Sunburnt

The trouble with a sunburn is that it is an unexpected change in appearance, hydration, and self-esteem.

I spent 80 minutes outside today and came home with the most substantial sunburn I've had in at least a year. It's not a bad sunburn by any means, but that doesn't stop me from catching my red face in the mirror and thinking "Doofus!" every time I wash my hands. My multi-colored and splotchy arms are a reminder that even though I think I'm tough I am entirely powerless to survive in the sun under my own power. For all the work I do to keep myself alive, three hours in the sun without protection would turn me into a grumpy old person who doesn't move very fast. A sunburn is a worthwhile reminder of my own mortality. I think my least favorite part is having such a visible reminder of my oversight. Most stupid mistakes go unnoticed. I classify not wearing sun-screen as a stupid mistake, and I therefore naturally expect to sweep it under the rug like most other stupid mistakes. Despite its categorization as "weak-sauce", this blunder insists on declaring itself in shiny red discoloration all over my forehead. It's a visible reminder that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed. "Oh hey guys, guess how stupid I was this weekend..."

I realized something today. I've never been turned down by a girl for not being nerdy enough. I've never been passed up for a job or anything like that on those grounds either. It makes me wonder, then, why so much of my life is focused on becoming more nerdy. The good news? My secret plan is totally working. I am nerdier today than I have ever been before. If these trends continue I'll be incapable of normal social interaction by fall semester of 2014. Just think of how much homework I'll get done once I am universally shunned by all other human beings. My productivity will go through the roof.

You know what I love? I love the flavor of the week program. I love the idea of being able to try something new at a reduced price (for a limited time only!). Case in point: Subways sub of the month, or whatever they called it. For one month a new sub is a five-dollar footlong. That just makes me happy. I've never ever bought one, but the idea is appealing to me. When one is single, I think similar things happen. There are flavors of the day or week or month. Sometimes we know that the idea won't stick around for long, but for at least a day we have one target. If you're me, you'll never ever talk to her anyways, but it's nice to actually have a target for a day instead of moping in the realm of "I've got nothing". I appreciate the flavor of the week program. Maybe one day I should man up and purchase the sandwich and actually talk to a girl. One day, one day...

Today has a song of the day. Not because today has any particular connection to this song, but because this song is a very good song that I like very much. There is no reason that this couldn't be the song of yesterday or the day before that. Today's song of the day is Sweet and Low, by Augustana. Will I embed the youtube video? Of course I will embed the Youtube video. I can vouch for the video- it doesn't contain any objectionable content. It is, in fact, safe for work.

Well friends, I'm out. I hope y'all have a good weekend. Catch conference if you can, it'll be great. One day, in the distant future, I will not have math homework hanging over my head. I'll have a job where I work on solving compelling problems. I'll have health insurance and a wife. Give me those four things, and shoot, I'll be a happy camper.

I've got to make it known, though, that I'm a happy camper right now, too. Life is good. Things are going excellent. I've got something to work for. Word, y'all have a good night. Enjoy the music.

A List of Things That I Would Like to Abolish

I have a really hard time with Tuesday and Thursday classes. The hour-and-a-half time limit just seems far too long for me. I have a Java class that is Tuesday/Thursday. I haven't been on time to that class more than a handful of times this semester. It's not that I'm not passionate about the material- because let's be honest, I love it. I recognize that being good at Java is directly tied to how much money I can expect to make in the next few years. I really like my instructor too- he's a total stallion and he's good at what he does. Sure, the lectures aren't the most exciting thing I've ever seen, but it's still good material. I just don't love Tuesday and Thursday classes. I know there's no real way to avoid them, but I'll try to minimize them in the future.

I also struggle with classes that are defined as the first class of the day. I am pretty good at being on time to classes that are after the first one, but shoot, I'm never on time to my first class. I would love to abolish the first class in general, but I realize that doing that isn't really mathematically possible. Curse you, well-ordering principle!

This gives me an idea. I'm going to start a list. I will probably update this list as time goes on. I am open to suggestions to the list. Here's what I've got so far.

A List of Things I'd Like to Abolish:

• The first class of the day. To it I am always late. In it I am often asleep. If my first class were my second class, my transcript would look far better than it does.
  
  
• Girls who wear rings but aren't married. Confession: I have no idea on which hand the wedding ring actually goes. I have texted my roommates twice since I've been back at school to double check. I see cute girls all the time with a ring on their ring finger, but since I'm incapable of remembering which hand counts as married, I have no idea whether I should talk to her or not. Is she single and she just likes rings? Is she married and would I be a dirtbag for talking to her? She has a ring on, but it's on her left hand. What if it were on her right hand? I have no idea. So, with these problems in mind, it makes more sense for me to abolish the wearing of any rings unless someone is married than for me to actually learn which hand is the marriage one. You know what we call this? This is ambiguity. It could mean one thing, but it might also mean another thing entirely. A program won't even compile if it's got ambiguity in it! Since I can't tell if a girl is married or not, I have no idea how I should operate around her. My life would be much less ambiguous if that ring finger were kept open on both hands until a wedding ring is there.
  
  
• Speaking of relationship ambiguity- can we abolish those that do not have their relationship status posted on facebook? I've been guilty of this one in the past, yeah, my bad. In my defense, this is not a rational list- this is just me being ridiculous. Hypocrisy is allowed in a ridiculous list, right? So here's my beef with the no relationship status on facebook: I'm a researcher. Before I ask someone out or go indicate that I have any degree of interest in someone, I want to do my research. This preliminary research usually takes the form of a facebook stalk. Call me crazy, but you wouldn't buy a car without checking online first, right? Same story, I'm not about to go invest time/energy without some initial facebook stalking. The biggest thing I want to know is whether or not a girl is dating someone. A normal human being would just go talk to her and find out. I'm not even close to a normal human being, so I'm going to ignore the suggestion that I ditch my anti-social tendencies. Anywhom, this lack of relationship disclosure on facebook leaves me in the dark. How am I supposed to know if I can ask her out? It's just like the ring thing, except I can be confused without even being in the same room as a girl this way. To solve this problem, we should make relationship status a mandatory disclosure on facebook. Those that are found to be falsifying information will be drawn and quartered-- it's only fair. Since the "it's complicated" status can be potentially confusing, I think we should just make it a radio button that says "Chris Thatcher can ask me out" or "Chris Thatcher shouldn't ask me out". Two options-- clear as day. That way we don't even have to know about your relationship status. Those that want to remain dating someone anonymously can do so. All we just need to know how you feel about me. This is a great idea. I'll email Mark Zuckerberg right now.
  

Alright, so if you're new to the blog I should probably include this warning: I'm not really a dirtbag, I promise. But hey, every once in a while you need to throw out a ridiculous list, so here I am. I invite anybody with something they want abolished to leave a comment and to let me know. The revolution starts here, apparently.

Over Achiever

You know what I love about being a Computer Science student? I love the fact that I can go above and beyond on assignments. I love being able to put in an extra hour or two to make my program that much better than it would have been otherwise.

I just finished up an assignment for 1410. I had a great time doing it and I feel like I did a good job. The truth is, the last two hours I spent on it were pretty superfluous. I'm a grader for CS 1400- I know that we don't spend more than three minutes on each assignment if we can help it. If it functions like it is supposed to and doesn't have the glaring errors we check for, it gets credit and is passed on. I just spent an extra two hours making my program awesome, and there's a good chance that nobody will ever really notice it. I'm okay with that. I'm pretty proud of me.

Now, I think I should make it clear that my program isn't really all that awesome. It fulfills the requirements of the assignment in a little bit cooler way than it could have. I love it because it is mine. It's not revolutionary, but it's something I did and I therefore feel some pride in my work.

I feel like this is a good sign. I'm enjoying the work that I'm doing. Even though my math homework is a mean mean mistress, I do enjoy solving the problems. I love my CS homework even more. Grading is tedious, but it's still fun for me. I've got the best majors in the world.

I get worried pretty often that I'm not good enough yet. I'm certainly not at the level that I'd like to be. It's good to remind myself that I'm still but a wee lad when it comes to this schooling stuff. As far as computer science goes, I might as well be a freshman. I have a few years ahead of me where I'll be taking classes full-time so I can learn this stuff. I hope to one day be excellent. I'm not there yet, but I feel like I'm moving in the right direction.

So, this is me. Certainly without enough sleep, but satisfied and happy to be working on my education right now. There are good days and bad days when it comes to school, but I feel like today was a good day. I hope that things are going well for y'all as well.

Survival from Dave's Place

It's Friday night, and I survived the first week back from Spring break. You remember that time that I posted every night for a week? Yeah, that was because I had no school and no homework. This week has been awesome- I've had tons of work and haven't had a ton of time to relax. I really do value my time writing here, I just wish that I had more of it.

This week had a ton of grading for CS 1400. It's getting much easier and it really is a satisfying job for me. It's fun for me to try to help the kids in the class. I leave gigantic comments and try to teach stuff as I'm forced to take off points. I feel like it has helped me understand the basic concepts. I guess that it's a little unusual for an undergraduate student to have a grader position in the department. It's also unusual for someone who speaks English as their first language. We're working on a really cool research project where we document all the bugs that beginning undergraduate students have troubles with. It's tedious, but the end goal is that we understand better how to teach and help students. Computer Science has a huge attrition rate- somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of kids that start in the major drop out by the time they're through with CS3 (and yes, that 50% was just made up on the spot. It's still pretty high). Our goal in this project is to work on reducing that. I'm trying as a grader to help kids come along. I do love teaching and helping.

I'm attending a math conference this weekend. Yeah, you read that right, a math conference. Last week was the state math competition, and this week is the MAA conference. There was an awesome talk tonight on the pancake flipping problem. Tomorrow morning I'm giving a 15 minute talk on the Frobenius number problem, particularly comparing the lower-bound for sets of size 3 with their actual Frobenius numbers. I'm enjoying the conference a lot more than I thought that I would. It has been a busy week, and preparing for the conference added a lot of stress. Since it isn't directly related to my GPA it has been hard for me to justify delaying other things in order to get ready. It has been worth it so far. I've learned a lot and had a good experience.

I feel like things are going well academically. At the same time, I occasionally get this feeling that I've skipped a million steps and don't really belong here. I once felt like I knew calculus very well. That was years ago, and now I consider myself a complete n00b when it comes to calc. There was an integration bee at the math conference today. None of us from Utah State entered, but I would have got owned had I tried. I'm but a small lad in a big world. Like a little kid trying to wear big-boy pants. Same story for CS. I'm working hard and learning a ton, but I tend to surround myself with people that are way better at all this than I am.

Fitting Example: Last semester I had three math classes. Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, and Intro to Probability. So, there were three undergraduate-teaching-fellows that taught those classes- Scott, Dave, and Sarah. These people are awesome. So, there are four of us undergraduates that drove down to the math conference together today. I drove the tempo with Dave, Sarah, and Scott. It was way fun. In math we don't tend to separate ourselves too much. Last semester they were very clearly my superiors. They helped teach my classes, let's be honest. But today we're all just colleagues or contemporaries. I respect them a ton and they respect me as well. Given that I took a probability class, I'll just point out now that the probability of me driving a car from Logan to Salt Lake to attend a conference with the three undergrad-teaching-fellows I had last semester is pretty low. I wouldn't have seen this coming last semester. I'm grateful for the opportunity, definitely.

I've felt stressed this week, and I am way less friendly when I am stressed. My goal for this next week is to fall asleep thinking about something that is not math. I can't tell you how many times this week I've woken up in the middle of the night and can tell, despite not being more than 30% conscious, that I was working on math. Not that I'm capable of working on math when I'm asleep, but just that my brain was running all sorts of circles around the ideas. Yeah, this doesn't normally happen, and I'm taking it as a bad sign. Well, not the healthiest sign. But definitely nerdy, and generally that's a good thing for me.

Because of the stress level this week I don't feel like I've been making great decisions. I've needed to go grocery shopping since Monday. It is now Friday, and I never went. I've been out of milk since I left for Spring break. This has led to me not eating breakfast. I'll be honest- I don't love eating breakfast. I do believe it's important. I can survive without it, but I'm a firm believer that my days go better when I eat breakfast. Today I woke up, got ready, and threw down some oatmeal. Today was awesome. I need to take care of myself. In an effort to work uber hard this week I didn't take great care of myself, and that has led to me being unable to work uber hard. It's better for me to take care of myself.

I have found social life to be more difficult than I was hoping it would be. I am convinced that finding a girlfriend is NP-Hard. Maybe the fact that I have classified the computational complexity of finding a girlfriend is a good indication that maybe I should try a less nerdy approach to socializing.

Westminster has a pretty cool campus, by the way. We were there today and its pretty posh. I wouldn't attend, clearly, but I liked the old and classy feel that it had to it.

So what's the news? I'm glad to have made it through this week. I'm not quite through yet- I have several more hours that I need to dedicate to my optimization homework before Monday morning. Once I give this talk tomorrow morning, those hours of homework are the last things that stand between me and rest. I'm looking forward to that rest.

Well friends, I'm alive. Surviving. Here crashing at Dave's folk's house on the East side for the night before we all go back to the conference tomorrow. This should be a cool weekend. It's amazing we've made it this far. I hope y'all are doing great. This cat is going to get ready for bed. w00t.

The Strong Force

Levi and I worked on registering our intramural team for ultimate tonight. We settled on the name "The Strong Force" as a play on a sweet physics principle and a great defensive mantra. The online system allows your team to have a logo, so I spent a little bit tonight whipping this up in Gimp. 'Hope you like it. Intramural championship here we come.

Layout

We played Ultimate tonight. Despite the fears of high winds and fairly low turnout things ended up spectacular. The wind died down and we had a blast playing 5 on 5 on a shortened field.

Before game time me and my brother were both brushing our teeth, getting ready to go play. I told him that tonight I was going to lay-out for a touchdown. Laying-out, or "going-ho" as Kyle likes to call it (the ho stands for "horizontal", by the way), is ultimate terminology for diving to catch a disc. It's pretty much the height of awesomeness within the sport. There are few things that are more manly than throwing yourself through the air to catch an object that you shouldn't possibly be able to reach.

The thing about setting a goal like that is that the situation is not entirely within your control. Sure, you can play your heart out and make an attempt, but in order to succeed at all this a moment must exist when you are the exact distance away from a disc traveling at exactly the right speed at exactly the right direction to make it impossible to reach on foot and yet possible to reach by air. It's sort of tricky business, and tends to spawn run-on sentences as you can clearly see.

About 20 minutes or so into playing tonight I got my golden momente. Somebody threw a toss to one of my teammates in the end-zone, but the throw was too high and the other player had no chance at it. I was further back, towards the middle of the zone, and saw the disc coming. I ran at it like crazy. As I got closer I got the feeling that this was actually going to work. It was far enough away, but not too far. There was no way I'd get it without the dive. The disc was in that magical zone right between possibility and impossibility. It's rare that you get those sweet opportunities. Those chances to stretch yourself, as I commented a few nights ago, are few and far between. They are worth seeking after. It wasn't an easy catch; it wasn't an impossible catch. It was right where I wanted it.

I dove and made it. I flew at it belly-down, right arm extended for the catch. I made the connection then rotated to land and slide on my back and shoulder- all the while holding the disc straight up in the air to signify that I had made the completion. I had met my goal.

The thing to know about all of this: that catch felt great. I'm used to feeling good about things. The feeling you get when the test gets handed back and you find out that you got a killer score- the feeling you get when you get the email saying you got the position you applied for- all that jazz. I'm even used to that feeling in basketball and video games. You know, the feeling you get when you get a triple-kill in Halo or Dota? Yeah, that's the one.There's a good feeling that comes with triumph. Something about chemicals in the brain. What I've got to say is that the pure sense of victory and win that rushed through my brain when I made that catch trumps all of them. I haven't felt that awesome in a long time. I was surprised at how great it felt, really. Ultimate, as much as I love it, is entirely inconsequential. I'm not sure why a game that is so unimportant could stir such a physiological response from me. What I do know is that it did, and it felt great. I felt like a total all-star.

In hindsight, the combination of great weather, endorphins, and the presence of an exceedingly cute girl 10 feet away when I made the catch all probably have something to do with it. The girl is dating someone (tragedy, really), but that in no way interfered with my primordial manly desire to show off what a total stallion I think I am. There's something deep within us that wants to be the greatest on the field. That part of us wants to outperform everyone, including our own expectations and limitations. It felt like that part of me was dancing, on fire, in the middle of the Large Hadron Collider after I made that catch.

Most things I do make sense in my brain. The huge rush or satisfaction I got when I made that catch? Yeah, totally not expecting that. I was expecting to feel good, but not that good. I guess I cared about it a lot more than I thought I did.

That's my triumphant story of the night. Not so much that I made the catch (even though it was pretty sweet), but moreso that I felt so good about it. It's good to be human and to feel passionate about things sometimes. Even if they are inconsequential and not "mission-critical", it is awesome to care. Our ability to feel is something to be treasured. Tonight I felt like a stud-muffin, and that means the world to me. Tomorrow I'll feel something different. Chances are I won't like it as much, but I know that it will be valuable and will change me into the person that I am the day after tomorrow.

Word.

Spring Break Successes

It's 4:17 AM and I'm writing a blog post. Must be Spring Break. I feel like I'm in high school again-- living at home, playing dota (2), and writing posts while staying up uber late. It's nice to be back in this world, at least for a little bit.

Today had three great successes. They are mostly inconsequential, but that's what Spring break is all about, right? Without further ado, the three coolest things that happened today.

1. I just played an awesome game of dota 2. I random'ed whatever they call the old harbinger. Outworldly something-or-other. He's the intel hero whose ulti computes the difference between your intelligence and the bad guys' intelligence and then does 10x that much damage to them. I ended up going 12-10 or something like that. My record wasn't incredible, but the last two pushes that won the game were both fueled by me getting ultra kills on their whole time. I had an orchid, shiva's, and was in the middle of building a scythe. I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 230 intel. I was an insane DPS machine with the meanest ulti in the game. So, yeah, we played like a team and I feel awesome about the contribution I made. Not bad for still being a noob.
   
   
2. I jogged between four and five miles today. I decided I wanted to do our old Monday morning distance run, except a little shorter. Had I gone full distance it would have been closer to nine miles, but since I didn't have a team with me and had all the time in the world, I jogged the first half and then intermittently walked and jogged back. I took a few minutes to sit down and watch the river go past, it was pretty nice to just take it easy. I feel good about hitting my goal to run it today. The best part about it was that it totally regulated my blood sugar all day long. I'm not quite sure what's up, but my body is a ton more responsive to insulin today than normal. I suppose it's the increased activity level (it's been years since I've run this far). I guess I should make this a more regular occurrence, I'm sure my kidneys will thank me for it.
   
   
3. Today was a good hair day.
   
   

Word up friends. I hope y'all are doing well. Keep up the good work, I'll catch y'all on the flip side.

Happy 8th Anniversary to The Other Dentist

In ninth grade I got an assignment from Mr. Brough to find out which blogging service would best fit the needs of our Journalism class. I did some research and suggested that Brough have the students use blogger. He assigned us all to create a blog and write at least two posts. That was eight years ago. Most of the blogs that were created back in that day have since died, but I know a few that are still kicking. Ha, we don't go down too easily.

Happy pi day to everybody out there. That's really the only way that I know the anniversary- my first post was about pi day. I'm glad to see that I was a nerd back in ninth grade. That was eight years ago, apparently. Can you believe it? I feel like it was longer, honestly. I was a much different person in 9th grade. Same basic makeup, I suppose, but with much less experience. I'm confident that I'll look back in another 8 years and say the same thing about me right now. Same basic person, but can you imagine the experience that I'll have in 8 years? I should have a family and career by then. That's pretty insane. I might be driving a car that is not from 1993. Now that'd be pretty hardcore.

I spent the day up in Logan, proctoring the state math competition for high school and junior high kids. I loved attending the competition while I was in school, and I jumped at the opportunity to proctor this year. The whole concept is pretty simple: A few professors at the host university (it rotates every year) write two exceedingly difficult math tests, one for high school kids and another for junior high kids. Kids from every school in the state

(Err, surrounding region? Not sure) are bussed up to come take this radical test. We anticipated 2,200 kids on campus today. I didn't hear the final count, but it looked pretty realistic. The test is designed to be at least partially way over the head of most kids. There are some problems that are fairly easy, some that are difficult, but most that are just a little obscure and that never get treated by a high school math course. It's more of an exercise in problem solving than in hardcore mathematics. I haven't taken this years test (although I happen to have three copies of it in my backpack for a future time when Me, Levi, and Kyle want to nerd out together).

The thing that I love so much about the state math competition is that it really doesn't matter. I mean sure, we get to gather some information on how one school compares to another school in math, and we get to compare male vs. female scores for all grades and all that. But aside from the data collection, the scores don't really matter. I suppose that if you did incredibly well you would be offered a scholarship or something, but I haven't really seen it happen. It's just a chance to take a day off of school, visit a college campus, and try your hardest to solve some pretty difficult problems.

I was very impressed with the students in my room today. They are required to spend at least 1.5 hours on the test, but can take as much as 2.5 hours if they want. Once the first 1.5 hours were over we had a little more than half of the kids leave- they had clearly done as much as they knew how. The other half stuck around and just kept on trying. They were working uber hard to solve problems they'd never looked at before. These problems had exactly no bearing on their grade or chances at university acceptance. There existed something within the students that urged them to solve as many problems as they could, despite the fact that they were difficult and largely useless.

I'm impressed with the tenacity that I saw today. It takes a special kind of individual to throw themselves wholeheartedly at a problem whose solution is largely insignificant. Having participated in this event multiple times I can tell you that it truly doesn't matter. But here they were, students, in droves, fighting like crazy to do just a little bit better than the other guy. Or maybe not even better than the other guy, maybe they just wanted to prove to themselves that they were that good. Or perhaps it wasn't about proof at all, maybe it was just about discovering their true limits as a math nerd. It's not every day that you get a test that is so difficult that you can't possibly get 100 percent on it (note: it is not impossible to get 100 percent on this test. It is just highly unlikely).

Opportunities to push ourselves this hard don't come along too often. We don't normally get to push as hard as we can. We most often just push super hard and the car either moves or it doesn't. It is rare that we can push as hard as we can, see some small movement, and then keep pushing as hard as we can and keep moving forward. It's like this sweet mushy spot of progress that makes me happy. I think the state math test does that. You get to push your brain as hard as you can against it. It's not like doing that will give you 100 percent, and its' not like doing that will give you 0 percent. You end up splattered somewhere in the middle, and that is where you lie. I love standardized testing.

Scoring on the test is worth mentioning. Leaving a question blank is worth 1 point. Marking an incorrect answer on a question is worth minus 2 points. Getting a question correct is worth 5 points. Some students were advocating the "If you don't know, don't guess" strategy. I think that's totally bogus. Assuming that we have 5 options, a blind guess will result in +5 points one-out-of-five times. If it weren't for the minus penalty, you'd be striking even with not putting anything at all. So, if probability holds, we could guess on five questions. Four of them would be wrong, for minus 8 points, and one of them would be right, for plus 5. We're at a -3 right now.

The cool thing about multiple choice tests is that you can eliminate answers that you know are not correct. If you can eliminate one answer, all the sudden you are gaining +1.25 points on every guess instead of just +1. If you eliminate two, or three, you are dominating. The elimination game in standardized testing is way too valuable to ignore. I wish somebody would teach this in high school. When it comes to scoring high on exams, you are going to need to be able to guess. Knowing how to guess is definitely going to come in handy.

In the past 24 hours I've only had about 70 minutes of sleep, so I'm going to head to bed. Merry pi day to everybody out there. I hope life is going well. Here's to continued postage.

Becoming Prolific

I was once a prolific blogger. I feel like I added value to myself as I wrote. I learned more about who I am and what I care about. I appreciated all the comments and encouragement that I received from readers. It really is what kept me going.

I'm at a point where I want to become a prolific blogger once again. I've almost always had this desire. I think that my audience, in large part, has refreshed. There will be a few old familiar faces, but more or less I will be writing to a completely new group of people. I'm convinced that most of those people don't exist yet.

I feel strange writing this. I'm still trying to write to the old audience. There are certain things that I have typed and then erased- this is not the fearless writing style that I espouses throughout my high school blogging career. The things that I'm thinking about writing about (ha, that's an about sandwich with writing in the middle of it) are not necessarily innocuous things. My current plan is to write about the way that I think and feel about things. If someone were attempting to stalk me this would be the new place to do it. I'm planning to write how I feel about school, politics, social issues, etc. etc. I want to do this because I'm feeling increasingly insulated socially. I have discovered that I require a fairly large amount of social interaction. If I don't get this interaction I get a little cranky.

Now, typing blindly to an audience that may or may not exist doesn't really seem like suitable social interaction, but I am confident that it will produce the results that I am looking for.

So I'm not sure what this will all turn into. But I want to start writing often again. Doing so will require me to be more vulnerable than I have recently been. Vulnerability is an interesting topic- it means that I share more than usual and am therefore more apt to get pwned for it. I feel like this is a good change for me to make, so I'm going to go ahead and give it a shot.

Just a quick shout-out to a few of my blogging heroes- particularly Jaron and Nate. They are good fellows that add value to the spaces they inhabit.

So, here's to more content. I can't guarantee quality content, but I can certainly guarantee some increased quantity of it. I have found a direct correlation to the number of naps that I take and the number of posts that I write. Since this is Spring Break I took a massive nap today. Hmm.

Well, here's to a new kind of Dentist. I hope this goes well.

Facebook Lent

Happy Friday evening folks. I'm here to announce another fun decision. I've decided to go on an official Facebook fast until I finish my "Learn Java in 21 days" book. I'm currently on day 6, and I'm hoping that this will give me some motivation to finish it.

I programmed a sweet solver to the Frobenius number problem yesterday. It's not the most efficient algorithm ever, but I feel like it rocks. Coolest thing I've ever coded in Java, hands down.

School is going really well. My classes are awesome and I feel like I'm making progress with networking with professors and all that. I'm enjoying my job and moving forward with social life I suppose.

Anywhom, I hope all is well for y'all. Have a good evening. peace

Lamentation

I have a rocky relationship with late nights. What I mean to say by that is that except for one big thing, I love everything about late nights.

I could go on and on about how I love doing homework when all my roommates are asleep so the apartment is quiet and without distraction. I could talk about how I feel like I can focus like crazy at night time and get everything done. I could talk about how nobody ever schedules anything this late at night so there's no way I could ever be late to something. I could talk about how it offers me a chance to think and ponder and read and write without falling asleep (if I tried any of those things during the afternoon I'd be out cold in a heartbeat). I love late nights.

My one complaint, the whole reason this relationship is a little rocky, is how other people act late at night. Many individuals have commented that they laugh at things that aren't funny late at night. This is usually expressed as something like

"oh my gosh, I'm so tired, I can't stop laughing and it's not even that funny."

Here's the issue: there's nothing I love more than making people laugh. It's what I do when I'm with a group. Like anything, though, I draw energy from my audience. If I'm making jokes and people are laughing and having a good time, shoot, that's the best. I get on a roll and keep building on things and we have a great time. I feel like an all-star whenever that happens. It's rare, but boy howdy is it fun.

When it comes to late nights, most of my skills and abilities are sharpened. I feel like I think, focus, and do math better as the night progresses. I used to think that the same was true of my humor. People just laughed more the later it got.

It ends up that I'm not any funnier late at night.

People just laugh more because they're tired. That's all.

See, that's why me and late nights are in this situation right now. You know, the situation where we're in couple's therapy because we really need to "work some things out". I love late nights, but the fact that she gets my hopes up- making me think I'm the funniest guy in the apartment complex- and then shatters the illusion is really getting me down. I mean sure, I like making people laugh, but when they're not laughing because I'm funny, well, come on now, that's like beating little kids at basketball. You don't want the easy wins. You want the good ones! Let me beat someone at basketball that can tie their own shoes for once.

So that's my rocky relationship with late nights. I hope y'all are doing well. Peace out.

Landing Page

So, let's be honest, I have nothing noteworthy to post tonight. I just made a ridiculous picture to put on Facebook and felt stupid uploading it without my obligatory blog-promotion on it.

I therefore bid a fond welcome to any of you who have stumbled here via facebook trying to join the crusade to stop gorgeous girls from going on missions. It is, in fact, not a real crusade. It does not reflect the views or opinions of 20th century Fox or its affiliates. Levi wanted me to make it clear that he was not involved. I'm not really starting a crusade, I just felt like making a funny image.

So, yeah, if that's not a dissappointing post I don't know what is. I hope this doesn't make me a terrible person. For the record I'm totally down with girls going on missions. Even gorgeous ones. If we really wanted to stop it from happening we'd ask them to marry us. While we all sigh when someone completely gorgeous leaves our presence for 18 months, we know it's for a good cause. We do not discourage it. The mission is the best thing I've ever done in my life and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I wouldn't discourage anyone from going- gorgeous or not. So, with that disclaimer in mind- welcome to the crusade.

My Week Without the 'Book - Day Three

Three whole days without checking Facebook. I'm setting all sorts of personal records. With the exception of my two-year hiatus and scout camps, I haven't ever voluntarily gone this long without being on the blasted site.

Now, I want everyone to know that I have absolutely nothing against the 'Book. A ton of people are way upset about the privacy issues and all that. I don't really mind. I guess I've just never been that paranoid of a fellow. If the CIA really wants to know what I'm up to they can find out. They'll figure out I really love Ultimate and that I make jokes about calculus being my girlfriend. Yeah, lots of terrorist activity there...

I made a new math friend tonight at my discrete math study session. I love math friends. I think one of the great things about studying math is that you get to meet a ton of good people. There aren't too many dirtbags who are way into the subject, you know? Whether it's pure math, math education, computational, whatever, there tends to be a large number of good folks involved in it. I've been way happy with the quality of the people that I associate with in my classes.

I've been recognizing more and more lately that one of the reasons that life is so good is because I'm surrounded by truly great people. Today was my day to do dishes in the apartment. We have some visitors staying for a few days and for whatever reason we had roughly two metric tons of dishes in the sink. Two of my roommates helped me out with it, just because they're good guys. I hear about people that have struggles with their roommates or who get shafted by people in their family or whatever. I haven't ever really experienced that stuff. I'm not sure why I've always been surrounded with great people, but I'm grateful that it has happened that way. I hope that it continues to go that way.

It's getting late and I don't have too much to say, so I am going to peace out. I hope that life is going well for you all. I'm happy to be staying strong on this whole no Facebook thing. Looking forward to rejoining the world next Monday though.

Oh, PS, cool junk I read today instead of spending time on the 'Book. Have you ever wondered what fire would be like in a microgravity situation? Like, what would happen if we lit something on fire in the International Space Station? Since there is no gravity, would the flames go up, or would they go out radially? Sure, the heat radiation would go out in all directions, but without gravity messing with the density of air and all that business, what does convection do to it? Yeah, apparently NASA has been thinking about that question for a while now. I read an entirely insufficient article about it today with an entirely insufficient video to go along with it. I didn't learn much, but the questions it presented were way cool. For your viewing pleasure: http://www.space.com/13766-international-space-station-flex-fire-research.html

My Week Without the 'Book - Day Two

What's this, a post before 2:00 AM? I know- I'm as surprised as you are. With my Facebook fast in full swing I am running out of non-time-committal distractions. Let's face it, I waste a lot of time. I recognize that fact. Despite the recognition, however, I have a really hard time committing time to something. I struggle to watch full movies because two hours just seems like way too long of a time to waste. I have a much easier time sitting down at my computer to "read the news" or "check Facebook" for just a few minutes. Those just a few minutes can graduate into two hours in no time. I end up wasting the same amount of time I would have spent watching a movie, just without the aversion to a time commitment.

Moral of the story? Facebook is one of my favorite time wasters that doesn't require a huge time commitment up front. With that out of the picture I'm being forced to commit my time to bigger and bigger chunks. Normally something as cool as a blog post would have to wait till late in the evening when most distractions are gone and I am more focused. Since I shot Facebook for the week my main distraction is gone and so I'm moving forward with life. Rejoice!

Since I can't share anything via facebook today, I shall share a decent link with you today. I read the news habitually. I love google news because it aggregates what it assumes will be relevant to me and I get to pick what I want to read from about a billion different news sources. It's a good tool.

I've been pretty fascinated with the occupy movements. Everybody and their dog has an opinion about the movement. I've found it's a little more complicated than a bunch of weirdo's in tents- although in all honesty that is probably the most characteristic thing we could say about the group. I admire what they are doing and the awareness that they are raising. Whether or not I agree with all of their ideas, I do find their way of doing things both scary and respectable. I give them a million bonus points for trying.

I read a good article from the LA Times today regarding the movement. It is an opinion article, but the author states 3 inconvenient truths for the movement. I particularly like his third point, in which he explains his view of one of the reasons for the widening gap between the fabled 1% and the 99%. He says:

A third dynamic widening income disparities is in some ways the most inconvenient of all: the collapse of intact families. The explosion of out-of-wedlock births and of children living outside of two-parent households has widened economic disparities of all kinds, including income.

The reason is straightforward. The role that human and social capital plays in helping a person generate income in an advanced economy has increased over the last half a century. And over that same time, the primary institution for inculcating human and social capital has badly weakened.

I suggest you read the whole article (it is pretty short) at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-schulz-occupy-20111130,0,7958755.story

The basic concept is a strong one- a strong family will probably give a kid a better shot at a decent economic future than a family without parental presence. Don't get me wrong- I'm in no way an expert and I definitely know that all people, no matter what their circumstances, can do awesome in school and economically. I will say that one of the reasons I was able to do well in public education was because I had a great family that was able to help teach me and walk me through work. I don't think I'd have done as well at school (which is the closest thing I have to economics right now) without the family. How do we fix the problem? I don't have the answers: but I think families are the start. Glad to see a newspaper guy agrees with me.

Much love, y'all have a nice night.

My Week Without the 'Book - Life Graphs

I am a grapher. I love graphing different things in my life to help me understand what is going on and what I should do about it. Graphs are super cool because you can explain the relationship between any number of things in the blink of an eye. There's a depth of understanding that comes from a graph. You know what's happening now, what happened a minute ago, and you certainly know what will happen as time approaches infinity.

I want to write about something I've been thinking about that I'm calling life graphs. A life graph is a Radar Chart or Star Plot. The idea is pretty easy- you put five lines (or howev

er many you want, you know, like n) coming out from the center. Each line represents something important that you can assign a value to. I know for a fact that Dance Dance Revolution once used a radar chart called a "Groove Radar" to show you how difficult a song was. Pokemon (at least in one of the guides) used to show how good a pokemon was using radar charts. Following their good lead, let's think about humans instead of Polywraths.

Consider a life graph with 5 axes (that's axises for those of you from central and southern Utah...) that represent five important aspects of life- school, work, family, spiritual stuff, social stuff. Depending on how you rate yourself on those things, we can make a sweet radar graph. Check it out.

So our friend Pablo has got the social stuff down- but he's lacking in other categories. The life graph is fun for looking at strengths and weaknesses and opportunities for improvement.

One of the cool things about radar graphs is that their area does not increase linearly- it goes up as a square. A graph of [1,1, 1, 1, 1] has one quarter the area of a [2, 2, 2, 2, 2] graph. Moral of the story? If we take total graph area to represent satisfaction with life, a small improvement in one area can lead to a disproportionately large increase in area and happiness. Theoretically, of course.

An important thing to note is that these axes (axises...) are completely arbitrary. This is just an idea, so we could toss any ridiculous axes in there we want. We could have a 7-spoked graph or a 12-spoked graph. I suppose that deep down, as humans, we have certain things that are truly important to us, whether we recognize it or not. Perhaps there is an official life graph inside of us that we don't fully recognize. Maybe we should find out what its axes are.

An important thing to note is that the relative values on the axes are not necessarily weighted the same between different axes. A score of 20 on my "Starcraft II l33t skillz" axis probably isn't worth as much as a 20 on my "school" axis. Visually, this means that each one unit in my SCII axis doesn't move me as far away from the origin as every one unit does in my school axis.

I've been feeling lately that life is about balance. Our life graphs are constantly fluctuating. A month and a half ago my school axis was dominating and my social axis was pretty shallow. These days my social axis is doing much better- but possibly at the expense of school. I find that it is very difficult to dominate at all things at once. In the words of a wiser man, life exists in both abundance and scarcity at the same time. My goal right now is to balance and therefore increase area.

Spencer had a great application. He suggested a "wife graph" instead of a "life graph". The current idea is a 4-spoked graph that quickly evaluates any marriage candidate based on our ridiculous ideas. We think it'd be nice if these graphs were displayed automatically when girls walked into the room. Maybe we'll program an app for that...

Consider the following examples:

"Maria" (a fictional character) is lacking a brain- which is a total shame. See, aren't graphs fun?

Girl Y (also fictional) has balance. See, I told you graphs were fun.

We could go on and on, but we probably shouldn't. What is the moral of the story? Why have you read this far? Because graphs are cool and can be used to understand ourselves and others. I understand that this is a complete oversimplification of the whole system, but it is the idea that counts. These things are not that stable.

Here's the optional homework for willing candidates.

1) Make your own life graph. Figure out how many axes you want, figure out what you want those axes to be, and then evaluate yourself on them. I've had fun evaluating things between 0 and 6, but you can use whatever scale you want. After you do that, take a look at what you want to work on and make a goal to do so. Balance is important, but remember that that doesn't mean backing down on your high scores- it just means bringing your low scores up. A change from a 2 to a 3 is pretty significant. This brings up some significant questions that we can address. What are the axes that are important to me? What is truly going to give me satisfaction with life? Where are am I doing well? Where do I need to improve? What do I need to do to improve in that area? A quote from the guys I don't know talking in my living room right now: "I'd rather be decent at socializing than fantastic at hoops" (I'm assuming he's referring to basketball). I know people that would disagree. We define our own graphs here based on our priorities.

2) Make your ideal wife graph (or dude graph, you know, if that's what you're into). Here's the only catch: You get as many axes as you want (which you can define yourselves) and you only get to use 50% of the available points. So, if you label each axis from zero to six and have four axes there would be a total of 24 points available. In that case you only get to use 12. The reason? Priorities :) One trillion bonus points to anyone who wants to share their graphs- whether anonymous or publicly.

Thanks for reading this post that has been altogether too long and way different than normal. I love the idea of the life graph, and have had a blast explaining it to my roommates using our whiteboard as a fridge today. Just imagine this post except a million times shorter and with moving dynamic pictures instead of jpgs. Yeah, it was that good. I hope you're all doing well. Have a great night!

My Week Without the 'Book - Day One

Happy Tuesday friends- it has been a good day. I made a decision over the Thanksgiving break that I would go one week without using Facebook. I did it mostly because I find myself wasting a lot of time on it and because I thought it would make for a good experiment. It's surprising how many times I check that blasted site per day. The only reason I know that now is because I've had to stop myself from checking it exactly that many times in the past 24 hours. I don't have an exact number, but I know that it is large.

So, here I am, writing in order to satisfy whatever strange desire I have for social interaction via my keyboard.

In a previous comment, "Johnson" asked if I had gotten my [Talk to a random girl on campus without mentioning the weather] achievement that I established during my week of the blue T-shirt. I'm proud to report that today, strictly because of that comment, I did so. I talked to a girl named Krista on the hill. She is nice. We had a good talk and I purposely didn't mention the weather. We got to a point where she was turning left. I had the choice to go left or straight- either way my distance was the same. I was enjoying talking to her but knew that if it went on much longer the weather would probably come up in some shape or form, so I opted to travel the other direction just to be safe. Call me a pansy, but I'm sitting on 10 achievement points because of it. I'll take that over human interaction any day. Oh wait...

Life is going quite well. I decided to shamelessly promote my blog via the 'Book earlier this week and the response was pretty overwhelming. I'm a total Google Analytics fanboy and the numbers were a lot of fun to watch. I posted my shameless plug on Sunday, November 27th. That day I had 51 visits and a total of 116 pageviews (that's 2.274 pageviews per visit). As a reference, in the month previous to the 27th I averaged 5.6 visits per day with each visitor seeing an average of 1.6 pages. So, with one status update on the 'Book I had the best day the blog has ever had and surpassed my average by nine times. Sweet. I appreciate all the visits and especially the kind things that were said.

I had a job interview yesterday and I feel like it went really well. I've never had a job interview before, if you can believe that. I applied for a temporary position at the bookstore here at Utah State. I've always had a dream of working there. There is always a huge rush at the end of semester so they hire a ton of four week employees. I wore khakis Monday morning on a whim- ha, I felt cool walking into the interview like I had planned that. It was an interesting experience- I walked into this little office where there were three girls sitting behind one desk. They told me to close the door behind me and then they introduced themselves. They alternated asking questions from an evaluation sheet and jotted down notes and a numeric rating for answers that I gave.

I don't feel like I did awesome with the answers, but I figure it went okay. I'll be honest- I absolutely love tests and this whole experience was a lot like a test. It might as well have been 13 "short answer" questions. I didn't have a ton of time to think of killer answers, but I did my best. I should know tomorrow or Thursday whether or not I got the job. I sure hope I get it.

There are only three weeks left of school and I'm working hard to leave this semester with a very competitive GPA. I find it interesting that my lowest grades throughout my scholastic career have always been in math classes. With the exception of a B+ in a physics class, my transcript is all A's except for my math classes. In fact, I haven't gotten an A in any math class up here at Utah State (A-'s don't count). So, funny that I'm here as a math major even though that's the most challenging thing I've done scholastically.

Great news on the math front. My stallion of a math professor, Dr. Brown, is teaching a course next semester on computational complexity. It's a readings course (by invite only, I think), but I really want to see what I can do to get invited. The course lives right between computer science and mathematics. The idea is to look at how mathematically complex the algorithms to solve certain problems are and see what can be done to make them less complex. Since I'm dualing in math and computer science that course is exactly where I want to be. Taking it would leave me sitting on 18 credits and a nasty workload, but I really want to try it. Opportunities are cool.

Alright, I'm out of here. I hope y'all have a great day. Don't forget symmetric matrices.

The Best of TheOtherDentist

Happy Friday, friends. I hope that you're all doing great. Life here is good. Great things are happening for me and my family. We've really been overwhelmed with the goodness of the people that surround us. People take their lives and their decisions seriously, and I love it. We're all in this together (cue James and Levi to start singing High School Musical...).

This blog has meant many things to me over the years. As it becomes large and unwieldy (I will hit my 500th post in no time) I have decided to post a "Best of TheOtherDentist" guide to help new visitors get a feel for what it has all been about. I've been rambling here since the 9th grade. What started out as an assignment for my Journalism class has turned into something that has helped me better understand myself and, hopefully, make the world a little better place.

The unwritten goal of this blog has always been that: to make the world a better place. My theory on world-benefiting is different from most. Given that I am in the world, my improvement means that the world improves. Since you, loyal reader, are in the world, your improvement or benefit causes a net improvement or benefit to the whole. Sometimes that improvement comes by way of motivation or encouragement. More often, I think, it comes by way of a little smile or sunshine. I hope the blog has done that over the years.

Without further delay, my very own "Best of TheOtherDentist" list. This is not comprehensive and I don't intend for it to actually mean that this is the best. This is just a good place to start.

Posts With Meaning:

Song about Sandpaper

Freshman year of college- I went to a party where there was a girl I really really really really liked. I pretty much knew she liked me, but didn't do anything about it. Frustrated at this situation and recognizing that many of my comrades (yes, I did just use "comrades") were in the same boat, I wrote this post to complain.

We like our girls cute, modest, intelligent, and ninety meters away where we can't do anything stupid. We'd step in front of a bullet for them, yes we would, but when it comes to saying "hi" in the mornings we'll kindly pass, thank you very much. That bullet starts to sound mighty appetizing when it's time to graduate from texting to real phone calls, I'll tell you what.

We are a noble class of gentlemen. We get good grades. We do our duty. We tie our ties well. We've never ever offended you, your sisters, your friends, or your mom. We have no criminal record. We have clean language, and you better believe that we drive safely.

This is our anthem. Too good to settle for the easy ones, too stupid to go for the right ones, and too cowardly to go for our dreams. We are sandpaper, and proud of it.

Logan Blogaday Day Twenty Four

Freshman year of college- I include this post not because I feel like it is my best writing, but because it effectively captures two of the major themes of my blog. First: I love Ultimate and get way too into it. Second (and more importantly): The way that I feel on Thursday is not the same way that I felt on Wednesday. The person that I am on Thursday owes something to the person I was on Wednesday, and ought to respect the way that I felt and decisions that I made. I hope that makes sense.

This particular post was written as we prepared to go play some kids from Murray high in Ultimate. They had been talking trash against Taylorsville and we desperately wanted to put them in their places. The match never took place. I didn't know that was going to happen when I wrote this post.

In 13 hours I'm going to start a match that I've been waiting a very long time to play. Brad's going to start a match that he wanted to play in high school but never got the chance to play. This isn't just a match for right now.

This match, like so many other things in my life, counts as a monument to the person that I've been. That person who helped put me where I am today. This match is more for him than it is for me. I know that sounds so corny and stupid, but it's sort of true.

Who I Am - Logan Blogaday Day Nineteen

Freshman year of college- I was really working on figuring out who I was my freshman year. I had come off of a very successful high school situation and was suddenly a very small fish in a very big pond. I learned a lot of important life lessons during this time. In an attempt to capture what I was learning I did a blogaday project where I posted every night for a month. This was day nineteen, and it was important to me.

But tonight I realized what it is that I actually fear. The thing that legitimately has me worried.

I'm afraid that I'm going to change. I'm afraid that even though I've been on fire before, I'm not going to be on fire anymore. I'm afraid that even though I used to be a runner that I'll never be a runner again.

Moving Forward

Post-Senior year of High School- Probably the longest post I will put on this list. This post happened the same way most of my posts do- I started writing one night because I felt the need to write. I didn't have anything to say, but wrote what came to me, all stream of consciousness-like. Lots of religious undertones in this one. Pretty important ideas in this one.

Another reason that it happens is because of a dual weakness/strength that I have. My life is a sine graph. I realize that most teenagers believe that their life is a roller coaster. The math nerd inside of me knows that it's a sine graph. It's not exactly periodic, but it does *always* come back up (or down, depending on frame of reference).

11:41: "Why are things the way they are? Why, because if they were any other way, we would be asking ourselves why they are the way that they are, totally ignorant of the fact that things aren't the way that they are in the world where they're not different."

Investment [Relationships]

Senior Year of High School- This was my formalized theory for how relationships work as described by me right before I graduated. For better or for worse, I still pretty much feel this same way. I was on a personal finance kick and on a relationship kick, so here goes.

We've come up with the idea of investments, that is, long term investments and short term investments. We see a guy running up to a girl and giving her a hug (a la P Burn) to be a short term investment. It carries fairly high risk, but it is almost immediately either rewarding or disappointing. Its long term effects are not incredibly extensive. We classify short term investments as bold actions by a guy to get a girl's attention for at least a brief amount of time. These are very active investments.

On the other hand are long term investments. Me, Kyle, and James all see ourselves as long term-investors. Long term investments are actions taken by guys that will not immediately result in any significant recognition from a girl, but will, over time, improve our standing with them.

Creative Writing, Videos, Art, etc.:

Ballad of the Unfulfilled

Freshman year of college- I wrote this on a whim to make light of my brother's attempt to woo a girl that wasn't very talkative. I include it in this post because it's representative of my style at the time.

" She hadn't said it. But she hadn't argued with it either. He knew that this line of dealing with her couldn't end well. But he was desperate. Our hero had a gnawing paper-cut wound, after all.

With a happy heart he whisked her off to Chili's where they dined and enjoyed themselves. Our hero happily noted that he was one step closer to following the council of his priesthood leaders to “Get married! Now! Don't wait!”

*as a note, please don't assume I take any of my creative writing seriously. I am not one of those people.

-Or Bust

Junior Year of High School - This isn't actually a post, it's a small "painting" I made in MS Paint. I include it because it's one of the very few artistic things I've done on my own. Word!

Rock the Vote

Junior Year of High School - Our friend Molly made a "Boy of the Week" program that she announced on her blog. I decided to officially endorse my friend Kyle as a candidate, and wrote a blog post explaining why. In this post I take almost nothing seriously and have a great time thinking of ridiculous stories. In all fairness, I must say that everything in the post is based loosely on truth.

As you know, Molly recently began taking suggestions for her "Boy of the Week" program. While I myself do not have a Boy-of-the-week program, I can see it's merit. It's not my style, but that's alright.

I have a suggestion to make for your boy of the week program, and his name is Kyle.

There are many reasons that one should consider liking Kyle Klein for a week or more. Aside from his towering stature and his rugged good looks, Kyle has a plethora of ninja-skills to back up his impressive aura of good looks.

One time, when Kyle was surrounded by communists and about to be gunned down by an execution squad, he sang the entire pokemon theme song in japanese. The Communists were so impressed that they dropped their weapons and wept for joy. Kyle later grew wings and flew back to America.

Leg Shaving and the End of the World

Junior Year of High School - My final project for my Junior Year AP English Composition class. We had to make a documentary. I noticed that most documentaries that I saw in class offered bold claims without any significant evidence or backing. I set forth to prove a satirical point about the need for scientific evidence. I credit Mr. Harward for teaching me some awesome stuff about literature that made this video tons of fun.

This is where I'd put a quote from the post. I can't quote an embedded youtube video. I highly reccomend you check this one out. You'll like it, I promise.

Jello

Junior Year of High School - So, I gave my sister a stapler submerged in Jello for her birthday, a la 'The Office'. I took pictures. You should look at them because they are neat.

Fun Posts:

The Best Game Ever Played II

Early Sophomore Year of High School- This was one of my first posts about Ultimate. You can tell I was young because I still referred to it as "Frisbee" and not as Ultimate. My mechanics weren't as good back in the day. I wrote about the most epic game I had ever played. Those were back in the days when Brad was still in charge of Frisbee Friday- before I became the leader and really started making things happen. This was before Kyle or Levi or James or any of my buddies started playing with us. This was back in the day when I was still the "young generation". Ha, it's great to read back and remember what it was like. Not my best writing, but definitely worth it for the walk down memory lane.

At 13-13, play starts to get fierce. It brings out the very best and worst of all the players on the field. When you make a good play, you know it, and your heart goes wild. When you screw up, it's one of the very worst feelings you've ever had. You've invested so much into the game, it hurts to lose it. Your legs hurt, your hands are getting hashed from catching, swatting, and throwing. Your lung hurt from the cold air, your breath comes out hard and short, and very frosty. But you know why you're in the game, and you know that you want to win. You put everything out there. This is when Frisbee gets real.

Manly

Right before Senior Year of High School - I had to cover for my mom at work one day, and kept a written journal (with time stamps) of important things that happened. Tons of fun.

10:12 Am - A guy with a hat that says "Terminator just walked by... gasp! A lady just walked in mid write, and is like "Do you sell only girls?" and I'm like "As far as I know... wait! There's a tuxedo over there, in white!" then she left. 2 more customers. Woman and man. Man wants to be here as much as I do. Deep breaths. Oooh, another good song. They're gonna buy something. Deep breaths.

The Lies Your Parents Told You

Sophomore Year of High School - I had to include one post about track. My woes in the 3200 meter race are fully documented. This is a shorter post, rejoice!

How could I lose? The establishment was on my side.

Yeah, they lied to me. I got slaughtered. These robot boys just kept on running. I don't know how they did it. There was no mercy, they just went, and I didn't. They ran fast, but I was slow and steady.

Slow and steady doesn't win any races.

Ridiculously fast and steady, now that's where the money is at.

The Conclusion: I love my blog with a fiery passion. I have learned so much about myself as I have created it. I look through my old posts and want to include all of them. They capture who I really was and what I was really feeling at the time. I'm so glad it exists. I've realized that most of my posts are pretty similar. My style and rhythm remain the same.

This blog has always been fueled by the comments of its readers. It exists to serve the community. That means me and the great people that I've been associated with. I know that mos of my readers of yesteryear have moved on, but I'm very grateful that they were here for the ride. They gave me a reason to be good and do my best at life.

I want to continue to be me. This blog is a decent representation of who I am and where I've been. I want to live up to the hopes and dreams of the kid that wrote all these posts so long ago. How am I doing? There's a spirit of unconquerableness that always pervaded the things that I wrote back in the day. Do I still believe I'm capable of the excellence that I wrote about back in the day? I sure hope so. I can't forget who I want to be.

Thanks for reading, friends. Whether you're oldschool like Nickmo or Jaron or whether you're a new facebook-stalking friend from Germany, I hope that you find something here that will bring a smile to your face and help you make it through your day. Life is good. Much love, keep up the great work, friends.

Blast From the Past

Behold, our 9th grade Spanish project!

In 2005 me, Kyle, Levi, and James all had Spanish together in Señor Hortin's class. For one of our assignments we had to read a book, Caminos Peligrosos. Each group of four was assigned one chapter and told to make a multimedia presentation recapping the major points of the plot. The book itself was all sorts of fun. Apparently some people from Argentina (I think) went to the Yucatan peninsula to steal some artifacts in order to make ludicrous amounts of money back at home (they were probably in trouble with the mafia or something, I forget). They got to the peninsula, found the artifacts, but needed a special declaration/paper in order to get them through customs. Our story picks up when Maria Josefa (James) and Eduardo (Kyle) are trying to hassle Alonso (myself) into giving him the paper. Later we see them flee the scene of the crime and then evade police by pretending to be lovers. One million bonus points are awarded to James for being willing to play a girl and hug Kyle in a video that would eventually make it to youtube (not sure he ever saw that coming...)

Filming, audio, editing, and publishing all happened after school at my place the day before the project was due. We had initially planned to do it with video but were unable to find my brothers video camera. We improvised by taking stills with a digital camera and then recording the audio separately on my computer. Best part? Check out the picture at 2:09, you know, the one with Levi in the sweet Jazz Band jacket from T-ville. Yeah, check out the lower right hand corner. You can see the camera charging on the desk behind him.... Not sure how we missed that the first time.

The whole production was pretty rudimentary, but not too shabby for a project in 9th grade under the gun. Señor Hortin, who always tried to be a tough guy, was laughing his head off. He even took the disc down the hall to our good friend Ms. Peck and showed it to her because he knew she'd get a kick out of it too. We were approached by a lot* of agents telling us they wanted to take our film to Sundance, but we decided against it so we could focus our time on the nerd team instead. *that didn't actually happen.

There's nothing I love more than exceeding expectations. Looking back on it this project really isn't that impressive, but at the time we thought it was the coolest thing ever. There's a great feeling that comes with producing something that is good. A feeling of pride comes with it. There's an additional sense of satisfaction that comes when you can make others laugh and feel good with you. Step by tiny little step, we're going around making the world a little better of a place. For what it's worth, we made our Spanish teacher have a little bit better of a day that day. After all he did for us, we're glad we could help just a tiny bit. We're going to keep trying to make the world better. Much love y'all.

Snow!

If this were Quake or Counter-Strike tonight would be the night we'd hear the announcer yell "First Blood!". Since this isn't a video game, we'll just have to be content with a picture of the parking lot. It begins!

The Week of the Blue T-Shirt: Wrap-up

Howdy friends, welcome back.

So, my father passed away last week. It wasn't too unexpected and we are very happy that he didn't have to suffer too much. He was an incredible man and I'm so proud of the person he was and the way he lived his life. I'm at peace knowing he's feeling better now and that he's doing good work. I will miss him. I hope to be the kind of man that he was.

Because of that, the week of the blue T-shirt was cut short, and I think I'm going to let it lie like that. I wanted to come back and review some of the highlights before I moved on to some other cool posts.

I had a blast with the Week of the Blue T-shirt. I had been writing myself to-do lists for a long time with varied success, but this was a completely different experience. Instead of focusing on things I had to do in order to not fail school, I was focusing on little things I could do to improve myself and raise my over-all level of happiness. This change was pretty significant for me.

I discovered that being social is something that makes me really happy despite being entirely unnatural for me. Without considerable effort on my part I tend to keep to myself on campus and everywhere else. One of the first goals I set was the goal to talk to a new girl on campus every day. This was a huge stretch for me but really paid off. I was proud of myself for doing something difficult for me. As with all things, I get better at it as I keep doing it, and I've already seen progress. It's becoming more normal for me. Today I talked to three girls on campus. I know that sounds entirely lame, but it's a big old deal for me. If this experiment were good for nothing else, that alone would have made it worth it for me.

I rediscovered the simple truth that working out makes me feel better. There's this inherent feeling of progress whenever I work out. I've got this theory that every mile counts. When it is cross country time, as the theory goes, the kid that runs 1000 miles during the summer is going to have an edge on the kid that only ran 999. Likewise, the kid that runs 1001 has an edge on the kid that only ran the 1000. Even though I haven't been very consistent and even though my workout program is anything but awesome, I feel great about making progress. I'll tell you that my abs, arms, and mile time feel better this week about themselves because of what I did last week. I can't guarantee that there is any measurable improvement over last week, but I am confident that deep down inside I'm stronger for having done those little things. The good news is that as I continue to do these little things I will continue to improve. Baby steps back into good shape, w00t.

I rediscovered that I absolutely love blogging and I love trying to influence others to do good stuff. Consistency has always been my issue. True to form, I wasn't able to complete the week like I wanted to, but I feel like the blogging experience made me a better person and gave a little nudge to other people. This is something I'd like to continue to do.

So what's the take-home message from the week? Certain choices lead to a happier me, and those choices are absolutely worth making. Most of them don't come naturally. Working out, talking to girls, programming, etc. aren't things that I just find myself doing. Every single time I did them last week they made me feel good and like I was making progress. If I can identify these things and continue to do them I will continue to improve. That's great news.

That's it for the Week of the Blue T-shirt. Thanks for being part of it, friends.

Final Score: 135/350 points (38.6% complete)

I'm calling it a success :) Stay tuned for more awesome posts.