JMP!

I got a new piece of software at work today. It's for doing all manner of statistical manipulations with data, plus who knows what else. All I know is, it sure better do everything I want and then some. I'm not sure how much it cost, but it certainly cost a bundle. Oh, and it comes with manuals.

It's been a long time since I saw a piece of software come with printed manuals. (It's been a long time since I bought any software, too.) But I've got my 138 page introductory guide, a 487 page user guide, a 239 page design of experiments guide, a 585 page scripting guide and a 1035 page statistics and graphics guide.

Bad Blogger

I've been a bad blogger lately. There's no good excuse other than being busy, and unable to remember what it was I wanted to blog once I finally get to a computer.

I've wanted to blog this from home (and you'll see why) but my birthday was 2 weeks ago, and I got some nerd books. A left-hander one from Suzanne, Mormon Scientist (?) which is a book about Henry Eyring, written by Henry J Eyring, and a book of Richard Feynman's letters. I've started reading the book on lefties. Obviously I'll provide a more thorough review, as well as the actual title of the books once I've finished them.

I haven't disappeared from the internet, though. Ben has been asking questions about nuclear fission and fusion, which I've been attempting to answer. Not that you probably care, but there it is. Of course, if you've recently taken a class on nuclear engineering, you're likely to find an error in my comments, but I believe them to be generally accurate, and I was trying to keep things relatively short.

Finally, it's always amusing to see what little kids are saying.

Ward Ball

Well, we won. It wasn't pretty, but we won. 55-36 was the final margin, I think. We played good defense, and they didn't get many shots to fall. I scored a hand full of points, mostly on 2nd or 3rd attempts, because nothing seemed to fall the first time. But my overall impression of the game was that it just wasn't very pretty. Our offense was inept and without a plan. But it's another victory for us.

Two interesting notes about the game:

1: I tried to set a pick at one point in the game, and as I set it and the defender ran into me, we both went to the ground. No foul was called. Apparently we both just randomly fell down at the same time.

2: Upon falling, I hit my arm just below the elbow. I have a bump there. But this time of year, I always have a bump there. It's on my ulna right near the elbow. Every time I fall playing basketball, that's the first thing that hits the ground. So my bump will heal for a few days, and then Saturday I'll go play basketball. I'll probably only fall once, but when I do, BAM! Right on the same spot. I suppose if you're gonna keep hitting one thing into the ground, it's not a bad choice.

King of Binks

Yesterday I woke up at 3 am with a terrible aching pain in my left shoulder. (It wasn't really a bink, but I don't get actual binks often enough to satisfy me desire to use the word, so I misuse it regularly.) The pain wasn't sharp, but it sure was constant. No position was more or less comfortable or any other. No movement helped nor hurt. Doing push ups didn't change the pain level. No stretch helped. Nothing. Just pain. Heat helped perhaps only slightly, and a warm shower helped not at all. Finally about 4am I managed to fall asleep for a while longer, but I woke up again at 6 and couldn't sleep any more. The pain was just too annoying to think about anything else. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary the day before, and my shoulder had felt perfectly fine before bed. I figure I just slept on it wrong. I got up at 6am and got ready for work, figuring that if I wasn't sleeping, I might as well get started on the day. I took some drugs and went to work. Somewhere between 8 and 9 am the pain went away as mysteriously as it came.

WV

We watched "We are Marshall" the other day. It's a fine movie. Matthew McConaughey does a fine job of playing a somewhat weird guy. But our favorite part was the 5 minute long West Virginia commercial at the beginning of the DVD. It details the wonderful mountains, outdoors, and whatnot that WV has to offer. I've never been to WV, but I'm sure there are some beautiful places. But someone apparently didn't think through the line that went something like this: "West Virginia's mountains, valleys and rivers were made for golfing." I kid you not. They said that. (Well, I wrote down the line word for word, but then accidentally threw out the scrap of paper. But that's really quite close to what they said.) So next time you're in WV, grab a 9-iron, wade out into a river and hit a bucket of balls. It's what the river was made for, after all.

Laundry Room #2

Shannon and I (along with KC and Celeste) went to the parade of homes in St. George. This weekend. For $12.50 a person, you get to visit 26 different homes in the area and walk through them. For those most part, these are not normal people homes. I think 1 of the 26 is valued at under $500,000 and at least 20 are more than one million. We only made it to three homes yesterday, partly because we picked some of the biggest ones. One home we went to was eight or nine thousand square feet, featured a 3 story library, a book safe, 5 outdoor fireplaces, 5 indoor fireplaces, a pool, 2 hot tubs, 4+ balconies, and who knows what else I can't remember. But, we decided that we needed some place bigger.

So, we went on to the 20,000+ sq. ft. behemoth. This home wasn't quite a fancy, but it sure was huge. The bedrooms (all 7 of them) were massive, probably 500 square feet in and of themselves. Each with it's own private bath, of course. The home had a 'sports bar' area with a pool table with 4 big screens above it, so you could watch TV from every side of the pool table. It had a fairly complete kitchen on each of the 3 floors. It had a nice movie theater for the adults, and a separate one for the kids. But the real kicker was laundry room #2. The top floor had one laundry room, which was a good sized room, apparently also for doing crafts. As we went into the second laundry room, however, we found one of those wooden signs that are all the rage these days. Rather than saying "family" or "love" or something this one had a much more fitting message: "Simplify".

I hope there isn't an additional charge beyond the $4,500,000 price tag to cover the irony.

Technical Theatre

We've got a new employee at work who is also completing a degree at SUU this year in Technical Theatre. Short and simple version: it's a 4 year degree in stage crew. Obviously there's quite a bit to cover when it comes to lighting, sound, sets, props and stuff like that, so I don't want anyone out there thinking I'm belittling the program or something. Mostly, I just mention it because I'd never really thought of anyone getting a degree in that before. If only I could go back . . . .

Lop, Lop, Lop,

That's what last night's basketball game was. Lopsided. We had a 2-0 lead about 4 seconds into the game, and that was even with us missing our first shot attempt. It was 4-0 within 30 seconds, then it was 11-0. The next time I looked at the scoreboard it was 25-2 or something like that. Our ward picked a good week to only have 8 show up. The game started getting kinda silly in the second half. Behind the back passes, alley-oops, weird defensive schemes, etc. We put the shortest guy on our team in the center of our zone defense for a while. Then I moved to the 'Shaq' position for a while and even picked up a good block. Final score was 77-33. The margin was exaggerated a bit by our team cherry picking in the second half, but reduced somewhat by the scorekeeper running the clock faster in the second half to just get the game over with. So, not a very competitive game, but I still had fun.

Dreams

Sometimes, when I'm really tired, I can't keep my eyes open. And I don't mean this in the sort of 'drifting off to sleep' sort of way, but that it is a physical fight to try to keep my eyes open, that I lose. Try as I might, it's like I simply don't have strong enough muscles to do it. I feel actual physical strain with the effort. It's not always that I'm sleepy when this happens, just that my eyes seem to have given up working for a while.

This doesn't happen to me often, but when it does, it is terribly debilitating. Although I feel at least moderately awake mentally, I can't see which makes doing anything a challenge.

For the first time yesterday afternoon I dreamed that this was happening to me. I was asleep, dreaming that I couldn't stay awake. I was in a church (not an LDS church) with Shannon and some of my family, and my sister was trying to tell me that I needed to change benches. Most of my family was sitting on the bench behind me. But I couldn't change benches, because I couldn't see. My eyes wouldn't open. (If you close your eyes in your dream, can you still see? It turns out, kinda. Just like if you close your eyes in the room you are in right now, you can still imagine where everything is, I was doing the same thing in my dream. So I could imagine where they benches in the church were.) But in my dream, I knew it was vitally important that I open my eyes so I could see my way to the next bench. No one wants to trip and fall in church and make a scene (and then have to explain that you fell because you were walking around with your eyes closed!) So I had to fight and fight to open my eyes. And finally, I managed to do it. And I saw a window.

Not a church stained glass type window (because that's the sort of window this church would have had) but a regular boring window from a house looking out on a bright sunny day, not a somewhat dimly lit church. I briefly looked out this window, and suddenly, my dream switched to me being outside and I was walking down the street. I think my brain was trying to deal with the fact that it had just seen a bright outside scene. I still couldn't open my eyes.

A few minutes later, I woke up. And what did I see? The window. I was laying on my bed (on Shannon's side) pointed straight at the window from my dream. And so, I conclude that I actually tried so hard in my dream to open my eyes, that I did it in real life. I managed to open my eyes while dreaming! Feynman would be so proud.

Basketball Updates

I wasn't able to to go the mens basketball game this week, so all I can report is that we won by 20+ points vs. a team with only 5 players.

The YM played last night, fought well, but came up short again. Our ward fought some serious foul trouble in the first half, as the two biggest players both picked up 4 fouls. This was mostly due to the other team having a player that could have passed for an RM. (I trust that he was eligible to play, but he was a big strong kid.) We actually held a 6-2 lead a few minutes into the game, but then fell behind by 10-15. Just like last week, we hung around in the second half, waiting to catch a break. That break happened this game when the big kid rolled an ankle. That sucks for him, but those things happen, and it gave our team a chance. With him out, the other team was down to only 5 players for the last 10 minutes. (I should also mention that with the 2 biggest guys on our team each w/ 4 fouls, Kyle [13 years old] had to guard the big guy, and he did a fabulous job for the first 10 minutes of the second half.) We managed to pull within 7 or 8 a few times, but at that point the other team would hit a lucky shot, followed by a defensive breakdown leading to an easy layup and the lead would go back up to 12.

With about 2 minutes left, the other team had a player foul out, and played the rest of the game 5 on 4. Unfortunately, there just wasn't enough time left, and we ended up losing by 5. Our stake only has 5 YM teams, so we only get 4 games. We're 0-2 thus far. We have a week off, and then have to play the best team in the stake. I really don't see that we have much of a chance in that game. The final game of the season, however, is one that we can win. Realistically, the other team is probably better than us, but if we play well there is no reason we can't win.

Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night

While discussing the SR-71 Blackbird at work today, I was thinking about the Blackbird poster hanging on the wall of my old bedroom at my parents house. If you've been there, you've probably seen it. Big poster of the Blackbird coming down the runway right at you. And if you were there today, you might notice the little calendar that runs across the bottom of the poster . . . from 1988. Yes, that poster has now officially been on my wall for 20 years. I have no plans to have it moved any time soon.

Difficult Times

During President Hinckley's funeral, Pres. Monson read a letter sent by President Bush and his wife. (What do I call them? Pres. and Mrs. Bush?) The letter was nice, and the Bushes said that they hoped "our faith would sustain us through this difficult time" or something to that effect. I have similarly heard people describe this time as "nervous" or "uncertain". I understand the sentiment, but I don't echo it.

I was in Elders Quorum yesterday (for the first time in months, as the YM president told us that we should go) as the EQP was released, and a new president called. I like the old president, but I'm glad he got released. I haven't been to Elders Quorum in months, so I never get to see him. He will now be the Gospel Doctrine teacher, so I get to hear his lessons regularly now. I like the new president, too. But as I was sitting in the room and the changes were being made, I thought about the similarities to the reorganization of the first presidency of the church. While the EQ in our ward is going through a change, I feel a similar lack of trepidation concerning the change. I don't worry, because I know it will be ok. The church is a marvelous machine. So long as it is guided from above, the rest of us can get shuffled from position to position down here, and I'll feel safe knowing that everything will work out.

YM Basketball

I suppose I should give YM basketball updates here, too. I don't get to play (usually) but I still go to all the games I can as the ward athletic director and the 2nd councilor in the YM. Last year, I documented some pretty bad losses from our YM. This year, we are teamed up with the 3rd ward, who has more youth than our ward, but for some reason only 3 or 4 of them want to play basketball. (We didn't tell our young men that it was optional.)

Our conglomo-team didn't do half bad! The game was close early, then the other team slowly built a 25 point lead. Our team did not, however, give up, or fall apart. A few shots started falling, we picked up a few steals and managed to pull within 10. The comeback was not to be, unfortunately, but the final margin was only 11. It was a huge improvement over last year, and it is impressive to see the difference that a year can make. I'm not sure how good the other team was compared to the other teams in the stake, so we'll see how the season goes.

Boulevard Home Furnishings

Most of you have probably been to St. George. And those of you who have should be familiar with "The Boulevard". Officially the road is St. George Blvd., but no one calls it that. It runs east and west across town, and it's where all the older hotels are, the banks, fast food, and it is where high school and college kids "cruise" during spring break. From my point of view, however, it is just a crowded road that has way too many stoplights, so I rarely ever go up there. I prefer to use 1st or 7th South to get across town.

Anyway, Shannon and I were out and about last weekend and decided that we wanted to stop by a furniture store, because we're in the market for a rocking chair. We figured that Boulevard Home Furnishings would be a good place, because we'd heard of them, we were pretty sure they were a big store, and we were right near the blvd. Unfortunately, we didn't know exactly where on the blvd the store is. So we guessed. We drove from the middle of the blvd to the west end, and found it not. So we turned around and drove the length of the road to the east end looking for the store. But still we were stymied. We gave up.

Upon returning home and consulting the phone book we learned the Boulevard Home Furnishings is not on The Boulevard.