March Madness

I have a very distinct first memory of March Madness.  I was either nine or ten years old, and in either fourth of fifth grade.  You might think that that isn't very specific for such an important memory, and so I will say that I'm pretty sure I was in fifth grade, 10 years old, and the year was 1998.  My elementary school principal was a graduate and a huge fan of the University of Utah (The U).  The U basketball team had a strong streak in the late 90's and was in the NCAA tournament for the fourth time in a row and our principal had been giving us updates and encouraging us to root for them.  They made it to the championship game where they played against the University of Kentucky.  I was a much bigger fan of UK than I was of the U, so I wore my Kentucky apparel to school the day after the championship game rubbing it into my principal that UK had beaten the U.

You might wonder why I am such a fan of the University of Kentucky, well I am happy to tell you.

This is where I was born,

This is how to get from there (where I was born) to Rupp Arena, where the University of Kentucky basketball team plays.

Congrats to the Wildcats for their 8th national championship!!

For those interested in random basketball trivia please keep reading, otherwise you may now close this window and resume your internet-ing.  I have a hard time remembering if my specific memory was in '98 or '97 because in both of those years Utah lost to Kentucky in the final and Elite 8 (respectively).  Furthermore, Utah lost to Kentucky in '96 in the Sweet 16, and in the second round in '93.  The first time that Utah ever made it into a post season tournament, (NIT 1941) they lost to Kentucky in the first round, and most recently Utah lost to Kentucky in 2005 in the Sweet 16.  Utah also lost to Texas Western in 1966 who went on to beat Kentucky in the final. (One of only three times Kentucky has made it to the final and not won... totally random, I know.)

Testing the 'scam'

So going around lately in magazines and in the mail, have been gift cards worth $500 for a company called RedStar Worldwear.  That seems pretty legit, but then you go and find out that you have to pay a 9% processing and shipping fee that cannot come from the gift card.  So this makes my "free" sunglasses actually cost about $17 (they're said to be worth $190 originally).  So is this a scam?  are they just trying to get your money for crappy sunglasses? or are these the real deal?  The website says they're doing this deal in order to "create a buzz for our new products" and you have to wonder if that's true.

So I took a small hit and tried it out (I had made a little extra money a couple months ago so I thought I'd put it to good use).  I ordered myself one of the pricier, polarized pairs of sunglasses, and got my wife a pair, and a pair for my good friend Chris Taney ('cause he helped me earn that extra money in the first place).  They shipped surprisingly fast, I was expecting a couple of weeks, but they got here in under a week!  And they are not cheap plastic wal*mart glasses.  They are surprisingly good, solidly built, quality materials.  For me the biggest test if they were quality or not was if they are truly polarized.  They have on their website a section of glasses marked as polarized, and I wanted to know if they truly came with polarized lenses, so I tested them out in the video below, and you will find that they are in fact polarized.  Sweet shades!

I'm a Mormon

The Church published this today.  I'm mormon and I'm proud of it, more than just proud of it, I love being mormon!  I really liked this info-graphic and I think it's worth sharing, so here it is.  

Some of the things I love the most about being mormong is counting myself among those who pray daily, attend church weekly, and know more than most people about the Bible and religion in general.  Also I love how much I get to learn about Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.

new theme!

You all may remember my infrequent updates on what my desktop background looks like.  My last update was in August, but it's changed since then (twice actually, not counting today's).  For the past three months I've had my desktop background a wintery Christmast theme, which was great for December and even part of January, but now that Groundhog Day and Valentines Day have come and gone it was well time for an update.

This weekend, tickets for The Hunger Games movie went on sale.  I'm pretty stoked for this, and I'm planning on buying tickets soon.  In honor of such, I have created this:

I'm still playing around a bit with some of the fonts, but that's the gist of it.

For those of you who care, all the updates to my desktop have been chronicled in my flickr photostream. (yeah, just those 5)

Fit to curl

That right there would be me, throwing the winning rock!

Pretty good for a first time!

I am also, a most excellent sweeper.

curling dreams

So this past weekend Stephanie and I lived out a dream and went curling.  Ever since the winter olympics two years ago (when we were just dating) we watched several curling matches and decided that we would someday go curling.

The Utah Olympic Oval in Kerns, UT offers curling classes and open curling times in the evenings so we went with some of my siblings (and my dad) and curled!  The most interesting part of living out this dream is that the night before I had had a dream about going curling.  And as with most dreams, everything was just a little strange...


Instead of curling with nice, rounded curling stones like this:

We were using unnaturally tall and awkward stones like this:

And instead of curling on a nice long sheet of ice (about 120 feet)

We were throwing stones on a rather short and boxed in sheet and I kept hitting the back wall, no mater how soft I did it (typical dream frustration).

The dream was further crazy by the random appearance of Stephanie's former roommate (a totally crazy, and really creepy person) who was not only in the dream, but wouldn't stop talking to me.

Hopefully I'll post some pictures soon (when I get them from my dad) of us actually curling.  I hope to go again soon, and I just might be the next world champion curler.  (Okay, not really next, but future... the national championships are actually happening right now, fyi.)

PS. since things in dreams don't really exist I did quick mock-ups of them using Google SketchUp.

life questions

So after a year of no job offers, I've decided to go back to school.  Well it's still in the deciding process, but we're pretty sure that it's the best thing to do.  As I've been working on my application to grad school I've come across some interesting questions, questions that have pierced me deep as I have pondered their meaning.

Part of the application is a letter of intent, the application says this about the statement of intent:

This statement gives the admissions committee an opportunity to learn the following:

1. your preparation and background for the program to which you are applying and the special emphasis you hope to pursue in it,
2. your academic or professional goals and reasons for your choice of career,
3. your particular academic or professional reasons for applying to Brigham Young University and the scholarly or professional contributions you expect to make to your program;
4. .....

Those middle few questions have really got me thinking.  What are my academic and professional goals?  What scholarly contributions will I make to the field of civil engineering?  I've been thinking for the past year that I want to do 'transportation' engineering, designing roadways and such.  But really, I never really thought of that before I ever went to college.  I never even thought of all that before I took a transportation class.  The real reason I switched to civil engineering was for structures.  

I think I speak for most engineers when I say that engineering is fun regardless of what it is your engineering.  Making awesome things is just always cool, whether it's buildings, roads, dams, engines, computers, waste water treatment plants.... it's just cool to build something intricate and amazing.


So I've applied to graduate school at BYU, and I'll hopefully bet going into structural engineering.  It will be strange going back to school, but hopefully I'll do a little better and care a little more, and it will probably be a lot of fun in the end.