Another Q&A from Natalie

1. What's the quality you like least of yourself? I'm sometimes easily distracted when I should be focusing on other things

2. If you could trade places with anyone, living or dead, for a day, who would it be? There's far too many people in history I would have liked to be around, but the first person who comes to mind that I'd like to change places with would be the cold, hungry, all-but-forgotten farmer-turned-soldier who stumbled across George Washington kneeling in the snow and praying for the deliverance of his rag-tag army and the infant country he knew only God could save.

3. My life would be simpler if... School was easier...

4. What's your favorite possession? My gun, my bike, or my computer.

5. Guiltiest pleasure? I don't really feel guilt about any of the things I like. I find the idea of liking something "I know I shouldn't" is a little silly.

6. High road or low road? Not that I know anybody who would "want" to choose the low road, but I try to do what I feel is the "Right Thing".

7. Who was the naughtiest kid in your elementary school, and what did he do? Although I feel that the word "he" here is a little bit of a stereotyper I think that most of my teachers could have made a pretty good case for me being the naughtiest kid in my elementary school (and most of high school). I'll plead the fifth on the details, since I didn't get caught in most of my shenanigans, but a lot of them (in grade school) involved spit-wads (I graduated from spit-wads to things like fire and dry ice in high school). Incidentally, having the same 6th grade teacher as my dad was an enlightening experience when one of the times I got caught he said, "Damn it Tim!!"

8. The big decision I'm currently wrestling with is... Where to live when BYU housing kicks out the rest of the families from Wyview Park Student Family Housing (but I'm not mad about it...)That's not the gun I mentioned above, but what a good day...

Wordless Thursday?? The end of 40 hours of sleepless programming

Classic Rock? Not for a 14-year-old me.

When you have been writing code long enough that you start to see semi-colons, parentheses, i's, and //'s everywhere you look, it's time to take a break.

Today I got an email from BMG telling me that my Grand Funk Railroad featured selection was available and I was mildly amused by the fact that when my dad recommended them to me almost 15 years ago (I don't like the sound of that!) I blew them off because I didn't want to listen to my dad's music. So here's a list of the top bands I ignored my dad's recommendation about that you'll find on my playlist now:

1. Grand Funk Railroad. Spanning from American Band to Loco-motion, these guys make a lot of music for a trio. And they rock.

2. Cream. Sunshine of Your Love. 'Nuff said. Cream holds some of Clapton's earliest, rockin'-est stuff, with Sunshine being a great indication. I do have to admit that I started to come around to this song when I was 17 or 18 and learned it on guitar.

3. Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin. Dad used to tout this as one of the top five best, rockin'-est rock songs ever. Coming from the man who introduced me to Black Sabbath, I thought it didn't quite fit the bill. But now that I'm older and a little less prideful about what is "hard rock" enough to listen to, I'll admit it. This song is classic, perfect hard rock.

4. The Moody Blues. Due to the previously mentioned teenage foolishness, I thought these guys sounded kinda goofy. Especially when I'm Just a Singer in a Rock 'n' Roll Band was on that top five list. But, no surprise here, it's a quality, kickin' rock song.

5. The Who. Again due to teenage brain damage I thought these guys were too old to be "hard rock". By now it will come as no surprise to hear me say that I was wrong. Who are you? and My Generation are 2 examples of their quality rock tracks. A sure sign of my teenage brain-damage is that if I had known that they were the first ones to get away with having the f-word on an album, I probably would have liked them. Kids those days...

Now. For the top bands/songs I'm glad I actually listened to my dad's recommendation about.

1. Led Zeppelin. One of my top 5 favorite bands, possibly in my top 2. Stairway to Heaven is probably one of a 3 way tie for my number 1 favorite song. Over the Hills and Far Away and D'yer Maker, are also in my top "five". And to top it all off, anybody with references to The Lord of the Rings in not one, but multiple songs--well, I'm sold.

2. Van Halen. They were a little outside the Metallica, Megadeath, Iron Maiden, and others of the like I listened to back then, but those guys can really take care of business. The Van Halen brothers (Alex and Eddie) are awesome. And I have to say I liked them best with Sammy Hagar.

3. Whitesnake. I got their 10 greatest hits as a Featured Selection that I forgot to tell them not to send, and I was getting ready to send it back when Dad told me to open it up and listen to it. After a couple of tracks I was sold. You'll still find Here I Go Again in almost every single one of my playlists.

4. Bad Company. These guys kind of made the cut because of the teenage brain damage. I came across the record when I was 14. The only thing that went through my mind was remembering my mom telling my dad that she didn't want us to listen to it because it would make us want to be "bad" when I was like 7. So obviously I started listening to it and really liked it. Shooting Star, Bad Company, and Can't Get Enough of Your Love are still among my favorites.

5. Last but definitely not least, Black Sabbath. (The Ozzy Osbourne era) I was listening to one of my then favorites, (Metallica, Megadeath, or Guns 'n' Roses) when Dad came in my room with a battered, scuffed old cassette tape. He told me that if I liked whoever it was that I was listening to, I should listen to this tape because I'd probably like it, and he used to listen to it when he was around my age. I believe my exact words were, "I don't wanna listen to any of your old hippie crap." So he pushed stop on my stereo, put it in and pushed play. It just happened (random chance Dad?) to be on Paranoid. There was nothing my teen-age hard-headedness could say. Done deal.

A new tinkerer is born?!?

I know, I know, 2 posts in one night. Don't I have school work? Well, the answer is yes, but something momentous has happened in our house tonight.

First, some brief background. For the past two years as I have tinkered with different distributions of linux, sometimes successfully and others learning the hard way how things work, Nicole has referred to my efforts as bumbling. As soon as she would hear me say, "I wonder if I can get ________ to work..." She would get a look of exasperation on her face, and tell me how much easier my life would be if I wasn't always "bumbling" and breaking my computer. She would talk about how she didn't have to "bumble" with her Windows system to get it to work, oblivious of the fact that Windows systems by themselves are the most helpless pieces of software I've seen. (A topic for an upcoming post). Any time I would try and figure something out for her (things I had never done and had to tinker with a little to figure out for her) she would tell me I was "bumbling."

Earlier today, I noticed that Nicole was fiddling around with iPhoto, seeing if she wanted to make a photo album for Apple to print. Then, to cement the fact that something strange is happening in my house, tonight as we were watching the news and I was washing the dishes, I started hearing strange little noises and sound effects. I looked over, and Nicole was fiddling around with iMovie HD on her new MacBook. Apparently, despite the fact that she has never touched iMovie in her life, she decided that she would "bumble" around and see if she could make a slide show out of some pictures she has taken.

Apple, OSX, iPhoto, and iMovie have done something that try as I might I have been unable to accomplish for the last two years. Despite having no prior knowledge of a software product, instead of asking me to figure it out for her, Nicole started up a program and started clicking buttons and looking around to see how it worked. I don't remember when was the last time I felt this kind of pride. As I write, she has selected some of her iTunes music for a soundtrack, and is importing pictures. I just asked her if it would be safe to say she was "bumbling" and the answer was an emphatic "NO!" She just asked me if I knew how to do something that I don't know, and told me, "I'll teach ya when I figure it out." We are still in the no-comment phase as to what exactly to call what she's doing, but we'll get there some day.

You know, they say that if you teach them, eventually they will learn. I never thought it would happen, but I'm so proud... so proud... You just can't teach this kind of thing...

Real Simple Q&A

Nicole said I should do this so here goes:


1. Bath or Shower? Eh. Whatever. Showers usually cuz they are faster and the purpose is to get clean.

2. What did you want to be when you were little? A soldier like my dad. Specifically I wanted to be an Army Ranger up until the time I got home from my mission.

3. What's the one thing you'll never understand? Why in the heck no one can make a pair of chick boots that is "cute" enough for my wife to approve of them, but useful enough to comfortably walk more than a block or two in. I know you were all expecting some kind of deep mysterious question, but if you can solve that one I'll be amazed.

4. What surprises you most about your adult life? Instead of an Army Ranger, or a construction worker, I'm a BYU student, studying Computer Science, looking at trying to get a Ph.D. and be a professor someday.

5. What's your idea of the perfect meal? It MUST HAVE meat. Potatoes help. Veggies are good. Add a peach-mango smoothie and you're there.

6. What is the craziest fashion trend or hairstyle you've worn? I don't recall ever wearing a fashion trend. My vacation beard over the semester break this year wasn't a big hit with Nicole, so I guess you could call that crazy.

7. What amount of money would make you feel like you were set for life? I'd settle for graduating, moving on to graduate school, and getting a more 'real' job.

8. If you could change careers now without any consequences or financial loss, what would you switch to? Uh... I would be a computer geek. And get paid for it. Oh wait, that's what I do. Ooh, ooh, I got it! I would be a graduated computer geek. Now that would be something.

9. What is the big decision you are currently wrestling with? Um. What to answer this question with. I really don't think I'm wrestling with any big decisions right now. Maybe what to focus on as I get into 400 level CS courses and start looking at grad school. Yeah, that would probably be it.

Thank you all, good night.

Happy Birthday Mari

Something that probably should have been said years ago...

I am currently serving as the Sunday School president in my ward here at BYU. Last night about midnight or so I realized that I had forgotten to call my 1st counselor back to find out if we had teachers for one of our two "Marriage and Family" Sunday School classes. Today sitting in Sacrament meeting I realized that there was no way we had teachers because I couldn't see the couple that teaches that class. So I ran to the clerk's office and grabbed a class member study guide from our cupboard and saw that today's lesson was: "The divine role of parents" (or something like that). I don't have kids yet so I looked in the obvious place, my own life growing up with my parents. As I taught the lesson and talked about some of the things my parents did while I was growing up I realized that I owe them a great deal and I'm not sure I've ever told them about some of the things I really appreciate about the way I was raised. So here goes:

1. I am incredibly grateful that my parents taught me how to work.

Some of these lessons were learned as a result of the fact that we burned wood for heat, grew our own garden for most of our vegetables, and killed/butchered most our our own meat. Up until I was about 14 I hated most of these activities (anyone who knows me well will know that me with virtually unlimited quantities of meat for a whole day is a happy me). But as I realized that these "activities" were helping our family subsist I grew to enjoy the time spent with my family working.

One of these lessons that began when I was 12 and continued until I left home was the result of being ambushed by my dad. One of the first days of summer vacation the year between 6th and 7th grade I was lazily sleeping in to avoid doing some of my chores when my dad came in and told me that one of the farmers in our valley had called to ask if I wanted to haul hay. For the young man I was then, his rhetoric was flawless: "That's where most of the bigger stronger guys around get so strong, and I think you're probably strong enough..." So I went. The combination of only weighing 30 or 40 pounds more than most of the hay bales and having pretty bad allergies made for what was at that time the most miserable day of my life. But the pay was much better than some of the other things I could do, so I kept at it. I quickly learned that because of the amount of hay dust in the barn, and because hay dust down my shirt quickly incapacitated me that I was the designated guy stacking hay on the truck and throwing it off into the barn. So for the next 6 years I got to lift every bale in the field twice 3 or 4 times per summer.

And sadly, some of these lessons were the result of me being stupid. After getting a 'whuppin' stopped being an effective bad behavior deterrent I would get grounded for making a 'bad choice'. It began with moving the entire woodpile so that one side would end up about 2 feet from where the opposite side began. Later after a couple of spectacularly bad choices, I hand-tilled with a shovel our lot all the way around our house one summer. The next summer I got to dig every clump of orchard grass out of our 3/4 acre orchard.

I had the opportunity when I was a little older to work alongside my dad. We worked together on family cars, doing work for farmers around the valley in exchange for a beef to fill the freezer with, and working together on maintenance and construction at a resort near Zion National Park for a couple of years. All of these experiences allowed me to have a close relationship with my dad, despite the fact that for a large portion of my high school years he had to drive truck and was gone a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversations we had as we worked side by side. Later when I was a Basic Training, or on my mission, I was grateful for the fact that I had learned to work and that it wasn't much harder than things I had done at home with my dad.

2. I am incredibly grateful that the gospel was important to my parents.

When I was growing up, it was never a question of whether or not we were going to have family prayer, but when. As a result of major difficulties establishing a time for family scripture study, my mom would read the Book of Mormon to us over dinner every night. My dad was a better Deacon's Quorum adviser than I could have ever asked for. When I had had a bad day at school my mom would bring me The New Era or The Ensign with a highlighted article or talk. Every so often when dad was gone on the truck, after we had family prayer I would remember I needed to tell or ask my mom something I would go back to her room only to find her on her knees praying. I would quietly sneak back to my room, and she would somehow always know it had been me.

3. I am incredibly grateful that my mom trekked all over the state to watch me wrestle and run at track meets.

Valley High school is not necessarily at any kind of hub. Our shortest trip to a wrestling tournament was 45 minutes, and the longest was more than 4 hours. Track meets were just as bad. Despite the early morning starting times, I could count on looking into the stands and seeing here there. Granted she sometimes looked a little tired, and she did arrive at one track meet my junior year approximately 45 seconds after one of the best races of my career to that point, but it meant the world to me that she was there almost every single time.

4. I am incredibly grateful for all the time I spent with my dad hand-loading bullets, calculating trajectories, and scanning the rocks above the hay fields for wood chucks.

We would spend hours talking about which caliber had better long-range trajectory, less wind drift, etc... We would spend even more time with our varmint rifles resting on sandbags on the hood of the jeep or truck or car, waiting for the little hay-mowing rats to show their beady eyes. Our talks about trajectories would drift on to physics, the army, cars, trucks, and you name it. While my class went on the Senior Trip, my dad and I went camping, hiking, and wood-chuck hunting on Cedar Mountain.

For these things, and so many more, I owe my parents more than I could ever pay back. Mom and dad, I love you guys and I appreciate all you've done for me.