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. 

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

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. 

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. :)

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. :) 

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. 

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. :)