Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Understanding Exposure
As many of you know, (it's funny how I say many regarding the 5 people that read this) I have lately been fumbling my way around a Canon Rebel XSi. Now, granted, I have been able to snap some pretty neat looking photos considering my knowledge base, but I have felt that I'm missing a great deal of what my camera can do. I have been aimlessly snapping photos and messing with settings. Typically I will shoot for an hour or two, take hundreds of photos and end up with 5-10 that actually look good. NO MORE! For Christmas, my sister gave me a book called "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson. This book is awesome. I'm maybe two chapters into it and already I feel so much more confident with my camera. I've read several articles on the interwebs and parts of a couple of books but this one blows them all away. Most of what I have read up to this point deals in lots of numbers and tries to make things overly complicated while overlooking some of the really basic functions of the camera. This book really breaks it down from a very basic standpoint and basically takes you by the hand and says, "Look, this is how it works." It is fantastic. I'm so excited to take my new-found knowledge into the real world and start taking some awesome pictures. I need the sun to come up already!!
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Vomit Blog #1
This could be kind of interesting. I've found since I started blogging that I've had lots of ideas that I wanted to write down that I didn't feel necessarily warranted their own blog post. So, I'm creating what I have decided to call the vomit blog. I'm just going to list all of these random thoughts. I think starting now I'll keep a running vomit blog and post it occasionally as it fills up. So here we go with vomit blog #1.
1. The reason there are very few pictures of drummers is because it's extremely difficult to do. They're moving fast, the lights on the stage are not placed optimally to get light on the drummer and it's very hard to get enough light on them to get a good picture and have an exposure time fast enough not to be a blurry mess. A lot of that could have to do with my crappy lens. :P I'll keep trying.
2. Every time I see someone speeding and driving like a jack ass I wish that they would run into a concrete barrier. It pisses me off that people feel like where ever they have to be is far more important than the safety of everyone on the road. Also, I am constantly amazed at how pissed off people get at other drivers who are actually going the speed limit.
3. In order to avoid all of the stupid warnings we have to put on everything to keep the idiots of the world safe, every product package should have the following statement; "By opening this product you assume responsibility for any and all risks of use/misuse of this product by you and any others using/misusing the product. Manufacturer makes no guarantee of the product's safety."
Seriously, put it on everything. Let the idiots of the world strangle themselves with lamp cords. We'll be better off in the end.
4. People need to either be more careful or more thorough when putting qualifiers on multiple choice questions. What if my answer is somewhere between "A. Yes, I fucking LOVE chocodiles" and "B. No, I am really damn sure I asked for pecan sandies." Either stick with just yes/no or make sure you include "C. Yes, I would enjoy a chocodile, but in truth I did ask for pecan sandies."
2. Every time I see someone speeding and driving like a jack ass I wish that they would run into a concrete barrier. It pisses me off that people feel like where ever they have to be is far more important than the safety of everyone on the road. Also, I am constantly amazed at how pissed off people get at other drivers who are actually going the speed limit.
3. In order to avoid all of the stupid warnings we have to put on everything to keep the idiots of the world safe, every product package should have the following statement; "By opening this product you assume responsibility for any and all risks of use/misuse of this product by you and any others using/misusing the product. Manufacturer makes no guarantee of the product's safety."
Seriously, put it on everything. Let the idiots of the world strangle themselves with lamp cords. We'll be better off in the end.
4. People need to either be more careful or more thorough when putting qualifiers on multiple choice questions. What if my answer is somewhere between "A. Yes, I fucking LOVE chocodiles" and "B. No, I am really damn sure I asked for pecan sandies." Either stick with just yes/no or make sure you include "C. Yes, I would enjoy a chocodile, but in truth I did ask for pecan sandies."
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
A step in the wrong direction
Under normal circumstances I’m am fairly strongly against focusing on negativity. In this particular case, I feel like it is very important to me to dedicate one post to this. I need to make sure I highlight the problem so I make sure that I see it. I also worry that if I included this in a typical post it would seem like I was trying to cover up the problem, both to the reader and to myself.
I smoked this weekend; more than a couple. As you may have read in a previous blog, I have struggled primarily with not smoking while at social functions, especially when alcohol is involved. Rather than thinking of a way to deal with this problem and take care of it, I chose, instead, to embrace the problem and let it grow. I decided that there was no way I was going to not smoke while drinking and that in an effort not to be mooching cigarettes all night that I would just buy a pack so I only had to deal with the guilt of smoking and not the guilt of taking cigarettes from people. The plan was to smoke until the end of the night at which time I would give the remainder of the pack to someone else. This worked relatively well on Friday night. I smoked maybe half of a pack and, at the end of the evening, gave it away to another friend that smoked. This seemed all well and good to me. I had my cigarettes for the night of drinking and at the end of the night, they were gone and I could pretend that I was still a happy non-smoker.
Then Saturday night came around and to my surprise, I found myself out drinking with some friends again. I hadn’t planned on this and of course, I had to have another partial pack. So I went and bought one. I did it last night, and truthfully, a prior evening a few weeks ago. Why wouldn’t it be equally successful this night? Unfortunately for me, at the end of the night, I did not give this pack away. Why didn’t I? That’s a great question and in truth I could give you several very valid reasons that I did not. But each one reeks of being a lame excuse and I will not burden you with them. There were several people I could have given them to. I could have just left them at the house I was at. Even better, I could have thrown them away. But I didn’t, I kept them. At the exact moment I chose to keep them, it was too late to do anything about it. I had cigarettes and I was going to smoke them. I had several Sunday morning and even through the evening and into Monday morning. Of course this whole time I kept telling myself, “I just have to finish this pack and then I’ll be done again.”
The first thing I realized is that I had been lying to myself. Obviously it hadn’t been a conscious decision. And in this case I think it was one of the more convincing lies I had ever told myself. I think most times that I have told a lie to me, somewhere, I knew it was a lie. In this case, I did not. I told myself I was in control, I had beaten this thing and now I was going to taunt it. I was going to use the occasional cigarette to remind myself how terrible they were and how much I didn’t need it. The moment I caught myself in the lie was one of the strangest and worst feelings I have ever encountered. I was driving home from somewhere, I don’t even remember where and I was angry about some little thing, I don’t even remember what. I remember sitting in my car on the freeway and just fuming over this little tiny thing. I was so unreasonably angry about it. It took a while but at some point I realized this. There was absolutely no reason for me to be so mad about this insignificant little thing. Then the thought entered my head that maybe just one cigarette would be good to calm me down, but no, I’m not a smoker, why in the world would I need a cigarette? That’s when it it me. Yes, I was unreasonably mad about something, that was being caused by the nicotine withdrawals and yes, I thought a cigarette would help, that was also being caused by the nicotine withdrawals and I was addicted again.
The realization knocked me on my ass. I’m sure most of us know how it feels to be caught in a lie. The guilt, the embarrassment, the frustration at being caught. Being the one catching the lie isn’t pleasant either, betrayal, anger, feeling foolish for having believed the lie. When you really truly catch yourself in a lie, you experience all of the emotions of the catcher and the caught at the exact same moment with no one to direct them towards but yourself.
The other thing that I thought was really off about this whole situation is that I was more comfortable with giving a poison to my friends than I was with taking it from them. Seems rather backwards to me.
Anyways, the good news buried in all of this is that I am back on track. It was a rough weekend but I’m back on the wagon again and feeling great.
I do have some residual sore-throateyness and congestion from a weekend of smoking but I expect that will dissipate within a day or two at the most. While this was definitely a set back, it was not a failure. Merely a small stumbling block on my road to victory. I have no doubts that I have beat this thing. I may not be perfect, and I may not have done it all at once but my eyes are on victory. I am consciously aware of my struggling and I am fighting it. I will beat this.
See ya later.
-Paul
I smoked this weekend; more than a couple. As you may have read in a previous blog, I have struggled primarily with not smoking while at social functions, especially when alcohol is involved. Rather than thinking of a way to deal with this problem and take care of it, I chose, instead, to embrace the problem and let it grow. I decided that there was no way I was going to not smoke while drinking and that in an effort not to be mooching cigarettes all night that I would just buy a pack so I only had to deal with the guilt of smoking and not the guilt of taking cigarettes from people. The plan was to smoke until the end of the night at which time I would give the remainder of the pack to someone else. This worked relatively well on Friday night. I smoked maybe half of a pack and, at the end of the evening, gave it away to another friend that smoked. This seemed all well and good to me. I had my cigarettes for the night of drinking and at the end of the night, they were gone and I could pretend that I was still a happy non-smoker.
Then Saturday night came around and to my surprise, I found myself out drinking with some friends again. I hadn’t planned on this and of course, I had to have another partial pack. So I went and bought one. I did it last night, and truthfully, a prior evening a few weeks ago. Why wouldn’t it be equally successful this night? Unfortunately for me, at the end of the night, I did not give this pack away. Why didn’t I? That’s a great question and in truth I could give you several very valid reasons that I did not. But each one reeks of being a lame excuse and I will not burden you with them. There were several people I could have given them to. I could have just left them at the house I was at. Even better, I could have thrown them away. But I didn’t, I kept them. At the exact moment I chose to keep them, it was too late to do anything about it. I had cigarettes and I was going to smoke them. I had several Sunday morning and even through the evening and into Monday morning. Of course this whole time I kept telling myself, “I just have to finish this pack and then I’ll be done again.”
The first thing I realized is that I had been lying to myself. Obviously it hadn’t been a conscious decision. And in this case I think it was one of the more convincing lies I had ever told myself. I think most times that I have told a lie to me, somewhere, I knew it was a lie. In this case, I did not. I told myself I was in control, I had beaten this thing and now I was going to taunt it. I was going to use the occasional cigarette to remind myself how terrible they were and how much I didn’t need it. The moment I caught myself in the lie was one of the strangest and worst feelings I have ever encountered. I was driving home from somewhere, I don’t even remember where and I was angry about some little thing, I don’t even remember what. I remember sitting in my car on the freeway and just fuming over this little tiny thing. I was so unreasonably angry about it. It took a while but at some point I realized this. There was absolutely no reason for me to be so mad about this insignificant little thing. Then the thought entered my head that maybe just one cigarette would be good to calm me down, but no, I’m not a smoker, why in the world would I need a cigarette? That’s when it it me. Yes, I was unreasonably mad about something, that was being caused by the nicotine withdrawals and yes, I thought a cigarette would help, that was also being caused by the nicotine withdrawals and I was addicted again.
The realization knocked me on my ass. I’m sure most of us know how it feels to be caught in a lie. The guilt, the embarrassment, the frustration at being caught. Being the one catching the lie isn’t pleasant either, betrayal, anger, feeling foolish for having believed the lie. When you really truly catch yourself in a lie, you experience all of the emotions of the catcher and the caught at the exact same moment with no one to direct them towards but yourself.
The other thing that I thought was really off about this whole situation is that I was more comfortable with giving a poison to my friends than I was with taking it from them. Seems rather backwards to me.
Anyways, the good news buried in all of this is that I am back on track. It was a rough weekend but I’m back on the wagon again and feeling great.
I do have some residual sore-throateyness and congestion from a weekend of smoking but I expect that will dissipate within a day or two at the most. While this was definitely a set back, it was not a failure. Merely a small stumbling block on my road to victory. I have no doubts that I have beat this thing. I may not be perfect, and I may not have done it all at once but my eyes are on victory. I am consciously aware of my struggling and I am fighting it. I will beat this. See ya later.
-Paul
Friday, December 2, 2011
Windows Live Writer
Ok, I know I already posted today but I just read a post about Windows Live writer and I decided I need to give it a try. Partially because I have nothing better to do. It seems pretty cool thus far. It actually allows you to write things IN your blog. As I’m typing this, I am seeing exactly how it will look when it is published which is pretty cool. Just to explore some of the functionality here I’m going to be posting some random videos, links, pictures, etc. Please bear with me.
Fun little side note: I was a little unsure about the correct word usage above (bear with me) so I looked it up. I did actually use the correct form of bear in that circumstance. The website I used to verify this also gave the tip that using the phrase “bare with me” would be an invitation to undress together. I seriously doubt I will every have a hard time remembering that one again.
Fun little video Chris and I shot making fun of Mulligans golf course in South Jordan
Ok, adding videos is pretty sweet. Windows writer will link to your YouTube account and you can simply choose videos that you have saved to your account. Also, if you load a video file from your computer it automatically uploads the video to your YouTube account, allowing input of tags and descriptions for YouTube. That’s pretty sweet.
Awesome music video
Ok fantastic, I was a little concerned there for a minute. You can’t directly add videos that you have “liked” from your YouTube account but you can add any that you have added to your favorites list. You can also just find a video on YouTube, copy/paste the link into Windows Writer and you’re good to go.
The photo functionality is a little disappointing. I was hoping you might be able to link to a Picasa account similarly to how YouTube links. This is not the case. You can either upload directly from your computer (which works great) or you need to have the direct link to the photo on the web. There isn’t even a way to browse to a photo online to use. I would have thought that it would be fairly easy to integrate some of IE’s functionality into this program and allow you to browse to photos on the web. There are, however, some nice formatting options for photos. It’s fairly easy to change the size, background, border options as well as crop the photo and add some limited photo effect. You can also fairly easily add an external link to a photo, which is pretty cool.
Ooh there’s an option to upload a map to the post as well. I’d better find a way to try that… hold on…. oh, lame. It links to Bing maps. I guess that’s not altogether surprising, being a Microsoft product. That’s rather disappointing though. That could be a really cool feature but I don’t use Bing. I use Google. Like the rest of the world. The rest of the cool world anyways. Maybe I’ll have to play with that and see if you can upload a map from Google to Bing so I can blog about sweet cycling routes in the summer or all of those awesome trips I go on (hey, I should go on some sweet trips.)
This is odd. I’ve noticed that while scrolling through the post if you hit a video or picture, it stops scrolling using the mouse scroll wheel and you have to actually mouse over to the sidebar and scroll from there. Not really a damning glitch but it’s a little annoying. 
YES!!! Old school messenger emoticons FOR THE WIN. That is a definite plus for this program.
The formatting options are nice. It has all the typical windows functionality for text which makes it easy to emphasize things. I can also use all the cool custom fonts I’ve downloaded for Mystery theatre posters and such. Having a spell check built in is nice also because I’m lazy and I sometimes can’t spell. There’s also a word count feature which is essentially useless but kind of cool anyways. I actually checked the word count when I noticed that tool and it was at 666 so if you’re superstitious, you’re going to want to make sure to read past the beginning of this sentence. Good job.
This is kind of interesting. Apparently you can group a whole section to make it a block quote. It seems that it has to be seperated from the rest of the post by a page break though. That’s a little odd but I guess it’s cool. I was thinking that it might be annoying if you wanted to only quote one line but I guess you can just quote one line and make it a separate paragraph.
-Paul
The preview feature is great as well. It’s not really necessary I don’t think since I’m writing on the blog background as we speak but when you go to the preview it puts in all the little sidebars and things so you can see it all. Not hugely important but nice to be able to see. Also it’s nice that it won’t add views to my blog stats which drives me nuts.
Well, I think that about covers it. I think I’m going to go ahead and continue to use this program for now for all my blogging purposes. By the way, this post was really fun. I don’t think I’ve really ever reviewed anything before except short little Yelp reviews. I feel like this was a really good objective review. Plus being able to write the review in the program I’m reviewing was kind of cool and unique. I think I see more reviews in my future. I know, you’re super excited.
See ya later,
-Paul
There's just really not much to say...
I find myself really wanting to write this morning but with a complete lack of things I feel are exciting enough to write about. I suppose I could make things up but that just seems to kind of defeat the purpose of a blog that I'm writing about my life. Although I suppose it would give some insight into my imagination. I have been thinking lately that I might want to attempt to move my blogging time into the evening. I find that in the evening as I'm wrapping up my day I have all kinds of thoughts swirling through my head and I could get some really interesting (at least to me) things written down and have something meaningful to say. By the following morning, all of these cool thoughts are pretty much gone. I could solve world hunger one night and if I didn't write it down by the next morning I think it would be gone. I guess a general update couldn't hurt anything right?
I have never been more excited for a semester to be over than I am right now. This semester has been a busy one for sure. I am looking forward to my upcoming time off of work and school with great anticipation. My engineering class project has been a pretty major source of frustration for me lately. We don't seem to be making a whole lot of progress lately and we cannot, as a group, make a decision as to which way we're going to move forward. From talking to some of the guys at work it seems that this is likely to be a recurring theme throughout the rest of my schooling. Wow, that is just exciting as hell right? My math class hasn't been much better although that is more to the fault of the teacher than anyone else in the class. I will be so glad to be done with this guy. I really hope that my Calculus teacher next semester is better than him. Having a crappy teacher really makes it hard to learn. I don't think I've ever really needed to make that distinction before. I've always had really good teachers. This is a new experience for me and I have to say I think I could have done without it.
Work has been ok I suppose. Nothing terribly exciting going on. I'm working on a few projects at the moment but it seems like most of them end up giving me a couple of hours worth of work for a day and then several days of waiting for something else. There's been some drama over updating working drawings of our new ceramic brackets. I guess people are expecting me to do them but I don't know what needs to be done. Our chief technologist has a whole bunch of things he wants changed in the prints but he won't tell anyone what needs to be changed and he's getting frustrated that it isn't done yet. Makes sense right? I was supposed to meet with my boss yesterday and find out what the situation on that is but he was a little late yesterday and missed the meeting. I guess I'll find out about it sooner or later. Probably I'll get a list one day and they'll expect all 240 individual drawings to be updated the next day. Sweet!
Ok so I might be in a bit of a pessimistic mood this morning. Ah well, this too shall pass. I'm gunna go listen to some Chili Peppers and see if I can't find some work to do since I've been at work since 6.
I have never been more excited for a semester to be over than I am right now. This semester has been a busy one for sure. I am looking forward to my upcoming time off of work and school with great anticipation. My engineering class project has been a pretty major source of frustration for me lately. We don't seem to be making a whole lot of progress lately and we cannot, as a group, make a decision as to which way we're going to move forward. From talking to some of the guys at work it seems that this is likely to be a recurring theme throughout the rest of my schooling. Wow, that is just exciting as hell right? My math class hasn't been much better although that is more to the fault of the teacher than anyone else in the class. I will be so glad to be done with this guy. I really hope that my Calculus teacher next semester is better than him. Having a crappy teacher really makes it hard to learn. I don't think I've ever really needed to make that distinction before. I've always had really good teachers. This is a new experience for me and I have to say I think I could have done without it.
Work has been ok I suppose. Nothing terribly exciting going on. I'm working on a few projects at the moment but it seems like most of them end up giving me a couple of hours worth of work for a day and then several days of waiting for something else. There's been some drama over updating working drawings of our new ceramic brackets. I guess people are expecting me to do them but I don't know what needs to be done. Our chief technologist has a whole bunch of things he wants changed in the prints but he won't tell anyone what needs to be changed and he's getting frustrated that it isn't done yet. Makes sense right? I was supposed to meet with my boss yesterday and find out what the situation on that is but he was a little late yesterday and missed the meeting. I guess I'll find out about it sooner or later. Probably I'll get a list one day and they'll expect all 240 individual drawings to be updated the next day. Sweet!
Ok so I might be in a bit of a pessimistic mood this morning. Ah well, this too shall pass. I'm gunna go listen to some Chili Peppers and see if I can't find some work to do since I've been at work since 6.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Thanksgiving weekend: twenty-eleven
Wow. What a weekend it was. I believe one of my favorite ever. Of course Thursday was filled with all of the usual family stuff. Early dinner with my dad's family and pie with my mom's later in the evening. I also actually managed to make it over to my parents early this year and watch some of the parade with them. At pie with the Broshinsky's I had some time to look at photos with Karen. We both took some time to show off some of the shots we had taken, that was a lot of fun. After looking at some of her work I'm getting really excited about taking my photography class next semester and learning more about how to use my camera. That really just about covers Thursday, nothing really out of the ordinary but great nonetheless.
Friday I actually took part in some Black Friday shopping for the first time as a customer. Well, sort of. I went to Target in the afternoon after things were done being really nasty and bought a vacuum. Exciting right? I also got Blu-rays of all the old Christmas classics, which is slightly more exciting. After that my day really began. I went geocaching with Tiffany Conger. We had a great time. We found 4 total caches including a revisit to my first attempted cache that I never found. It was nice to be able to finally cross that one off the list. We also found one that was up the side of Mt. Olympus on some crazy metal contraption. I'm really not sure what it was. Neither was the guy that placed the cache actually. If anyone can tell what this thing is from the picture it would really be awesome to know. It has an enormous engine attached to an even bigger winch all attached to a small tower. It was the craziest thing. It was really cool though. Although we ended up having to drive up part of the mountain on a pretty sketchy looking dirt road. I was a little worried for the safety of my car to be honest. Even after the sketch drive there was a little bit of a hike up to this thing which Tiffany was really not happy about but I bought her tea after. Hopefully she forgave me for that. :/
Post geocaching, we decided to grab some pizza at some new pizzeria Tiffany's cousin works at. I think it was called Limon something or other. Anyways, really weird pizza. The one we got had olive oil, mozzarella, spinach, prosciutto and blackberries. Weird right? It was really good actually. A little sweeter than I'm accustomed to for pizza but I enjoyed it anyways. We ended up taking our pizza back to my house and chatted about our Nooks for a while. She ended up loaning me Percy Jackson Lightning Thief. I was fairly surprised to get this particular recommendation from her as we saw this movie together. It is arguably one of the worst films I have ever seen; however, several chapters in now, the book is not too terrible.
Next up: Black Metal Friday. Woo, what a night. I headed out to the Donahue's for some drinking and black metal. It was a grand time. Haley set up a black metal shrine on their table that was really cool. I tried to get some photos of it. I haven't edited them yet but I think I got a few good ones. We had mead and butter beer and other beverages. The butter beer was particularly interesting. It was served warm and I believe Haley said it had beer, butter, and eggs in it. It ends up being almost sweet and very rich. It's an interesting concoction but I think I enjoyed it. So, drinks were consumed, conversations were had and as the most metal of us left, the night gave way to pop music, dubstep and dancing, kind of an interesting transition I must say. Overall; a very fun night. Unfortunately it didn't lead to the greatest morning come Saturday.
We worked on our engineering project pretty early Saturday morning. As you can imagine I was a little grumpy about this situation but with the due date closing in and our machine still not climbing stairs we have some work to do. We made attempts to attache some spikes to the tires in hopes that they would catch the stairs and pull it up. It seemed to work pretty well but unfortunately We were impatient and tested it before the glue dried. It managed to pull itself up one step before everything tore apart. It has been re-assembled and testing will commence this evening. Fingers crossed.
Wow I didn't really realize how packed this weekend really was. I'm looking back at what I've written and realizing it's really a lot of stuff. That doesn't even cover it though. I spent a significant amount of time on homework, a great guitar hero hunt, put lights on the house, deep cleaned the kitchen, and more!Wow, what a weekend. Hope you all had a great one as well. :)
Next up: Black Metal Friday. Woo, what a night. I headed out to the Donahue's for some drinking and black metal. It was a grand time. Haley set up a black metal shrine on their table that was really cool. I tried to get some photos of it. I haven't edited them yet but I think I got a few good ones. We had mead and butter beer and other beverages. The butter beer was particularly interesting. It was served warm and I believe Haley said it had beer, butter, and eggs in it. It ends up being almost sweet and very rich. It's an interesting concoction but I think I enjoyed it. So, drinks were consumed, conversations were had and as the most metal of us left, the night gave way to pop music, dubstep and dancing, kind of an interesting transition I must say. Overall; a very fun night. Unfortunately it didn't lead to the greatest morning come Saturday.
We worked on our engineering project pretty early Saturday morning. As you can imagine I was a little grumpy about this situation but with the due date closing in and our machine still not climbing stairs we have some work to do. We made attempts to attache some spikes to the tires in hopes that they would catch the stairs and pull it up. It seemed to work pretty well but unfortunately We were impatient and tested it before the glue dried. It managed to pull itself up one step before everything tore apart. It has been re-assembled and testing will commence this evening. Fingers crossed.
Wow I didn't really realize how packed this weekend really was. I'm looking back at what I've written and realizing it's really a lot of stuff. That doesn't even cover it though. I spent a significant amount of time on homework, a great guitar hero hunt, put lights on the house, deep cleaned the kitchen, and more!Wow, what a weekend. Hope you all had a great one as well. :)
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
It was a dark and stormy night
Ok, this is freaking exciting. Five Iron Frenzy is back! The band officially announced their return last night at 7 PM. With it came the release of this brand new FIF song. Here's the thing that's really amazing. Since they are releasing this new song without the help of a record label, the band has asked for the help of their fans to raise the money necessary to record, produce, mix, master, market this new album. Kinda risky right? Wrong. The goal of the fundraiser was to raise $30,000 by Jan 21 2012. In less than 24 hours after the announcement of the upcoming album, FIF fans have donate over $80,000 towards the production of the new album/touring/marketing/etc. HOLY CRAP. The band has promised that any money past what they need to produce the album will go toward putting the band back on tour and I'm certain that donations will continue to flow in hopes that after an eight year hiatus, FIF might make appearances.
So I was thinking about this in terms of other fundraising efforts that I have seen. It seems that people were much more willing to donate to a bunch of middle class American rockers than to the tons of relief efforts that have been happening over the last few years. It's kind of an interesting priority. Most of us are a lot more willing to donate money for the promise of a new CD of our favorite band than to send money to disaster stricken countries to aid people that really need it. That being said, I plan to donate next payday to the FIF cause. I try to donate to more worthy causes when opportunities arise but I think I could definitely do better. End minimally fact based social rant.
Ok now, that is out of the way. I am waaaay beyond excited for this new album. I was a little concerned when I first heard about it, fearing that it would be a half-assed attempt at a comeback from a bunch of guys that have long since lost their touch on their various instruments. This new song they released really boosted my confidence in the band and in fact, made me feel bad for doubting them. These guys still have it and I am stoked to be part of the backing they need to get the gears rolling on the next chapter in FIF history. Friday, November 18, 2011
In all fairness, I did say bring it on.
Holy crap. This week has been absolutely insane. I have been working my butt off trying to get the new Mystery Theatre show open. The Agents of Chaos (including my assistant director) were busy most of the beginning of the week tearing out everything from the old 3300 South haunt building. It's really kind of sad to see it go. A lot of my life happened at that building and as cliche as it sounds, I did a lot of growing up there. During the move I took a couple opportunities to head over there and take a few pictures. I think I got some kind of cool shots of the old building but I really haven't had time to look through all of them. I'll hopefully get them posted in the next little while. Anyways, I took Mon-Wed off of work this week and worked 12 hour days Sat-Wed at the show. From 3D haunt space to the Cromwell Bed and Breakfast took a ton of work and a lot of hours. Fortunately I occasionally had some help from the cast, my mother, and now that the move is over I have Allegra and company to give me a hand.
During all of this craziness I still have school going full speed to finals. It's coming up really quickly and getting pretty stressful. It seems like we're behind in every one of my classes. My engineering class is behind because it is a Friday only class so the Fridays that we have had off put us a week behind schedule each. My trig class is behind because our teacher is an idiot. He consistently shows up late, leaves early, and a couple times has just not shown up for class. All of us in the class are concerned about learning everything we are going to need for the final and being up to speed for calculus next semester. My chemistry class is behind for unknown reasons and we are tearing through material at break neck speed trying to get caught up.
On the bright side, my engineering project seems to be going fairly well. We started welding together the remainder of the components over the last few days and it's really starting to come together. We hit a couple snags yesterday and had to take things apart but we came up with a new solution for our gearing so we have a plan to get it all welded back together this weekend. It should be pretty exciting to get the thing going.
It's been a rather exhilarating few days and I have managed to get a lot done. I can't wait for life to get back to normal though. I'm way behind on sleep and nodding off at really terrible times. :P Oh well, show opens Saturday and then hopefully I can get things back to normal. I don't think I've ever been this excited for Christmas time. I get the whole week off between Christmas and New Years and it is going to be a very well earned break. I think I'll start my countdown now. :)
As an afterthought; for a while I was doing fairly regular updates on my non-smoking progress. I haven't updated on that in a while and I don't want anyone to think that it's because I've slipped up. Things are going exceptionally well. Since my small slip up while drinking that I posted about I haven't had any problems at all. The only time I even think about smoking anymore is occasionally when I take a deep breath and notice that my lungs don't hurt. It's pretty fantastic. :)
During all of this craziness I still have school going full speed to finals. It's coming up really quickly and getting pretty stressful. It seems like we're behind in every one of my classes. My engineering class is behind because it is a Friday only class so the Fridays that we have had off put us a week behind schedule each. My trig class is behind because our teacher is an idiot. He consistently shows up late, leaves early, and a couple times has just not shown up for class. All of us in the class are concerned about learning everything we are going to need for the final and being up to speed for calculus next semester. My chemistry class is behind for unknown reasons and we are tearing through material at break neck speed trying to get caught up.
On the bright side, my engineering project seems to be going fairly well. We started welding together the remainder of the components over the last few days and it's really starting to come together. We hit a couple snags yesterday and had to take things apart but we came up with a new solution for our gearing so we have a plan to get it all welded back together this weekend. It should be pretty exciting to get the thing going.
It's been a rather exhilarating few days and I have managed to get a lot done. I can't wait for life to get back to normal though. I'm way behind on sleep and nodding off at really terrible times. :P Oh well, show opens Saturday and then hopefully I can get things back to normal. I don't think I've ever been this excited for Christmas time. I get the whole week off between Christmas and New Years and it is going to be a very well earned break. I think I'll start my countdown now. :)
As an afterthought; for a while I was doing fairly regular updates on my non-smoking progress. I haven't updated on that in a while and I don't want anyone to think that it's because I've slipped up. Things are going exceptionally well. Since my small slip up while drinking that I posted about I haven't had any problems at all. The only time I even think about smoking anymore is occasionally when I take a deep breath and notice that my lungs don't hurt. It's pretty fantastic. :)
Friday, November 4, 2011
Bring it on....unless there's another option.
Holy crap. Things are about to get a little crazy. Haunt season just ended and that means I have like 15 days to get the next mystery open. I met with James and Brian yesterday to start planning out the space for the new set and I started to realize how much work I have to do. It's a little scary. I'm a touch behind on homework and I have TONS of work to do to get this show ready. I'm a little nervous. Finals are coming up, work is getting kind of busy, things are just piling up. Game on.
Speaking of work, there are some kind of cool things going on. My first real mechanical project is taking shape. It was a project to add a belt drive motor to a mechanical mixer to add an additional rotational axis (kind of). Anyways, we fired the thing up yesterday and it appears to work just fine. We need to modify the cover to make it fit over the new components and I think it's ready to go. I'm pretty excited about that. My next new project I've been working on is for freeze drying. I can't actually say what it's for (which makes it seem a lot cooler than it is) but I need to basically make a freeze dryer. We want to experiment with the process without spending $10 grand on a dryer. It should be pretty cool. :) I've been doing a lot of research on the process and different configurations and should be ready to start buying parts and piecing the thing together here in the next couple of days. Exciting right?
Speaking of work, there are some kind of cool things going on. My first real mechanical project is taking shape. It was a project to add a belt drive motor to a mechanical mixer to add an additional rotational axis (kind of). Anyways, we fired the thing up yesterday and it appears to work just fine. We need to modify the cover to make it fit over the new components and I think it's ready to go. I'm pretty excited about that. My next new project I've been working on is for freeze drying. I can't actually say what it's for (which makes it seem a lot cooler than it is) but I need to basically make a freeze dryer. We want to experiment with the process without spending $10 grand on a dryer. It should be pretty cool. :) I've been doing a lot of research on the process and different configurations and should be ready to start buying parts and piecing the thing together here in the next couple of days. Exciting right?
Monday, October 31, 2011
Week 1 and Other Things
Well here we are, 1 week after my decision to quit smoking and I have done damn well if I do say so myself. My health is improving at an incredible rate and nicotine cravings are near non-existent. It is really a great feeling. My success aside, I did slip up on Friday night and had one cigarette at a party. For some reason this is absolutely the hardest time for me to stick to my goals. I imagine it has something to do with impaired judgement but at the same time, if I realize how bad it is for me sober, why after a few drinks does it sound like such a good idea. Smoking does nothing positive for me when I'm not drinking. Why should a few beers make smoking a good idea? It's a problem. If anyone has any suggestions about how to better deal with this problem, I'd love to hear them. Unless it's don't drink. I should not have to avoid situations in which I smoked in the past to beat this thing.
Ok, so, smoking update, check. Now, on to the rest of my life. Friday afternoon in my design class, we had to present our progress on our group projects. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before but we're building a stair climbing machine. My group has done fairly well. We have solid drawings of the whole project, most of our materials on hand and we actually got our frame welded this week. Our teacher was really impressed with the progress we have made and I'm excited to continue on with the project. We are expecting to have it running the week before Thanksgiving.
I had an interesting experience Saturday night. I had borrowed my grandpa's truck to finish up some yard work, when I dropped the truck back off to him I stopped to chat for a while. It ended up being a rather lengthy conversation that was much more pleasant than some conversations with my grandparents have been. We just chatted about life, it was nice. I got the latest health updates from both of them which, while not great, was also not terrible. My grandma has found another incompetent, rude doctor that she will not be visiting again, and my grandpa's vision has been slowly improving. For the benefit of those who don't know, my grandfather has macular degeneration, which is a hereditary condition that destroys your eyes as you get older. He was diagnosed when I was about 8 and we were told that he would likely be blind within 10 years. The fact that his eyesight is actually improving is incredible. Granted, it's definitely not 20/20, he was telling me how exciting it was that for the last few weeks he had been able to see well enough to put his heart pill into a pill cutter and cut it himself. We spent some time talking about that and what I should be doing to give myself a leg up in case I get it as well. He also spent some time telling me about his father which was pretty cool. As I was leaving, my grandpa stood by the door and waited until I drove off so he could wave me off. It made me think of when I was younger. This was the norm any time we were leaving their house after a party. My dad would be driving off and he would turn the dome lights of the van on so that my grandparents could see us waving back. After I left my grandparents house I had to run to my parents house to return some tools I had borrowed. We chatted for probably around 30 minutes before I decided to head out. The thing that really struck me as odd then is that as I pulled out of my parents driveway they stood in the doorway, waving as I left. Holy full circle Batman! It hit me then that I actually am an adult. It's weird that this was the thing that really drove it home. The whole moving out, paying bills, taking care of myself thing didn't do it. It was a wave from my parents. Weird right?
Last night I made curry again. This was my second time and I think that I'm improving. The recipe I used is really great. It's one of the simplest Indian recipes I've been able to find. I found the recipe on allrecipes.com. It's called Spicy Chicken Curry, if you're interested, go check it out. I found that it turns out much better to use coconut milk instead of the two cups of water that it calls for. Anyways, the problem I'm having with this recipe is the peppers. The first time I made this I used two jalapenos instead of the chiles it calls for because I couldn't find chiles at the store I went to. I think this turned out pretty good. It was just the right amount of hot but I thought that the jalapenos added a little bit of a Mexican flavor. This time, I did a little advanced planning and went to El Rancho Market thinking that would be my best chance to find the right peppers. I ended up with four yellow chiles. This turned out pretty good but it wasn't nearly as hot as the jalapenos and the flavor of the peppers was a little overwhelming which might be okay if I liked peppers. Long story short, I'm now on a mission to find the right peppers for this recipe. If anyone knows of a Thai or Indian food market here in SLC where I could find some Indian chiles I would be eternally grateful. :)
I had an interesting experience Saturday night. I had borrowed my grandpa's truck to finish up some yard work, when I dropped the truck back off to him I stopped to chat for a while. It ended up being a rather lengthy conversation that was much more pleasant than some conversations with my grandparents have been. We just chatted about life, it was nice. I got the latest health updates from both of them which, while not great, was also not terrible. My grandma has found another incompetent, rude doctor that she will not be visiting again, and my grandpa's vision has been slowly improving. For the benefit of those who don't know, my grandfather has macular degeneration, which is a hereditary condition that destroys your eyes as you get older. He was diagnosed when I was about 8 and we were told that he would likely be blind within 10 years. The fact that his eyesight is actually improving is incredible. Granted, it's definitely not 20/20, he was telling me how exciting it was that for the last few weeks he had been able to see well enough to put his heart pill into a pill cutter and cut it himself. We spent some time talking about that and what I should be doing to give myself a leg up in case I get it as well. He also spent some time telling me about his father which was pretty cool. As I was leaving, my grandpa stood by the door and waited until I drove off so he could wave me off. It made me think of when I was younger. This was the norm any time we were leaving their house after a party. My dad would be driving off and he would turn the dome lights of the van on so that my grandparents could see us waving back. After I left my grandparents house I had to run to my parents house to return some tools I had borrowed. We chatted for probably around 30 minutes before I decided to head out. The thing that really struck me as odd then is that as I pulled out of my parents driveway they stood in the doorway, waving as I left. Holy full circle Batman! It hit me then that I actually am an adult. It's weird that this was the thing that really drove it home. The whole moving out, paying bills, taking care of myself thing didn't do it. It was a wave from my parents. Weird right?
Friday, October 28, 2011
Verified Sources
Check it out. I found the list I posted about yesterday with LEGIT sources! Cool right? Here it is.
- 20 minutes after quitting: Your heart rate and blood pressure drops.(Mahmud A, Feely J. Effect of Smoking on Arterial Stiffness and Pulse Pressure Amplification. Hypertension. 2003;41:183.)
- 12 hours after quitting: The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1988, p. 202)
- 2 weeks to 3 months after quitting: Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. 193, 194, 196, 285, 323)
- 1 to 9 months after quitting: Coughing and shortness of breath decrease; cilia (tiny hair-like structures that move mucus out of the lungs) regain normal function in the lungs, increasing the ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce the risk of infection.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. 285-287, 304)
- 1 year after quitting: The excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, p. vi)
- 5 years after quitting: Your stroke risk is reduced to that of a non-smoker 5 to 15 years after quitting.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, p. vi)
- 10 years after quitting: The lung cancer death rate is about half that of a person who continues smoking. The risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, cervix, and pancreas decrease, too.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. vi, 131, 148, 152, 155, 164, 166)
- 15 years after quitting: The risk of coronary heart disease is the same as a non-smoker’s.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, p. vi)
Immediate rewards of quitting
- Kicking the tobacco habit offers some benefits that you’ll notice right away and some that will develop over time. These rewards can improve your day-to-day life a great deal:
- your breath smells better
- stained teeth get whiter
- bad smelling clothes and hair go away
- your yellow fingers and fingernails disappear
- food tastes better
- your sense of smell returns to normal
- everyday activities no longer leave you out of breath (such as climbing stairs or light housework)
This excerpt was taken from an article provided by American Cancer Society, you may read the full article following this link Guide to Quitting Smoking
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Benefits of Quitting
So my little sister sent me this link from Stumbleupon (awesome service by the way).It explains what happens to your body right away when you quit smoking. I found a few things about this interesting. First of all, I'm curious about his sources. This guy does not site a single thing. Not one! Come on, you could at least say, "I heard this from a buddy of mine at the bar. He was 12 drinks into the night and nearing comatose." At least then I'd have some kind of gauge as to it's accuracy. Ok, moving on. Let's pick this list apart.
* In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.
* In 48 hours your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.
I thought this was an interesting claim. 48 hours seems like a very short amount of time to be able to determine if a risk of heart attack has decreased. How in the world could anybody possibly study that. You would have to have an insanely large study group, filled with smokers, non smokers, and people who had just quit that day. Of course after that it's easy. Just monitor them all for 2 days and count how many of them have heart attacks. Say what?! Come on. No way. As far as nicotine leaving your body; I'm very curious to know what the actual facts behind that are. I've heard claims about that anywhere from a day and a half to a month after you quit. It seems like that could be dependent on how much you smoke. If anyone has any verified facts on that one, I would be very interested in seeing them. The taste thing is really hard to gauge as well. The night I quit I ate KFC, not exactly a flavor explosion, and the night after I made spicy Indian curry. I can definitely say that I tasted more of the curry than I did the KFC. That's probably not a very good comparison though...
* In 72 hours your bronchial tubes will relax, and your energy levels will increase.
* In 2 weeks your circulation will increase, and it will continue to improve for the next 10 weeks.
* In three to nine months coughs, wheezing and breathing problems will dissipate as your lung capacity improves by 10%.
* In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.
As you might expect, I
really don't have any way to verify this as I don't regularly check my blood
pressure. However, I did notice while working out yesterday that my heart rate
was noticeably lower than it had been in the preceding few months. That is
definitely encouraging. This also brings up a rather interesting point about
the state of your body while you are still smoking. Most people I know go at
least 20 minutes between cigarettes while they are smoking, at least during
weekdays anyways. Smokers are a little bit more likely to be chain smokers on
the weekend but for most working people there are 2 hours between smoke breaks
during the day. That means that if this point is true, a smoker’s blood
pressure is on a roller coaster ride all day long. That can't be good for your
heart (not like smoking was particularly nice for it in the first place.)
* In 48 hours your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.
I thought this was an interesting claim. 48 hours seems like a very short amount of time to be able to determine if a risk of heart attack has decreased. How in the world could anybody possibly study that. You would have to have an insanely large study group, filled with smokers, non smokers, and people who had just quit that day. Of course after that it's easy. Just monitor them all for 2 days and count how many of them have heart attacks. Say what?! Come on. No way. As far as nicotine leaving your body; I'm very curious to know what the actual facts behind that are. I've heard claims about that anywhere from a day and a half to a month after you quit. It seems like that could be dependent on how much you smoke. If anyone has any verified facts on that one, I would be very interested in seeing them. The taste thing is really hard to gauge as well. The night I quit I ate KFC, not exactly a flavor explosion, and the night after I made spicy Indian curry. I can definitely say that I tasted more of the curry than I did the KFC. That's probably not a very good comparison though...
* In 72 hours your bronchial tubes will relax, and your energy levels will increase.
I'm going to disagree
with this one as well. My energy levels have already increased. Granted, I am
now at the 72 hour mark but, I was feeling more energetic before now. I suppose
that could have been in my head but does it really matter? If I feel like I have
more energy, it amounts to the same thing as having more energy so who cares?
I'm not entirely certain what is entailed by "your bronchial tubes will
relax" but my throat is, again, feeling better this morning. I've also
been coughing a lot of garbage out of my lungs. That's not really a new thing
but it's nice to know that I'm no longer filling them up and once it all gets
expelled they're going to STAY clean.
* In 2 weeks your circulation will increase, and it will continue to improve for the next 10 weeks.
I don't really have
anything clever on this one. I wouldn't mind finding out about that one. Is
there a way I can monitor my circulation?
Well, the wheezing is
gone already. The wheeze was only an occasional thing for me though; usually
right after a cigarette or maybe the day after a particularly heavy night of
smoking. In terms of coughing and other breathing problems I think that this is
also a fairly conservative estimate. It may take that long if you've been a
chain smoker for several years but I think most people in my situation who have
been at a pack a day for maybe only a few years, you'll start to see these
changes a lot sooner.
The remainder of these
I'm not even going to touch. The ten years for normal cancer odds thing I've
heard before. That's one of the really common ones that they tend to throw at
smokers to scare them into quitting. My nit-picking aside, I think this is a
really encouraging little list. A lot of these numbers may be based off of
something closer to a "worst case scenario" and for most people they
are going to be a pretty generous estimate. That's kind of a cool thought
though. Take a look at the list, "Hey, this is as long as it's going to
take for me to notice this benefit." I think it's pretty cool. And you
have it from an ex-smoker that while the numbers may not be 100% accurate, you
WILL notice these benefits and more.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
24 Hours
In an effort to keep me pumped about this whole not smoking thing, I'm going to post about my progress. Once again, this is really more for me but if anyone else may benefit from reading it, awesome.
In a mere 24 hours I am once again amazed at how quickly things are changing for me. Each time I have attempted to quit I have been astounded at how quickly my body can bounce back from the punishment I've been forcing on it. I woke up this morning feeling incredible. Sure, I was tired but it wasn't the usual pathetic, groggy, hour long waking process that I've become accustomed to. I woke up quickly and easily and soon was going about my day. The feeling was incredible. Also, a huge plus, my throat didn't hurt. That's the first time in several months that has happened. I didn't wake up immediately needing something to drink to soothe my burnt, scared, broken throat. THAT is a wonderful feeling. I can't wait for things to continue to improve as my body works out all the poisons I have put in to it.
In a mere 24 hours I am once again amazed at how quickly things are changing for me. Each time I have attempted to quit I have been astounded at how quickly my body can bounce back from the punishment I've been forcing on it. I woke up this morning feeling incredible. Sure, I was tired but it wasn't the usual pathetic, groggy, hour long waking process that I've become accustomed to. I woke up quickly and easily and soon was going about my day. The feeling was incredible. Also, a huge plus, my throat didn't hurt. That's the first time in several months that has happened. I didn't wake up immediately needing something to drink to soothe my burnt, scared, broken throat. THAT is a wonderful feeling. I can't wait for things to continue to improve as my body works out all the poisons I have put in to it.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Freeeedom!!
As many of you know, April marked a great success in my life; I quit smoking. I chose to use Allen Carr’s EASYWAY method and my success was incredible. The feeling of courage and power over my life was unmatched. I was healthier, happier and far better equipped to deal with everyday stress in my life. Unfortunately and to my own shame, over the last few months I have once again been struggling with the nicotine trap. Many of you knew this, many more did not, and I’m certain that many of you knew but, with the best intentions, kindly kept your mouth shut. Worst of all I worked very hard to keep the truth of my shortcomings from many of the people who mean the most to me. It seems strange to me now and through the entire time I had fallen back into the subtle trap of the cigarette how, after several months of pure elation at being an ex-smoker, I was able to fall so easily back into my old destructive habits. I would like to stress that it was not the fault of the method. Reading “The Easy Way to Quit Smoking” is easily one of the best decisions I have made in my life. Reading it a second time as I once again struggled with cigarettes was again a great choice and my best shot at overcoming this particular demon. The downfall of my attempt in April was my blatant disregard for some of the instructions of the method. I made the mistake of loaning the book to somebody who also needed the instruction it contains. This meant that when I needed it most, I did not have it available to turn to as a reference and a reminder of the filth I had left behind. The second instruction I failed to follow is that I kept cigarettes in my house. I tricked myself into thinking that this would not be a problem as I knew that I had escaped the trap and I would not need another cigarette. On the evening I smoked my last cigarette, I decided that I would seal the pack, mark it with the date of my last filthy cigarette, and keep it as a reminder of what I had overcome. Unfortunately, what I truly had done was ensure that in my weakest moment, I had cigarettes available to make my failure easily accessible.
I have moved past these mistakes and others that lead me back down the path of nicotine addiction. Having gone for months at a time as a non-smoker, nobody is more aware than myself of the incredible benefits of not smoking and the hideous drawbacks of the filth. I have re-read the book and am once again committed to a successful escape from the nicotine trap. This morning, I proudly smoked and extinguished my last cigarette. It has been less than an hour since that moment and I am beyond excited to already feel the filth of smoking leaving my body. In a few short weeks I will be completely recovered from my recent struggles and ready to move on with the remainder of my long, healthy, non-smoking life. I am beyond excited to be free of the control of nicotine. Each day as more and more of the drug leaves my body I will battle each craving with the glorious realization that I no longer need to poison myself.
Please do not mistake this post as a cry for attention. It is more for my benefit then that of anyone else. I am posting this so that I have a record of my thoughts and feelings somewhere easily accessible to me. I am not looking for attention, pity, or congratulations from anyone. If you choose to comment on this post, please make it positive. Do not belittle me for my mistakes. They are mine and no one could possibly realize fully the negative impact they have had on my life. I realize that no one is as sarcastic as I am and many of my good friends share a love of teasing each other. I beg you to not take that attitude now. I do not need negative reinforcement. In the coming weeks and months, please feel free to ask me about my success. I will be excited to tell you how wonderful it feels to again escape slavery from cigarettes and how elated I am to know that I have quit for the last time. To my smoking friends, if you are interested in quitting. I would highly recommend the EASYWAY method. As I mentioned before, my struggle of again falling into the nicotine trap was not any fault of the method. The fault is my own. If you are interested in reading it, I would strongly encourage you to do so. Although I feel it would be dangerous for me to once again loan my copy of the book out, I will gladly buy a copy for you.
Thank you to everyone for your support through my struggles and my shortcomings in this effort. Please realize with me that every failure is one step closer to success. I am excited to be tackling this beast with every expectation to defeat it; this time for the last time.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Blog Change
So this is pretty cool that you can back date blogs.....
Anywho.... I'm moving. Any of you who may have read my short lived blog on Tumblr know that my posts are pretty few and far between but, I'm hoping to blog a little bit more and I thought that moving somewhere that I can integrate with my Google+ profile might make it a little easier. So, as of this week, my blog is now here. :)
Anywho.... I'm moving. Any of you who may have read my short lived blog on Tumblr know that my posts are pretty few and far between but, I'm hoping to blog a little bit more and I thought that moving somewhere that I can integrate with my Google+ profile might make it a little easier. So, as of this week, my blog is now here. :)
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Catching Up
Ok so maybe I’ve been slacking a bit on the whole blog thing but hey, I’ve been busy. It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. School has been a bit nuts. It’s really a lot of work. In chemistry we were covering quantum mechanics and the electromagnetic spectrum. I had a really hard time grasping a lot of the concepts behind it. Once I got into doing the work most of the math came pretty easily but I’m still not entirely certain that I understand exactly what it is that I’m doing. Fortunately we’ve moved on from that and we’re working on bonding and chemical compounds. That, I can understand. It’s nice to have a clue what I’m doing. I just had my first test in trigonometry. It covered the unit circle and the beginnings of the trigonometric functions. I got 92/100, which I feel pretty good about. My engineering class is also going pretty well. My project group hasn’t met much but we’ve done some talking in class and things seem to be moving forward slowly. We’re meeting tonight to get a few things really going. I’m really excited to get moving on that project. We’re a couple tests into that class with another one coming this Friday. I’ve found that I struggle with the tests in that class a little bit. I seem to focus on learning the wrong parts of the chapters and then not knowing the stuff that’s actually on the test. The first one I got 90/110 which is decent but I feel like I can do better. I’m going to have to adjust my study habits for that class in particular.
A couple weeks ago I went on a hike through Bells Canyon. That is an absolutely gorgeous hike. I really enjoyed it. I’d like to go back there on a day that I have more time and go all the way up to the second reservoir. I was planning on doing Mt. Olympus this last weekend but that didn’t quite pan out. :( Hopefully I’ll be able to do it before the end of the year. That didn’t stop me from having a great weekend though. Had a date on Friday night. Made dinner and went geocaching. It was a lot of fun. :) Then on Saturday I did a 5K mud run; The Dirty Dash. That was quite the experience. The course had several big mud pits, climbing walls, bales to hurdle, pipes to climb through, one long mud pit you had to army crawl through and a giant slip ‘n slide. I have never been so dirty in my entire life. I don’t know what my time was because we only got timed as a team but I had a blast. I hope to participate again next year. Then Sunday was Chaz’s birthday party. We got together and his/Rachel’s apartment for a few drinks and watched Star Wars.
Trig was rather frustrating yesterday. Last Wednesday my teacher didn’t show up so after waiting about 20 minutes, I left. Turns out, the rest of the class went down the front stairs and met our teacher as he was on his way up. He then proceeded to give the lecture without so much as a “Oh, sorry I’m late” and then yesterday, carried on as if nothing was amiss. Apparently over the weekend we were supposed to make detailed graphs of all six trig functions. The whole thing was really rather frustrating and I left class feeling really overwhelmed (an increasingly common feeling in my life.) Fortunately, I had the good sense to go home, eat dinner, watch a documentary on the development of the F-35, (as a side note, if you enjoy documentaries, watch The Battle of The X-Planes. It’s on Netflix.) have a few beers and then get to work on a couple of the graphs I was supposed to have done. It ended up being a pretty good night. The recovery after that class was much needed.
So one of my coworkers was just reading my over my shoulder as I’m typing this and reminded me that I did not even post anything on my blog about the Kamelot show. It was last weekend and it was easily one of my favorite concerts I’ve ever been too. I bought VIP passes for myself and Fluffy and we got to go meet the band before the show. Being kind of a spaz (I know, big surprise) we showed up like 2 hours early and sat in line off property before the show started. Fortunately there were some cool guys in the line so we had good company before the show. When we finally got in there were only a small group of people with VIP passes so we got tour posters and had them signed by the whole band including guest vocalists Elize Ryd and Simone Simmons. We also got photographs with the band. It was really a cool experience. They were all a really friendly bunch and it was cool to meet them. I didn’t really care much for the opening acts, some local band and The Agonist. I probably would have enjoyed The Agonist a couple years ago but not so much now. Kamelot put on an incredible show. Fabio Leone did a fantastic job in lieu of Roy Kahn, the energy was amazing. :) Also, the female vocalist for The Agonist sang the part of Mephisto in “March of Mephisto.” That was incredibly hot. All in all, a great night.
Well, I think that pretty much catches me up with the current goings-on. I’ll try to keep things a little more current. :) Catch ya later.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Playing with Photoshop
So this is one of my first attempts at a nature photo shoot and then doing some manipulating in Photoshop. Have a look. :)
Photos at Squaw Peak
Photos at Squaw Peak
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Full Time
So I am 2 days into my first full time semester at SLCC. I know not exactly the best spot to make an evaluation of how it’s going to be but, I feel like this is going to work out fairly well. I got the most scared of the whole thing during summer semester when all of my classes got out close to 8 PM. That, would be a little terrifying; however, during a real semester, all of my classes get out by 6:50 at the absolute latest which should give me sufficient time to do my homework the same night as I have the class leaving my weekends open. I should also have plenty of time to finish my homework and get to bed at a reasonable time. It also helps that since my math class is so short, we will only be covering one section each class. Trying to do 2 sections of homework each night last semester was a little much. I’m feeling really good about this semester. I think it’s going to be good.
On an unrelated note. The Kamelot show is less than a month away. No offense to any of my friends or family reading this but I think I may be more excited about this show than I have been about any other single thing in my life. I just confirmed everything with the venue and the VIP pass I got means that I get early entry to the show, a limited edition tour poster and a chance to meet the whole band. Totally worth it. I am soooo stoked.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Accomplisment?
After several weeks of
wading through classified ads on the internet, I purchased my first DSLR; a 12.2
megapixel Canon XSi. I managed to find it used from a guy on KSL for $400. For
that price I got the Camera with all of the materials that came with it, a nice
image stabilization lens and a book about photography using that specific
camera. I feel like I got a pretty good deal. The camera is in really great
shape and is only a little over a year old. I’ve been working with a Canon EOS
50D at work doing some macro-photography for marketing photos and a few other
things at work some I am at least somewhat familiar with how the camera works.
Yesterday I did my first official photo-shoot. With my parent’s anniversary
coming up in a few days I thought it might be fun to get a more recent photo of
them. We went down to the Jordan River Temple grounds and shot some very nice
photos of them. It was a lot of fun. We spent about 20 minutes taking a little
over 100 pictures and then close to 2 hours trying to decide which one to use.
It was a lot of fun. Hopefully something will turn out. :)
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Exploding Tires and Photoshop
So, today has been a rather interesting day. Work was rather boring to be completely honest (I’m just going to hope no one that will care at my work reads this). Most of my projects are kind of stuck in machine shop limbo. It’s a little frustrating really. I have some stuff that I have designed/helped design that I’m really excited about and it’s driving me nuts not to have the parts I need to build it all. I guess that’s probably something I’m really going to have to learn to deal with. Anyways, as a result I spent a lot of time at work today doing, well, nothing. It was pretty boring, however, I did have time to be checking the school website every 20 minutes or so to see if my grades had been posted yet. They did, around 10:30 and I got all A’s this semester. :) Granted that’s only two class but what the hell, I’m proud. Next semester I’m registered for full time and ready to kick that into gear. Should be a hell of a semester.
After I got off work, I had plans to go on a bike ride with Jon. He ordered his first road bike recently and it arrived today so I took my cycling stuff with me to work and went to Mom and Dad’s house right after to help him assemble it and get out on the road. This is when the day started to get a little sketchy. Upon arrival at la casa de mis padres, I discovered that I could not find my set of metric wrenches that I thought I had brought with me to assemble the bike I searched my bag and eventually gave up and drove back to my house to find them. This lead to a lot of searching and frustration when in the end, it turned out it had been inside one of my cycling shoes in my bag the entire time. That was nice. So, we finally got the bike assembled and we were off. Jon was enjoying the ride and doing very well on the road and in traffic. We got about a mile away from my house when a sound like a gunshot rang out. I immediately panicked thinking something had happened to Jon, not even realizing it was my own rear tire that had just exploded. We ended up walking the last mile to my house.
Fortunately for the both of us, Katrina and Mike were able to drive my car up to my house and pick us up. While we waited, Jon and I took apart my wheel and discovered that I had actually blown the tire which in turn caused the inner tube to pop. Sweet right? So Mike and Katrina arrived and we set out to load the bike on the car and get out of there. On the way out I got stung by a bee for the second time in a week (I might also mention that this was the second time in my LIFE, crappy luck right?) Just after being stung I heard Katrina calling for me from the back of the house and responded only to find that my roommates extremely angry cat had escaped the house and was only coaxed back in after five minutes or so of scratching, screaming and pushing. It was a rough experience for everyone.
After that things calmed down for the rest of the evening. Had some dinner, watched Arrested Development; good times. Then, I decided it was time to get serious about trying a few things in Photoshop. Holy crap have I been missing out. Gimp is great and you really can’t beat the (free) price but Photoshop is about 3 billion times easier to use and gets much better results with less effort. In like 30 minutes I had created the basis of the show poster for the next mystery show and had experimented with my concept for the main images. I took a few quick test shots of myself and with very little effort was able to come up with a pretty good looking prototype of what I want the actual poster to look like. Once I take some time to get the photos to where I want them I think I’ll be able to get a pretty damn nice poster put together. I’m excited to get a photoshoot done and have the pictures I need to go forward with it. Should be a lot of fun I think.
Anyways, that’s gunna be it for tonight. Later. :)
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Auschwitz
So two nights ago I watched the first part of a 6-part mini series called “Auschwitz-Inside the Nazi State.” All I have to say is holy crap. I think when I learned about Nazi’s in school somebody kind of glossed over how extremely-fucking-evil they actually were/are. I was absolutely blown away by what I saw. I always knew that Hitler was evil, but for whatever reason it came as a shock to me that he had/has so many followers that to this day hold a deep seated hatred in their hearts and feel that everything they did was completely justified. They had several interviews with an SS officer who was stationed at Auschwitz the entire time it was in use by the Nazis. During the course of the interview, they asked him how he felt while he was murdering Jews and Polish prisoners inside the camp. His answer was that he felt nothing. His only thought was to take careful aim and be sure he didn’t miss. He spoke of his hatred toward the Jewish people in present tense and claimed that he would do it all again.
I keep trying to look at the things that I learned from this documentary and say that I’ve learned something valuable. I haven’t, there is not a worthwhile lesson to be learned from this. The evil that was exhibited by the Nazi’s in WWII is of an unmatched and unimaginable scale. The only thing that you can say after having watched that is that you are left with a feeling of despair for humanity as a whole. After seeing that it is hard to imagine that there are good people in this world. It’s really rather disheartening.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Swimming, Drumming, & a Movie.
That was my day yesterday. Well, that was the most interesting parts of it anyways. I did some paperwork for the Mystery that I really needed to catch up on but there’s not really a whole lot to say about that.
So, swimming. I burned, a lot, not surprisingly. I always burn when I go outside without clothes. It’s kind of a given for my pasty white skin. What’s surprising is that due to a prior engagement, I was only outside for like 40 minutes, tops, and I still burned. Fortunately, I was sore enough from other activities of the day that I didn’t actually notice the burn until I took my shirt off last night and was beet red. Then, once I knew about it, it hurt like hell. Figures.
I also had the awesome opportunity to go jam, once again, with my good buddies in Arsenic Addiction. It was sooooo good to get behind a drum kit again. I was actually surprised that I was able to play fairly well. It definitely wasn’t my best performance ever, but considering I really haven’t spent any significant time behind a kit for the last two years, I did okay. It was a blast to go jam with those guys again. I’ve really missed playing with them. Since then I’ve been listening to their latest album a lot. I actually haven’t heard the recording of it until now. I’ve heard it all live a couple times but hearing it on the CD is a little intimidating. Their last drummer did some cool stuff that I’m going to have a tough time learning. It will be a fun challenge though. :) I’m excited to go jam with them again.
Under normal circumstances, I don’t think that watching a movie at home would warrant a spot on the blog; however, last night was my first time watching The Green Mile. Okay that’s not exactly true. It was my first time watching the entire movie in one sitting in an unedited format. I think I had seen pretty much the entire movie over several different sittings on TV. I was amazed how much of the meaning was lost in just the little bits that were edited out for TV. Both the stuff that got trimmed to make it shorter and the parts edited to keep it PG13. Not that it isn’t a great movie, even edited, but it is MUCH better in its original format. Lesson learned, avoid edited for TV movies. :)
Monday, July 11, 2011
I can't swim like I could when I was 16...
So this morning marked my first structured swimming workout in 6+ years. Holy crap, I am out of shape. I did a relatively short work out and I am sore as hell. 6x50 free on 1 min warm up, 5x100 kick (free, fly, breast, back, free,) 4x100 pull, 4x25 sprint (fly, back, breast, free) and 2x25 free cool down. All in all, not a huge work out but man am I beat. I am really excited that I am able to go do workouts like that in the morning before work. I never would have been able to do that when I was taking the bus. It will be really nice to get back into swimming shape.
I’m planning on sticking to a pretty strict workout schedule from now on, we’ll see how it goes. I’m going to post it here just so it’s written down and I have at least something to hold myself too.
Mon-Swimming 5:30 AM
Tue-Running 1 Mile before work (increase distance gradually)
Wed-Swimming 5:30 AM
Thurs-Running (see Tue)
Fri-Cycling, to and from work
Sat-Either swimming or long distance running (3+ miles), early morning.
Sun-Hiking
I think that should make for a pretty damn good work out schedule. I may need to work in a day off in there somewhere but that is my tentative plan. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve got one day under my belt so far and I did do some pre-work running last week so I’m at least off to a good start.
I need to make sure I’m in shape for a triathlon at some point this year. As soon as I have the funds available I’m going to find a sprint distance tri and register for it. All the ones I have found are about $45 to register. Stupid registration fees… I’ll get registered for one though. :) Also, I plan to run the Murray Youth and Family Tri that I did last year. It’s just a short one but it was a pretty fun event and I’d like to do it again. Well, I think that’s all for now. I should probably get to work, I guess.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Reason, Season, Lifetime
People come into your life for a reason, a season, or
a lifetime. When you figure out which one it is, you
will know what to do for each person.
When someone is in your life for a REASON . . . It is
usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have
come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you
with guidance and support, to aid you physically,
emotionally, or spiritually. They may seem like a
godsend, and they are! They are there for the reason
you need them to be.
Then, without any wrong doing on your part, or at an
inconvenient time, this person will say or do something
to bring the relationship to an end.
Sometimes they die.
Sometimes they walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.
What we must realise is that our need has been met, our
desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you
sent up has been answered. And now it is time to move on.
When people come into your life for a SEASON . . .
Because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn.
They bring you an experience of peace, or make you laugh.
They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount
of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season.
LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; things
you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional
foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the
person, and put what you have learned to use in all
other relationships and areas of your life. It is said
that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant."
Author-Unknown
http://www.yuni.com/library/docs/631.html
http://www.yuni.com/library/docs/631.html
Just thinking...
As of late I have had some good reasons to think about my past and it has been quite an interesting ride. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on the subject and trying to figure out exactly what has had the biggest influence on where I am today. I know that every part of my life up until now has lead me here and without any part of it, things would be very different. Unfortunately, part of getting where I am was leaving some parts of my old life behind. Now I’m having trouble deciding which of those things I left behind were really necessary. Are there some things that I have given up or done with out that I could have as part of my life and still be where I am? It’s kind of an interesting concept to consider. I tend to think that a lot of things are not worth trying to incorporate back into my life.
I keep thinking about that saying that says something about people being in your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. I’ll try and find the exact quote and post it later. I took a lot of stock in that quote and I usually try to analyze past events in my life in those terms. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the people we meet are probably only going to be in our lives for a reason or a season. Only a very select few of our closest friends and family can and will be around for our whole lives. Anyways, little sidetrack there. If we take that as being true, and apply it to things in our lives as well as people, then what? If someone/thing was in our life for a reason or a season, do they get another season? Or do we have to assume that everything/one that got a season had a season and that’s all they get?
I know I tend to have a pattern of going back to things that I shouldn’t, repeating old relationships, I went back to smoking last winter, drinking more/drinking less, different jobs, different friends, different habits. It seems like 90% of the things in my life I was happier with before and I keep trying to reincorporate them into my life now. Most times, it ends up being a huge mistake and I end up having to bounce back from it. So how do you know when things are just bad for you or when they just happened at a bad time? Is this ever the case? The perpetual what if in the back of my mind is a powerful motivator for me and I think it’s something I need to try harder to repress. I have a hard time saying that everything past is past and to forget about it but I think I need to take a harder look at the past and evaluate things objectively. I act too frequently on a whim and get myself in trouble. Gotta stop that.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Blogging
Well this is interesting. I’m not entirely sure how interested I am in blogging but I thought I would give it a shot. I don’t even know if this thing is public or much about it all. Just seems like everyone has a blog these days and maybe it would be a good idea to do the same. Plus I kind of miss the bulletin feature on Myspace which was kind of a blog. It would be nice to have a way to just get some thoughts out I guess. Maybe it will just end up being more of a diary kind of thing that is just for me. Either way, it gives me a place to just write stuff so I guess that’s good.
So, what’s going on with me? Well, I’m working at Ultradent. I work in R&D Engineering group. I’ve been here for about 5 months right now and I love it. I’m considering actually changing my major to engineering. Not sure exactly right now but the course requirements are similar enough that I don’t really need to make a decision any time soon. Right now I’m working on a few actual design projects that so far have been a lot of fun. They can be challenging but it really feels good to work though something like that. I’ve spent a lot of time working on the 3D models and drawings and have had a lot of problems. It will be interesting to see what problems surface when I actually get the parts made.
I’m currently in my second semester at SLCC. I was really starting to think I wouldn’t ever get back in to school. It’s so nice to be learning again. I put this off for way too long and I’m really happy to be working towards a degree. I’m currently declared as a chemistry major but, as I mentioned before, that might change. I love chemistry and have had a really good time working anything chem related that I have done in the past but the idea of having actual physical results and problems in engineering is really appealing to me. It’s been really cool to be doing work that is in the same genre (for lack of a better term) but actually have something that I can touch and hold to work on or to show for my efforts. I enjoy that aspect a lot. Anyways, back to talking about school. I’m only in two classes right now, English 2010 and math 1050. I’m really rather enjoying both of them. Math has been challenging and a pretty decent workload and I’ve done some really fun projects in English. I just finished writing a proposal on ridding the country of the duck face phenomenon. It turned out to be really funny. When we did the peer review in class the people in my group were actually arguing over who got to read my paper. That was a big ego boost. We are working now on a group project which will end up being a magazine and presentation regarding animal testing in the medical field. I’m kind of excited to learn more about that. I tend to feel that it is kind of a necessary evil in the medical field but it will be interesting to see how I feel after doing all of the research for it.
My health efforts are going well. They started with a goal to quit smoking last summer and have blossomed since then. After quitting in July of 2010 I set a goal to participate in the Murray Youth and Family Triathlon in September of the same year. I was able to complete that and actually finished second in my division. It was very exciting. Unfortunately, come winter I really slipped with my goals and started smoking again and my workouts just went down the drain. I managed to quit again on April 12th of 2011 and have been completely smoke free since then. I just rode in my first Bike MS event a few weeks ago (June 25.) This was a 100 mile bike ride starting in Logan Utah, looping up into Idaho and returning to Logan. This was a great experience. The ride was fantastic and raising money to fight MS felt great. I was able to enlist the help of family friends and some coworkers to help raise $300 for the cause. I plan to ride again next year and hope to increase both the distance of my ride and the amount of my fundraising. I would like to participate in a sprint distance triathlon this year but have not, as of yet, been able to register for one. They are all at least $45 to register. I still hope I can get into one before the end of the season and will definitely be participating in the Murray tri again. I have set some weight loss goals and hope to get down to about 190. I don’t have a deadline for this goal but I am watching calories and running/swimming/biking everyday to try to reach my target.
I am still writing/directing the mysteries at Castle. I’ve really been able to take some big steps in trying to make them successful. With Peter Allred as my assistant director and great group of actors we have tried to make a lot of positive changes lately. We just moved to the Nightmare Mansion in Taylorsville and hope to make that a good home for us. We also changed the name to Mystery Theatre so we are not entirely confined to murders as our mysteries and our free to present our guests with other mysteries to solve. I just recently ran an advertising campaign with Groupon that has shown some success. We sold a boatload of tickets but thus far have only seen a very limited number of them return. It’s unfortunate to see that people are not coming as much as I hoped. I am getting a little scared for next March when the vouchers expire. I think a lot of people are going to hold on to them until then and then realize at the last minute that they need to use them before they expire and I’m not going to be able to handle the kind of crowds that are going to show up. We will have to wait and see how that goes.
Well, that seems like a pretty good summary of the major things going on in my life right now. Oh, well I just got a car. That’s pretty damn cool. I’ve been two years without and it is indescribably nice to have my own transportation again. Ok, now that’s everything major. I think. Even if it isn’t, it gives me a good base to build off of. Catch ya next time.
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