Pink

I don't know how it happened, but Julia is a pink girl. Now, despite rumors I've heard to the contrary, I have nothing against pink. I did make comments before Julia was born that we didn't need to overload her in pink. We don't need 50 pink outfits, a pink crib, pink sheets, 11 pink blankets and a sign for her room that says "Julia's Pink Kingdom".

But, Julia loves pink anyway. If we let her pick anything, she's pretty much guaranteed to pick the pink option. Pink bowl for breakfast, pink shirt, pink blanket, pink pajamas, pink toys. She's just a pink girl, I suppose.

Now, this still doesn't mean that we need to overload her with pink stuff. In 6 months, her favorite color could be orange.

Diapers

Tonight getting ready for bed:

Clark: Are there any poops in your diaper?

Julia: Nope. Just a wet diaper. No wipes.

Chart

We are in absolutely no position to be promising any sort of regular updating at all, but various people have been interested in a current puking chart. So, here it is.

The mayhem is staying at fairly reasonable levels, though Shannon still doesn't feel well. Julia is doing admirably with 2 parents that have both been battling their own issues. I am nearly better these days, except for the cough that shows up around bed time.

You'll note that this post has been tagged "Baby #2" because we still haven't come up with a name for it yet.

Terror

They say that you should do something every day that terrifies you. I'm now set for about a week. Tonight I was the musical entertainment at the ward Christmas party. It was supposed to be me and Shannon, but as she is both sick and in SLC, I did it by myself. I've been sick for the last 2 weeks, and while I am generally recovered, I still have a cough, and my voice starts to disappear each night at about 8pm.

But, I did it. I played one song on the piano AND SANG, then did Mele Kalikimaka on the ukulele, and then lead everyone in the 12 Days of Christmas. I'm not sure I've ever sung a solo in front of a group bigger than about 5, let alone two numbers, on two different instruments. It wasn't perfect, there will be no calls from any recording studios, but I made it through alright. There's even video of it, but I don't think I need to see it any time soon. In fact, I don't think anyone needs to see it. Ever.

Puking Chart

Apparently my promise of a graphical accounting of Shannon's queasiness was a big hit. So here it is.


A "puke" is defined as any trip to the toilet (or other puke receptacle as available) in which heaving is accomplished, without regard to the presence of actual vomitus. After successive "pukes" throughout a single day, they tend to degenerate into dry heaves, but are tallied for this chart anyway. This is not a count of heaving events, which would be at least equal to, but in fact much greater than the number of pukes; heaving events generally occur 2 to 5 times per puke.

Analysis:
Hyperemesis gravidarum is certainly a complicated issue and a full study of all related factors will not be done at this time. It would require much more data than is being collected with regards to diet, hydration therapy, weight, time of day, etc. One interesting fact is this: the embryo hates St. George. The red boxes below enclose days that Shannon has been in SLC.

Since the 20th of November, Shannon pukes 5.6 times per day on days that she is not in SLC, and only 0.2 times per day on days that she is in SLC.

Announcement

Here is the big announcement. Everyone head for the edge of your seats . . . .

Last Thursday, Shannon and Julia packed up their things and moved up to Shannon's parents house in SLC for a little while.

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

This is because Shannon had been puking her guts out, because she is pregnant! (I hope you weren't too close to the edge of your seat!) Yeah, I know that probably borders on distasteful, but you just don't get an opportunity to throw something out there like that very often. If I were really tricksy I would have let that sentence up there just hang out by itself for a day or two before explaining.

Anyway, for those of you who remember, Shannon and pregnancy don't quite get along. (Question of the week comes from my dad: Do other species get morning sickness?) Last time she threw up a gazillion times, got many IVs and lost 15 pounds. This time she also had to deal with a sick husband and a child. It wasn't working well, so she's in SLC at her parents. She'll be back on the 12th probably. And probably her mom will stay down here a few days after that. We're playing things by ear here. She's doing reasonably well up there, and I'm bored down here. Its even worse that I'm sick, because I can't get out and do much, so I just sit at home by myself and sniffle. Anyway, back to the topic at hand: babies!

Baby #2 should arrive in mid July. We haven't given it a fetus-name yet. Feel free to offer one up. If last time is any indicator, Shannon has another 2 months of unpleasantness to go through before things normalize. But, on the upside, this time we've got graphs! Yes, we're tracking the vomitous activities, doctors appointments, medications and other key indicators so I can really quantify for people Shannon's discomfort. Then I don't have to use phrases like "she threw up a gazillion times" and can instead reliably say that she found herself bent over the toilet 18 times in a 36 hours period from Monday at midnight to Tuesday at noon last week.

Ok, I think that covers it. Don't worry, we still have lots of time to discuss puking yet.

Absenteeism

Neither Shannon nor I have blogged much at all lately. Usually this is ascribable to either traveling or illness. In our case, it is both.

We went to SLC for Thanksgiving, and got to see all the Grandmas (ours and Julia's). That's not always an easy thing to do, as they live in Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake, Taylorsville, South Jordan and Sandy. Among the highlights were:

- Turkey

- Not working

- BYU beating Utah. (My very brief comments on that game: this is 3 out of 4 close games where BYU has beaten Utah. I thought Utah was supposed to be the team that came up big in the important moments. On Halls comments: a small percentage of fans on both sides are absolute jerks. Let's not try to deny they exist, or pretend that it is easy to turn the other cheek when they do get in your face. It would be nice if Max had done a better job of ignoring them, but he didn't. But just because he made some stupid and unfair comments doesn't mean that all of us should go join that small percentage of jerky fans.)

After the vacationing was over, we decided to start the illness phase of our non-communication. I started Sunday on the drive home, Shannon shortly after, and Julia on Wednesday (I think). I am still fighting through the cold that will not die. I don't have a fever. If anything my temperature is abnormally low. So, I don't think I have the pig virus. But whatever I have has made the rounds from my head (as achiness), into my throat (as soreness), to my whole body, back to my throat (as an inability to speak) and back to my head (as every imaginable sinus issue all at once). I like to think that as it has made the rounds, it's got to be just about ready to leave my body. For the last 24 hours it has been doing its darnedest to escape via my nose, taking every last mucus membrane with it.

Finally, I would like to announce a big announcement. But, the announcement deserves it's own blog post. So, like all good bloggers do, I'm telling you that I'm going to tell you something, and then make you wait. Unlike the other bloggers though, I'm not going to string you out for days or weeks. It'll be up in 18 hours or less. (For those of you who know (or think you know) the secret, you can hold onto that little treasure of knowledge for another day.)

Leftovers

Shannon made waffles for dinner. Pumpkin waffles, with apple syrup. They're very tasty. And that's a good thing, because these are the leftovers. Yes, this is after three of us ate all we could.

Planning our family vacations

The video is long, but I wanted to show off Julia's talent.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

For the record she can locate (to the best of our knowledge) the following countries: Canada, USA, Greenland (we know this isn't really a country, but she doesn't), Mexico, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Madagascar, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sri Lanka, India (sometimes), Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Russia, Japan, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.

Gizmo

I think my sisters (at least the older ones) will see a resemblance. (I sure think it is there.)

Change

When I was a kid, every so often (annually, biannually?) my dad would pull out his big piggy bank full of change and set all us kids to work rolling all the coins. He always seemed to have tons of change, and we'd roll up 30 or 40 bucks worth. Similarly, I had my tootsie roll bank and I'd pull the change out of there occasionally to trade in for "real money". A bit later in life, my friend Spencer and I would refer to change as "free money". If we wanted to go ride our bikes somewhere to get a slurpee or something, even if we "didn't have any money" we knew we could go find a little pile of dimes and go get something. The point is, piggy banks always seemed to be full.

That is not the case anymore. Shannon and I have but one change receptacle, which basically just sits there. (Unless she's moving stuff in and out when I'm not home.) In years it's never filled up, and its very rare that we go take anything out of it.

November

It's November. I may not own a snow shovel, but I did just mow my lawn.

Hair Removal

I've always been a procrastinator. For weeks I've been meaning to get a haircut. It got to the point that I looked like this:

Or, with a little bit of froofing out of the beard, I looked like this:

Yes, I know it would have been tempting to turn all that into a nice Halloween costume of either a caveman or Brother Brigham or something. But instead, we finally chopped most of it off:

TROGDOR!!!!!

Burninating the countryside. Burninating the peasants.

And the Trogdor comes in the NIIIIIIIIIIGGGGHHHHTTTT!

Things that must go

Websites that charge ridiculous fees on ticket sales. It's particularly bad when they do it per ticket. I've seen movie theaters that sell tickets for 6 bucks each that want to tack on 1 or 2 dollars more per ticket for letting you buy them online. Or, as was the case tonight, a site I saw that had a flat fee of $5 on $30 worth of tickets. It's one of those hidden costs that really ought to go.

(I listen to NPR in the car now. Too bad they don't have "things that must go".)

Elements

I saw an interesting blog today where someone (an organic chemist) had counted how many different elements he had worked with. Now, a lot of the ensuing discussion can depend on how you define "working" with an element. I'm having trouble putting a specific definition into words, but let's just say that I know it when I see it. In general, the element in question needs to have been a deliberate and important part of what was going on. So, here's what I've used, and, if I feel like it, what I've done.

1: Hydrogen - I've collected H2 gas off of a reaction using HCl, and also ignited H2-filled soap bubbles.
2: Helium - Does inhaling it from balloons count? Even if it didn't, I've put it through a diffraction grating and looked at it spectral lines. That one experiment from physics 107/150 is going to get me a whole handful of these.
3: Carbon - A whole semester of organic chemistry lab. Ewwww.
4: Nitrogen - Liquid nitrogen, for everything from shattering pennies, to making ice cream, to hammering rubber hoses into a 2x4, to actual productive purposes.
5: Oxygen - I've collected it out of the atmosphere as a liquid. Liquid O2 is very exciting. (And potentially very dangerous. I've never had more than a few mL of it.)
6: Fluorine - I use HF at work all the time. The first on this list that I haven't encountered in elemental form.
7: Sodium - It burns yellow. (Like the sun.) I've only burned it in solution though. Elemental sodium is quite dangerous.
8: Magnesium - Burns extremely bright white. It's what they use in fireworks, and it's fun to play around with strips of it. As a side note, water catalyzes it's oxidation, so be very careful how you fight a magnesium fire.
9: Aluminum - Drinking a can of Coke does not fill this requirement. But writing a senior thesis about microscopy of aluminum oxide does.
10: Silicon - More microscopy. And hours spent wedging it down until it is 0.000004 inches thick.
11: Phosphorus, 12: Sulfur, 13: Chlorine: As it turns out, a mixture of these 3 elements (as H3PO4, H2SO4 and HCl) will put holes in your pants quite nicely. Not quite the experiment that I was supposed to be doing, but it's the one that I remember.
14: Argon - this is what we use for an inert atmosphere at work.
15: Calcium - I've dissolved calcium carbonate in acid. Sounds exciting, but it's just limestone.
16: Iron - Well, who hasn't done something with iron?
17: Cobalt - The aluminum oxide I mentioned earlier, well, it was covered in cobalt.
18: Copper - Pennies aren't just for spending, they're also good to turn into brass.
19: Zinc - You take the old penny, disolve some zinc in acid, and, um . . . I forget the rest of the lab, but it ends up with a brass penny.
20: Gallium - it melts near room temperature, so it makes a nice phase transition lab for pre-med students. It also super cools pretty well, unless the surface of your sample is too oxidized, then it just won't re-solidify. And I use it at work all the time.
21: Germanium - I know thee well.
22: Zirconium - Used a strip of it as a heating element once upon a time. It had just the right resistivity.
23: Molybdenum - Hard to spell, and boring to measure the resistivity of a wire made of it! By this point in the periodic table, I'm now skipping the majority of the elements.
24: Indium - I've soldered with it to make electrical contacts.
25: Tin - Also used in soldering.
26: Cesium - I've measured the half-life of a radio active isotope.
27: Tungsten - My wedding ring is made of tungsten carbide. It doesn't scratch. I've tried. Yeah, it's a bit weak, but I'm counting this one.
28: Silver - I have deposited a film of silver onto glass to make my own mirror, which was then used in an experiment to measure the speed of light through different mediums. The experiement was a big failure, but it wasn't the mirror's fault.
29: Mercury - I've studied the spectral lines.
30: Lead - I've measured the half-thickness for stopping the radiation from the aforementioned Cesium isotope.

And, from here on out, pretty much everything is radioactive. There is one other radioactive isotope that I have worked with, but I can't remember what it was. Possibly it was a repeat, but I don't think it was. So, at this point, I can point to 30 elements I've used. There's probably another 1-3 that I have used, but I'm not remembering it at the moment.

Prognostications

I've never claimed to be the "prognosticator of prognosticators" or anything, but I did have a dream last night that the moon blew up. So, you should all be on the lookout.

Blog Comments

So, I'm about to ask you to comment on my blog in response to my blog post about commenting on blog posts.

Ok, I read various people's blogs. Friends mostly. And occasionally they express opinions about one thing or another. While the most common topic is probably politics, this applies to various topics. (Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I want to emphasize that there is no one person, blog or post that I'm specifically thinking of here, so don't try to read too much into this.) Anyway, my friends have a tendency to say various sensible things, a few things that I might not agree with, and then drop in something that is down right ridiculous, silly, wrong or dumb. Here, I'll create an example for you (which I am fabricating from my own brain right now):

"I can't believe Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, he hasn't DONE anything! This sullies the reputation of those who have won the prize in the past for substantive work. And since entering office, Obama has decreased our likelihood for peace! Sure, nothing has happened yet, but because of him blaming America for everything, we are going to be attacked more for sure. I guess this is what we get for electing someone who is stupid."

So, lets analyze this hypothetical post. There are various things I agree with: Obama won the peace prize, and he hasn't achieved any meaningful peace, in my opinion. Then there are some things that I don't necessarily agree with, but that I can at least respect as a plausible opinion: America might be less safe now than when Obama took office, because of his policies. Then (and it always seems to be at the end) the post says something downright silly: that Obama is stupid. Say what you will, the man isn't dumb. He holds degrees from Columbia and Harvard.

So now we're down to my dilema as a blog reader. Someone I know has just written this silly statement that Obama is dumb. My first reaction upon reading is to write up a snarky comment pointing out to them that while they may not like Obama, they should stick to actual criticism, rather than illogical logorrhea. I usually get most of the way through the comment when I start to think about how the author will react. Because it's the internet, whatever I type will come out sounding argumentative and condescending (I think the internet does that to whatever you type, whether you mean it or not) and they will get defensive. Arguments will ensue, and now I've just taken a friend and created a whole bunch of bad karma. And the worst part is, I agreed with most of what they said! So, in the end I wind up not commenting at all. And they never know of their silliness, and they get no comments on their blogs.

So dear reader(s), what am I to do? Do I sustain my "keep the peace" policy? (Can I get a Nobel Prize for that?) Or do I try to politely point out that they are dead wrong on a topic and risk the ensuing melee? Some of my friends have some pretty strong opinions, and, while I know I do too, I try to remember that there are more important things than convincing other people that I'm right all the time. (Because I am, and deep down inside, you all know it.)

So, time for you to comment about commenting on friends blogs when you disagree with them. By all means, go ahead and disagree with me. :)

Cluck

So here's what we learned: Cougars can lay eggs.

I didn't watch the entire game. (It was too painful.) But it was clear that BYU was simply not ready to play, at least not to the same degree that Florida State was, particularly when FSU had the ball. They ran everywhere they wanted to, and BYU didn't stop them. After not allowing a play over 20 yards in either of the first two games, BYU continually hemorrhaged yards all over the field in big chunks. It was disappointing. But it provides a good opportunity to discuss an important aspect of college football: luck and timing.

I'd still bet on BYU to beat FSU. Through a 12 game season, a team is going to play poorly at some point. The key is getting those games to align with your crummiest opponents. I don't know how you can do that, but if you do, you get a special season. If BYU had played FSU last week, and Tulane this week, they might well be undefeated still. But they didn't and they aren't. BYU beat OU, and made their heisman winning QB look just ok. They made his backup look very mediocre. That backup threw 6 TDs against Tulsa this weekend as OU destroyed them 48-0 or whatever it was. If OU had played that game vs BYU and played their BYU game vs Tulsa, they would still be undefeated and ranked in the top 3 still. The point is, in college football you must be both good and lucky.

One more point: Chambers needs to get smacked upside the head, and hard. I'm tired of watching him (and anyone else) strut around on the field after an 8 yard completion, particularly when he's got 2 costly fumbles already this season. For the most part, no one should be strutting at all on a football field, but if you are going to do it, you'd better be darn sure that you are actually helping your team win. He did it last year, too, when his main role was #4 receiver and #2 punt returner. Now that he's been up graded to #3 receiver, he's still doing it. Someone (anyone) needs to pull him aside and let him know that he looks ridiculous.

Stats

I was only able to watch about 1 quarter of the BYU game today. (The second quarter.) Tulane isn't exactly a terrific team or anything, but there were a couple of stats that jumped out at me from the game:

• 0: Zero punts. On 10 offensive possessions BYU had 2 field goals, 6 touchdowns, an interception and a turn over on downs. That's pretty efficient football. (Of course, that took our best kicker out of the game, it seems. For the second game in a row, we had a kickoff out of bounds (how hard it is to keep it in bounds? the field is like 30 yards wide) and Payne missed a PAT.)
• 6/9: Third down conversions. 67% is pretty darn good, but that isn't really the number that piqued my interest. The interesting number: 9. BYU only had 9 3rd downs all game long. 79 plays in the game and all but 67 of them were either 1st or 2nd down. It's a good thing when your offense doesn't need 3 tries to get a first down.
• 16: Players that gained yardage for BYU. Sure, it helps that it was a blowout and everyone got in on the action, but on 26 completions no one caught more than 4 balls, and 45 runs were split up between 10 players with no one getting more than 12 carries. 9 players averaged 3.5 yards per carry or more.

Yeah, its true, playing a team like Tulane will always help you put up big stats, but it's still not every day you see numbers like these. (Note: I am not arguing that a team that has 9 players averaging 3.5+ yards per carry is somehow better than a team that has one back carry it 30 times. I'm mostly just interested in these stats as statistical anomolies.) But while we're here, lets compare some other teams on the winning ends of blowouts:

Florida (56-6 over Troy): 3 punts, 10/14 3rd downs, 6 players 3.5+ ypc

Oklahoma (64-0 over Idaho State): 4 punts, 4/13 3rd downs, 4 players 3.5+ ypc.

Cincinnati (70-3 over Southeast Missouri State): 4 punts, 7/12 3rd downs, 6 players 3.5+ ypc.

Ok, I'm done.

Eruptions

For labor day, we went to Bryce Canyon to do some hiking. Bryce is about 2 1/2 hours away, though we didn't really get a good estimate of how long it really takes. We were about 2 hours into the trip up there, when suddenly, from the back seat, there was an eruption. And then everything was covered in barf. (Anyone who might have come with us: be glad you didn't. We might have been tempted to carpool and then you would have been in the kill-zone.) Turns out the yogurt for breakfast did not agree with Julia at all. So, we got every parent's delight: wiping things down on the side of the road with wet-wipes. Once we were about cleaned up, a family was nice enough to stop and ask if we needed any help. There really wasn't much they could do for us, but we appreciated their willingness. Thank you family of strangers! (Though it would be a real long shot, we should have asked if they had any febreeze in their truck!)

So, we made it to Bryce and went on the Navaho/Peekaboo loops. 4.9 miles total. Not sure how long it took us, because we didn't reliably look at a clock the whole day. Anyway, the weather was nice, in the 70s, and there was often a breeze. Bryce is a fantastic place, because it has large, grand views, but you can also go hiking down through all of it and experience it up close, and away from crowds. We also learned that 4.5 miles is about my limit for toating Julia on my back. We'll see how the shoulder feels tomorrow.

We managed the trip back without any eruptions. Instead we got a 30 minute backup on the freeway from an accident.

Wow. It's been 12 hours, and it's still sinking in. BYU beat #3 Oklahoma on a not-quite-neutral field. Wow.

• BYUs defense was the best unit on the field througout pretty much the entire game. Better than either offense, and better than OUs defense.
• Replacing 4 offensive linemen, having a top offensive player out with an injury and losing another important player to injury in the first half might might be a decent excuse for losing a game. But it's real hard to make that arguement when it applies to both teams. There simply isn't any ground to say that any one play was the game breaker. OU lost their starting QB. BYU turned the ball over 4 times. (The muffed punt was particularly eggregious.) Both teams got called for pass interference in the endzone. (The call against BYU was pretty iffy in my opinion.) Both teams picked up lots of penalties and did it in bad spots on occasion. (OU kept putting themselves in 3rd and long situations from their O-line, and BYU essentially put OUs final drive together for them with a kick out of bounds, a face mask and a late hit (if I remember that correctly)). In short, it looked like the first game of the season.
• I found it particularly interesting that in the second half both teams moved the ball down to about the 5 yard line, ran a few plays, got a PI call in the end zone, started fresh at the 2 yard line, and then was called for a false start. BYU got a touchdown, OU didn't.
• The final BYU drive of 16 plays, 78 yards and 8:44 was really impressive. I was most worried for our chances at the opening kickoff, and then again near the end of the 3rd quarter. In the 3rd quarter the OU O-line and D-line seemed to be wearing down BYU, which happens so often in big games. I feared BYU would run out of gas and a bigger, faster and more talented OU team would finally push by them and win pulling away. Instead, BYU ate up most of the 4th quarter on a great drive.
• Speaking of drives, OUs 3 longest drives were 52, 43 and 35 yards. BYU put together drives of 78, 63 and 59 yards.

Football

College football has started, and I'm watching Utah/USU online. Thank goodness for people streaming things! Unfortunately, the game is on the mountain. The mountain has been around for a number of years now, and for every one of those years, they've had the same flaw in their on-screen game clock. In the final minute of a quarter, the clock shows 39:04 when it ought to show 39.4. So I have to sit there watching the clock tick down: 39:04, 39:03, 39:02, 39:01, 39:00, 38:09, etc. I understand how the error could be made, but I don't understand how it can be allowed to stand for years, when it ought to be simple to fix. So, either no one at the station is paying enough attention to notice, or no one cares enough to display a time that makes sense, or maybe no one can figure out how to fix it.

Total Eclipse. Literally.

I find that I'm usually the last person in the world to catch on to the latest cool youtube video. The people dancing down the aisle at their wedding, yeah, I was dead last. 70-year-old grandmas had it in their facebook status before it worked its way to me. Apparently I live on an island or something. Anyway, the following video only has 3.6 million views on youtube, so at least 90% of the country hasn't seen it. (Whether any of that 90% reads my blog is, of course, another question.)

The idea here is that what you are seeing in music videos doesn't always correlate well with the lyrics. So, people have been creating 'literal versions' of music videos, where the lyrics have been adjusted to represent whatever you're watching. There are a whole lot of them on youtube, with a wide range of quality. The vocal talents of the re-recordings are severely lacking on some of the videos, and obviously some videos are better suited to the project to begin with. But here is the best one that I'm aware of out there. The lyrics are on the screen so you can sing along! Well, without futher ado (thanks for laboring through all that ado!) I present the literal version of Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Feast for Two

Last night for dinner Shannon and I had a feast for two. It was a lot of food. Salad, garlic bread, pasta, pizza, root beer and cookies that we passed back and forth underneath the table. In the end, we couldn't quite finish all the food, so we had to get a box to take it home. (And yes, all three of us signed it.)

For those of you who haven't already figured it out, St. George now has a Brick Oven! Maybe for the start of next semester we can get some other people to join us here.

Zion

Let's just clear this up right now folks: it's Zion National Park. It is NOT Zions National Park. Nor is it Zion's National Park. There is but a single Zion. One Zion canyon, and it doesn't possess anything. Now, if you'll all kindly quit calling it "Zions", I'll be very grateful.

Fake Numbers

In the last few days, I've noticed a few instances of fake numbers. Take any statistic, any measurement, any anything, and you're almost guaranteed to get a non-round number. So, when you see a number that is particularly round, you should get curious. The number on my mind today is 10,000. Evidently that is how many hours it takes to become an expert at something, according to Malcolm Gladwell. (Disclaimer: I've never read anything he's written, other than a lame piece on ESPN.com that was NOT worth my time.) Now, I have no idea how he arrived at that number, but it doesn't make sense. Why would there be something magical about 10,000 hours?

Now, you might be thinking that his point isn't the exact number of hours it takes to master something, he's just driving at the idea that it takes a long time. Well, if that were his point, he should have said, "it takes a long time". Or "it takes years and years". But the one thing I'm almost certain of is that it doesn't take 10,000 hours to become an expert. And when you think about it, you know that number can't really be calculated the way it should be, unless Gladwell managed to somehow measure how much time Bill Gates spent working on computers decades ago, or how many hours John Lennon spent fiddling with his guitar and writing bad songs. In the end, what I think Gladwell did is determine that it takes a really long time to become an expert at something (surprise, surprise) and then picked a nice, round number that matched up with that.

Re-Making it Worse

I was discussing movies with a co-worker recently. He's seen pretty much every terrible movie you can think of. One of our favorites that he's seen is Vampiyaz: Brothaz in blood. Anyway, we discovered that there is a whole class of movies that he hasn't seen. Stuff like The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, and Mr. Mom. Now, I'm not saying these are the greatest movies ever made, but I think everyone ought to have seen them, as part of their general life education. But, as I was urging him to see the movies, I found myself saying "You have to see 'The Parent Trap'. The original, not the remake with Lindsay Lohan, you can skip that one." And "you must see Freaky Friday, but the original one with Jodie Foster, not the remake with Lindsay Lohan."

And then I realized that we had developed a whole new tag line for Ms Lohan: "Re-Making it Worse". The Parent Trap. Freaky Friday. Herbie. Along with all the rest of her problems in life, she has a knack for remaking movies that never needed to be remade, and not doing a good job of it.

Talking Julia

Words Julia says*:

Jesus

Hat

Shoes

Blockburger

Button

Buckle

Oh man

Milk

Hot Dog

Please

Up

Down

Book

Dog

Kitty

Duck

Mama

Daddy

Rock

Walk

Open

Eye

Nose

Mouth

Mouse

House

Car

Elbow

Elmo

Maggie

More

Isaac

Baby

Yes

No

Hi

Bye

Tickle

Uh-oh

Oh no

Apple[sauce]

Hot

Frog

Ball

Cheese

There could be a few more, but that's all the ones that the doting parents could think of right now.

* Requirements for counting it as a word are that she says it on her own (she'll mimick just about any word we ask her to, with varying degrees of sucess) and we can understand what she says. This does not mean that any random stranger could understand what she is saying.

Basketball

Hooray for basketball! My ward is attempting to set up weekly basketball games. We had 5 at our first attempt, which isn't terrible. And only 3 of them were recruited from outside of our ward. But, here are my observations from the first time I've played in ages.

1: Apparently I'm 100 years old, because things still hurt.

2: I blocked 2 shots in one evening. TWO! That's about 10 times more than I normally do. One was on a pull-up jumper. For the other, I was beat off the dribble and the other guy had a step on me as he headed toward the hoop and I blocked the shot from behind almost. I don't think I've ever blocked a shot that way before. This was probably a statistical anomaly.

3: I made a right-handed hook shot. I've had a left-handed hook that I've used for years. It's very accurate and extremely difficult to block. (Even Brett would agree with that, I think.) But, to increase my repetoir, I've been practicing a right-handed version for years. Years! It's certainly not as good as the lefty (lower accuracy and range) but I can consistantly make it when practicing. Unforutnately, I never trust it enough to use it in a game. Even when the right side is more open, I trust my left-handed shot more than the right-handed. But, without planning, I spontaneously took a right-handed shot the other day. (It went in.) NBA, here I come!

If my blog readership included anyone who liked basketball in the St. George area, you'd be invited.

Visitors

Kim and Patrick came through town this week on their way further south. They stopped to say hi to Julia and Shannon and brought food with them for lunch, too. I guess they didn't end up eating all of it (they came and went while I was at work) and left some behind. Shannon showed me the zucchini they left us:

"That's great!" I said. "I'll put it next to the one from our garden."

Sports Famine

The NBA playoffs are over. I didn't watch any of them. But at least I had something to read about on espn.com. Now, I have nothing. Sports are dead to me. Until the fall. Baseball doesn't get remotely interesting until August, and then college football comes back.

Somewhere, Shannon is celebrating.

Hot Ham Water?

We have some friends that need to watch Arrested Development. We've been meaning to watch some with them for some time, but it just hasn't happened yet. (Just like we've been meaning to do so many other things.) Anyway, Shannon and I were discussing what we could do to have an Arrested Development (hereafter "AD") themed party to enrich the watching atmosphere, but haven't come up with much. It won't be a big party, and we aren't rich, but surely there must be something we can do to bring out the AD spirit. We could make frozen bananas . . . and . . . hot ham water? Get a crane game? A sing-along to the Final Countdown? Anyone out there got any more ideas?

P

Memorial Day weekend.  There we are, enjoying sacrament meeting.  It was a double missionary homecoming.  The M's were there.  The A's were there.  And suddenly, there was something warm and wet in my lap, and running down my legs.  Thanks Julia!

Saturday (a few days ago).  Shannon had a choir performance (last of the year) that Julia and I went to.  She really enjoyed the clapping part.  She was getting kinda squirmy near the end.  The final piece by the choir was really good.  Made me feel all warm inside.  And all warm in my lap.  That Julia, so willing to share!

Today.  Shannon was working on dinner, I was reading Julia a book.  Then, I was all wet.  Yay for urine!

Shannon had even changed Julia about 90 minutes before so she wouldn't pee on me.  But somehow she still manages.  As if she didn't generate enough laundry as it is.

Happy Anniversary

No, not to me.  My anniversary was 10 days ago.  But these folks did get married 5 years ago:

Don't worry folks, that picture isn't from their wedding.  Or any time near it, really.  But it was the first picture of the two of them that I found.

But anniversaries are times for remembering.  So, I choose to remember back to 1999 when I met Sabrina . . . .

And 2000 when I met Brett . . . . 

But most of all, I like to think back to the first grade . . . .

0-1

I just went to a meeting. I walked in with 1 piece of paper. I walked out with 4.

That, my friends, is what we call losing a meeting.

More books

I hadn't realized how far behind I'd gotten on my books.

Brisingr:  This book follows Eragon and Eldest, which I read recently.  I read those two (which I had read before) to remember what happened, so I could read the third and final book in the series and be done with it all.  But, as it turns out, this wasn't the final book as I had thought.  It was long and entertaining as the others were, and, I was glad to see that it provided some plot twists that I didn't see coming.  I remain curious to see how it all turns out.  Sometimes it is best to discover series' after they've all been written so you don't have to do the annoying part of waiting for the next book.

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman:  In 35 years at Caltech, Feynmann was listed as teacher of record for 34 courses.  25 were graduate courses.  I guess when you're as big a name as Feynman, you can teach what whatever you want (or not teach, as the case may be).  But for two years, he taught a series of introductory physics courses.  The lectures were recorded and eventually edited and published as Feynman's Lectures on Physics.  The finished work is famous, among physicists at least, and anyone out there is welcome to buy it for me.  (It's 3 volumes, and not cheap.)  Until that day, I have 6 Easy Pieces, which are exerpts from the lectures.  They're interesting and are Feynman's attempts to collapse some big topics, like "Basic Physics" into a single lecture.

4 fluids

Julia is having a bit of a rough day.  Which of course means that we all are.  This afternoon she managed to get, more or less simultaneously, 4 different bodily fluids on my shirt: tears, slobber, boogers and poop.

I suppose that is better than if she had done it to four different shirts.

And, as I type this, she just got Shannon's pants.  (hint: not tears, slobber or boogers)

Her Parents Daughter

We've recently discovered a few traits that julia seems to have picked up from her parents.

From Shannon: Julia is a bottomless pit.  She would eat all day long if we would just be so kind as to keep feeding her.  Shannon likewise loves food.  One thing that Shannon loves about pregnancy and breast feeding is the ability to eat so much more.  "It's like a dream come true."  I've heard her say.  And now Julia is always hungry.  She at a full grilled cheese sandwhich today.  She went through two bottles just during church yesterday.  And she ate an hour before church started.  She knows a few signs.  "More" is made by touching all 10 of your fingers together infront of you.  "Eat" or "Food" is made by putting 5 fingers together and touching them to your lips.  Today she combined the two by bringing both hands to her mouth to sign for, what I can only imagine means "MORE FOOD NOW!"

From Clark:  When I got her home from church yesterday, I took off her shoes to find . . . sweaty feet.  I'm sorry Julia.  That's all I can say.  She might just be doomed to sweaty feed.  No matter how hot, no matter how cold, they just sweat.

Updump

Yes, here are some updates that really, are pretty dumpy.

1.  I read "Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident".  Yeah, it's a young-adult book.  The first one was interesting and mindless enough.  The second one made me realize that I didn't really remember much of the first one, even though it had only been a few months, and that neither one was really that good.  I don't plan on reading any more.

2.  I read "Clarks emails to Shannon May-Aug 2001".  Shannon printed out a collection of emails I wrote when we were first dating.  Let me sumarize: my job is boring.  There, I saved you a bunch of reading.  There were, of course, a few humorous nuggets, but man, did I just say the same things over and over again.

3.  Nothing quite so fun as holding your daughter and then realizing she's just peed all over you.  yay.

4.  Our garden isn't faring too well.  Nothing really seems to be growing, though most of the plants look ok.  Some, however, seem to be dead/disappeared, and are dying from North to South.  Perhaps a very, very, very slow moving plague?

5.  I've just about completely lost my voice over the last two days.  Now would not be the time to give me a call.

Boring tournament, Exciting math!

Yesterday, Brett started us down a dangerous path, but you'll be happy to know I saved us all from potential loss of sleep. I'll explain . . . . Brett was wondering, as I'm sure various of you were, what the results would be from a 64 team single elimination tournament in which there were no upsets and the positions of the teams are clearly defined and well known, but matchups are random. The tournament wouldn't be much good for setting contest up; we all know who the best team is, and they are guaranteed to win. However, there is an interesting question of who gets second place. Certainly, the #2 team has the best chance of getting second, but, if they meet the #1 team before the championship game, they are out of luck.

Brett started from a numerical approach, letting his computer set up 10,000 such tournaments, randomly placing the teams into brackets and seeing how it comes out, and intially supposed that team #2 has a 1/2 chance of 2nd place, #3 a 1/4 chance, #4 a 1/8 chance, and so on and so forth. The result isn't surprising. But quickly, we realized that this can't be correct. First off, it implies that all teams have a chance of winning, when they clearly don't. No team lower than the field size/2 + 1 can make the championship game. Also, that result can't be right because the probability of someone finishing in 2nd place only adds up to 1 if we sum forever, and we don't have infinitely many teams.

So, what is the probability? If you want to figure it out for yourself, quit reading now, because I'm about to tell you. Ok . . . I see that none of you have quit reading. (It's impressive that you've read this far.) After various attempts at finding a formula that fits, I present you with the formula for finding the probability of any team taking second place in such a tournament, generalized for any number of teams and any seed:
where f is the field size and s is the seed and a[s] represents the odds of the nth seed taking 2nd place, where 2 <> (f/2 +1). There, can't you rest easier this weekend now that this problem has been put to rest?

The Fix

Chad Orzel has a great idea on how to fix the economic mess we're stuck in: Physicists Can Fix This.

You should read the whole post, it's not that long. But this is the gist presented in Q/A format, with me providing the questions, and Dr. Orzel responding:

Q: What's your plan?
A: "fire them. All of them. Every trader who bought or sold a mortgage-backed security, every manager who signed off on the buying and selling of credit default swaps, every CEO of every company now in need of a federal bailout, everybody who ever shook hands with Bernie Madoff."

Q: And who should we hire to run things?
A: "I've thought of the perfect replacements: physicists."

Q: But won't physicists screw it up because they don't know about business and economics?
A: "the people who are pushing that line the hardest are the people who stand to benefit most from large windfall payments to the current financial industry. Which is to say, the people who have wrecked the economy by failing to understand the most basic facts of the underlying market. They have lots of experience, to be sure, but the bulk of their experience is in being wrong about everything. They lost billions to a Ponzi scheme, for God's sake. And, seriously, do you really think that these transactions are too complicated for physicists to figure out? We're talking about people who have spent the last several years thinking about folding and twisting strings in eleven dimensions."

Eragon and Eldest

The 3rd book in the Eragon series came out a while ago. As it had been a while since I read the first two books (and regrettably saw the movie) I decided to re-read them to refresh my memory before I read the third. Then I would put a nice conclusion to the whole thing and be done with them all.

Unfortunately, it turns out there will be 4 books, not 3. Hopefully he writes #4 quickly, because I am not reading the first 3 over (again) before reading #4.

Anyway, if you haven't read Eragon, here is my fairly spoiler-laden review:

Eragon was written by a kid. He was like 15 when he started the book, perhaps 17 by the time he finished. Google it if you really want to know. It is very impressive that any teenager can write a coherant book. The best way I can describe the book is that I think he watched the original Star Wars trilogy, read Lord of the Rings and then thought: "Hey, I have a fabulous idea for a book!"

We have Eragon, an orphaned child living with his uncle. He doesn't even know who his father is, and his mother dropped him off as a baby and was never heard from again. He ends up coming across a dragon egg which hatches for him, and names the dragon Saphira. Some bad guys who work for the evil king come looking for him, and he ends up leaving his backwater village with kinda crazy old guy who lives nearby, pretending to be a story teller. But, as it turns out!, kinda crazy old guy isn't who he appears to be! He's been hiding that in the past he was a feared warrior with magical powers who happens to be nearby and can now teach Eragon to use his magical powers! The book is largely a travelogue of their adventures as they get captured, escape, kill some bad guys, learn about Eragon's destiny, and eventually make their way to the small alliance of rebels. Sadly, this group isn't known as the Rebel Alliance, but as the Varden. Along their way, we see that their world is made up of humans, elves (who have magical powers and live forever, but like to keep to themselves in their forest), dwarves (who are excellent miners and live in the mountains) and urgals (who are disgusting, horned brutes who work for the bad guy).

Really, the book isn't bad, though I do like to poke fun at it. It is entertaining and goes quickly. It's not great literature, but it is a good distraction from life, and is better for you than watching reruns of 'Friends'.

The second book in the series is Eldest. Begin spoiler fest:

Having defeated the urgal army at the end of the first book, Eragon travels to the elves' forest to train where, lo and behold, a very old dragon rider and his dragon have been hiding for all these years waiting to train the next dragon rider (Eragon). We also discover that Eragon's travelling companion from the first book, Murtagh, who we thought died is really not dead, and has been put into the service of the evil king. Oh, and he's Eragon's brother. Oh, and their father was the evil king's right hand man before Brom (the kinda crazy storyteller who died in book 1) killed him. So, it's all one big happy family.

I'm currently half way through book 3, about 1500 pages into the adventure. While there aren't many surprises, it still sucks me in. (Just ask Shannon.)

Yard Work

I've got a friend who apparently likes yard work.  I guess I need to invite him over more often.

Last night we cranked up the sprinkers for the first time.  We probably could have done that a week ago, but oh well.  Luckily the sprinklers all seem to be working in reasonably good order.  One is somewhat broken, but still puts 90+% of the water out on the lawn where it should go, so it certainly isn't a crisis.

I also repaired the spigot in the backyard.  Look how handy I am!  It was leaking out of the knob when turned on, so I took it apart, applied Teflon tape and cranked it back together good and tight.  No more leaks!  Now I can return the new one that I bought under the assumption that I wouldn't be able to fix the old one.

Also, we've been weeding fiends lately.  Apparently the difference between a plant and a weed is that a plant is what you want to grow, and a weed is what will grow.  I think we should just declare that we are trying to grow the weeds.  Then, we will either succeed, or the weeds will decide to shrivel up and die, which wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Now the top priority is to get the garden planted, and the water all hooked up for it.

Made in America

You might think that I've stopped reading, what with no more book updates lately.  That is far from the truth, which is that I've been wanting to write a summary of this book for so long that I've finished 3 books since.  All in good time.

See, I was waiting until I had the book with me to review Made in America by Bill Bryson.  You may be familiar with Bryson books, which are often humorous traveloguey type books.  But rather than being straight humor, he likes to add in lots of detail about whatever he finds along the way.  This book is no different.  Made in America claims to be "an informal history of the English language in the United States".  I suppose it is, but I would have bolded and italicized the word informal.  (In fact, I just did!)  Bryson heads off where ever his interest takes him on minutae about words that are used or invented in America.  This is a good thing, because otherwise, he would have spent the whole book just listing words and when they first appeared: to scoot (1841), highfalutin (1848), underdog (1887), rip-roaring (1834), sitting pretty (1910), dope fiend (1896), jet lag (1966).

But, it's all worth it, just for Bill to provide us all with this nugget of information in the section about candy: "Equally improbable was the Chicken Dinner candy bar, so called because it was supposed to engender the feeling of well-being provided by a steaming roast chicken dinner.  Though few people were able to make the leap of imagination necessary to equate a 5-cent chocolate peanut roll with a well-balance meal, the Chicken Dinner sold well and survived into th 1960s."

Hold Still

Now, I know the acapella performing segment of my readership is rather limited, but I still feel it is my duty to help inform the world.

I'm a Ben Folds fan, and apparently he's got some sort of contest going for people to sing acapella versions of his songs. There are some of the better ones on his website. (Remember, better and good have two separate and only loosely related meanings.) Watching some of them, I realized that acapella groups are:
1. Usually too big.
2. Incapable of holding still.

And it's rather distracting to watch 12 bodies wiggling, 20 guys trying to look cool, or this bevy of girls who, if you watch with the sound off, all seem to be playing on a Wii.

So please, if you're going to sing, hold still. It's not that hard. This guy does it four times!

One of these things . . .

My mind is swimming with things I could say about this.  But I'll let the graphic do the talking.

Pasta Ridiculous

So, I'm making Pasta Roni today, and I find something that's just ridiculous.  It's right there in step 1.

"In a medium saucepan, bring water, milk and margarine, butter or spread with no trans fat to a boil; reduce heat to medium."

It can't just be "butter", or even "butter or margarine" anymore, no, it's got to be "margarine, butter or spread with no trans fat".  Is there someone out there who's been wondering "It says 'butter' but I wonder if I can use my no trans fat butter substitute?"

If they are going to go that far, I suggest them further revamp the instructions:

"In a medium saucepan, bring water (tap, filtered, distilled or de-ionized), milk, soy milk, powedered milk, or milk substitute and margarine, butter, spread with no trans fat, or leftover bacon fat to a boil; reduce heat to medium."

Silly

Yay!  Cougars are the MWC Men's Basketball Champions!

Woo!  Utes are the MWC Men's Basketball Champions!

Yipee!  Lobos are the MWC Men's Basketball Champions!

BYU, Utah and New Mexico ended the regular season in a three way tie for first place in the conference.  So, logically, they all cut down the nets, and all paraded around with banners declaring themselves champions.  75% of the conference games played Saturday ended with the winning team declaring themselves champs.

And it's not out of the question that a different team wins the conference tournament.  SDSU and UNLV are both capable of it.  If so, that would be a fourth team cutting down the nets this year.  It's all just a bit silly if you ask me.  Utah, BYU and NM are all good teams and have earned their positions, but it just wouldn't feel quite right having a championship party knowing that two other teams are declaring themselves champs of the same thing somewhere else.

Chrome

I downloaded Chrome a few weeks ago, and have been using at home.

I like:

1. Shannon can be logged into gmail via Firefox, and I can be logged into gmail via Chrome at the same time.  This isn't specific to Chrome, I think it will work with any two programs, but it doesn't work with 2 windows of the same.

2. Very little of the screen is taken up with junk like toolbars, print buttons, etc.  Of course, when I actually wanted to print something I had figure out how to do it, as it wasn't blindingly obvious.  However, that was the first time in weeks that I had wanted to print something.  It's perfectly ok for a feature to be a bit out of the way if I only want to do it once a month.  And, frankly, pretty much all I do on the internet is look at sites and open new tabs to look at other sites.  New tabs are instantly available, and that's about all I need.

3. I can get to websites I visit often 1 keystroke faster.  In Firefox, to get to espn.com, I have to type 'es' and then hit down to highlight the site from the list firefox has just made.  Chrome just assumes I want espn as soon as I hit 'es'.  Over a lifetime, this could amount to whole minutes of savings!

I don't like:

1. Chrome seems to be a little bit slower than Firefox.  I can't prove it, but that's what it feels like.

2. No spell check.  It claims to have a spell check, but it doesn't seem to work.  And I'm not a great speller.

Summary:

I still prefer Firefox, but Chrome is serviceable for what I do, which isn't much, really.  My expectations are low, so it isn't surprising that Chrome can basically hit them.  It's way better than Internet Explorer from Microsoft, which no one should use.

Aggregation: It's anti-impressive

I don't actually visit very many blogs these days.  I use Google Reader to do it for me.  I even pulls out comments on blogs, so I don't even have to go look for those.  As a result, I don't see any of the special things that people have done lately.  I guess what I'm telling you is: if you've been trying to impress me, you can quit wasting your time.  In a similar vein, I don't look at my blog regularly either, which is why it doesn't change; I guess my objective isn't to impress any of you with my bloggy-aesthetics.

The exception to this is, of course, people who have made their blogs private.  I understand why people do it, but it makes life harder for me.  What I can't figure out though, is why Google Reader (run by Google) can't figure out if I'm allowed to look at a private Blogspot (run by Google) blog.  It ought to be super easy for them to do, but they don't.  Apparently Google's objective in life is not to impress me.

Walking

We keep practicing every night, and Julia's record is now up to 12 steps with a maximum range of about 6 feet. Her attempts regularly reach 5 steps, and about 1 in 4 gets at least 8 or 9. She hasn't yet shown much interest in walking unaided other than between me and Shannon. Even then it is hard to get her attention sometimes. Or, if she gets to giggly, she starts falling over a lot more. I guess we'll need some more videos soon. Or, if you've got a webcam, you can now call us and watch. (I suppose officially you don't even need the camera, we have one, and that would be sufficient, but not much fun for us.)

Super Shopper

Shannon is quite the bargin shopper these days.  She gets lots of coupons and then does fancy sales where you buy lots of stuff and get big rebates and what not.  But what this means is that when something goes on sale, we end up with a lot of it.

And so, I present to you: the Yogurt Shelf.

New Calling

Thursday evening I got a call asking me to go meet with a member of the Stake Presidency on Sunday morning.  (side note: I don't think I can ever be in a Stake Presidency or Bishopbrick,  I just can't get up that early on a Sunday.)  So, Shannon and I spent a few days doing the obligatory speculation as to what it coudl be.  Certainly high profile callings come to mind, but that isn't always the case.  About 2 years ago we were asked to go meet with our old stake presidency.  Speculations abounded in our private discussions.  In the end, we were called to be a Ma & Pa for a pioneer trek (which I really enjoyed), something we would never have suspected.

Unfortunately, no pioneer treks for us this year.  Instead, I will be the new 2nd councilor in the Elders Quorum Presidency.  I've never been in an EQ Presidency before.  I've never even taught EQ before.  Should be exciting!

Extreme Sweeping

I'm pretty good at minesweeper.  I'm fast, and pretty sucessful, though the game doesn't keep stats for you, and I haven't yet stooped to that level myself.  All it keeps is best times, which after a time, get harder and harder to beat.  Some games in minesweeper are only winnable by guessing, and others are easier to complete quickly than others.  Anyway, my best times for beginner, intermediate and expert are down to 5 seconds, 35 seconds and 119 seconds, respectively.  I just don't know how I'll ever improve upon those much, if at all.  So, I've recently resorted to extreme minesweeping.

What I've done is taken the standard expert sized grid (16x30 with 99 mines) and increased the mine density.  I've completed as high as 115 mines on that size, though 120 mines is proving very difficult.  It's not for the faint of heart.

Read me like an open Google

Inspired by the things that Tyler likes to do, here is what you get when you google "Clark likes to":

1. Clark likes to think that every year at the turn of midnight on his birthday, the whole world celebrates, everyone kissing everyone else and cheering. (This is actually very, very far from the truth.)
2. Clark likes to play his tuba. (I don't play the tuba, but I wouldn't mind learning.)
3. There are several insurance rating services, and the one Clark likes to suggest you use is A.M. Best. (I've sold out to corporate endorsement.)
4. Clark likes to keep fit through regular visits to the gym and has a passion for hiking and cross-country skiing.
5. Clark likes to emphasize that he's a poor Southern boy trapped in Los Angeles. (Wow! Google does know everything!)
6. Clark likes to delve into different worlds in her crackerjack novels of suspense; but while the milieus change, her stories are always . . . (remember folks, I have many milieus. You might say I have a plethora of milieus.)
7. And, as Clark likes to point out, everyone has ... (yes, my point exactly)
8. Clark likes to tinker with computer sounds and a capella renderings of drums. (also: a capella renderings of papers and coloring.)
9. And, as Clark likes to point out, everyone has health care. (Health care crisis solved! All it took was for me to point it out!)
10. Clark likes to use the term, "at the end of the day," as in "when we get to the bottom line," or "when it's all said and done,"

And, at the end of the day, that's what the internet thinks of me.

Wild Ride

About 10 days ago, someone in St. George who works at the Blue Bunny Ice Cream plant was late to work. So he raced down the road at approximately 70 miles per hour. And apparently tried to take the final corner before arriving at work at about that speed. The road he was turning on to is a nice wide road, but not wide enough for those speeds. So, he got sideways, and hit the curb, taking chunks out of it with 3 of his 4 rims, and headed into the gravel landscaping. He managed to miss the large rocks (large suitcase size) in the landscaping, mowing through about 20 feet of gravel and up a 5 foot rise, throwing the rocks across the parking lot. He then left the gravel, and went out of control another 30 or 40 feet across the parking lot, before coming to a resounding stop when he crashed into the building I work in. His Honda Passport was totaled, and his un-seatbelted self we probably lucky to escape with nothing worse than a big cut on his head. First aid was administered by one of my coworkers who heard a noise and stuck his head outside to discover a car wrecked into the wall. If he had hit the building 5 feet over, he would have gone right through a big roll up door and started taking out equipment.

Moral of the story: slow down, wear your seat belt, and if you're not going to do to that, at least do it somewhere that I won't have to spend a bunch of time sweeping up rocks from the parking lot!

Parade

We're going to the Parade in St. George this week! Yay for parades! Clowns, and candy, and horses pooping on the road and furniture, and large patios, and . . . walk-in-closets? Yes, it's the parade of homes. It's actually quite entertaining, particularly the over the top gaudy homes. I'm not sure who buys 15,000 sq. foot homes with indoor basketball court, rock climbing wall, golf area, raquetball court and 2 story weight room. Maybe they're just wealthy people trying to stimulate the economy.

You can see me

Because we're so darn awesome, we now have a webcam. So if anyone really wants to see Julia, they now can. (I suppose there is a chance that even if you don't have a webcam, but do have a microphone, you could still make it work? We just wouldn't be able to see you?) We have thus far made one phone call to my sister via Oovoo. We also have Skype. As it turns out, we have family that use each of them, so we're at least starting out with both. If one is clearly superior, maybe we'll try to get people to switch. We should be look-up-able on both, should you care to say hi.

Empire

I'm catching up some of the books I've read lately.

Empire, by Orson Scott Card

Yeah, I read a lot of Card’s books. The premise behind this one is interesting, though. It’s set in the not too distant future in which some crazy people decide to over throw the government and start a revolution that is based on right vs left ideology. Now, before you start trying to guess who it is that ends up being the ‘bad guys’, I’ll remind you that Card, in addition to being LDS is also a registered Democrat. Basically, the book is about a big conspiracy theory which leads to shots being fired and rival governments being declared. While I’m not what I would call a big conspiracy theory sort of guy, that doesn’t keep the book from being entertaining, which is why I do most of my reading. I view the book like I would a Tom Clancy novel; it’s interesting and draws on various facts, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a work of fiction. Card invents a presidency and all his characters, as well as other specifics.

Killer Angels

Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara

I don’t know about you, but I can’t begin to count the times that I’ve read a book, and then, upon seeing the movie, felt disappointed because they left out so much detail and, often, plot. Well, if you’ve read Killer Angels and then seen the accompanying movie, Gettysburg, you won’t have any such feelings. You might be feeling a bit of de ja vu, however.

The 4 hour 15 minute movie and the 368 page book are so similar, at times I wondered if I was reading the script. The dialog is the same, often times word for word. I remarked to Shannon that the book is what you’d get if someone watching the movie were to describe it to you as they were watching, and they have a good vocabulary.

There are, of course, minor differences. The book has a few more maps that make it easier to understand the tactics of the whole situation, and the movie has a lot more explosions.

(I just found out the book was written in 1974. I hadn't figured it was that old.)

Made in Brazil

We went to Made in Brazil for dinner last night, and various people have mentioned they wanted to know how it was.

Here's the part where I remind you that I not only lived in Brazil for 2 years, but I lived in the part where this style of food comes from. The comparison I use is that me living in St. George and having been a few times to Famous Dave's Barbecue doesn't make me a good judge of authentic American barbecue. I'll leave that to people who have been to the South and experienced backyard slow cooked barbecue and been to the small, local barbecue restaurants. Same thing with the Brazilian food. Just because the meat is on a stick, doesn't make it authentic.

Authenticity:
Brazilian places like this don't really have a menu. You get the buffet of sides and they bring the meat to you, but they still have a small drink menu, which they gave us. And right at the top, it says something to the effect of "This is a churrascarria (pronounced "choo-ras-ka-REE-ah") . . . " Wrong! Right of the bat, they had two problems. First, it's spelled churrascaria, and secondly, it's pronounced "shoo-hahs-ka-REE-ah". But from there, things improved greatly. Guarana is a well known Brazilian soft drink, and they have two brands. Antartica is more familiar in the US, but they also have Brahma on tap. Brahma is evidently the second best selling guarana in Brazil and has a very different taste, but it's still good. Guarana is no more specific than "cola"; not all colas taste like Coke, and that's ok.

Churrascarias (a place where you get churrasco ("shoo-hahs-ko") which is the meat) always have a buffet. The point of the buffet is to trick you into eating less meat. A traditional churrasco will have a few sides. Some rice, some beans, a potato salad, tomatoes, bread, cucumbers and that's about it. But when churrascarias come to the US, they feel a need to fancify things up. So we end up with (last night) pickled potatoes, crab salad, broccoli salad, green olives and a variety of other things offered. I don't mind them adding these things, but I don't eat them, because I'm going for an authentic meal. Made in Brazil did have a nice selection of more authentic foods, which included: fried yucca (excellent!), fried bananas, fried rice balls, rice, beans, stroganoff, and farofa (yucca flour).

The meat was good. It wasn't perhaps as salty as I would have liked, but it was still good. They had a good variety (which is smaller if you go for lunch, but lunch is cheaper) including chicken hearts (which they cooked just for me), grilled pinapple (I realize this isn't a meat), sirloin, chicken wrapped in bacon, and other yummy things. Shannon even tried a small piece of chicken heart. You'll have to ask her about it.

Service:
I thought the service was excellent. They were friendly, but more importantly, the people the brought the meat around remembered what we wanted. When we mentioned to one that I was waiting for some chicken hearts, he even told the other guy. Interestingly, one employee came and started talking to me in Portuguese. I asked if he always assumed people spoke Portuguese, and he told me he could tell that I did based on what I was eating.

Ambiance:
Nice. It wasn't at capacity, which helps, but I liked it. It was clean, etc.

Price:
Churrasco is never cheap, as it focuses on meat which is brought to your table and cut just for you. But the price is reasonable for a churrascaria. I think the dinner is 18 bucks. Lunch is less (15ish?). We won't be going back often, but birthdays only come back once a year.

In Conclusion:
I'd go back often, except for the price. This is why we don't eat out anywhere very often. I'd love to go again, and enjoy taking people and telling them all about the foods. So, if you want to hire me to spruce up your Churrascaria experience, I'm available.

Birthday

It's my birthday. Wee!

To catch up a bit: the picture in the previous post is indeed Joseph Stalin. Good ol' uncle Joe. Too bad anonymous chose to stay anonymous, so he doesn't win the prize. The prize instead goes to the second closest answer which would be KC and his guess of "Antonio Bandito" which, I'm pretty sure, is a childhood nickname for Stalin. I thought it was pretty interesting that communist leaders start out life looking very un-communist dictator-y. Not that this should really be surprising though.

Else where in life, I haven't been blogging much. I guess I'll have to work on that during my 28th trip around the sun. Today completes the 27th trip, at some time around 11:08pm. (What with all the leap years and other small adjustments it would be difficult to say exactly when this year's trip will conclude.) We are going to the new churrascaria in town to celebrate tonight, and at work, I got a gallon of chocolate milk as a gift! (Someone here at work apparently knows me well.)

Awesome Hair

Today at work, we discovered this picture:

This guy's got it all going. The scarf, the scruff, and, most importantly, the hair. This is a guy who would be popular with the ladies. Maybe next time I go get my hair cut, I'll take this picture in so the hair dresser knows what I need.

But the real question is, who is this person? The picture is pretty old, as the image quality and clothing suggests, and subject is famous enough that I know everyone out there would know who he is if I told you. But telling you wouldn't be as much fun. So, time to guess: Who do you think this young rogue is?

Excel 2008

I hate Microsoft Excel 2008. With a fiery passion.

Today's angst is because I want to put lines on a graph. I just want to draw in some red lines. So I put one on and then decide to copy and paste it to duplicate it. But when I do, it pastes the line to the EXTREME left side of my graph, where I can't pick it up, because my mouse will only grab the edge of the graph. So, I am forced to go through the 7 or 8 extra mouse clicks for each line I want to get it to look the same, as the one I already have.

Add to this Excel's general inability to draw lines, and I'm just mad at is. I would draw the line not on the graph and then make copies and drag them onto the graph, but that isn't an option. Lines that aren't on graphs can't be vertical in Excel 2008. It won't let them. The ends of the line snap to invisible coordinates that force the line to be not vertical. And I can't drag my vertical line off the graph, because it just won't let me.

Oh, and if I copy my vertical line on the graph and paste it elsewhere, it comes out horizontal.

Can I please, please, PLEASE have Excel 2003 back?

Bug Book

Bug: the strange mutations of the worlds most famous automobile, by Phil Patton.

I borrowed this book from my dad, which is about the only way you could probably even find it. Even amazon doesn't have a picture of it. The book was ok, but certainly not what I expected. I thought I'd find a story about people in their teens and twenties driving bugs around southern California in the 1960s. (Probably because these are the sorts of Bug stories I've heard from my dad.) Instead, the first third of the book focused on two guys with familiar last names, but who most people probably don't connect with the VW Beetle: Porsche and Hitler. It turns out that Hitler really wanted a car designed that every german family could own, and Porsche was the guy who really believed it was possible and designed the car. All back in the 1930s.

It's not a bad book, but unless you're really interested in VW Bugs, it's probably not going to be high on your list.

Travelling

Other people are nice enough to blog about my life, so I don't have to!

Last weekend we went to Tucson to visit Brett and Sabrina. We saw big cacti, and enjoyed some very warm weather. Brett put up some pictures of the trip. (Of course they focus on his family, not mine. I guess I haven't trained him properly.) We live in a neighborhood of cactus street names. We've got cholla, barrel, saguaro, and others. So we got to see the namesakes for our neighborhood. One more comment on saguaro cacti: I was expecting to see desert scapes with a lone giant cactus out in the distance. Instead, the hills in the area have thousands of cacti on them. They're everywhere.

Julia is growing, but at an ever slowing rate. In the last 6 months, she has moved from being bigger than average, to decidedly smaller than average. Shannon posts the details.

Corn Bran

15 days since my last post, and I've still got stuff from Christmas that I haven't mentioned.

For Christmas this year (and last year, too, I think) I asked for the cereal Crunchy Corn Bran. My bewildered parents went to the store, bought some, wrapped it and gave it to me. They couldn't understand why I wanted cereal for Christmas, and I couldn't figure out where they got it from. For years I've been telling Shannon about Crunch Corn Bran, and for years we've never seen it in any store. Apparently they still sell it in Sandy, but not in Provo or St. George. The cereal is kinda like Capt'n Crunch; it's little squares of crunchiness, but instead of being made primarily of sugar, it's made of corn bran. It looks bran-y, it tastes bran-y, and yet, somehow, it's good.

Well, at least I like it, and Shannon says she does to.

Ender in Exile

Orson Scott Card has written yet another book about Ender, "Ender in Exile". This brings the 'Enderverse' up to like 10 books now. Because I enjoyed the original series so much, I keep buying (or getting as presents) all the new books. I wasn't expecting too much, as I worry that he's stretching the story too far to keep making new books, but Exile is still pretty good. The book is a direct sequel to Ender's Game and ties up all the loose ends that result from Shadow of the Giant as well. If you've read all those other Ender books, you'd better read this one too, because it would be a shame to have read all but one. And if you haven't read any of them, you need to read Ender's Game, because it is a really good book, but I wouldn't be offended if you never made it to Ender in Exile.

Come

This is not a word that Julia has learned yet. Since she's recently discovered the many powers of her new found mobility, she's always going places we don't want her to. (She's been crawling for a month, but only recently realized that this means she can go just about anywhere.) Rather than always telling her 'no' when she heads for the garbage can or something else we try to get her to just come to us. She always get soooo sad when you tell her no. But unfortunately, she doesn't come. I say her name, get her attention, and she turns around for a moment, ponders the sounds coming from my mouth, and returns on her course toward the Bad Object.

But we have a cunning plan. We get her attention, and then while she's watching, we start stacking things. Blocks, cups, anything. She can't resist it. She'll crawl all the way back across the room just to knock it over. I think you could start stacking paper and she'd come over to try to unstack them. She just can't stand to have one thing on top of another.

Unfortunately, today she crawled the 10 feet back to knock over my tower and then promptly turned right back around back for the garbage can. I can see we're going to be building a lot of towers to keep her distracted.

Books

Shannon and I have decided to keep track of how many books we read this year. And here seems as good a place as any to do it.

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. Bryson is a very entertaining writer, who is not a scientist. He finds science books boring, and set out to write a book about well, nearly everything thing that would be more interesting. And it is interesting. Of course, one of the ways he makes it more interesting is to add biographical bits that have nothing to do with his discussion of the developement of Big Bang theory, evolution, the age of the earth, and other science topics. It interesting, and while he adds in odd trivia, he still remains serious and accurate. There was one or two areas where I had a quibble with how some information was presented, but over all, I liked it very much.

"What do YOU care what other people think?" This is another Feynman book, and is the follow up to "Surely you must be joking Mr. Feynman," I guess. While "Surely you must be joking . . ." is full of short funny stories, "What do YOU care . . " is longer and somewhat more serious. The book is somewhat split into two main sections. The first is about his first wife. They met as teenagers, and by the time they married, they both knew she had a serious disease that would limit their time together. She died a few years later. The story is terrific. The second part of the book is about his involvement in the investigation of the Challenger space shuttle flight. This part is a bit slower and more detailed, but still interesting. Feynman was a very straight forward man, and wasn't afraid of anybody, and I love to see how such a "Curious Character" interacts with the world.

Sick Day

Today, I'm taking my first sick day . . . well, ever. While I could be mistaken, I'm not aware of having taken a day off work for being ill in my entire life. I missed a day of work at Target once because of a toe injury. But somehow, I've been remarkably lucky in life to not get sick, or if I do, not miss work because of it. (Or, is it unlucky that I apparently only get sick on holidays then?)

Shannon fared much better than me through the night, but now has taken ill, too. I'm personally blaming dinner last night.

So here I am at home, trying to keep my body running, watching the snow fall softly in sunny St. George. I'm not kidding about any of that, except for the bit about St. George being sunny. It's cold here, and it's snowing. Apparently we didn't move far enough south.

Our computer is now in the shop. By shop, I mean at KC's house, where he will hopefully fix it for us. Unfortunately, I don't always seem to have a lot of skills to offer people in return. But KC, if you ever need a trivial pursuit partner, I'll be there for you. (Unless we're playing against my sister, in which case, let's just give up. (Further, why are you playing trivial pursuit with my sister?))

Update

We have returned from the land up north. Christmas was good, the weather was cold, and there was lots of snow. We saw lots of people, and opened lots of presents. We barely got everything back in the car to come home.

Upon arriving home, we found that our computer has self destructed. Not sure yet what is wrong with it. There is some sort of error to the effect of "unmountable boot disk" or something like that. I don't recall the exact phrasing right now. We'll be looking into it more soon, to be sure. I just figured I'd let people know why our blogging absence will continue on a bit longer.