So Random

The Most Terrifying Rodent.

2011-08-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

When Joe was visiting, he helped me catch a gopher that had been burrowing in my yard. It was a mighty battle of wits that ended with a live gopher - caught in a Macabee trap by the cheek - that was quickly silenced with a sharp snap to the head with a trowel.
That's not the terrifying rodent I'm talking about. There was nothing terrifying about the gopher. Neither is there anything terrifying about the one or two mice I've caught (in mousetraps) since living here. No, this is a story that will melt the skin from your bones, sure to become a staple terror story around campfires everywhere.

Sit back, get ready, and don't blame me if you experience lasting side effects after reading this.

Valerie and Cj are at girls camp all week. I took the week off to take care of the youngest three kids. Not having to work each day allows me the luxury of being able to stay up late working on various projects. On this particular night, I was trying to put together a home theater pc. I sat down on the floor in the living room and surrounded myself with a spare computer and a bunch of spare parts. I was reconfiguring the hardware and trying to install Linux.

It was about 12:30 am. I was sitting there in a pair if shorts, with bare feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a quick movement across the floor from the couch to the desk in the corner. I turned my head toward it just in time to see a brownish gray blur move into the shadows under the desk.

Oh great! Another mouse. At least Valerie isn't here to witness it and get grossed out. I walked - in my bare feet - over to the desk and peered underneath. I couldn't see anything. It was literally cornered, with only one way out, so I thought I'd try to catch him as he came out. I waited, but he never came out. I ran to my room to grab a flashlight. I layed my face down on the carpet so my left eye could see under the desk. Some of you might think that was crazy, but I'm really not afraid of mice. (remember I used to have pet mice when I was a kid). I shined the light under, but there was nothing there! He could have escaped while I was getting the light.

I went back to working on the computer. About fifteen minutes later, I caught another quick movement going from the desk to the back of the entertainment center. There were two things that struck me as weird. First, I know there was nothing under the desk, and second, it didn't move like a mouse. I can't explain it really, but it felt like it was a bit too fast and it seemed like it started and stopped instantly. Of course, I only caught it in the corner of my eye.

The flashlight was across the room, and I didn't want to lose him again, so I quickly walked over to the entertainment center without the light. I pushed a toy to the back wall with my bare foot to block one avenue of escape. I could see the shadowed shape of the mouse just four inches from my foot. It occurred to me that he might run right past the toy and over my bare foot, so I prepared myself to move if I had to. I tried to get a good look at the mouse, but it was just too dark. I stretched over and grabbed the nearby Ikea floor lamp (It's a "KROBY", the slightly more durable brother to the $8.00 "NOT" - just to keep the facts clear). I leaned the lamp toward me to shine some light in the dark crevice.

Before the light was fully there, the mouse moved away from me into a tangle of wires on the floor a few inches deeper behind the cabinet. Although I didn't have good light on it (I could only see a mouse-sized shadowed mass), I was sure that it moved very unmouselike.

It skittered. It skittered very fast.

The movement triggered some reflex deep in the most primitive part of my brain. I felt the warmth of adrenaline as it shot through my body. I leaped back from the wall, expertly dodging computer parts strewn around the floor, and landed in the center of the room - a full six feet from when I was standing an instant ago.

This happened before I had any conscious thought about what was going on. I stood there, a bit stunned, appreciating the distance I had just leaped and the fact that I had managed to avoid stepping on anything. Finally, my brain caught up an I realized that I was shaking a bit from the adrenaline, and then I wondered what had just happened. The mouse had moved away from me, yet I freaked out. Then my conscious brain registered the creepy skittering.

I shuddered. Literally.

I recognized the skittering. That mouse moved just like a - just like a - Ooooo! it gives me the creeps just thinking about it now.

It moved just like a SPIDER!

But it couldn't be a spider! It was the size of a mouse, and dense. Not spindly like a daddy longlegs or a house spider. It was big. If I took one of the many daddy longlegs we have around here and stretched his legs flat, It would still be too small. Maybe a black widow? I think they get pretty big, right? (It turns out, they don't get as big as a mouse.) But this was definitely brown, not the sleek black of a black widow.

Black Widows are Too Small

I dashed into the kitchen, suddenly very aware of my bare feet and legs. My mind was racing for an explanation. I could feel creepy crawlies crawling all over my legs! It was my imagination of course, but I was hyper aware of every texture of the floor on my feet, every slight swirl of air around my ankles. Everything felt like a spider on my skin. I found what I come for. The flyswatter. I immediately thought of the crunch and inevitable goo that would result from a swat on a spider that big.

I shuddered. And tried not to gag.

It occurred to me that maybe it was a scorpion. That would be kinda cool. For some reason I'm not nearly as creeped out by scorpions. I know they can get pretty big, but I don't think they move as fast as this mouse did. My mind was racing to recall every nature show I had ever seen. What kind of spider would live in California and get that big? I could think of some big spiders in Australia and New Zealand, some in South America. The only one I could think of in the USA, is a tarantula, but they move very deliberately, very slowly, plus this mouse was smaller than a tarantula.

I slipped on my flip-flops which, oddly, made me feel much more protected from creepy crawlies. I grabbed the flash light in one hand, and held the flyswatter ready in the other. I approached the back of the entertainment center. Despite the massive protection of the flip-flops, I kept my feet away from the edge of the cabinet. I could see the shadow again right at the edge of the cables. I quickly shined the flashlight on the shadow - and began flinching - not sure whether to slap the shadow or jump away. Fight or flight?

Fight.

I slapped the shadow. Once, twice. The third time I pushed hard, grinding it into the carpet. The body separated into two pieces. It had to be dead. I leaned down to get a better look at it. As I moved, the beam of the flashlight wandered a bit high, casting the carcass into shadow again. At that same moment, one of the two pieces lifted off the ground right toward my face.

And I found myself standing in the exact same spot as before - in the center of the room six feet away. I watched the shadow rise up from behind the cabinet and sort of swirl across the wall in a lazy loop before coming to rest on the carpet a foot from the wall.

That was neither mouse-like nor spider-like. In fact, it was more feather-like than anything.

I shined the light on it, and found a brownish-gray lump. It was a dust bunny!

There I was, working on a dusty computer that was filled with dust bunnies! I walked back to the back of the cabinet, and sure enough, the other half of the shadow was there on the carpet. One half of a dust bunny. As if to punctuate the situation, the air conditioner turned on and a quick burst of air sent the dust bunny skittering across the floor.

Talk about relief! My heart slowed down to a normal level and I plopped down in the middle of the room, in my bare feet and shorts, and resumed working on my computer. Even though I knew it was just a dust bunny, I still found myself flinching at everything. I still felt like spiders were crawling all over me. I was thirsty, but I had visions of drinking from my cup, gulping the water, until I would look into the tipped-up bottom just in time to see an enormous spider slip into my mouth.

I was pretty creeped out.

My cat, Zombie, walked over and plopped herself on my lap. I know it's stupid, 'cause what could a cat do anyway in the arena of protection, but I felt calmer with her there.

After awhile, Zombie, who I'd thought had been sleeping, bounded off my lap toward the entertainment center. She was chasing one half of the dust bunny (Hey I hadn't calmed down enough to clean it up yet! Sheesh!) which had skittered into the bottom shelf (which is at floor level) of the cabinet. We have a square, fabric-covered, cardboard box there that holds video games and diapers. Zombie was laying on her side reaching through the gap between the box and the cabinet wall, trying to catch the dust bunny. I thought I'd help her out, so I grabbed the box and pulled it a good two feet out of the cabinet onto the floor.

The box rested between me and Zombie who was now inside the dark cabinet trying to slap the dust bunny as the fans from the blue-ray player tossed it back and forth across the shelf floor. I leaned forward over the open-top box. My weight was on my right arm which rested slightly against the outer edge of the box, my hand protruded a few inches beyond the back of the box.

I know what you are thinking; "That's not a dust bunny that Zombie's playing with!". Well you're wrong. It was a dust bunny and I could see it clearly despite the darkness of the cabinet. Sorry to disappoint.

But suddenly Zombies demeanor changed! Instantly, she went from a playful kitten, to a predator on alert! She was crouched ready to pounce. She was facing me. Or rather, she was facing the box in front of me. You know, the one my arm was leaning against.

I chuckled.

I looked down at the box.

I froze! Solid! I was an idiot that didn't recognize what I was looking at. That went on for at least .0023 seconds - but it felt like an eternity! At .0024 seconds, I was off the floor, into the air, landing in what I'm sure was a Jack Bauer-worthy rolling crouch where I picked up the flyswatter.

My quick movement didn't distract Zombie one bit. While I was in the air, she pounced and made a full body tackle of my "mouse", ripping it off the back of the box where it had been hiding, one inch (Go look at a ruler right now so you can understand how small a distance one inch is. Go!), one inch! from my arm and hand.

Zombie and the "mouse" tumbled across the floor. Zombie stopped once she got back to her feet, but the 'mouse' was flung several more feet. It landed on it's feet and charged Zombie. It was at this time that I was able to think again. I took a good long look at the "mouse".

It wasn't a mouse at all.

It was a spider. Did you hear me!? I said a Spider! A spider that was big enough that I had mistaken it for a mouse! A wolf Spider to be exact.

I've seen wolf spiders hundreds of times in my life. The biggest one I've seen was probably a little bigger than a quarter. This was different!

Stop for a minute. Think about the biggest spider you have ever found in your house. How big was it really? (Spiders from foreign countries don't count killjoy!), now multiply that times three or four. Now you are at half the size of this spider!

Zombie and the spider wrestled in an epic battle. The spider spraying acid-venom at Zombie's throat. Zombie shooting laser death rays from her eyes. I had the flyswatter ready, but couldn't use it for fear of taking out Zombie by accident. In the end, my secret spec ops ninja training came through and I slapped the flyswatter down, a hair's breadth from Zombie's face, crushing the wolf spider.

It crunched. And Goo-ed. I gagged.

I carefully picked up the carcass (with about 50 Kleenexes), and placed it on a sheet of paper. It was a bit disappointing, because it had curled up all it's legs the way spiders do, so it didn't seem nearly as big as I thought. I grabbed some forceps and stretched out it's legs. They kept wanting to curl up, but I was able to take some pictures.

I hope you aren't eating right now.

Here he is next to an Oreo! Ok, so it's a small oreo, not a regular size one, but the spider is still bigger!

Here are a few other pictures to show the size.

My hand is a little more than an inch away from the spider here. That's further than it was before Zombie took him out!

Don't worry, I threw away the Oreo, the paper, the money, the ruler and my hand!

I still feel like spiders are crawling all over me!

I just hope I never meet this guy!

Spring Break

2011-05-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

I don't get a spring break from work, but I took one anyway. I went to work on Monday - business as usual. On Tuesday, we took the kids to Point Reyes. Val posted some pictures on the family blog. What she didn't tell you is that it was soooo windy! The first beach we went to had signs posted everywhere warning people NOT to play in the water because of the dangerous current. I walked down to the water carrying Zoey. This was the first time I was frightened by the surf while standing a safe distance from it. The roar was insanely loud and the crashing waves seemed to be coming and going at the same time. White water from waves smacking each other was shooting a couple of feet over my head just a few meters from where I was standing. Zoey was terrified. I was afraid I broke her. She had never shown fear of the water before (which is terrifying to Val and me). Now she wouldn't even look at it.
Val and the other kids had plopped down next to the only windbreak they could find. It was a single log that provided a break from the wind if you layed down right next to it. The kids really wanted to play at the beach though, so we endured.

I noticed that the gravel on that beach (it was really not sandy at all) was polished smooth. The entire beach was a giant rock polisher.

A ranger came down and told us about Drakes beach on the other side of the point. That was so much better! The point blocked the wind completely so we could wander forever without being sand blasted. The surf was also much calmer. All the kids - except Zoey, who I broke - felt safe chasing the and dodging the surf. It was the calmest weather we've had at a NoCal beach!

The next day, Wednesday, Val took the kids to a beach where we found out that I didn't break Zoey (again, see the family blog). I woke up before dawn and met up with the Priest Quorum for the High Adventure. We drove about 3 hours to the Merced River as it leaves Yosimite.
Remember when I was talking about white water crashing several feet over my head a few paragraphs ago? You can take the time to go back and review that part if you've forgotten. I'll wait...

Ok, well instead of being a few meters from it, this time we intentionally went right into it!

The water was snow melt, so it was unbelievably cold! We got to jump in anyway and float through one of the minor rapids. I didn't catch my breath for the entire swim. Boy was I happy to get back in the boat!

We drove home that evening and spent the night at the YM President's house. Next morning, we woke bright and early and drove up to Mt Diablo where we hiked a mile to an eroded trail. We spent the day bent over digging the dirt with fire fighting tools with cool names like "Mattock", "McLoud", and "Pulaski". We basically tore up the old trail and reformed it, making it the proper width, filling in the ruts, and giving it the proper slope. Eight hours later we went home.

I was exhausted and sore.

On Friday (click the link if you dare) I went to work as usual.

Luckily, I recovered over the next week, because the following Saturday, Val and I moved 2 1/2 cubic yards of decorative landscaping rock, and 3 cubic yards of topsoil from a pile in our driveway to various areas around our house and garden. I'll let Val tell you guys more about that on the family blog.

I'm so sore I can barely move my fingers to type.

Food-Stuffed Food

2011-03-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

Let's face it: Food is Delicious.

That's it's purpose of existence: To taste good.

And certain flavors work well with others so that both taste better, and are more edible. I guess you could say "both are edified". You know what I mean; Bacon and eggs, fruit and cheese, sweet and salty, and of course, peanut butter and chocolate.

Actually, peanut butter and chocolate is a perfect example of what I wanted to share today. Long ago if people wanted to eat it, they would have to pick a chocolate bar right off the chocolate tree and dip it into the river of peanut butter - like chips and dip. Then one day, some genius thought about stuffing some peanut butter inside the chocolate and gave us Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

I think more foods should get stuffed into other foods.

The other day I made breakfast for dinner. Pancakes, sausage, bacon and eggs. I'd heard about a new way to prepare it so I gave it a try. I mostly cooked the bacon and sausage, then poured pancake batter over it. The result: Bacon or sausage-stuffed pancakes! They were so delicious! The pancakes cooked in the bacon grease. And so efficient!

A couple of weeks ago I ate at KFC. I got a "Double Down". Have you ever heard of it? It's simply a bacon and cheese sandwich, but in place of bread, they use two crispy chicken breasts. So Good! But hard to eat. You have to hold it by the wrapper and avoid eating the paper. Of course you could hold it by the chicken then just lick your fingers clean at the end, but after seeing that Doritos commercial where the guys grabs the other guy's hand and sucks the Dorito dust off them, I'm a bit paranoid. I wouldn't want some stranger sucking the residual double-down off my fingers.

I used to make what I called "The heart stopper". It's just a regular cheeseburger, but instead of buns, I used two grilled cheese sandwiches. Talk about delicious! Of course you often felt your arteries filling with plaque as you ate it - hence the name.

I guess my point is, we should be more daring with our food and simplify it by stuffing it inside a complimentary food.

Root beer-stuffed pizza anyone?

Eclipse

2011-01-17T21:49:00.000-08:00

Beware. There are spoilers in this, so don't read it if you to want it to be spoiled!

You may remember last year when I summarized "New Moon" in 19 frames. Well, I just saw "Eclipse" and felt the need to summarize it as well. As before, I do this as a service to all those who have no desire to watch the movie, but might be curious. Also as before, my comments on the film are below the image.

In this one, Bella has traded self loathing for complete selfishness. She wants both boys. She wants both boys to want her. She wants what she wants with no regard for the feelings of anyone else. Once again, why would you want your main character to be so unappealing?
Whatever.
I'm looking forward to the next movie - where she dies! The story is much more entertaining after that.

Let it Snow part 2

2010-12-04T15:47:00.000-08:00

This is a continuation of the post I made earlier today. Don't forget to scroll down and read that one as well!
So, I just got done making snowflakes with the kids. Here are the ones they made.

I made a couple as directed by the kids. Xander wanted Iron Man and Spiderman.

I know! Spidey looks like a Roswell alien. Leave me alone already! You try making a snowflake while a 4 year old tries to clime on your lap and put his head in your line of sight! Jeeez!

CJ requested a Ballerina, and Mia really wanted a spider. I didn't have the energy to make two more - so I only made one.

I must say, this one is fun! Even the spiders are doing ballet!

Now on to sweeping up the confetti we left behind.

Let it Snow!

2010-12-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I came across a site where someone had made some cool Star Wars themed snowflakes. They were pretty cool and I really wanted to give it a try. The site had patterns for their snowflakes, but I thought I could throw my own spin on it.

Here is one from that site.

I really like Darth Vader, and I especially like how she was able to put the Galactic Empire logo in the center. I added detail to my Darth Vader and threw in a storm trooper.

Here is mine. It's hanging up so I couldn't get a good flat picture, but you get the idea.

I wanted to do a Rebel Alliance snowflake as well, so i designed my own from scratch.

You can see, Yoda, The Rebel Alliance symbol, the Millenium Falcon, and an x-wing fighter. Awesome!

My friend challenged me to make one more that would be so unique that no one would ever duplicate it. He even gave me the subject matter.

Yes, Jar Jar Binks. Why would anyone spend the energy to make a Jar Jar snowflake? Well, in my case, it was a dare. I'm sure no one else will ever bother, so this will remain a one of a kind forever. I'm going to make some more with the kids today. If we come up with any good ones, I'll post 'em for all to see.

Why Be Mario?

2010-11-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I would go over to my friend Andy's house and be amazed at all his trophies. He had a bunch for baseball and football and soccer. When I was a bit older, I was in awe of my friend Chris's trophies for football, basketball and bowling - yes he bowls. Really, most of my friends have had collections of trophies that they won in everything from soccer to ballroom dancing. I never got a trophy. Or rather, I never got a "First Place" trophy.

I did have a few successes though. I won second place in a regional science fair. That was awesome! My little league team came in second place in the championship game that I didn't even play in because it was on a Sunday. They brought me my tiny trophy at the end-of-the-season picnic. More recently, I helped with a student film that won second place at the Emmys (which still means that we won an Emmy). I'm comfortable with second place.

If you think about it though, who is the better athlete in the Olympics? The guy who wins one gold medal in one event (and no other medals), or the guy who wins 5 silver medals in 5 events? I say second place!

Remember Super Mario Brothers 2? That was the first one where you could choose between Mario, Luigi, Toad, Princess Peach. They each had special talents; Princess Peach could jump further than any of the others, Mario jumped further than everyone else. Luigi jumped higher than the others, Mario jumped higher than everyone else. Toad was the fastest, Mario was second fastest. Mario was second best at everything - which made him the best overall. It's not called Super Luigi Brothers.

So, like I said, I feel comfortable with second place. Well at least I used to be comfortable with second place.

Things have changed.

This past Saturday, the day before Halloween, My daughter Mia ran her first race. It was a 1k, which is just over half a mile. It was a race for kids ages 6-12. Mia is 6.

Let me pause for a moment to explain Mia for those who don't know her. She is stubborn. She hates to lose. We have been working with her to understand that it's not important whether you win or lose, but only that you have fun. It's the Playing of the game that's fun. Winning is just a bit of frosting on top. She's been trying hard to remember to have fun with the playing, but losing is still hard for her. Even when it's just for herself. A classic illustration of her stubborn personality is when she was trying to learn to jumprope. She was standing in the driveway crying so hard, growling in frustration that she couldn't get it right. I offered to help, and she yelled at me to leave her alone. Rather than give up - or even take a break - she just kept trying and trying until she finally got it - tears and all!

With that in mind, Valerie and I prepared her for her upcoming race. We gave her the wonderful parental encouragement that she might not win. We prepared her as much as we could so she could handle her loss well and have fun anyway. She seemed prepared to handle her inevitable loss against kids who were bigger than her. But then she saw them handing out the trophies for the race before hers. She was mezmorized by them. She said to me, "Dad, I want one of those." Oh Great. It broke my heart a bit. I told her that if she ran her hardest, she might get one, but that she shouldn't be sad if she didn't.

She ran her race. She took off like lightning, weaving through all the bigger boys to try to get out front. Then the trail went down a hill and Xander and I waited for the racers to get half way, turn around and race back. We waited for the sign of all the bobbing heads of the bigger boys to signal that Mia would be showing up soon.

Finally, I saw one. A 10 year old boy was racing toward us. I looked behind him but saw no sign of other bobbing heads. I looked down to tell Xander that Mia would be coming in a few minutes. When I looked up, I saw Mia come up over the hill! She was so small I didn't see her bobbing head earlier. The next thing I noticed was that there was no other kinds anywhere near her.

I yelled for her to run as fast as she could. She sprinted across the finish line in 4:57. Not only had she come in FIRST PLACE among the girls, but she had only been beaten by ONE boy who was several years older than her.

I was so proud of her when she got her FIRST PLACE trophy! She was in heaven! She asked Valerie if this was just a dream. She was so happy all day. She carried her trophy everywhere with her.

This is when I changed my mind about second place. I realized that even though I never won a first place trophy before, I could do it now - through my kids! All I have to do is wake Mia up every morning at 4am to run drills. I'll get a whistle and a stop watch and time her at everything she does. I'll never prepare her to handle losing gracefully, but to handle it shamefully. I'll constantly remind her that she isn't fast enough yet. She'll win every race she enters if she doesn't want to be grounded from going to school or having friends. We'll have to buy a huge trophy case to hold all her gold! When she's old enough, I'll arrange her marriage to a lean African man - probably a world record holder. The genetics will surely produce inhumanly fast offspring. That's the way it works with horses anyway.

I bet my other kids are good a something too. I should decide now what I want them to be good at so I can start their training. I bet Zoey is old enough to start learning competitive archery! I'll start Xander in the weight room tomorrow so we can get him in shape for the NFL, NHL and MLB. Maybe I can get him genetically modified to make him taller for the NBA! I'm sure I have some contacts that will get CJ into hollywood! I expect to see her face on the cover of "Bop!" by next year. I will get furious at every little league game and yell at the umpires! I'll throw chairs onto the field during pee-wee football games if a bad call is made against my kid! I will be - I mean - my kids will be so famous that we will get our own reality TV show!

Bahh! Whoever thought having fun was the most important thing obviously never won anything! And as for Mario - just wait until they come out with a "Mario's Offspring" game in which all his kids dominate everyone else!

So I'm taking applications now for prospective mates for my children who are guaranteed to have earned lot's of first place trophies by marrying age. Fun will have been torn out of them, so you can count on highly competitive automatons. Second place or below need not apply.

An Apology To, And In Behalf Of, All Married Men

2010-08-09T08:03:00.001-07:00

Some of you may be aware of a set of rules which governs how men interact with other men. It is known most commonly as the "Bro Code". Most of the rules are written only in the DNA on the "Y" chromosome, but there have been compilations recorded in a few places on the internet.

For any female readers out there who may be curious about what kind of rules are in the Bro Code, I'll share a few examples. But before I do, I must state that no man expects you to understand these rules, and you should not expect him to explain - or defend them. Right or wrong, they are in his DNA. He can no more explain/defend the Bro Code, than he can explain/defend the color of his eyes or his naturally masculine physique.

"Bros Before Hoes". I know some find the verbology of this ruel to be crude, but remember, this is translated directly from our DNA with no "politically correct" filter involved. This is the number one rule on which most other rules depend. This rule basically means that if a man's girlfriend (or her interests) conflict with those of his best friend's, he should always go with his friend's. (The reasoning being that girfriends come and go, but you have your bros forever).

"Buffer Urinal". Also known as ICUP, or International Choice of Urinal Protocol. There is a pretty deep and entertaining examination of this here. The quick explanation is simply that there should always be a buffer urinal between two guys going to the bathroom. There is no reason for two guys to pee next to each other if there are empty urinals to separate them.

Other rules govern when it's OK to cheat in a game (if there is no money involved), when it's OK to smack talk or badmouth a friends favorite sports team, etc.

The reason I bring up the Bro Code, it that things change once you get married. As I said before, Most of the Bro Code governs the interaction of male friends, with the number one guiding principle being "bros before hoes". Obviously marriage changes this. Now that rule - the base rule- get overruled by the new rule: "Whatever makes your wife Happy".

We love our wives, and we want them to be happy for two reasons: We just want them to be happy because we love them, and when they are happy, we are happy.

Among married men, this new rule is understood. Gone are the days when you would go hang out with the guys rather than sit at home watching a romantic comedy with your girl. None of your married friends will tease you (much) when you have to watch the kids while your wife has a "girls night out".

We live with it. We accept it. We take it like men. After all, most of the stuff we do to make our wives happy is kept private, so none of the guys know the girly details. At least, thats how it was until recently, which brings me to my apology.

With the growing popularity of blogging, nothing is kept private anymore. Everything a man does for his wife is shared with the world. Every man can see how far his friend has been emasculated. It is not for this humiliating exposure that I apologize. After all, we all know to what extent we go to make our wives happy, and can infer that other men are doing likewise.

The apology is for the fact that other men's wives see what we have done.

One man has flowers delivered each hour to his wife on the day of their anniversary, the number of flowers increasing incrementally until the number of flowers equals the number of years they have been married.

Another man surprises his wife randomly by watching the kids while he sends her to the spa.

Another throws a huge surprise party for her birthday.

In each case, somewhere, another man's wife reads about it on a blog and says to her husband,

"Why don't you ever do things like that for me?"

For this I apologize to all married men, on behalf of all married men. I also accept the apology on behalf of all men. We know it's not your fault.

I should tell you that this apology comes about from something a friend said to me. To protect him, I will keep his identity a secret. He did a grand thing for the sake of his wife's happiness. When My wife complimented him for it, he stated to me - in front of my wife - that I don't need to do what he did, just because he did it. Even though he was doing it because some other guy had done it before him.

With that in mind, I suggest that we men continue with our lives knowing that we may have to do things for our wife simply because other men have done it first. And to help each other out, try not to "one-up" the other guy. And occasionally, within earshot of your buddy's wife, excuse him from having to match your feats.

Me vs. Nature

2010-05-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

Mother Nature and I have been in battle lately. She generally kicks my butt then laughs at me, but sometimes I get to laugh back.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed some mounds of dirt appearing in my back yard. I examined a couple and couldn't see any holes nearby, so I spread the dirt out and ignored them. A few days later there were half a dozen new mounds. After a bit of internetting, I concluded that we had a gopher. No big deal. I came across the best method of ridding my yard. The Macabee Gopher trap! Mia and I watch a video on youtube about how to set it. You have to stick a long screwdriver down in the ground near a mound until you find a hollow - this is the main tunnel. Then you dig a hole down to the tunnel and place 2 traps - one facing each direction - inside. Next you push an irrigation flag into the ground to mark the location and secure the trap - just in case. Lastly you cover the hole back up and wait.

A Macabee Gopher trap is a nasty device. Imagine those jaw-like bear traps you see in cartoons. Th ones where you pry the jaws open and then when you sniff around on the ground trying to find Bugs Bunny, the jaw slams shut on your nose. Well this is like that - but miniature. Instead of jaws of teeth, you have a couple of sharpened spikes that pierce the chest cavity of the gopher.

The morning after I set the trap. I went out to check it. To my surprise, I found one tripped trap four feet from the hole on the surface of the ground with the irrigation flag still connected to it. The hole where it had been set was now completely packed closed by the gopher. I had thoughts of the Cadyshack gopher laughing at me as I pondered the need of C-4 to finish this guy off.

All I could do was wait for a new mound to appear and try the process all over again.

Nature: win Me: lose

But more than 2 weeks has passed and no new mounds. On closer inspection of the trap, I found some fur on the spikes, so the trap must have got him to some degree. i figure either he died back in his hole, or I scared him off.

Nature: lose Me: win (revised)

The next thing is birds. I like birds. Not as pets, but I like pretty birds flying around my yard. I like it when there is a nest in my tree. The kids like that too. I thought it would be fun if we encouraged the birds, so we built a birdhouse and put it on our tree in the back yard. We also bought a hummingbird feeder.

Months have gone by and no bird is interested in our birdhouse or bird feeder.

I walked out the front door this week to go to work, and noticed a dozen beautiful birds flitting around near our entrance. They were chirping pretty songs as they flew up under the eaves then out again. I could tell they were building a nest. How exciting! The kids will love this!

Nature: win Me: win

I told Val about it a few days later (the birds were there every time I went outside), because she uses the garage rather than the front door. I took her out to see the birds and the nests. To my surprise, the nest wasn't your regular, round, made-out-of-grass, nest. It was made of mud.

No big deal. It is hidden up under the eaves, so you can't see it. And the birds are really neat to watch and listen too. We left for our camping trip for a couple of days. When we came home, we were greeted by not one nest, but six. And the beginnings of new nests all along the eaves in front of the garage.

Nature: win Me: lose (revised)

I did some internetting again to find that the birds are cliff swallows. Some more digging turned up that they are migratory birds and therefore, protected. It is illegal to knock down their nests once they are built - until they fly south for the winter. The best we can doo is be vigilant about instantly cleaning off the first bits of mud to prevent new nests from forming.

Nature: win x 2 Me: lose (revised again)

Most recently we went camping. What a trip. You can read more about the trip at our family blog, but I want to highlight a couple of things.

Fire.

It's easy to light a fire. Accidental fires happen all the time. We were planning on having a camp fire, so when we had our tree removed (a fruitless mulberry), we asked to keep a couple of logs for firewood. He left us 3 half-logs that were about a foot in radius and 18" tall. I had to cut into firewood sized pieces. I let the logs dry for about a month and then I used my tiny electric chainsaw - meant for cutting limbs no larger than 4" diameter. After an hour I cut most of it apart - and completely dulled my blade.

We packed the firewood (and a couple of scrap 2x4s for kindling) and headed off on our trip. At camp, I struggled for a hour to light the fire. The newspaper burned, the 2x4s burned, I burned my hand, but the firewood wouldn't burn.

Nature: win Me: lose

Good thing we also brought some charcoal and a charcoal chimney. I set that up and within minutes had some nice coals going. I dumped them into the fire and and the persistent heat finally caught the firewood on fire - kind of. It really just smoldered without flames, but the shape made for a great oven and we were able to cook our foil dinners.

Nature: lose Me: win (revised)

The next night. I tried to start the fire again. After some struggle, I gave up.

Nature: win Me: forfeit (revised again)

The last thing is a hammock. Joe gave me a hammock when he came home from his mission. I take it camping every time I go. At our site, I just needed to find 2 suitable trees.

Nature: win Me: lose

This wouldn't do. If only I could find some bigger trees.

Hah! I got it!

Next time I camp in a redwood forest, i need to remember to bring a lot more rope!

Nature: lose Me: win (revised)

Final Score:
Nature: 3 Me: 2

But it ain't over yet!

New Moon

2010-03-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

Beware. There are spoilers in this, so don't read it if you to want it to be spoiled!

I saw "New Moon" last night on blue ray. I decided to summarize it for anyone who might be curious, but unwilling to spend time watching it. My commentary is under the image.

To avoid to much ranting, I will say only this:
Why would you want your main character to be so unappealing!? I'm not talking about Kirsten Stewart, I'm talking about Bella. She hates herself, wines, cries, and acts crazy. There is NOTHING appealing about her. I read all 4 books and prayed through 3 1/2 of them that Edward (or any other vampire or werewolf for that matter), would just eat her. I did, I admit, like Bella after she died. Finally she was appealing and so was the story.

A buncha projects.

2010-03-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I ate a (couple) Maple Glazed Bacon Apple Donuts.

HEAVEN!!!

I haven't posted for awhile, but I've been busy. Here are a few projects I've tackled recently.

First, we bought an HDTV in February. I wanted one because IT'S AN HDTV! Val wanted one because she thought that if we could hang it on the wall, it would free up a bunch of space in the living room. Our old TV was in a giant armoire that took up a lot of space.

When we got the new TV, I immediately hung it on the wall. It totally opened up the room - tons of space now. Except there was a problem. Where do we put or Tivo, Dvd player, Playstation3, Surround sound receiver, subwoofer,& Wii? Temporarily, while were were deciding on a solution, we moved our console table under the TV to hold things.

After a few days, Val got used to the idea of having a small shelf-like thing under the TV - as long as it didn't stick out too far into the room - and as long as it was wood and NOT glass. I looked online and saw some cool shelves, but they were almost always glass. Also, whether they were glass or wood, they were over $200 - way more than we wanted to spend.

So I designed and built my own. The requirements were these:
It should be as small as possible.
It should be wood.
It should prevent overheating.
That last point is important. Most cabinet-type entertainment centers have nice wooden shelves, but don't leave room for the heat to move or escape. Excess heat destroys electronic equipment. I've had a number of DVD players die because of overheating, and video game systems run very hot and their built-in fans get very loud as they try to cool themselves.

After taking a bunch of measurements I set to work. I already had most of a sheet of 1/2" MDF left over from making some utility shelves in the laundry nook. I would have preferred 5/8", but what's 1/8", right?
So I cut all the pieces. I had calculated the optimal shelf heights, so rather than making it with adjustable shelves, I decided to make them fixed. I got to use my new router for this. I made dados for the first time! Awesome!

I did a few things to help control the heat; First was optimally placed shelves, second, I left a space behind the shelves to create a chimney for the hot air, and third I installed a fan.

The fan I used is just an old computer fan. They run on 12v DC, so I scavenged an old 12vDC converter and wired them together. Then I cut a circle (almost) on one side wall, near the top. Next I traced the fan on the inside and, using my router, shaved out a 1/4" to inset the fan.

You can see how the shelves don't come all the way flush against (what will be) the back wall. This lets all the hot air move up the back to get blown out by the fan.

To help minimize the cable mess, I installed a powerstrip inside one wall. Now all the power cords remain inside the cabinet and just a single power cord goes out to the wall. Through the small hole at the bottom. The bigger hole is for all the connector cables to use.

So with that done, the next problem is the ugly cables connecting everything to the TV. I wanted to put them in the wall, but I wanted a solution that made it easy to add/remove new cables, but also looked nice. I worked up a plan to install a pvc (ABS actually) pipe in the wall to send the cables through.

First off, I had to install an electric plug behind the TV for it to plug into. I just piggy-backed off of a plug near the floor and extended it up.

Now it's time to tackle the pvc set-up. Here are the parts I used. 2 deep electrical boxes, a 2' length of 2" PVC, and a couple of ends that had a screw ring on them. I started by cutting a hole in the side of each electrical box. Then I slid the threaded end through the hole and screwed on the ring.

Next, I had to cut a HUGE hole in the wall in order to slide the pipe in.

Then I just had to patch up the holes (Thank goodness for textured walls!). I used a couple of solid plate covers and cut large holes in them to cover the boxes.

After a little paint on the wall - TADA! The finished product!
- Well almost finished. I've decided to add a small trim around the front edges and Val has plans to paint it, but outher than that - TADA!

In other news, I have been growing my hair out since Zoey was born (July) - just for fun.

Finally I decided to get a hair cut - just for fun.

One of those pictures is actually me upsidedown which is why the red face.

Val wouldn't let me keep that so I got my hair all-the-way cut.

In other other news. I designed and built my own workbench for the garage. I also hung a pegboard on the wall to hold my tools. I built the workbench to be a height that would help out with my table saw. The top is 2 pieces of 3/4" mdf for a total of 1 1/2" of sturdiness. The legs and frame are made of 2x4s. In all, this cost me around $50 to build - Chaaa--eeep! All the kids - except Zoey, of course, helped me build it. They each drilled some holes and screwed some screws.

My garage is starting to feel like a real garage!

It's a long distance call to my nextdoor neighbor.

2010-01-20T08:37:00.000-08:00

I've lived in California for 2 1/2 years now and still haven't updated my cellphone number (or is it 'cell phonenumber', or maybe 'cell phone number'?).
My argument has always been that there are several people in the world that I know through school, etc who have my UT number and occasionally call me. It would be a pain to make sure everyone would get my new number and I'm sure I would forget someone.

Anyway, the last 6 months or so I have been getting a lot of wrong number calls from Utah. By 'a lot', I mean like one or two a week. It's usually teenagers (or maybe collage-age kids) looking for Tiffany. They seem to be genuine mistakes rather than ongoing prank calls, because once I say something like "This isn't Tiffany's phone", they simply reply:

"Uh... Sorry wrong number" and hang up.

My guess is either that Tiffany has a number similar to mine and has terrible penmanship so people misread her number (or possibly she quotes it wrong - I always find myself dylexifying the 6 and 7), or mine is a random number Tiffany gives as her own to people who she really doesn't want to hear from again.

What ever the reason, I've decided to start having fun with it.

This weekend I got a text from a UT number I didn't recognize. I could have ignored it, but I couldn't resist. Here's how the conversation went:

THEM: "Whats up?"
ME: "They found us out"
THEM: "What?"
ME: "I'm serious! U know what I mean!"

At this point they called me. I let it go to voice mail so they found out that they had a wrong number. Immediately afterward they texted back.

THEM: "Think u have a wrong number"
ME: "U texted me first. U must have a wrong number"
THEM: "Ya I do. But thats funny u sound like ur in trouble"
ME: "Ya, don't tell anyone k?"
THEM: "Uh dont even know you dude"

That was last I heard from them but a couple of hours later I got another text from a different number. I assume it was the first texter's friend texting me after hearing about the previous conversation.

THEM: "I Think they are on to us. What should we do?"
ME: "The chip is enroute. Stay away from the lab." - at this point It occured to me that if the government were secretly spying on text messages, this would look kinda suspicious. So to avoid any unnecessary homeland security involvement, I ended the message with "Beware the wildabeests."
THEM: "You are @%?! crazy"

That was the end of that.

This morning, however, I got a call from a completely different UT number. I answered the phone:

"Utah County Coroner's Office."

To which the caller replied: "Uh... Sorry wrong number" and hung up.

Way more satisfying!

So until (and if) I finally make the effort to change my phone number, if you call or text me and get an unusual response. I appologize. You apparently aren't important enough to be programed into my phone and therefore appear to be one of Tiffany's friends. Might I suggest contacting me via facebook (if I haven't "ignored" you there), maybe email. Or even via my blog.

On another note. Check out this link. If you type in your zipcode it will tell you which Star Wars planet your current weather most resembles.

An Essay on the Amazing

2009-12-23T10:55:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a book called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. It's a story set in Georgian England (think Jane Austen) about a couple of magicians trying to bring magic back to England. Not prestidigitation magic like Houdini or David Blaine, but real magic like Merlin or Harry Potter. Early on in the book one of the magicians is asked to perform a feat of magic. When he does, the witnesses are amazed at what they see. I, on the other hand, was less than amazed.

The reason I bring this up is that I've been thinking about how common amazing things seem to us now days. With the constant advancement of visual effects, we routinely see things that previously could have only been imagined. The result is that, to be impressed, we need to see something even more amazing than before. We become accustomed to Hollywood explosions, spaceships, and magic. I've tried to imagine how I would feel if I witnessed, in real life, the amazing feat of magic from the book. I think I would be initially impressed, but then would quickly bore of it. I have begun to wonder if I will ever be truly amazed again. I am, we are, desensitized to the “amazing”. Now, desensitization is usually a bad thing, and “amazement” desensitization has some negative aspects too; You can't help but to be disappointed when you see the Space Shuttle's replacement, the Ares & Orion Constellation space craft.

Reality just doesn't meet our higher expectations. But I believe our desensitization actually pushes us to constantly raise the bar of “amazing”. That means we end up advancing our technology and probing deeper into our imaginations to bring it to life.

I obviously have a special interest in, and love for, movies and their visual effects, but I think that if you think about it, even you, can think of something from a movie, or a movie itself that amazed you enough to put a little tick mark in your life, marking that as a standard by which to compare all things “amazing”.

Think about it. Go ahead. Think of any movie that you remember having ground breaking effects. For me, I think of the water tentacle in The Abyss. That was the first time I had seen something like that that didn't look like a puppet or some had drawn animation.

Next I think of the liquid-metal guy from Terminator 2. Both movies were visual effects benchmarks.

Then came Jurassic Park. That movie raised the bar to the stratosphere. Here we had realistic dinosaurs. They had realistic flesh, movement and weight. No longer were dinosaurs to be portrayed by jerky stop-motion puppets. If it could be done with dinosaurs, why not everything else. We were convinced that computers could do anything in movies. We all began to wonder how long it would be until live actors were replaced by computer generated characters.

Since then, visual effects have continued to get more and more realistic, more and more amazing. There continues to be films that mark the memory as having amazing effects; The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. But we haven't seen anything raise the bar to the extent Jurassic Park did – until now.

Before I go into that, I want to take a couple of quick tangents. First, a bit of history of our amazement, followed by a bit of science of what amazes us.

Film has been around for over a hundred years. Animation was there almost from the beginning. One early benchmark of “amazing” was Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur.

Watch the film here if you want. It's about 6 minutes long.

This was hand drawn animation in black and white. It was the first combination of live action and animation. It was so amazing that the audiences thought it was real! Can you believe it!? They were convinced Gertie was a real life dinosaur. I often wonder how the people could be so stupid as to think that Gertie were real. That was 1914, skip ahead to 1993 and compare Jurassic Park, and now I begin to understand.

The people of 1914 were reacting based on the experiences they had had in their lives. They had seen other silent films staring real humans, but even then, they were in black an white and didn't really move the way we do in real life. They knew those were actors and bought into the illusion film presented, filing silent films in the “Acceptably real” category of their mind. Now they see Gertie, also black and white, not quite moving right, and staring with a real actor, and it fits neatly into the same “Acceptably real” category.

In 1993, our experiences had already added color and sound to film. Practical special effects (latex monsters and miniatures) were standard. They didn't always move right, or the lighting was a little off, but despite all that, we filed them in our “Acceptably real” category. Now comes Jurassic Park with digital visual effects. The dinosaurs seemed to move as realistically as the human actors. The lighting was correct enough that they seemed to actually exist in the world of the movie. Suddenly our “Acceptably real” category emptied itself to make room for the new reality. The category began to fill up again as movies continued to reach or surpass the standard set by Jurassic Park.

Now a change in direction. A bit of science. The Uncanny Valley. From Wikipedia:
The uncanny valley hypothesis holds that when robots [and computer generated humans] look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.

So basically, humans can be represented in film very crudely, and we accept them as appealing. The closer they get to looking and acting like humans, the more appealing and acceptable they become. Eventually they get to a point where they are very close to real humans, but rather than finding them appealing and believable, they are ugly, lifeless and revolting. What happens is that initially, with the less than perfect human representations, they are far enough from reality that our subconscious minds overlook the shortcomings, chalking them up to the fact that they are really not real. Some good examples are the characters in The Incredibles. Their proportions are characterized enough that they couldn't be real, but we never question that they are supposed to be humans, and we feel comfortable sympathizing and empathizing with them. We accept them as people.

As you get closer to reality, like the characters in The Polar Express, or Beowulf, where the characters look very much like humans, and seem to move like humans, you reach the deep uncanny valley. Suddenly your subconscious mind can't see and obvious signs that these aren't supposed to be real, so it no longer overlooks any shortcomings. On the contrary, it goes into defensive mode, constantly alerting you that something isn't right – someone is trying to deceive you – warning, these humans are not to be trusted! They are not what they appear! It's extremely difficult to name what it is exactly that sets off the alarms, and that much more difficult for the artists to overcome. The audience can only identify that the characters creeped them out, or seemed to be zombies. As visual effects go, we have reached the edge of the uncanny valley, and some are falling in.

On the other side of the uncanny valley, you have humans characters so real that we fully accept them as real. It's never been crossed.

Ok. Now back to my original line of thought, visual effects benchmarks. The bar has been significantly raised, a new historical benchmark set. And I was completely caught off guard. The movie is Avatar.

Going into the film, my expectations were low. There was so much hype for this film that I knew it could never live up to it. I had heard that they used motion capture for the animation. That is the process where they put the actor into a full bodysuit covered with dots or ping-pong balls. They record the motion of each dot then plug it into the computer generated character, thereby recreating the actual movements of the real actor.

It's the technology used on the Polar Express, Beowulf, and the new Christmas Carol. So basically it's the technology that pushes you into the uncanny valley. I expected to be offended by $500 million zombies. I had seen the trailers, and thought the characters were ridiculous. They were supposed to be “real”, but they looked like cartoons. It looked to me like this was an animated film, not a live action film with visual effects. The characters were lanky blue cat people with giant eyes.

I was so wrong.

I kept trying to pick out the negative things in the execution of the animation. I kept looking for the zombies. After 30 minutes, I gave up. I was completely awed by the detail and depth of Pandora. The Na'vi people were odd at first, but within minutes, I completely bought in. They moved so completely realistically, that I found myself fighting with the notion that these are really actors in make-up, not computer generated characters. Their skin had pores, and you could feel the slight translucency, the depth of the tissue, the life in the cells. The facial expressions were completely convincing.

It's difficult to point out how beautiful it all was. One thing I can say is that by the end of the film, anytime the humans were on screen next to the Na'vi, It was the humans that I found disappointing. I almost didn't believe in their reality.

Did it cross the uncanny valley? I don't know. Probably not. It's definitely not in the uncanny valley. I mean the characters really are lanky blue cat people, so our subconscious mind surely is overlooking things. All I know is that when the film was over, I felt a little depressed when my practical mind broke the news that, as cool as it looked, the Na'vi were not real. I was actually disappointed by that fact, as irrational as it is. So it may not have crossed the uncanny valley, but it sure felt like it.

Since I'm talking about the movie, I may as well address a criticism I have heard about it. That is that the story is weak, simple, familiar. That it is just “Dances With Wolves” in space. Well, yes it is just Dances With Wolves, but last I checked, that was a good movie. A good story. Sure it's simple, but it's not weak. And it is familiar, even Pixar's “Cars”, is just Dances With Wolves on four wheels. By choosing a story that is already established as a good one, James Cameron could focus on all the visual effects while being comfortable that the story was sound. Most big effects films focus on the effects try to force some story elements in between.

Avatar is without a doubt, the most visually amazing film I have ever seen. I mean, It forced me to write all this down. And even more, it convinced me that I can still be amazed.

A Different Perspective

2009-12-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

It's funny how your perspective can change under different circumstances. I used to be pretty hard on my kids for being wild. They would run, jump, whoop and holler, and I would yell at them and tell them to calm down.

Now we own our own home which doesn't share a wall, floor or ceiling with any other resident. After making the kids tiptoe around the house and making them go outside if they had to burp, sneeze, swallow, breathe, or do anything else in the past year that would make a sound louder than 1 decibel (so as not to prompt a visit from our grumpy neighbor), Val and I decided to let the kids be wild for a week to get it out. I figured they would be extremely annoying while Val and I patiently counted down the passing of the week. It happened a little differently than expected.

They have been wild. They have competitions to see who can scream the loudest. They climb everything in and outside the house and jump off it. They never ever walk - ever. They run full speed everywhere. This was all expected. What wasn't was how much fun I've had watching them finally get to be kids. The other day I was working in the yard and Mia was riding her scooter around our driveway. I told her she could go ahead and ride in the street if she wanted (remember we live in a cul-de-sac). She looked at me like I was crazy and didn't know weather or not I was teasing her. I told her it was really fine, but she should just watch for neighbors who might drive out of their driveway. Her eyes got as big as softballs and she let out a siren-pitched scream that rattled my bones. She scooted down the driveway and all the way across the court to to the other side then immediately back and then back again, siren scream never stopping except to add a few "ho hos" and "hee hees". She was in heaven. Soon she figured the scooter was too slow so she pushed it off on it's own back up the drive way and began runnung back and forth. Xander came out all excited (because he seems to be the only one who can tell the difference between Mia's screams of joy and screams of anger without seeing her face) The two of them ran back and forth and around the circular sidewalk.

I just sat back and laughed at how much fun they were having.

Another time, I came in the house and found CJ and Xander on the floor beside each other and Mia on the couch jumping over them. The second she landed, one of them would get up and trade places and have their turn. I told them to stop it right now! I explained that they could really hurt someone if they didn't jump far enough. Mia made a comment about how she is good at jumping and already knows she can jump far enough. I agreed and encouraged them to see how far they could jump from the couch without someone under them. So they did.

I just sat back and laughed at how much fun they were having.

Just before we mowed it, Mia's job was to rake the leaves in the backyard. She was so excited. She grabbed the rake and raked a pile about two feet square and about 5 leaves high. Then she dropped the rake and JUMPED onto the pile yelling woo hoo! I thought it was hilarious that she was so excited because she knew she could make a pile of leaves to jump into. I helped her scoop the small pile into the trash can and she raked a new pile to jump into before throwing those away as well. She did it over and over.

I just sat back and laughed at how much fun she was having.

Growing up, I hated mowing the lawn. I also used to be amazed at how my dad would spend hours on Saturday doing yard work. I was not looking forward to the day I would have to be responsible and take care of my own yard. I have my own yard now. It has a lawn and bushes and two big trees. I bought my first lawn mower. It looks like a hot rod! It red and has a sleek modern shape. I started it up and only had to pull the rope one time! I kinda couldn't wait for Saturday so I could mow the lawn. CJ thought it was pretty cool too. She said "Hey, how about you let me mow the lawn and you could pay me like a dollar or something"

Deal!

Now before I go on, I should explain that it crossed my mind that I'm probably ripping my own daughter off by paying her a dollar for this work. Then it occurred to me that right now the work is worth a dollar to her. Eventually it won't be enough so I can raise it up to five (probably two to start)and she'll be re-motivated. No use in jumping to far ahead in the payment plan yet.

So I taught her about how to mow the lawn. I had her go around the whole yard looking for sticks and rocks. Then I explained some safety stuff and started it up. I pushed it around the perimeter, pointing out sprinkler heads and high spots to watch out for. After a full circle, I figured it wouldn't hurt to take her around one more time before I let her try on her own. I was having fun taking care of my own lawn. Then we came to a tree and I showed her how to get around it. Now it was her turn. She took over and pushed it down two stripes. I asked if it would be ok if I went ahead and finished this part because it got tight in one corner. So I finished that off. I let her mow another stripe then took over again and asked if she would feel bad if I just finished the back lawn. She let me.

She sat back and laughed at how much fun I was having.

Easiest dollar she ever earned.

When we moved to the front. I once again did the perimeter, but then handed it over to her to finish (It took her about five minutes to be done). Mia was out watching us. I asked her if she would sweep the grass cuttings from the sidewalk back onto the grass. I offered to show her how, but she insisted she already knew. And did she ever.

Now you get to sit back and laugh at how much fun she was having.

So it turns out that I love that my kids get the freedom to be kids now. It makes me happier and way more patient. I also like to tke care of my own house. Huh. Who would have guessed?

He's Done. Finally.

2009-11-07T08:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a project that I have been working on for about a year. That sounds like a lot, but I only worked on it for a few minutes here, a few there. I think the total actual time was probably more like 20 hours.

Anyway, here's the process.

It all started when a neighbor was throwing away a perfectly good globe that only had a collapsed southern hemisphere. I looked at the northern hemisphere and, naturally, the first thing I thought was "Hey, that looks like R2-D2's head!"

The next thing I did was find a few good pictures of R2-D2 for reference. The diameter of the globe is 12", so with that measurement, I brought the images into Illustrator, tossed on a grid, sized the images so the diameter was 12 units and, ta da! I could now figure out the correct dimensions of everything else. I drew up a few schematics and moved on to construction.

First, I needed materials. I searched for 12" diameter cylinders for a few weeks. I considered 5 gal buckets, but they were not exactly the right size and they had a bunch of extra plastic around the top. I looked at plastic garbage cans, but they almost always tapered a bit. Finally, I thought of a sonotube. It's a cardboard tube used for making concrete pillars. We used one when we built the Thanksgiving Point water tower on the Lehi pioneer-days float 7 years ago. A quick visit to Home Depot, and I had a 12" diameter cardboard cylinder. It was 4 feet long, and I only needed 15", so I cut it down to size. Incidentally, if anyone has any cool ideas of what I can use the remaining tube for, let me know. It's now in 2 pieces.

For the legs I chose my best friend, foamboard. 3/4 inch. I also cut some circles and glued them into the tube and the dome for extra support. I used a poster mailing tube for his neck.

With help from the R2-D2 builder's group online, I got a template of R2's skin. I scaled it down and simplified it a bit.

I covered the cylinder with white poster board and struggled with what to use for the outer skin. I considered more poster board, but it was so thin that you really couldn't see the depth. I tried styrene plastic (1/16"). This stuff is amazing, and I will use it in future projects for sure. The cool thing about it is that first, you can cut it with an exacto knife (straight cuts just require a simple score and break), and second, you can heat it up with a hot air gun (or oven) and it becomes pliable, within seconds it hardens into the new shape. I actually covered the back half with it and cut out all the shapes. In the end I decided that it wasn't going to work. Although straight cuts are easy, if they are on the interior surface, you can't easily snap them off so you have to make a zillion cuts. I ripped off the plastic and went with craft foam.

The sheets are smaller than I needed, so I had to piece together 4 sheets to cover him. But talk about easy. I was able to glue it down with elmers glue and cut out all the pieces in just a couple of hours (compared to about 4 hours on one side - and needing to use super glue, with the styrene).

As for the details on the body, I built them out of foamboard and styrene plastic. For his face, I used parts from old camera lenses, video cameras, water bottles, and plastic Easter eggs. The feet are also constructed out of foamboard but I used 3" tires from a big RC Mercades and wire hangers for the axles.

Then I spray painted the head silver and the body and legs glossy white (the foam stood up just fine, though it didn't get very glossy). Next I hand painted the metallic blue and a bit of silver where needed. I connected his legs to the body using toilet paper tubes.

True fans may notice that he isn't actually 100% finished. He's missing the battery packs on his inner feet with cable connecting into the foot. I will be using several toilet paper tubes for those, so I'm waiting for the inventory. Once I got him this complete though, Val wanted him out of the house, so he lives in my office at work. For now he sits on my couch, but I have the idea brewing of building him a proper "place". Maybe a simple pedestal, or maybe the top of an X-wing fighter - wait why not a full sized X-Wing fighter! Well, no hurry, the idea will come eventually.

Oh, And he made it to work in time for Halloween, so here he is in costume.

...The Highest Form of Flattery

2009-10-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

Today, instead of going down to San Diego with my friends to catch the BYU vs SDSU game, I decided to do something with my family. We went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin and Art Festival. It was a lot of fun - way more fun than the totally predictable outcome of the football game.

To get to Half Moon Bay, heretofore referred to in the local gangsta speak as HMB, you hop on hwy 92 and drive west until you come to the ocean. I let Valerie drive because she tends to get car sick on windy (as in very winding - not as in very blowing) roads, and 92 is super squiggly. You know you're getting close because you pass a field of pumpkins.

Then you pass another, and another.

And then you pass 2 more.

And then you pass another.

And another.

And, you guessed it:

A bunch of metal dinasaurs.

Once we got there, we followed the crowd to an empty field with a guy taking $5 to let you park. He had no uniform or anything, so for all we know he was some homeless guy who once asked someone for five bucks, and upon seeing him receive that money, everyone else decided he's the guy to pay.

Anyway, we walked from the parking field down the main street and came to a booth run by some organic snack food company. They were giving away free samples so Val and her friend Lora (who brought her family too), grabbed as many as they could carry and started stashing them in every nook they could find in our strollers. As we continued walking down the street we noticed that there was a line of people a block long waiting to get the samples. We totally cut in front of everyone!

After deciding that we may have a couple hundred people mad at us, we decided to get lost in the crowd, so we visited all the craft booths. It was your average street festival type of set up - times 3! Tons of booths selling paintings, photos, jewelry, pottery, puppets - all the stuff you expect to see - just a lot more of it.

There were several new ideas that we saw though. (Disclaimer: "New" to me. Maybe its all some ancient art that you already deem obsolete, but it was new to me) This is where I derived the name of this post. We took pictures of everything and I am sharing them here with you all because I'm sure you'll flatter the artists by imitating them - or by just flat out stealing their ideas.

The first is probably not that new, but I saw a bunch of people walking around with their new purchase, and I don't remember seeing this exact implementation.
It's vinyl nonsense signs on glass or Plexiglas in a frame. You can fit a lot more nonsense in a picture frame!

Next, we have framed pictures made from polymer clay. They are dimensional, but still pretty shallow so they don't feel like deep shadow boxes. Some are matted a different levels so it feels like it all belongs together, rather than a matte on one plane and the image on another. The style totally reminded me of Mom.

Next are quilted quiet boxes. They had quiet books too like the ones that have a pocket on each page where you hide a soft little animal. These boxes were the same idea - just in box form.

The last craft is these cool "crazy" bird houses.

So after loosing the mob in the craft booth crowd, we checked out some of the other sights.

Giant pumpkins!

Giant pumpkin carving! (And No, I don't mean pumpkin carving being done by larger than life people.)

Soon it was time for a potty break. If only we could find a toilet.

It turns out that the toilets were the only place without a crowd.

While there we made a discovery.

Apparently the toilet was haunted.

That's a joke (though they were very scary). It's a little funnier when you follow the signs to the actual haunted house and find an outhouse at the beginning.

We took all the kids (except Zoey) through the "Family Friendly" haunted house. It was pirate themed and all the scary actors were kids, so it was just right for even Xander. A little scary - but not too much. The kids all loved it the most out of the whole day.
I think I did to.
Well, that and the fact that BYU was able to win even without my support.
Not going to San Diego was definitely the better choice!

Like Father, Like Daughter... sorta.

2009-10-04T21:13:00.000-07:00

It's October! That means it's almost Halloween! My favorite time of year! Time to Decorate!

When we moved to California, we were moving into a teeny tiny apartment with no storage space. We had to make some sacrifices, so I sold 90% of my Halloween decorations. It was fine at the time, but every Halloween since has been a bit depressing when it comes to decorating. Last year Val was so depressed about it that she and the kids made a bunch of decorations for the house. After Halloween, she bought a few decorations at the post-Halloween sales for us to use this year. One thing she got me was a 3 foot articulated skeleton.
I like skeletons.
I named him "Bones" after my last 3 foot articulated skeleton who got "garage sold".

Tonight we decided to decorate the house for FHE. I broke out the 3 - no, the 2 - no, our only box of decorations and we went to work. 30 seconds later the house was decorated with a giant spider on the chandelier, window clings on the window, my funeral dirge playin' skull on top of the book shelf, and three porcelain ghosts on another shelf. All done. But wait! where is Bones?

Why, he's (or rather "she's", as I have been informed) playing with Mia!

Mia has adopted Bones as her friend. Bones sat next to her on the tiny couch. They played dress up. They danced and did gymnastics. Bones is having the best time ever. Mia likes how big Bones is - almost as big as her - yet she can carry her around like her own baby.

The picture at the top of the post is where Bones was left when Mia went to bed. tucked snugly in the corner (Mia's Happy Spot), with a box for a pillow and another box in case she gets bored.

It's nice to see how my love of Halloween and scary movies has rubbed off on my kids. I first noticed it when warning Xander that a movie is "kinda scary" convinces him to watch, even if he has to stop his tantrum first. They love movies like Coraline (Mia wants to be her for halloween), Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride, Monster House, and the "scary" Harry Potters.

My kids aren't strange or creepy or goth or "Wednesday" like (think Addams Family). They are cheerful, pleasant, happy kids. In fact, they are fascinated by the pretend nature of scary things. Maybe I'm raising a brood of future visual effects giants!

One can only hope.

Crafty Nonsense Signs

2009-09-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

So I was looking through my brother's wife's blog Poppies at Play last night. It's pretty amazing, all the craftiness she does (and her blog followers too). One thing that seems to be really popular all around, and to be honest has been popular for years, is the idea of putting vinyl lettering on a painted slab of wood. I call these nonsense signs. Well, I thought I'd get in on the action. So I've analyzed the concepts and would like to offer some better ideas to all those crafty folks out there.

The biggest thing I've noticed is that the words you put on the boards don't have to mean anything - hence the name nonsense sign. I don't mean use gibberish, I mean use any words you like.
Here's an example I found on the internet. It's a pretty cool idea. Make a bunch of oversize scrabble tiles and lay them out on your wall. The only problem with this one is that the words have no connection to one another (other than the physical cross-word connection).

Here's my update to the idea. All of the words have a meaningful connection to one another. In fact the placement to the names relative to each other may have profound meaning and should cause you to ponder.

The next idea is to choose a quote from somewhere. Here's one from the internet.

Duh! Apparently you should find a quote that states the obvious. To make it better, choose a useful quote, like this one from Yogi Berra.

The next idea is to take 2 unrelated words or phrases, put one in big bold letters and the other in small, skinny script, of contrasting color, directly on top of the other. The most common usage of this is a last name in bold and the phrase "families are forever" as the subscript. This is great, but be more creative! Pick words that are interesting to you like this.

Next we have this - and it's really fun. It's simply the last few words from a book. This is a poor example because the ellipses should be in front of the phrase indicating it is the end fragment of a sentence. But the idea is to not use a full sentence, but instead the last half or so. The best part is that the ambiguity of it's meaning is it's appeal.

Here's my version. I took the last words directly from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

Three more Ideas to go.

Choose a few random, alliterative nouns, and place a cute symbol between them. Here's one from the internet.

And here's my better version.

Next we have this.

It's a gerund with it's descriptor (the adjective). What the heck is "Country Living" supposed o mean? It doesn't matter! Here's mine.

The last one is the most minimalist. Simply use a single word. The best kind is is an imperative verb - like you are commanding someone. Andy made a big sign that said "Gather". Here is mine.

I hope I've inspired you to go out and buy a vinyl cutter and some wood and start making nonsense signs of your own!

Genetics

2009-09-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

One of the fun things about being a parent is when you see how much of yourself (or your family) gets inherited by your kids. Valerie spent the last four days in Michigan, with Zoey, visiting her family. That left me home alone with the other three kids. I was able to observe a couple of cool inheritances in my kids.

First, do you remember back when I was about 13 or 14, Joe was a year younger, and Sarah was about 10? If you are a member of my family, you probably do - unless you are Caleb (who wasn't born yet) or probably Abby (who was really little). If your are not a member of my family, it's ok, remembering it isn't all that important because I'm going to tell you about it anyway - so calm down. Anyway, Mom and Dad would head off on an adventurous weekend where they would save the world in the wilds of Borneo, leaving us kids to fend for ourselves. They knew we would be safe because Sarah would babysit everyone. Well not everyone, me and Joe didn't need babysitting, but we had more important things to do than watch a bunch of kids (like play Super Mario Brothers), so we were there just in case there was an emergency. Sarah took care of everyone else. She fed them, changed diapers, bossed them arround, mediated their arguments, put them to bed, gave them baths, etc.

Well it turns out that CJ has inherited that! I was obviously a carrier of the '10 year old taking care of everyone' gene (which was deactivated in me by the presence of a Y chromosome). These past four days CJ has cooked, cleaned, fed, bathed, played with, taught, mediated, and altogether mothered Mia and Xander while Val has been gone. Me? I had better things to do (like play Playstation and XBox) . She is awesome and I really couldn't have done it (by 'it' I mean get 150 head shots with my AK-47 in Call of Duty 4) without her. All kidding aside, she gets so excited to be the mom and reminds me a ton of Sarah that way.

The next thing I observed is something inherited not from me, but from Valerie.

It was very hot on Friday. It got up to 82 degrees. Hah! you may scoff - you who live in the middle of a desert! Well, you have to understand that becasue the average temperature (with the cool breeze coming off the Bay) is about 65- 70 degrees, no one here has an air conditioner. All you need to do is open the windows and you get a wonderful natural air conditioner. That's great until the temperature reaches 80 degrees. At that point, the wind stops. Now you are in an un-airconditioned house with no breeze at all. To make things worse, we live upstairs, so all the hot air accumulates in our house. While it's 82 degrees outside, its more like 89 degrees inside. Sure we have fans blowing nonstop, but it really is unbearable.

I tell you all this so that you will have some sympathy for us. Also, I tell you this so you understand why I left Mia's bedroom window open overnight Friday night. While she slept, a swarm of twenty million mosquitos came into her room and ate her, leaving a dry husk behind. Ok, so that is an exaggeration, there was really probably just one mosqito, and rather than a dry husk, it left a plump, oozing, puss filled princess behind. You see, Mia has inherited Val's alergy to Mosqitos. I didn't even know people could be alergic to mosquitos! Of course, I have inherited my mother's mosquitophobic aura which repels mosquitos. On the rare occasion that I get bit, the mosquito either combusts spontaneously, or imediately flies off in a panic, seconds before exploding with a loud POP! (CJ has inherited this from me). Afterward, there is hardly a mark of their attack.

Poor Mia (and Val) , draws mosquitos to her. They fly from the other side of the world just to taste her blood! After they bite her, rather than the little pimple-like itchy spot most people know, she gets a huge welt or hive that is frighteningly huge. On Friday night, she got bit a total of 10 times; One on her forearm, one on her triceps, one on the tip of her finger, and 7 times across her face, giving her a black eye.

I know! I know! they look like spider bites, but they're not. As miserable as she looks, she is actually still very cheerful - she gets that from Val too. I did, however get scolded by her about leaving her window open overnight. She told me I need to remember to shut it so the mosquitos (she cant say it, so pronounces it either "skamitos" or "posquitos") don't "eat her guts".

Oh, one last thing, we're talking about genetics - we get some of our genes from an egg - i have a picture of eggs at the top of the post! Ha! I tied it in! I really just wanted to show off the smiley that my eggs made by themselves - right before we turned them into lemon bars. The mouth was actually even cooler, but by the time I grabbed the camera to take the picture, it has started to slide to the side.

One more "one last thing":

I got mutton chops!

Also known as the kissable beard, (Val won't kiss me when I have facial hair) or inverted goatee. Check out how much red hair I have!

Señor Vader

2009-08-29T01:03:00.000-07:00

Xander just turned three, and since he is a huge Star Wars fan, we threw him a Star Wars themed birthday party. I'll let Val tell you specifics about the party on her blog, but she asked me to make something for the party, so I thought I'd share the step by step process.

The Project: a Darth Vader Piñata.

Step 1. Blow up a balloon. (you can do this your self, or ask someone with more experience to help).

Step 2. Paper-mache the balloon. (If you don't know how to do this, ask a kindergartner) For best results, I mix 1 cup of flour with enough water to make it about the consistency of white glue - then I add about half a bottle of white glue for added rigidity. I cover it with 3 full layers of newspaper. Let it dry for 24 hours - If you cheat and move on before a full day has passed, you are either impatient or terrible at following directions.

Step 3. Pop the balloon and pull it out leaving a nice shell. Now cut a hole in the top big enough to put all the organic, free-range, post-consumer recycled fruit (or whatever goodies you want) into it. I also made a ring from poster board and glued it to the bottom of the shell as a stand (It is also Señor Vader's neck).

Step 4. Add the string. You probably never thought about it before, but a pinata takes a lot of strain right at the point where the rope connects into the pinata. If you just poke some holes and run a string through them, the pinata will just fall out of the tree after a couple of hits while remaining intact. The solution? Run the string around the whole egg shape. That way, the strain is being taken across the whole surface. Tack it down in a few places with hot glue and add a layer or 2 of paper mache. For this one, I will be adding a face and helmet, so I just glued it down without the extra paper mache.

Step5. Sculpt the face and helmet. I used poster board and hot glue. It's ok to leave gaps here and there because I will be covering everything with more paper mache. I'm basically just building a frame to lay the paper mache onto.

Step 6. Cover everything with paper mache and let it dry another 24 hours. Make sure you cover the goodie hole with some posterboard so you don't soak the goodies.

Step 7. Paint it. Black. Glossy. Use spray paint (If you need help here, ask a teenage boy).

Step 8. Beat the Force out of it. Of course there is really only one way to properly break a Señor Vader pinata --- with a lightsaber! Luckily Valerie got some for pretty cheap at Oriental Trading.

My Big Baby

2009-07-08T00:15:00.001-07:00

Yes She's Big.

New Stuff I Made

2009-07-03T19:50:00.000-07:00

For Father's Day Val got me a 14.5" deep dish pizza pan. I tried it out the other day for the first time. My goal was to make a chicago style pizza. It you don't know what that is, it's like an actual pie without a top crust. In other words, the crust goes along the bottom like normal, but then goes up the sides of a deep dish - making a deep dish pan shape out of crust. Then you fill it to the top with the topping - but upside down. The cheese is on the bottom, followed by veggies and pepperoni, then topped with a very chunky sauce. I throw a couple of pepperonis on top of the sauce so I can tell when it's done cooking (The pepperonis get crispy).

The above is not my pizza. It's from a place called Zachary's in Berkeley which is delicious! It's my inspiration. Here is my result. It's enormous!

Although it tasted alright, it was too big. One apple thick! That's a third of a Smurf! The problem was that I used my usual dough recipe which tends to rise quite a bit. Confining it to a deep dish pan forces it to rise straight up. Now I am on a quest to find a deep dish crust recipe which will remain thinner (but not cracker-like)while being delicious! I'll keep you posted as I progress toward my goal.

The next thing I made was for my kids. My kids have been wanting their own light sabers. I've see a few nerf-like swords online for $15 or more each. A friend gave us a couple, but the inner stick broke pretty quickly. As I was trying to fix them, It occured to me that I could make way better ones on my own.

So I did.

It cost me $3 to make 4 swords.

I bought a couple of water weenie/noodles from the dollar store. Next I bought a length of 1/2" pvc pipe. (I even cut it down to size right there at the store). Next I slid the pipe down the hole of the noodle. Finished! I taped the handles just to make them look nicer.

I had a couple of feet left over, so I left only a short bit of pipe showing, and plan on connectling them with string (or chain) for nerf Nunchucks.

I made one other thing, but it's not done yet. It should be done by Sunday. I'll let Val show that one.

The Promised Land!

2009-06-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Today, as our June "Discovering California" activity, we visited, probably the most fun place I have ever been too: Adventure Playland in Berkley (or Burpley, according to Mia). There are a TON of pictures here, so sorry if it gets tedious. Be sure to look at each one, because I will plant more text here and there just to keep your attention.

We found this place in a book I bought Val about things to do in the area. The description was pretty vague. It described it as a playground that had tools for the kids to play with. I was imagining some kind of outdoor , hands-on museum or something.

As we got close to it, I got worried. I only caught a glimpse through the trees, but I asked Val if she was sure this place was open. She said it should be, because it was after 10:00. I clarified that I meant open in the "not out of business" sort of way, because, well, It looked condemned.

We parked and started walking toward it and this is what we saw.

Definately condemned.

Except that there were kids playing on the structures.

As we walked in the entrance gate, we were required to sign a waiver for our kids. Imediately after that, there was a little shed with hammers, saws, clamps, and nails. on the other side were small tables built out of scrap wood.

I figured this must be the hands-on part. I guess the kids would have some fun putting nails into some small scrap wood, or cutting a piece with a hand saw. We asked to use some tools and the guy in the shed pointed us to the sign beside us. It said that you have to earn the tools by doing things like finding 10 nails on the ground (they even gave you a huge magnet on the end of a rope that you could just drag around as you played and it would pick up any nails around), or finding 5 large (finger sized)splinters, or trash, etc. I thought, Hey that's a pretty cool way of helping keep the place safe and clean. We got a magnet and set about playing on the various, scrap-wood structures.

There were even several graffiti covered, abandoned boats to play in.

CJ's favorite was the zip wire.

Pretty soon we had found enough nails. We traded them in and each of the kids grabbed a hammer or saw and some scrap wood and took them to the work tables and hammered or cut.

The kid's interest in that lasted about 5 minutes. They were ready to go back and play. Then I had a revelation. I overheard one of the workers explaining to someone that if they wanted to build a roof, they had to make it slanted so nobody would mistake it for a floor and fall through.

A choior of angels began to sing and the brightness of the day became more glorious.

This entire place was built by the kids (and their parents) who played there! The point of earning the tools was so you could then build on to anything you wanted to. You could even demolish walls and rebuild them to your own liking.

These were not cheap, scrap wood, graffiti-covered play structures. They were forts! Clubhouses! Treeless treehouses! Each one painted beautifully by it's occupants.

HEAVEN!

I grabbed the kids and their tools and dragged them to the largest fort. As we went by, I saw they had bins filled with scrap wood of all types and sizes! This is better than any toy or candy store!

We grabbed a few boards and went to work adding a little room to the fort.

Xander was amazing. He would take a nail and get it started all by himself!

We found a junked windsurf board and used it on one of the walls. Here is our finished section of the fort.

We would have finished more, but Xander was ready for a nap, so we had to go. On our way back to the car, we took a look at our work and Val pointed out that someone had given the fort an appropriate name. (It's in red just above the fence on the right side.)

Our wall may not even exist anymore by the end of the day, but that's what make this place so awesome. Everybody gets to change it however they want.

It turned out to be so much fun. I wish some of my Brothers and sisters could come out and visit us so I could have another excuse to go to adventure land.

We could even get a babysitter to watch the kids ;)

What are you doing?

2009-05-29T13:34:00.001-07:00

If you are reading this, you obviously have time that would be better spent watching "Up"! Still here? Watch it again!

Famous Family Members

2009-05-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

As you know, "UP" comes out on May 29. As part of the marketing, the Movie Surfers from the Disney Channel did some promo clips about it. For one of them, they wanted to see how kids would react to a talking dog (because there is a talking dog in Up - but not your everyday, run of the mill, animated talking dog - he's way cooler). Anyway, Mia was one of dozens of kids who got to meet a real life dog that could talk. It's really quick, but you can see her on the Disney Channel during a random commercial break. An easier way is to go to the Movie Surfer's website HERE. Click on the link called "Blaine learns the mind of Dug". You will see Mia at about 1:26. I suggest you watch the whole clip, but if you are only interested in Mia, here she is. Oh yeah, Val, Xander and I are there for a second too.

About a week ago, there were a bunch of people from the press at Pixar for a screening. They also got to take a ride in a chair hanging from helium balloons. Here are some pictures I took.

One of the marketing things they're doing is advertising on this huge dirigible that flies all over the bay area. A dirigible is not a blimp - it has an inner frame that gives it it's shape. A blimp is basically a giant helium balloon. This picture was taken by a pilot friend of one of my coworkers.

On Sunday we had dinner with a family from church. They have a Model T Ford that still works. The kids and I got to ride around town in it.

One last thing, do you remember this?

It's the Academy Award that Wall-e won. Well, I just found out that Pajama Gladiator won a student Academy Award! Only 2 other BYU shorts have won that award, so this is super huge! And to answer everybodys questions: The award goes to the Director, Glenn Harmon (and it's about time he gets recognized for his awesome work!). We don't know which place we won (1st, 2nd, 3rd), that will be revealed at the awards ceremony in June. The trophy is not a golden Oscar statuette, it is usually a nice, heavy block thing with a medallion on it featuring a carving of the Oscar. One other interesting thing is that the other 2 winners are the same 2 films that won the student Emmy with us! That's weird! Oh - and that means that one of them is "Kites", also a BYU short! I'm happy for the Kites folks, but I hope we beat them this time (they beat us in the Emmys)

Wrap It "Up"!

2009-05-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

So last week was the wrap party for "Up". Everyone looks forward for years to the wrap party, and they never disappoint. Everyone dresses up in their most elegant clothes, we watch the finished film together, and spend the rest of the night (into the wee hours) dancing and partying. Here are some photos of our evening, compliments of Mia.

This is Valerie and me in our nice clothes getting ready to go to the party.

Here is an actual scene from the film. You can see all the main characters.

This is the crowd of people going to the "Ball" - which could only happen in a castle (but actually happened in a couple of beautifully restored art-deco theaters).

If you want to see some photos I took, let me know and I'll send you the link. For the sake of privacy, I don't want to post them for the general public.

In order to go to the wrap party, Val and I had to miss a dessert auction fundraiser at the church. We still participated though. Val made homemade oreos and I decorated them with an "Up" theme (Val added the balloons - which was genius). The dish apparently went for quite a sum.

Valerie mentioned on her blog that I wore an ugly tie to the party. Well, that was my intention, but I came across an interesting phenomenon. Before I get into that, let me explain my reasoning behind the ugly tie. In the movie there is a sequence where I shaded 11 different ties - most of which were pretty ugly. I thought it would be appropriate to wear my own. If I would have thought about it earlier, I bet I could have found much closer matches to the ties I made in the movie, but I only thought about it last minute, so I ran to the thrift store and bought the 5 ugliest ties I could find - for a buck a piece.

Have you ever heard of the uncanny valley? It's a concept that applies to robots and computer graphics. The idea is that if you have a circle with dots for eyes and a simple line for a smile, we fully accept it as a person. You can add more and more detail and the person gets more appealing and we have no problem accepting them as a person. Eventually you get more and more realistic, but just before you get perfectly realistic, there is this valley where suddenly the character seems like a zombie. They become extremely offensive to our senses and basically make you feel really oogy (think Polar Express). So basically, at some point they become so realistic that you would expect them to be fully believable, but instead, our subconcious pics up on all the things that make them not real, and accentuates them. Eventually, things get so realistic that you cross the valley and fully accept the character as a person again.

I explain this because I experienced something similar with ugly ties. I found 5 very ugly ties, but, it turns out, that at some point they reach a point of ugliness where we don't see them as ugly anymore. I'm sure, if they got uglier they would suddenly cross this uncanny valley and be ugly again. Anyway, you be the judge. The second tie from the right is a tie I bought years ago, thinking I was buying an ugly tie (I mean look at the colors!), but it has become one of my favorites.

Fire goes in...fire comes out the other end.

2009-04-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

Val's folks visited with us over Easter weekend. We all had a great time with them and were sad to see them go - except for one thing. They left us a TON of snacks. Val's dad, Lee, just buys random treats every time he goes to the store. Some times it's candy or cookies, other times it's nuts or chips, or crackers. When they left, they couldn't take it all with them, so we got to keep it all! I gathered it all together to look at it all at once (you know, like you do with your Halloween Candy or Christmas presents), and I noticed a trend in the treats.

If you look closely you will see that every box, every bag, every jar contains the words "Hot and Spicy" or "Jalapeno". That's right, we got a life time supply of Hot and Spicy (and pepper jack) Cheez-it's, Jalapeno Pringles, Hot and Spicy Ketchup, Jalapeno Mustard, Hot and Spicy V8, Hot and Spicy Jalapeno Cheetos, Hot peppers, and more. It's a good thing me and Xander like spicy foods (Mia does sometimes too)! The only thing is what goes in - must come out, so we only snack in moderation.

In other news, we make stuff.

This is a Wall-e that CJ made all by herself with a couple of boxes and toilet paper rolls. You might have seen it before.

My big project is a paper/cardboard/foamboard R2-D2 which has taken me forever to build - and still has a long way to go. But I made this handy gadget in the mean time. It's a 5 way switch for head phones. At work I have 2 computers that do different things. Sometimes I listen to music on one, other times I watch (really "listen to") movies and shows on Hulu.com on the other one, and sometimes I listen to my iTouch. This results in a lot of unplugging and plugging of my head phones and constant tangling of and running over of the headphone cord. With this switch, I have one cable plugged into each of my computers, and have 3 empty head phone slots to plug in my itouch and anything else I might want to listen to. Then I plug in my headphones into the single output jack and simply turn the knob to listen to whichever device I want. I searched the internet for something like this and could only find professional audio equipment costing $300! This one cost me about $10, 2 hours, and a phone call to my brother, Joe, to clarify the circuit technology.

I plan on taking pictures of my future projects and posting step-by-steps of them for those who are curious.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

2009-03-08T16:13:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been concerned about CJ. She has a lot of boy friends at school. Like any father would be, I've been worried about the things they talk about at recess. I was horrified when CJ finally told me. They all think (and play) that Aniken Skywalker is some sort of hero and is the center of the Star Wars universe! It makes me sick to my stomach to think that my little girl is being deceived by the revisionist histories of the modern George Lucas!

In addition to this revelation, I have been building my own R2-D2 (which should be done in a couple of weeks), and my kids have naturally been curious. Along with that, the kids and I have been playing Lego Star Wars: the Complete Saga. They didn't understand who Luke, Han and Leia were. I tried to explain, but they still just didn't understand. I thought maybe their mother would have "the Star Wars talk" with them, but those hopes were dashed when I excitedly told Valerie about how Duff (from Ace of Cakes) had made the coolest Millennium Falcon cake for some one. She just stared at me. "You know, the Millenium Falcon", I said, "from Star Wars?"
"Oh!", she suddenly remembered, "Is that the big hairy thing?"

Whatever.

So I was forced to step up to my fatherly duties and explain (by my self) that the Star Wars prequels were made after the original Star Wars movies - but that they take place before them. Also that the Clone Wars cartoon is some attempt to extend the prequel experience, but that the only things that actually matter are the original 3 films. I also had to try to explain that George Lucas keeps messing with the original films, changing lines, adding shots, tweaking here and there, until we end up with some warped version of reality. Kinda like Michael Jackson's face.

I figured the best explanation was to simply show the original films to my kids. All three kids sat in absolute wonder through "A New Hope". CJ declared that Luke Skywalker was "really cute, like a twenty! - wait, what number does it go to?" Xander and Mia went around the house fighting with pretend lightsabers. When Mia watched "The Empire Strikes Back" while I was at work one day, she was so excited to tel me what she learned. She said "Luke got his hand cut off! And guess what!", then in a conspiratorial whisper, "Darth Vader is Luke's father! Nooooooooo" I was so excited at her excitement that I didn't even care that she called him "Dark Vader" (Xander says Darth Mater). Yesterday they watched "Return of the Jedi". The girls dutifully informed me that Luke and Leia are brother and sister, and that Han and Leia kiss a lot.

All in all, I feel that my kids have been shown the truth now of what Star Wars is, and are now prepared to handle the peer pressure relating to the prequels and Aniken. Who knows, maybe they will teach their friends by example and we will save a whole generation from the lies that are everything George Lucas has done to Star Wars since Return of the Jedi.

The other day...

2009-02-26T19:50:00.000-08:00

This is Andrew Stanton's Oscar for Wall-e. The other day, the day after the Oscars, we had a big celebration and toast (the drink kind not the bread kind). Afterward Andrew stuck around so we could get pictures taken with him and the Oscar. I didn't feel like getting my picture taken because I didn't work on the film, but you can bet I will next year when "Up" wins!

The other day the "Up" character team (the people who worked on all the characters)had a 'We're done!' celebration. We went to Skywalker Ranch. If you know what that is, you know how cool a thing it is to go there. If you don't know what it is, I'll forgive you and give you a clue. Skywalker Ranch is located on Lucas Valley Road. Still don't know? Fine. It's George Lucas's place. By 'place' I mean the huge plot of land where much of his production studios reside.(For those who are still in the dark - he made (cough - and ruined - cough) Star Wars! This is the main house (Where George hangs out).
It's a gorgeous area! Our main goal was to visit Skywalker Sound, where they record/create all the sound for our movies. We saw them mixing the sound for a trailer, but the highlight was playing with foley. Foley is all the natural sound effects. Things like footsteps, the sound of doors opening/closing, etc. In a live action film they record most of those sounds while filming, but nothing exists for animated film so every single sound has to be created by a Foley artist. You've probably seen it on a DVD or at Disneyland. They assigned each of us a sound effect, then they played a clip of the movie and we tried to time our sound effect to fit. The recorded it and played it back - It was soooo fun!

The other day Mia came in my room with a baby doll under her shirt. She said "I'm going to have a baby!" Then made this face and a weird grunting sound and flipped her shirt inside out plopping the baby out.

The other day we had a family Guitar Hero match. While the girls played, Xander, feeling left out grabbed the girl's Barbie guitar and copied them. Eventaually he figured out that his was different, so we gave him a chance. He Rocked! It was so sweet, he had to brush his teeth afterward.

One last thing. They don't teach Art in the schools out here (I mean money is short you know - and how could they afford to pay for Art without cutting the important curriculum that only our schools can teach, like "Gay and Lesbian acceptance") Anyway, in an effort to keep our children from becoming uncultured hippies (rather than cultured hippies), they have (usually untrained) parents volunteer once a month to teach art to the kids.
Valerie is this volunteer in CJ's class. Today Val taught the kids about "Surrealism" (like Salvadore Dali). CJ was excited about it ad told me that they learned "Cerealism".

I'm sorry about the long, political, set-up to that punchline. No I'm Not.

Places to Pee and Places to Play

2009-01-27T11:01:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday, Val and I celebrated our 7th anniversary. Actually Monday was our anniversary - we just observed it on Saturday. We took a Go-Car tour of San Fransisco. A Go-Car is a 2 person (side-by-side), three wheeler (50cc) scooter that you drive all over the city while a nice lady in your radio tells you about stuff (based on her gps). We were going for 3 hours, so i thought it would be fun to document all the places where Valerie had to stop and pee (Pregnant ladies have to pee all the time, you know). Well, it turns out that she only had to go twice - right at the beginning (In a hotel across the street from the Go-Car rental), and then when we were done and eating lunch in Lori's Diner (next door to the hotel).
BTW: Lori's was delicious and fun! It was like a 1950's diner with checkered floor and red and chrome booths and fun, friendly, servers.

One of the places we went is the old WWII gun battlements. They are right at the tip of the Golden Gate and were there to protect the bay from a Pearl Harbor type attack. Now they are just a super cool place to play! I expect me and the guys will have to throw on our military gear from Halloween and pose for some pictures! Maybe we'll even get ambitious enough to shoot some video! We'll see.

"Stupid is as stupid does. . ."

2009-01-19T16:16:00.000-08:00

George Carlin made this observation: "Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider!" If you have ever worked in any industry where you come in contact with the general public, you know what he means.

I tried twice before to write this entry and found myself first on one side of the argument, then the other. I think I've finally cleared up my opinion, so here goes.

I was watching the Golden Globes the other night and saw (my childhood hero)Steven Spielberg accept the C.B. DeMille lifetime achievment award. In his speech, he mentioned how the studios were thinking about making films for a broader audience (meaning the stupid people of the world), but he warned them to keep making films for "individuals", and to remember "inspiration". By indivisuals he meant "filmakers, actors, and artists", basically the enlightened few.

The kinds of films he is talking about are the ones that always win all the awards, causing most people to throw popcorn at their TVs while exclaiming "I've never even heard of that one"! You know, the films where the protagonist is a mentally challenged Jew who finds himself working side by side with a sympathetic Nazi in an effort to free the black slaves in the swamps of Louisiana.

So here is where I usually either talk about how elitist artists are, comparing them to the Senate of Rome (versus the plebeians), or contrarily, how artists really are a bit more enlightened than the general public. Instead, all I want to say is this: Imagine you bake cookies. A lot of people may love your cookies, others may not prefer them. What would mean more to you, if your cookies received a compliment from the mailman, or from world renown cookie exper, Mr. OREO? Either compliment would feel nice, but really the one from the guy who knows cookies would feel better. That's the one that would make you want to brag a bit. That's how it is with the movie awards. The Oscar goes to the film that the film experts like the most and so it means a lot to the winners.

You probably don't agree with the winner, but even though you are surely less stupid than the average person, you are probably less enlightened than the average artist pretends to be. Which leads me to this question: Which movie is more successful? The one that wins no awards, but makes $400 million at the box office, or the one that wins tons of awards , but only makes $50 million?

This whole subjet could be debated forever. What makes art art? What makes good art? Who cares? Does art actually have any effect on society or is it just an indicator? Is it arrogant of artists to want to exclude those who don't understand it? Are artists actually more enlightened? Is it mean to point out that most of the people of the world are idiots even if it's true? Does humility require that you be oblivious to the stupidity around you?

The whole point of all this unfocused rambling is a message to (my childhood hero)Steven Spielberg. Mr. (my childhood hero)Steven Spielberg, you of all people know about both types of film making. You, who brought us some of the best films targeted at the masses, like Jaws, the Indiana Jonses, ET,Poltergeist, and Jurassic Park, should know that "inspiration" can come across in films with mass appeal. It is true, that the "inspiration" in your films was never recognized by your peers until you started making films for them instead of us, like Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Amistad and Munich. Why not encourage your peers to try to make films for mass audiences that also have some "inspiration"? Why not make the kinds of movies that everyone will remember and re-watch 30 years later - you've done it before, so make them understand that the value of a film lies in it's longevity - not in it's depressing obscurity - you'd win a lot more awards for sure!

DarthTater and Christmas Zombie Children

2008-12-23T17:14:00.000-08:00

Val and the kids visited me at work the other day for lunch. I had a little extra time since I just finished up on "Up" (Coming to a theater near you May 2009), so I took them all to my office. Valerie commented on all my toys on my shelves and was surprised at all my Darth Vader (and other Star Wars) toys. I thought I would share them with you. Here's what's in the above picture (from left to right). This is one of 3 shelves of toys in my office)

A paper Boba Fett helmet I made to fit one of the maquette sculptures of a character on UP (the fat mullett-haired nurse from the trailer).
R2-D2 candy container.
Behind them is a smallish Darth Vader head (the symetrical one from the prequels). It's filled with miniature Darth Vader heads like the one to it's right. That is a sigg water bottle they gave us at work to encorage us to use instead of disposable ones (it's the green thing to do, you know). I glued a Vader head to the lid and use it as a display instead.
In front of that is my Darth Tater. Fitting cross between Star Wars and Pixar. Mia calls it my "Dark Vader Tomato Head".
Next we have Boo from Monsters, Inc in her monster outfit and behind her is a dragon with Nemo in it's hand, being ridden by Kate Bekinsale (actually Anna Valerious from Van Helsing), wearing a paper Storm Trooper helmet while holding a blue bird from Cinderella.
Next is Jango Fett with Boo climbing out of his head and reaching to touch the dragon.
Behind them is a Venom Mask, and to their right is Yoda dancing with Jaques from Cinderella. It's a celebration of Pixar. Though neither are Pixar characters, Pixar started out as a part of LucasFilm, and then teamed up with Disney.
Last is my full sized Darth Vader Helmet. There aren't many things cooler than that!

On to Zombie Children. During the Christmas season the kids watch "Polar Express" - a lot. That movie creeps me out soooo much. Every character looks and acts like a zombie with their dead expressionless faces. Anyway, we also drink a lot of hot chocolate. Because of that movie, every time someone says "hot chocolate", someone in my family says "Yeah, we got it (hot, hot)". They're all zombies too.

My Talented Wife and the Father's Guide to Pregnancy.

2008-12-14T15:11:00.000-08:00

I want to share with you one of Valerie's talents. You might think I'm going to talk about how she's an awesome teacher, or super crafty-creative. Or, you might think I would go with her obvious (and recently realized) photography talent. Well, if you thought I was going to talk about those, you're wrong, and if you would stop interrupting me and trying to finish my sentences, I would get to the point - as soon as I share some thoughts.

Pregnancy is different for every woman. It's got to be hard right? I mean they have a parasite inside of them stealing all their nutrients and energy. They get fatter - which seems to be every woman's nightmare. And then there are the uncomfortable things like having to go to the bathroom every two minutes, craving food at odd times, and of course puking all the time.

Let it be known that I am fully sympathetic of all pregnant women.

BUT...
What about their husbands? Pregnancy is really hard for us too. First of all, from the moment she finds out that she's pregnant, she is constantly questioning whether or not she is showing yet. Every man knows that the answer to "Do I look fat?" is ALWAYS "No!". It gets more complicated when you are dealing with a pregnant woman. She is conflicted. She doesn't want to be fatter, but at the same time, she is excited to see the proof of the baby inside her. So if you answer "No" she hears "You're are getting all excited about the baby and just imagining that you can see this miracle growing each day" and she gets frustrated and upset. If you answer "Yes", she hears "You look fat". I try to go with an "honesty is the best policy" approach which just frustrates Val (because her belly is just barely showing so far).

Next you have the cravings. These can actually be a good thing for the Husband - as long as she is craving something you also enjoy. Val craves red meat - delicious! I look forward to her saying "Will you run to a local fast food establishment and get me a burger?" She feels bad about making me go, so she lets me get some for myself as well. So what could be bad about it? Imagine it's mid December. It's cold and rainy outside. The kids are all down for the night, and you have just gotten ready for bed. You climb under your favorite fleece blanket and settle into bed all nice and cozy. You flip on the TV and - look at that - a great show is just starting. -- Something about your total comfort triggers her cravings. Now you have to pull off the warm covers, get dressed, go out into the wet cold night, and miss a good show. But hey, you get a hamburger right?

Apparently pregnancy shrinks a woman's bladder too. Yesterday, in the time we were shopping at Target - maybe 30 minutes, Valerie had to go to the bathroom twice. For some men, this could get really annoying, but the way I see it, it actually means more time for me to play the Demo Playstation 3 in the electronics depatment. So Val, take your time, and maybe you should go one more time before we leave - just in case.

Lastly there is the puking. Most women get morning sickness. Not Valerie. She gets evening sickness. I figure it's really morning sickness - it's just confused. Valerie was born in Korea, so it's on Korean time. Morning there - evening here. This leads me to Valerie's awesome talent. She has total control of her puking. in fact, she seems to be able to decide whether or not to she should puke. She says to me; "I'm nauseous, I can't decide if I should eat or throw up". If we have instantly available food she'll eat, if not, she'll puke - but only when she's good and ready. Seriously, she can totally control when she will puke - the way most people can with going to the bathroom. It's not unusual for her to say that she needs to puke, but on her way to the bathroom she'll get sidetracked by some project and 20 minutes later she say "Oh I forgot, I need to puke". She's AWESOME! You probably already read her thoughts about puking at her blog.

If I don't get to write again before Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone!

Communication is Key!

2008-11-20T15:41:00.000-08:00

Val and I are getting older, but we still try to stay up to date with the newest technology trends. Ok, maybe not up to date, but just one or two versions behind the times.

A couple of weeks ago, we both got new cell phones. We replaced our old "free when you sign up so there are no bells or whistles" phones (Ours were identical except for color) for fancier "almost free when you sign up so they are a little nicer" phones. Well, Valerie's was still free, but we got to pay for mine (so it's better). Sure they don't have touch screen or multitouch interfaces - but they come with twice as many ringtones as our last ones! And they are very shiny! Anyway, we also let Val have text message access this time around too (I already had it). It's great! We never have to talk directly to each other the way old fashioned people do.

When it works, I just text Val from the living room when she is in the kitchen and I can find out whats for dinner, how her day was, etc. I say 'When it works' because, despite having had a cell phone for 2 years, Valerie still isn't used to just carrying it around with her everywhere. Often times I'll text (or call) her only to hear her phone ringing 4 feet away from me. That's really ok if I'm in the living room and she is in the kitchen, but if she is further away (like the bedroom), how am I supposed to communicate with her?

Truthfully, we find other ways to communicate. Sometimes we comment on eachother's blogs or facebook wall. An even better technology though, is gchat. Like if I'm on the computer in the office, and she is on the computer in the living room, we can both log into our gmail accounts and chat back and forth - in real time!

Technology is so great now days that we've pretty much decided (while g-chatting) to do all our Christmas shopping online! I bet we could even have the gifts all wrapped online!

"Up" Trailer

2008-11-08T10:01:00.000-08:00

For the past year and a half or so, I have been working on Pixar's next movie "Up" which comes out next May. It's really fun and exciting, but there are a couple of frustrating things. First, everything is 'top secret', so I can never share too much with anyone. Second, it takes a couple of years (from when I started) before I can show off any of my work.

Well, they just released the trailer for UP, so now people can get a taste of what this movie is.

It's tiny on my blog, but you can go here and see it bigger and make it full screen.
You want to make it full screen so you can really see the expression on Russell's (the boy scout kid) face at the end.

The very first things I worked on at Pixar are in the trailer:
The fat orderly/nurse guy, I shaded his scrubs and name tag. (shaded = did the color and textures).
The window shopping family, I shaded their skin and clothes, and made their grooms (their hair).

Much more to come in May.

The Award and Halloween

2008-11-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

First off, Thank you to everyone who voted for Pajama Gladiator online! I hope you enjoyed it. If you haven't heard yet, WE WON THE VIEWERS CHOICE AWARD! This is the second award we won in this festival. I just got the plaque/trophy for the Producer's Choice award. Here it is.

Halloween is the best! My friends and I have been playing a lot of "Call of Duty 4" lately, and decided on the 30th to have a COD4 party at Lou's on the 1st. We decided we would dress up in military costumes and make it our Halloween party. After a couple of hours scrambling around at thrift stores, we had our costumes. Since Halloween was the next day, and it's a huge deal at Pixar, we decided to wear our costumes to work. I really needed a special piece to my costume, so I built an M5 rifle out of a golf club, foam board, a couple of flashlights and a lot of electricians tape. On Halloween,we went out on the Pixar property and posed for a bunch of pictures.

At work they have an awesome Halloween party. People come with the best costumes you can imagine. But even more impressive is the 'show'. There are prizes for the best costumes, but you have to 'sell' you costume as well by performing some kind of skit. Here are a few fun ones. The "Enchanted" group was awesome. Giselle got on stage and was lip syncing to a song that was beautifully sung - by the prince in a beautiful falsetto. He came on stage and they danced together while singing a duet. they would dance in a circle so that his back would be to us when he was singing her part and his front was to us when he sang his part.

The Bunny is Alec. He is the magician's rabbit from the Pixar short "Presto" that showed before Wall-e.

One hilarious part was when everybody who was planning on performing was done, there was a little lull in the show. Suddenly Elliot rode by on the bridge above with ET in his basket. It caught everyone off guard and was sooo funny!

Vote Today & Tomrrow (Oct 29 & 30) for Pajama Gladiator!!

2008-10-29T08:49:00.000-07:00

The film I produced at BYU is up for a Viewers' Choice Award from the Nicktoons Network. You can watch it online today Starting at 11 pm eastern and all day tomorrow!!!! Please visit their site today and click "Rock" to vote for our film. Remember it's called "Pajama Gladiator"
Here's the link
Here's a press release from BYU
Thank You and Enjoy!!!!

6. 6 M&Ms. Ah Ah Ah Aaaahh.

2008-10-26T18:24:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday evening, we had a Halloween Party at our church. It was pretty chaotic, though less so than last year's where they did a trunk or treat and just let the kids run free to raid the trunks. This year there were no trunks, so they just let the kids run free in the church to raid the treats. The best thing about the party were the contests that the adults could participate in. I'm talking about the "guess how many M&Ms are in the jar" contests, or, my specialty, "how much does the punkin weigh?".
Some of you know of my amazing super talent of being able to determine the weight of things pretty accurately simply by holding them in my hands. It's a power I acquired while working at UPS. For those who may not know, for 3 years I worked as a UPS package handler. I basically unloaded packages from 55 ft semi trailers onto a conveyor belt starting at 3:00 am. each day. 1200 per hour. Averaging 20 lbs a piece. That's 24000 lbs an hour. 96000 lbs per shift. 480000 lbs a week. 24,960,000 lbs a year. 74,880,000 lbs during my time there.

Whoah! I'm tired after all that! The math - not the package handling.

Anyway, Each package had it's weight clearly marked so I just started associating the feel of the weight with the number.

The only reason I'm bragging about this is because at the Halloween party, they had 3 punkins there for you to guess the weight of. I thought I would test to see if I still had the superpower or not. I guessed on all three punkins. I was actually pretty worried, because I wasn't super sure of the weights. I haven't worked at UPS for over a year now. There was a wide range of guesses from other people ranging from 20 lbs, to CJ's guess for each: 520. Not 520 lbs, just 520.

Just before they announced the winners, I confessed to my friend that I think I have completely lost my super power.

BUT IT DIDN'T!

They said I guessed all three right! They changed the rules and tossed out 2 of my guesses to let others win. That's OK by me, I wouldn't have been able to carry all 3 punkins home anyway.

As for the number of M&Ms in a jar? I never get close on those. Mia was probably closer. I asked her how many were in this jar. She immediatly answered "4". I asked if she thought there were really only 4, or if there were more. This time she thought about it for a bit and said nodding her head "I think 6. No, maybe 7. No, 6. 6." I entered that as her official guess.

She didn't win.

Video Game Lingo & Pizza

2008-10-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

First thing, let me calm all the panic I caused with my last post. I am currently leaning more in the McCain direction. - SO CALM DOWN EVERYONE!!!

Now on to what I really wanted to talk about. Most of you probably don't play video games enough, so I wanted to give you a brief lesson on a piece of gaming lingo. Today's lesson is the word "respawn". I know it sounds like fish procreation - a second time, - but it has nothing to do with that. Respawning is what you call coming back to life after dying in a video game. So like in Call of Duty 4, if you get splattered by a grenade, you respawn somewhere else and continue fighting.

Good, now that you understand what respawn means, I want to tell you something funny. Today at church, one of the speakers was talking about a story from the Bible. It was a story where someone asked Jesus a question. The speaker said "Jesus responded...", Valerie looked at me and said "Jesus respawned"? I hadn't been paying real close attention so I looked (confusedly) at her and thought to myself "Well, I guess He did respawn after His crucifixion didn't He." I answered, nodding my head "Jesus respawned". We had a hard time not laughing out loud and will probably be struck by lightning, but it just goes to show you that even violent video games can help remind you of the most important things at times.

Now lets talk pizza. We ate pizza for 5 meals in the past 8 days. Valerie can't stand to have it more than once a month, but somehow we tend to eat a lot of pizza. Oh, and since you brought up the pizza topic and all, I thought I would share my pizza recipe with you.

If you have ever looked up pizza recipes on the internet, you'll find they aren't much help. You get things like this: Mushroom Pizza, ingredients: Crust, sauce, mushrooms, cheese. or fancy recipes like: Gourmet New york Peperoni Pizza: Crust, sauce, peperoni, cheese. Basically just a list of toppings to put on a pizza - as if you need a recipe for that. (Incidentally, sandwich recipes are almost as useless too). Here is a real pizza recipe that is de-lish-us! It's step by step so start at the top and continue downward or you'll get confused. PS - make the sauce first.

Makes 2 large pizzas.

Crust
2 tbsp yeast
2 tbsp sugar
2 cups lukewarm water
Stir these together and let them sit for a few minute while you do the next steps (to let the yeast get all foamy and active).

1 cup softened butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup flour
Put these together in a mixing bowl (use a kitchen-aide or bosch or the like)and pour the yeast liquid in with it. Mix it up into a soup and add the following seasonings.
1 1/2 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp basil
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp marjoram (optional)

It should smell reallllllly good right about now. Now add the following a cup or 2 at a time and let it knead for a while.
5 more cups flour

Cover and let it rise for 20 min (until doubled). Build your pizza and cook at 450F for 15 -25 min depending on how thick it is.

Sauce
1 can tomato sauce
1 can diced tomato
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp black pepper
salt to taste
1 tbsp oregano
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp minced garlic
Stir it all up, and put in in the fridge while you make the crust.

Toppings
Here's what I like on mine:
pepperoni
mozzarella Cheese
mushrooms
bacon
also:
green olives
artichoke hearts

P.S. For those who care, we are planning on visiting Utah right after Christmas.

Politics

2008-10-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

So a lot of my family are concerned about my political affiliation. Well, I thought I would take a few minutes to explain my views. Unfortunately I could fill a book with them, so I'll have to abbreviate. I think the majority of the country has chosen a side and blindly votes for their side time and again. Don't you think it would be better for the country if everybody would actually look at both sides each time and pick whats best from EITHER side? Maybe the bad guy is more honest.

First Let's look at what's wrong right now.

Our current Leader is an idiot frat boy whose cronyism and fear mongering has made him an all powerful Emperor. He reminds me of my Senior Class President in high school. He was elected Class President because he was popular and could drink more beers than any of his competitors. The fact that it would be his responsibility to organize our reunions didn't seem to bother anybody. Now years later, his ineptness is all too obvious through our lack of reunions. W and his buddies took care of all their agendas during their time. They got to attack Iraq and 'show Hussein whose boss'. Their friends in the oil business got richer than ever. And I could go on.

The point is simply this. The current Republican Administration doesn't seem to care how they destroy the country as long as they get what they want. Almost everything needs to change!

So lets look at the pros/cons of the candidates. I have a chart at the bottom that summarizes all this.

McCain Pros: He's experienced in Washington. He has military experience so he would probably be more cautious than W and his buddies when it comes to war. He's got a reputation for crossing his party to push legislation he believes is important for the country.

Cons: He's a grumpy old guy who thinks it's OK for the leader of the most advanced country in the world to not know about 'the internets' or use computers. He has really short arms - like a velociraptor. He appears to be towing the party line of fear mongering, and although he has sometimes crossed his party, he seems to be comfortably backing the GOP message. I hope that he's doing that because he needs the party's support to be elected, and as soon as he is, he'll go back to following his conscience. How much do I trust him? 3 out of 5. I worry that he'll be bullied by his party to do things their way.

Palin Pros: She's pretty and young. Tina Fey does the best impersonation of her and 4 years of that would totally be worth it! See for yourself.

Cons: Could she be less qualified to lead this country? Just watch the SNL clip to see what I mean. I know it's a joke, but some of here answers are nearly word for word from the real interview.

Obama Pros: He's young and intelligent. He's NOT a Republican. He wants to change the way things are right now. He preaches Hope instead of Fear.

Cons: He's a Democrat - that's a big one, we could go from a fascist regime to a communist society. He's a slick talker. This isn't necessarily bad, but i get suspicious when i hear the silver tongue. How much do i trust him? 4 out of 5. I'm pretty sure he'll try to do the things he says he will.

Biden Pros: He has lot's of experience.
Cons: He seems to be a non-entity. No one talks about him good or bad, maybe he doesn't do anything beyond being a grumpy old man.

So what it comes down to is this. I would like to vote for McCain because his ideals match my own the closest, but if he were to die because of his old age, the country would be in a very bad situation if it had to rely on Palin to lead. Also, who knows if he will bring a change to Washington, or if he'll just join with the current Empire.

THE REAL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES

Obama's ideals are far from my own in most cases, but I believe he'll bring a needed change to Washington.

THE REAL DEMOCRAT CANDIDATES

The question is Do you vote for the guy who believes the same as you, but may be more of the same problem. Or do you vote for the guy who doesn't share your views, but at least you know where things stand with him?

I don't know. But I still have a few weeks to decide.

The Orange Carpet

2008-10-06T21:58:00.000-07:00

"Pajama Gladiator", The student film I produced at BYU won the Producer's Choice Award in the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival. That means that the producers who are responsible for Spongebob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, Backyardigans, etc. liked our film best out of 4500 other animated shorts. That's pretty impressive and gives me a little hope that we might actually have a chance to win some more festival awards.

The award ceremony was held last Friday at the Nickelodeon Studio in Burbank. They flew me down, put me up in a swanky hotel and sent a limo to pick me up for the event. Glenn, the Director of Pajama Gladiator, just moved down to L.A. to start working for Sony Feature Animation (they made Monster House). He drove up and met me at the hotel and we rode together in the limo. It wasn't a stretch limo, it was a nice Lincoln Towncar with black windows and black leather seats. You know that little cubby on the side of a car door where you can store maps or trash? They filled those up with suckers (blowpops and dumdums).

When we got to the studio, a guy in a white uniform opened the door for us so we could get out and walk down the orange carpet (Nickelodeon's color is orange). We walked down and waved to the lone photographer who promptly asked us to get out of the way so he could take a picture of the front entrance of the event. When he was done, we hopped back on the carpet and proceeded to the front gate where the security guard told us he couldn't let us in yet.

Whatever.

Glenn and I hung out and talked until our friends Dan and his wife Kori showed up. Dan also worked on Pajama Gladiator and, thankfully, he got be there because he works for Nickelodeon. Eventually the guard let us in.

We walked to the check-in desk to get a cool yellow tag, but were told to go to the other table because we actually got a special blue tag identifying us as nominees. Along the walkway there were pictures of the 29 finalists. In front of the Pajama Gladiator picture, there was a little 'light table' pedestal with the trophy plaque on it. We walked into the main area and went straight to the bar. There's no way we were going to let the open bar go to waste! 7-ups for everyone! We took our drinks and grabbed a seat on some cool Ikea couches in front of the stage. I should mention this was all out-doors. Pretty soon one of the event producers came and told Glenn and I that we had reserved seats closer to the front. That was cool, but we decided to lower ourselves to the level of the little people and sit by Dan and Kori until the event got started. We had reserved seats after all. Shortly before the program began, some people sat in our reserved seats. We asked the producer lady about it and she said they were the family of another winner, and said we could sit in some other reserved seats instead. We did. And we decided Dan and Kori are like family, so they came and sat by us in the reserved area.

The program consisted of some dirty jokes by the emcee, an entertaining question and answer with Stan Lee (if you don't know who that is, you are not allowed to read my blog anymore. But in case you had a lapse in memory and you want to be able to read it in the future, you should know he invented Spiderman, the X men, the Hulk, and 200 other Marvel superheros), a performance from a band I'd never heard of, and the announcement of the winners of the various awards. When they announced us, we just stood up and waved while people clapped.

Afterward, the limo picked us up (this time a black SUV with no candy in the doors) and delivered us back to my hotel where I slept on the worlds most softest bed with the softest sheets and pillows. It was like sleeping on room-temperature butter! I flew home the next day and saw Natasha Henstridge in the Burbank airport.

She is a year older than me. I only say that because comparing celebrities ages to mine puts my oldness in perspective. When I start to think celebrities my age are old, I will know for sure I am old. So far, so good.

It was pretty fun over all and I hope we win more awards where I can attend an event. Next time I'll bring Valerie so I'll have pictures to share.

Oh! I almost forgot. Pajama Gladiator is till in the running for the "Viewers Choice" Award. On October 29, you can go to the NNAF website and watch and vote for Pajama Gladiator. It will also be shown on the Nicktoons Network at 11:00 pm EST that night if you have the channel. Anyway, remember to visit the website on Oct 29 and vote for us! Here is the URL: www.nicktoons.com/nnaf

I love Fall!

2008-09-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

So there are 3 main things I love about Fall. I look forward to each of them for months! They are: Halloween, BYU Football, and the new season of TV! I have a little to say about each:

"103 UNANSWERED POINTS!!!!"

And you would be disappointed in the lack of Halloweenness in my home so far. I usually decorate the house for Halloween on Sept 16 (My Birthday), and spend birthday money on new decorations. This Year, I live in a real, live, haunted-house-looking victorian! But I sold most of my decorations before moving to CA and it depresses me to think how cool it 'could have been' compared to what it 'will be'. I am feeling repentant though and will be decorating very soon!

As for the TV shows. THANK GOODNESS the new season finally started!!! We were going insane watching stupid reruns of stupid shows all summer long. I checked for all our favorites and wrote down a schedule of when they premier and what we will watch each night.

It works out great! We will be watching Chuck and Heroes on monday, House and Fringe (If I can get passed the main girl's 'always worried' eyebrows) on Tuesday. Wednesday is the only problem, Val likes Pushing Daisies, I like Bones. (That is a weird sentence if you don't read it in context), followed by Ghost Hunters (the only cable show on our schedule). Thursday is "Play XBOX with Val night" until The Office is on, and Friday is dvd date with Val.

It's silly that I look forward, for months, to 6 1/2 hours of TV each week - but I do. I just worry how our near perfect TV schedule will hold up in early 2009 when we will need to squeeze in LOST (and possibly 24).

The End of the World and Eating Slugs

2008-09-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago something very significant happened in the scientific community. The Large Hadron Collider went online allowing scientist to study things that have only been theorized before. There has been a lot of fear about the LHC though. So much so, that some girl in India killed herself rather than be destroyed by it. What's so scary? Well, I'll tell you.
The purpose of the LHC (according to CERN - the people who built it) is this:

To smash protons moving at 99.999999% of the speed of light into each other and so recreate conditions a fraction of a second after the big bang.

Sounds academic enough, until you realize what the conditions after the Big Bang were like. If you know any physics at all, you probably know the Law of the Conservation of Matter. That is that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Well, it's not entirely true when we're talking about the big bang. To understand what happened think about this: The number 0 means nothing right? That's what there was before the big bang: 0. But this also equals 0: 1 + -1, or 1zillion + -1zillion. When the big bang happened, that 0 was torn into 2 halves. Suddenly there was all the matter in the universe (1) as well as an equal amount of antimatter (-1). So we instantly get everything from nothing. This splitting of nothing into something released an unimaginable amount of energy. In fact, just 10 to the -43 (thats "point" followed by 43 zeros and a 1) seconds after the big bang, the temperature was 10 to the 34 (1 with 34 zeros after it)degrees Kelvin (imagine Celsius if it's easier, there's only about a 273 degree difference).

So with temperatures that hot, will the earth just incinerate?

The other big fear is that scientists think they will be able to create a black hole. Yeah, that's right. The thing that is so dense that even light can't escape it's gravity. The thing that sucks everything into it never to escape. At least if they do make make a black hole, France will be the first to be sucked in.

One more fear. Did you ever read "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown? Remember how it all started when someone stole the antimatter from CERN (yes the same people who are behind the LHC), and it was going to cause an annihilation? Well, the LHC is expected to make antimatter too (remember: 0 = 1 + -1). That antimatter will surely meet matter and you have the big bang in reverse - with a huge amount of energy being released.

The only reason I bothered to explain all this, is to share a website with you. You can go to this site to see if the LHC has destroyed the world yet. It's real scientific. They actually have a program on the web site to see if the world has been destroyed, and they have a warranty - just in case the world ends and they failed to update the site.

In related news, I was eating pot stickers the other night. We eat them often and love them. As I was thinking about how much I loved them, I suddenly found myself wondering why we love them. There are so many reasons why I shouldn't.

They smell horrible. For hours after cooking them, the house smells like a poopy diaper. It's even worse when that smell comes out of your mouth when you burp!

They look and fee like slugs! I can't help thinking of Ron Weasley puking up slugs in "The Chaber of Secrets" when his broken wand backfires on him!

The insides look like an owl pellet. You know, owls swallow their prey whole, then puke up the fur and bones that they couldn't digest in the form of a pellet.

Despite all that I still love pot stickers.

My Birfday... and PS I have the Best Wife!

2008-09-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

So Tuesday is my thirty-somethingth birthday. I say Thirty-somethingth , not because I feel old and don't want people to know how old I am, but because I can't really remember which thirty it is offhand. After about 25 I kinda stopped caring how old I was, so when people ask me, I have to do the quick math to figure it out - and if you know anything about my allergies to math, you would know there is no such thing as "quick" math. Ok, Fine. If you must know: I was born in 1975, that means in 1985 I was 10, 95 I was 20, 2005 I was 30, in 2015 I will be 40 minus 5 = 35 in 2010, it's 2008, so take off 2 more = 33. There I'm 33 - and that wasn't much of an exaggeration of how my mind caculates math.
Not that that pain is over with, let me tell you about my Birthday present. I've never really been one for big birthday celebrations. Parties are fun, but usually more stressfull than they are worth. As for presents, I never know what I want. Cash is usually a safe gift, but then it burns a hole in my pocket and I just end up buying lunch with it. Valerie is pretty observant about the random times I'll be watching TV and a commercial for the newest Batman or GI Joe toy will come on and i'll exclaim "Ooo, I want that!" But this year she gave me an awesome gift! The gift of nothing. That's right, this year she said she wasn't going to do or get me anything for my big day. Instead, what she did, was let me spend the entire Saturday (this past one) Hanging out with my friends.
The morning started early. I met my friends Jacob and Emron (both of whom I went to BYU with and who work at Pixar with me now) at Lou's house. Lou works at Pixar too but was about 12 letters off and went to NYU instead of BYU. The four of us loaded up in Jacob's spacious extended cab F-150 with our golf clubs in the bed and went golfing. Jacob even played Gwen Stefani for me while we drove. The course we went to was a tiny pitch -n- put par 3 course. This was Emron's first time golfing (though he dressed like a pro), and Lou's first time since he was a kid. We had a great time. We basically had the course to ourselves and played several balls each. The best thing is, I started with 5 golf balls and fiished with 20! Ohh Ye-ah! I would have had dozens more, but the fairways are lined in Blackberry bushes. THORNS! These are some pictures Jacob took - which is why he's not in any of them.

We finished golfing in time to head back to Lou's to watch the BYU vs UCLA slaughter on his wall with his High Definition projector. 59 -0?! Are you kidding! That was AWESOME! After that we played Call of Duty 4 on the PS3 (1080p HD!) That is a seriously fun game! We tried a bit of Halo3 on the xbox360, but Call of Duty was really much cooler. Finally after about 12 hours of fun, I went home to my beautiful wife who was glad that I had a fun day. That was such a fun birthday present!
Now tomorrow we'll have cupcakes to celebrate, but that is really for the benefit of Val and the kids. They all love birthdays way more than me so I don't mind a little partying for their happiness. After all, I do have the best wife and kids.

PS Val made this Blog for me because I kept complaining about not having time to start my own blog. Thanks Valerie!

PPS I just want to clarify, I know there is a picture of Barak Obama in my header surrounded by things I like. I am not currently a Barak Obama supporter (or democrat even), I'm just not convinced yet that McCain/Palin will be any less fascist than our current emperor.