miracle chip

Over the weekend following Christmas 2012 a small miracle occurred.  It took me these past two months to finally get around to taking this picture so I could post about it properly.

After a good day of skiing at Snow Basin, I sat with Maddeline at the bottom of the hill waiting for some of our other siblings to finish their last run.  We found some chairs and we sat down and relaxed a bit, loosened our boots, took of our gloves.  ....

Thirty minutes later we were in the car driving home when I realized that my wedding ring wasn't on my finger!!  Freaking out I soon realized that it must have come off when I took my gloves off there at the base.  There was zero chance of just looking around and finding it since I had taken my gloves on and off several times at the end of the day.  I resigned my self to just crying over it and telling myself that we'd check the lost and found the next day.

Well the next day we didn't actually go to Snow Basin, but to Powder Mountain, which was a really awesome ski day.  So the following day we were back at Snow Basin and as the day ended I went over the the lost and found and asked if they had my ring.  The conversation went something like this;

"Was there a men's wedding ring turned in here a couple days ago?"
"A silver one?"
"Well it's actually cobalt, but it looks like silver."
"When did you loose it"
"uh... 2 days ago"
"Yeah, I saw it here earlier today"

at this point I got really excited, but then he spent like 4 minutes rummaging through boxes and lost items saying, "I thought I saw it here...."

Finally they found the piece of paper they had taped it to, told me that someone found it on the ground near the base lodge.  The base there at Snow Basin is not just snow like many other resorts, but paved with bricks, so my ring picked up a souvenir of being kicked around on bricks, and I call that souvenir my miracle chip.  You can see it on the rim at about the 8 o'clock position in this picture.

On a slightly related note, my ring is made out of Cobalt, not as ridiculously hard as tungsten or as strong as titanium, but still hard and very strong, and it has a more silvery color that matches white gold well.  On the inside is lightly etched 'Cobalt 24" which you can partially see here:

I love my ring.

Vacationeering

I've largely neglected writing on this blog over the summer, but that's only because everything I've done has been more of a family affair, and so Steph and I posted about our vacations on our family blog, http://smmurray.blogspot.com/

So check that out to see some of our amazing vacation photos.  :-)

Also I am getting really excited for college football season, just 16 more days... AHH!!

Major League

Over the weekend of June 8th-10th over 20,000 people gathered at the Anaheim Convention Center to watch people play games.  I was able to count myself among those present and got the chance not only to watch people play, but I did a little playing myself.

The event was the Major League Gaming (MLG) Spring Championship, with most of the focus on the Starcraft II tournament.  There were also tournaments for League of Legends, Mortal Kombat, and Soul Calibur V, as well as a North American Starcraft Championship sponsored by Blizzard.  All the games were streamed online for millions of viewers, but as an added bonus for those attending, there were playable demo stations for the new Starcraft II expansion game set to be released later this year (Heart of the Swarm).

Most of my attention was focused on the MLG tournament, watching games and playing HotS against my friends.  We were there for all of Saturday and watched the finals online Sunday afternoon.  It was a great experience something I would definitely do again.

I'm sorry for the lack of quality pictures.
It was fairly dark all over, so lighting was less than ideal.

A high view of the main viewing area.

Leading up to this I have been getting really into the pro-scene of starcraft.  There are certain celebrity  like players and commentators.  It was cool and weird to be so close to them because they are very much just normal people.  Also the best players are Korean and many of the don't speak much english so its not like you could talk to them much or anything, but whatever.

There are tons of games going on at any given moment, this is a row of computers facing each other where two players face off.  

The most important game going on (with highly seeded or more popular players) is put on the main stage.  The players are in those little lit booths at the front, the screens show to the audience what either player's screen looks like on the sides, and then the commentators screen in the middle.  The commentators (who's voiceover is heard, are actually in little booths of their own behind the stage) have access to information about both players units, production, mining, etc. basically everything needed to commentate and say who is probably ahead and say how engagements will end up.  If you're not familiar with Starcraft at all... I'll explain it sometime later.

The next two most important matches at a given moment are played on a semi-stage where there are no commentators, but you can see either player's screen above their head so you can watch the big battles, also you can watch close up their fingers on the keyboard and mouse and really watch them play.  That dyed haired Korean is MarineKingPrime (aka MKP, aka Lee Jung Hoon) the winner of MLG Winter championship.  Here at Spring he came in 3rd.

This is SK-MC (aka Jang Min Chul, aka The Boss-Toss) talking to his coach and getting ready for a game against Quanitic-SaSe (aka Kim Hammar, he's Sweedish).   MC recently won a Red Bull tournament, SaSe went to take 4th place here at MLG (and I said 'hi' to him).

This is EG-ThorZaIN (aka Marcus Eklöf, a Norwegian) who came out of nowhere a year ago and started winning tournaments.

And this is Grubby (aka Manuel Schenkhuizen, Dutch) one of the few pro-gammers not on a team.

The finals were super amazing!  Even though it was just back at our hotel with the 3 starcraft nerds, then a handfull of girls, we got them all to be a little interested.  We watched some of the quarters and then the semi final matches and everyone started rooting for certain players.  Alicia made an astonishing climb through the losers bracket to make it to the finals where he was pretty much crushed by DongRaeGu (aka DRG, aka Park Soo Ho).  We were mostly rooting for Alicia, but DRG was pretty awesome to watch since he really was just soooo good.

A great way to spend a weekend :-D

If you're still interested here's an article from Forbes.com about the event, including an infographic on viewership and attendance.  It's a big deal because at one point over 400,000 people were watching live or on the internet, which is more than many major tv programs that happend at the same time.

photography

Sometime I just like to post pictures.  For more details about our trip to Moab and Arches National Park, see our family blog post.

Delicate Arch

Alex is in the picture if you look carefully.

Fly

The Balancing Rock

The background is really amazing in this photo... as is my beautiful wife.

a shoe print we followed for almost 6 miles

... talk about blue.

A new Blog

So we have a new blog.  I will still use this one to voice random opinions, mostly relating to football and other random things.  But the Murray Family Blog, posted on by myself and by beautiful wife.  If you'd like to check it out:

http://smmurray.blogspot.com/

Go there to see about our new house and our recent trip to washington.

Cruising

Not our boat.  but this is.

Serenity Bay on Disney's private island... notice how serene.

Queen's Staircase, an escape route from the Fort/Palace on Nassau (the capital of the Bahamas)

Goofy's Mini-Golf around the stern

Serious game of billiards

Sailing

Basketball

I was just standing there in the water and these guys came swimming up to me!

Swimming (snorkeling) with the fishes

and finally...
Disney World

and if that wasn't enough for you here's some more pictures and descriptions
Stephanie's blog
Photobook
Kacy's blog
Coleen's blog

emo day!

There comes a day in every young man's life that he just has to sit down and listen to some Dashboard Confessional... Today is that day (okay, so maybe one of the many of mine, but still). There's not one particular reason for my emo-ness today, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

I keep meaning to write in here, but nothing I think about stays in my mind long enough to be transferred to type. Some of my thoughts recently though include:

-Fair-weather fans whom I hate. Not just those who leave a game with 5 minutes to go, but those who only cheer for winning teams in general, sure we have a national recognized football team, but what about our women's volleyball team or cross country, they rock too and deserve to be cheered for just as much.

-Hearing really awkward clips of conversations of random passerbys. Things like, "...pills and it's like drug use..." or "... buy a new baseball bat, come over to your house and beat you with it!"

-Dating... yes girls and their ever complex minds still intrigue me, as do my own reactions to them.

-Surprised at how much I didn't really miss my friends over the thanksgiving break, not that I don't love them, but I just enjoyed being with my family so much that I kinda forgot to think about my super awesome friends (who I believe were equally absorbed into their family activities).

and I've been thinking about myself a lot lately too. Thinking about how cool I am, about the cool stuff I've done lately, about the cool classes I'm taking or will be taking, about how arrogant I am and how obnoxious I must seem to others, how much I talk when I shouldn't and keep silent when I should talk, how I'm dirt poor, how life's quickly escalating complicatedness is by far a much larger foe than I could ever hope to defeat.... hence the emo. w00t.

yes, this is me playing frisbee on the beach ^_^

And this is an 'A' for Ako (tagalog for 'me') Awesome, Ace, and an all around nice guy ;-)

Day 7

Sunday:Boeing
My family was invited to attend Boeing Family days from my Sisters in-laws, the Grahams. We left after church and went to the Everett Boeing Factory, the larges building (by volume) in the world! Where they have production lines for their 747, 777, and 787 among others. We got a little glimpse of the new, up and coming 747-8 a new aircraft to be released within the next year as well as the new 787 the first plane built with a carbon fiber fuselage. They told us that taking pictures was not allowed, but we all know how good I am at following rules so:

That green thing is the 747-8 in final inspection-->


and here's a 777 being sold to EVA air. EVA is a Taiwanese company that I actually rode to and from the Philippines \/

Day 6

Saturday: Movie Making
This actually only took about 2 hours to film all we needed and a couple hours on Sunday to clip it all together. ENJOY (click here to go to the YouTube file of this video)

Other than that I went shopping on Saturday, got some new white shirts for work, a black belt, and a new wallet. This time I didn't get a big thick, fill with junk wallet, but a small, simple, hold-your-ID-and-some-cash wallet. I'm really excited to start using it, it's just so nice and small and makes me happy ^_^

Day 4

Thursday: not camping
So today my mom wanted to go camping. There's a really nice state park nearby that she loves to visit and she wanted to go there, stay the night and come back Friday. Great plan except she didn't make reservations at the relatively small campground and we ended up going there, visiting the visitors center (a great place for visitors to visit... really), walking in the tidelands a bit and having a picnic lunch. Not bad for an afternoon. When Kacy got off work her and I went on a quick kayaking trip. We ran into a rather swelly ocean... at is an ocean with large swells, large for the Puget Sound at least, I think we saw some that were nearly three feet! something I've never really seen much of before hear since the area is so bay-y... or rather, has many bays. :-D

Day 3

Wednesday:Sailboats
I visited the Left Coast Development shop today, it is owned and operated by Jim Lee, aka my pointy haired boss (he's actually just mostly bald). He's a really funny and relaxed guy who decided to get into the boat building business. After one year of work they've yet to finish a boat, but they're getting close. In the mean time he's making money selling the 'Simple Stereo' which is a control box that you plug in a 12v battery, speakers, and your iPod and it plays music. Good for a car, boat, RV, or kayak (if you want to tow along a battery, which in my case is worth it for music, hehe). Anyhow, you can check out his website if you want to see picture of the boat he's building, "The Dart"

In the evening I went out with Jim in his J-35 sailboat and participated in the Anacortes Yacht Club weekly race. Jim isn't competitive since his crew consists of his wife, kids 3 (ages 15-9), and who ever he finds durring the week, but it's always fun to get out and sail. His boat is actually a racing boat and gets going quite fast. Despite only a small wind we had a great time sailing.

Day 2

Tuesday: beach combin'
So because of the exceptionally difficult morning going to the dentist and such my day was slightly dampened. Okay, mostly I was just lazy, couldn't eat so I didn't have energy, badda boom. We did got to the beach though where I took several pictures of my broha skim boarding and such.













So I did a lot of thinking today. I was driving my mom's honda Accord and as I left our driveway I tried to push the automatic transmission stick into neutral and jiggle it around (as I usually do with my car) and when it wouldn't budge to the side I remembered that it was automatic and not manual. Then I noticed the knob for adjusting the side mirrors, it was a very simple and easy to use knob, much nicer than the one on my car. This got me thinking of the perfect hybrid car. Taking elements from each of the cars that I drive I devised what would be the best car ever!

First, it's a manual, and it would drive just like my Mitsubishi, but then it has the space and seating of our Suburban with of course the gas mileage of our Prius. (Okay, I know that is so impossible right now, but this is a perfect car after all.) Then it would have the audio control system/capabilities of the Pruis with the sound system of the suburban. It would have adjustments and controls (seat position, mirrors, CC, brights, etc.) like the Honda (as well as the pick-up of the Honda) and a dash display like the Mitsubishi. Finally it would also be just as cute and fun-loving as my Mitsubishi. That's pretty much the perfect car, and I love it. The end.

A Week in WA: Day 1

So I'm visiting my family at our place of residence in Anacortes, WA. Here in A-Town there is a lot of crazy fun stuff to do I have therefore decided to give a little picture blogg of what I do. I'll call it A Week in WA and do a post everyday.

Day 1, Monday:
Arrived at the airport and drove home. Took a bike ride in the forest, went kayaking w/Gavin, later that evening we took the boat out, but just for a bit so I could get used to it again. Now that my parents believe I'm capable, I can take it out anytime this week :-D



Gavin and I just walked to the beach from our home with the kayak




This is our friend fredrick the Seal











My bike in the forest near the Beaver Ponds

Perfect

I realize that perfection isn't really possible, and supposing it was actually possible it would still be infinitly hard to determine whether an even or day was 'perfect' since there are so many variables involved and so many different ways to judge something as perfect. As far as perfect days go, one mans party is another's prison, but for me, today was great. So great in fact I'm quite tempted to call it perfect (assuming that nothing horrible happens tonight) and heck, even this whole weekend is shaping up to be pretty freaking rockin'.

So let me explain. I was with my family at ranch in the middle of Duchesne County, I woke up around 6:30 this morning, I love early mornings, I'm a morning person, good moment. I stayed in bed 'til nearly seven then did a whole bunch of cleaning around the house putting chairs and tables away because we had to check out that morning. However after 45 min. or so of cleaning and getting ready to go I said good-bye to my few relatives awake at that time and took off. GoogleMaps says this drive is 2h45m however I made it in just over two hours. Only about an hour into my drive my gas light comes on. I know that means I should have about two gallons of gas left, meaning I should be able to go about 40 miles. So I resolve to stop as soon as I see a gas station. Not long afterwards I see a sign saying Heber is 48 miles away... hmm. I quickly lost hope in finding a gas station before Heber as the terrain I was crossing was quite deserted so I just kept hoping. Then came the glorious moment of reaching a sign saying "Summit 8020" meaning it was all down hill from there. I had gone about 38 miles at the point, but figured I could make it to Heber. 15 miles later I did, victory #1.

I got into Provo and had plenty of time to prepare for our ward activity. An activity that I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. We filled up about 400 waterballoons and had purchased a large tarp for sliding on. I also go 15 extra large pizzas, and a couple of gallons of water. After a bunch of preparation I went to play frisbee. I LOVE FRISBEE!!! We had a good game, my team lost, but it was super fun and a bunch of my favorite frisbee friends came to play. Then the activity started, we ate pizza to our hearts content, then played a quick, silly game of capture the flag with waterballoons, a game of my own invention that ended up in a mass waterballoon fight to the enjoyment of all. With our remaining water balloons we played some WB-volleyball with towels. By this time some of our frisbee friends that weren't in our ward had come to join us, which made the whole activity SO MUCH FUN!! Maybe it was just be since I knew the guys, but I really loved it that topped of the activity for me.

Finally we had a huge slip'n slide down the grass hill which extended down across the dry creek bed, probably about 60 feet long! At first I was content with helping out, holding the corners down, manning the hose, giving suggestions, timing crazy racers etc. but eventually my comrades convinced me to get myself wet and slide down. It was awesome! Once getting over the initial strangeness of sliding down water sprayed plastic on your stomach it became one of the greatest activities I've ever done! Now that I had my feet wet, I went all in, and kept sliding over and over, on my back on my front, as a train, in a race and had the time of my life. We ended play a little sand volleyball, cleaned up and left.

I then proceeded to turn on music really loud in my apartment, showering, relaxing, and playing THPS 1 =] what a day!!

So other than my great elation and happiness over the day, I began to develop some interesting philosophical ideas about myself, including why today was such a great day. For those only interested in adventurous deeds, stop reading here.

This week I have been very busy with my few classes, catching back up on reading, as well as seeing Harry Potter 6 at midnight, and attending my family reunion as often as I could fit into my schedule to do so. For this cause I spent little or no time with my friends (a few of which were out of town themselves) and I felt separated from them, like I was missing out on a lot... or I was at least missing them. The sense of loss and longing only added to the exuberant joy when I saw them again today, which upon analyzing I found silly since I had only been gone for one day! I began to realize though why I love my friends so much, and that is because of their individual personalities that I know so well. I have some strange, some normal friends, some strange on the outside, others on the inside, and some while seeming strange at the first impression, turn out to be quite normal, while others that seem so normal are found to be very strange upon further investigation.

For what ever reason, my joy in being with them seems to stem from my enjoyment in predicting their behavior, corresponding to their strangeness or lack thereof. I'm not verbally saying "oh she's gonna do/say this next" but in my mind there are fewer and fewer surprises, and I love it. I think being with people that don't surprise you makes life more comfortable, you worry less, and I find it easier to be myself and enjoy myself when this is the case.

Bottom line, I like to analyze people and I think I'm pretty good at it. I also love my friends, and it happens to be time for me to go meet them again, gn&gl.

Razor

I have some guys I know that are a little crazy, all return missionaries, really great guys actually... but they've just gone a little off the deep-end (judged by 'normal' standards). I actually think they're smart, they don't let 'social norms' hold them back, they actively pursue ideas that may seem impossible or ridiculous to others. One of their ideas of late was to get Razor scooters, and go as far as they could in a day. They chose Mona, UT as a good destination and began to plan and publicize. When I first heard of the idea, I told them it wasn't possible, that their scooters would fall apart after only a few miles (Mona is about 40 miles from Provo). However when they day came of their unheard of journey I had somehow been pulled it.

Starting just past 8 in the morning from a house north of BYU campus, we Razored... down 9th East and onto State St. Arriving in Springville I was surprised, no broken scooters (well only one wheel had problems, but they had replacements), no broken bones, and a lot of enthusiasm from all participating. We continued on, south into Spanish Fork and down Main Street (really fun!) out past the Hari Krishna temple, and into Salem. Finally the magnatude of what we were doing began to set in, we weren't quite halfway there, and it was getting hot, and we were getting tired... However out designated spot of lunch lay just over one small hill (One Man Band in Payson) so we pressed on.

After a rejuvinating lunch and rest we all felt ready to continue on with high hopes of reaching Mona soon. However Spring Lake had it's own ideas for us. As we Razored past Spring Lake Elem. School (down a hill) we felt fine, and quickly hopped back on the highway to head into Santaquin. That simple stretch of road nearly killed us. At the top of the second, LONG hill we reached a yet unopened gas station, thirsting for cold water, we settled to sit in the shade of the building and began to doubt the plausibility of the ride ahead. The rough shoulder of the highway was no place for a scooter, vibrations disabling your fingers and slowing you down with every push... I was done, I just didn't think going over the several hills reamaining between Santaquin and Mona was worth it at all. Eventually we realized that no one was taking us home, and giving up just wasn't really an option (who wants to say that that *almost* Razored to Mona?) Moving on under the freeway and up Santaqin main, second west on the left, and straight on 'til Mona. The majority of the riders felt it better to walk up the hills, ride across the flat section at the top, then coast down the side, before picking up their scooters and walking up the next hill (only on guy actually rode up all the hills and he's a cross country runner). Three hills later we found ourselves in an endurance ride through the outskirts of Mona. Luckily the sun was low enough that any trees on the side of the road provided paradisaical shade and some smooth recently re-paved section of road made coasting possible and then suddenly in the distance the sign was seen, "Welcome to Mona" and we all crossed, collapsing thereafter to rest until our ride back to Provo showed up about 10 minutes later.

We'd Razored from Provo to Mona, a 40 mile trip, nearly an hour drive in a car, and it took us 10 hours. What an accomplishment, what a sense of fulfillment resonated within our group. Two of the riders were complete strangers to be in the morning, but we were great friends as we rode side by side for most of the last few miles. What many thought wasn't possible now was done, conquered, and the seed of a legend was planted.

What happens in Vegas....

So I just spent like five days in Vegas.  I've heard people say that Vegas is a three day kind of town.  It you stay for less than three days you won't get the real feel of it, but if you stay for more than three days you're likely to end up in more trouble than you set out for....  I'd probably have to agree.  Truthfully I didn't get into any traditional 'trouble' like someone would suppose when it comes to Vegas, but I certainly got a lot more out of this trip than I was ever expecting.  Being with my friends and hanging out all day everyday was awesome.  I really do have some of the best friends ever!  My old roommate was getting married (the reason for the trip) so it made quite a special time for us all, and I LOVED going to the sealing, it was beautiful.  The only thing that rivaled the excellence of the temple was the day before and after where I got to enjoy some time with a girl I met in my ward this past semester.  Her name is Lyndsi and she's a native of the Las Vegas area so we picked her up from home and had her along for some of our activities.  My roommate, Reece was pretty happy about that, he's been trying to get me to hook up with a girl all semester.  I guess he got his wish because all that time with Lyndsi seemed to end with us being pretty much together.  It was certainly the last thing I was expecting from this trip, but I can't complain.  I guess in the back of my mind it is what I wanted all along.  YAY!   She is a really awesome girl, I'm super excited to get to know her better next semester.  (that's the biggest problem with the situation, just as we began to really want to spend time together we have to be separated).  Anyhow... I'm excited for life, and for skiing this break.  All in all, I am so thankful for all that has happened in the past week or so :D