasted over 200,000 miles. It's a 1991 Skylark with the 3.3L V6, in case you need to know. That makes it over 18 years old. Eat that, America-hating Toyota-freaks! If you want a car that lasts, buy a Buick!

Really Quick Update

2009-01-16T10:44:00.001-07:00

FYI

I got a job in Murray at Feature Films for Families. I'm living in a nice apartment in Taylorsville. Come see me if you are around!

Calvin

2009-01-08T09:55:00.002-07:00

I just realized that I check my own blog regularly for the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip at the bottom. I am therefore moving it to the top for easier viewing. I hope you can all enjoy it with me!

Random Updates

2008-12-31T08:41:00.018-07:00

It has been awhile since I have posted anything so this will probably turn out as a random update of the past month ish.

Things that have happened:

We survived finals week
-This can be attributed to more Little Caesar's pizza boxes, a fair amount of Dr. Pepper and Sobes, some late nights and some early mornings. We made it though!

I graduated!
-I now have a BS degree in English with an emphasis in Literary studies-and BS the operative word-I am now an expert in making stuff up and pretending it is more meaninful and interesting than it really ever could be. It is, however, a degree and even if it isn't that marketable I'm happy to have one. There will be no pictures of me in a cap and gown however, because I decided not to walk. Treading across campus in a strange hat through lots of snow to get handed an empty diploma holder for the diploma they mail 6-8 weeks later didn't sound that fun. Instead my family had a lovely party for me. They are pretty nice.

LAS VEGAS!
-In celebration of graduating and our 2nd wedding anniversary we went out on the town. Thanks to Nick for keeping me for two whole years. We have a ways to go yet. But have no fear, we will make it, we are having too much fun not to!

Las Vegas was a great choice this time of year because they are practically begging people to come down. If it hadn't been for the shopping, which we both suprisingly enjoyed, we would have almost made money on vacation because things were so cheap! (For example a 600 sq ft hotel room for $27 a night).

I didn't realize how much of Vegas was shopping, but it was fun because the malls are actually quite gorgeous and they had fun performers. The gondolas and the singers at the Venitian were pretty cool, but the ceiling that looked like the sky made me feel kinda funny. The shops at the Venitian and the Forum shops at Caesar's Palace were the coolest to walk through. We also spent some time at the regular mall where they sell items that humans can afford. My very favorite store was at the Forum Shops and it was the fantastically enormous toy store F.A.O. Shwartz. Nick bought me an anniversary present there. Meet Nicodemus:

We had all sorts of fun seeing the strip. The fountains at the Bellagio were great and the firey volcano show was warm.

This was good because Vegas was actually pretty cold. We were present for the historic snow. Which we documented so you wouldn't be too jealous of us.

There were lots of other fun things to go see besides the snow. I loved just looking at all of the buildings. They build them in such fun shapes and designs. I was particularly impressed with the New York! New York! What a fun idea! We also went to Ethel M Chocolate factory where we saw cool machines and tasted yummy chocolate. We also saw cool sculptures made entirely out of chocolate. And for some reason they also have a cactus garden there.

We ate at The Cheesecake Factory twice because it was so yummy. We also checked out some buffets and had a pizza party in our hotel room when the snow got too icky.My very favorite thing however, was the dolphin and tiger habitat at the Mirage. It was the only thing we paid to go see and it was worth every penny. They had a 3 month old dolphin and an 18 month old swimming around with their families. We even got to see a little bit of the training. They also had three 7 month old tiger cubs who we got to watch play around. I love them. I think i will get a pet tiger cub when I grow up. There were also lions, a panther, and llamas. We took a few pictures, but mostly videos because they are cooler and easier to see. I will put a few pictures up and leave the video posting to Nick.

Christmas and a Wedding!
We came back to the crazy Utah weather which makes Vegas snow look like nothing. We had a great Christmas with family. We visited the Stamps on the afternoon of the 24th then went back to Logan for a yummy Christmas Eve dinner with the Jensens and liked it so much we went back for breakfast the next morning. Christmas afternoon we braved the craziness and went to Tremonton. Those of you who know what the weather was like that day already know that we had to spend the night. But oh well. They have couches and blankets and we were safe and warm. Fiday night some of the Stamps girls came to spend the night at my apartment and then the morning of the wedding 7 of us girls got ready together at Heather's apartment. It was a bit crazy but fun. We spend the rest of the day doing wedding affiliated stuff and enjoyed visiting with family and friends.

That is pretty much a summation of the last month of our lives. I have of course left things out, but this post is getting awfully long. So maybe Nick will post something sometime. Until then, adios!

2008-11-17T14:23:00.000-07:00

On days like today, I remember why I was hesitant about starting a blog- I have nothing interesting to tell you about. We are simply in survival mode until the end of the semester graces us with its presence. We stay up too late, have a very messy kitchen, need to do oodles of laundry, and rarely if ever cook (As evidenced by the unnumbered quantity of little Caesar’s pizza boxes that have made their way into our apartment). I am however a very lucky girl. Somehow, I found a husband who does not mind that I live out of piles, hate cooking, and only wear mascara about once every three weeks. The dear fellow even made me my very favorite dinner last night, and packed me a lunch this morning. So today’s blog will be an Ode to Nicholas.

Actually, I’m not much of a poet. So maybe we had better call it a Telegram to Nicholas.

Dear Boy [stop] I am the luckiest girl in at least the western hemisphere [stop] Thank you for the tacos the PBJ sandwich you made me [stop] I am glad that you are real and not a sparkly vampire [stop] I am also glad that you [stop] are smart and funny even when you are tired [stop] I love that you watch old silly movies with me [stop] Also thank you for letting me hang out with you and the boys all the time [stop] I'm glad you like playing games with me even though sometimes I wallop you [stop]Thank you for putting up with your ornery messy wife [stop] Maybe I will be less messy when I grow up, but I know you aren’t counting on it [stop] Thanks [stop]

I am glad you are mine[stop] Love, wife [stop]

Celebration

2008-11-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

For those of you who may not be celebrating with me over the results of last nights election, I ask for a little more kindness, optimism, and a little less "end of life as we know it" hullabaloo.

If you are still down in the dumps, I offer some other things I consider worthy of celebration.

Today is Guy Fawkes Day. So what if it isn't an American Holiday. Celebrate with the British. Who doesn't like bonfires?
The world still offers us Teddy Grahams. If you are feeling down today-splurge- buy a box of Teddy Grahams. You can't help feel a little better.

Go read The Paper Bag Princess. What's not to celebrate? If you don't feel a little happier at the end of this book, I don't think you deserve happiness.

2008-11-03T23:06:00.000-07:00

So there I was, dazedly going about my classes today, when I suddenly found myself in a blog.

So I took a nap in the library.

Things were better after that.

It's starting to get to that point in the semester where students are sleeping everywhere on campus, and I am one of them. It's like we all forgot to sleep - at all - for the first two months, and suddenly remembered that it's a basic physical need, and we ought to resume the practice right now in between classes.

I think most people have a favorite nap spot - mine is on the third or fourth floor of our single-doored library, where they have ridiculously uncomfortable couches and super-hard pillows that make your face sore. For some reason, I can nap really well on them, even with people yelling at each other in the group rooms right next to me.

2008-11-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

I have no fun stories to tell you, but thought it would be fun to start a blog anyhow. So here you can stay updated on the mundane and listen to me ramble about silly things. Best of luck to you. Here we are in our hard hat glory shooting a firework show.

2008-07-30T18:21:00.001-06:00