A productive week

So, I didn’t mention it last time, but one of my favorite things about conference Sunday, was the DDR tournament my family did afterwards.  Okay, maybe calling it a tournament is a little much, but it was fun to watch my family play DDR together.  It was really awesome.

 

As for this week, I have been crazy busy.  I was actually able to stay focused at work.  As any of my friends now, that is tantamount to the parting of the Red Sea.  It was really what I needed though.  On Monday I finished my write-up for the IEEE publication.  I came home and then also re-boxed all my Wii stuff, sold off a bunch of my video games to Amazon (great idea for Lars to keep the price of buying video games cheap in the long run), and eliminated another large garbage bag of stuff.  It was great!

On Tuesday I finished up my last major school project.  It is good to have this semester wrapping itself up so nicely.  At night I watched Midway to Heaven.  It is one of the best terrible movies I have seen recently :)  What I mean by that is that while from an artistic standpoint it is a terrible movie, but still it was fun to watch.  And besides, my cousins were extras in it!

Wednesday and Thursday I decided to refresh my javascript, so I decided to read a book on it, and I ordered a new book about something called MooTools as well.  We are hopping to rewrite the browser part of our lab projects so that they are actually understandable.  As it is now we look at what has been written and we just rub our heads in confusion.

On Friday I had a wonderful session at the temple.  There were so many missionaries there it was crazy.  They were scrambling left and right to find people that spoke and could help out with the appropriate languages as well.  There was Tongan, Samoan, French, Spanish, Italian, and several other languages all there.  And the session behind me had even more.  It was just so awesome to see missionaries that came from across the world!

 

On Saturday I took 6 hours of HSK testing.  In the morning I took the level 6 test.  I think I probably got a near perfect score on the listening section.  The reading section was a little harder, but still not bad.  And then I met the writing section, and proceeded to get my teeth kicked in.  My handwritten Chinese is just terrible. 

Later that day I took the level 5 test, and I must say in comparison to the level 6 test it is just a joke.  So for all of my classmates that might have not passed level 6, don’t worry you would pass level 5 in your sleep.  Heck, I am kinda scared to see all of you and see how great your Chinese has gotten, and how far behind mine has fallen… 

Later that night I went out with the boys from the FLSR to the cannon center.  Apparently I said plenty of things to make the little freshman stare.  It was fun.  After that I came home for a birthday party for my cousin-in-law.  All in all a really good day.

 

Well, that was my week.  I got a lot done, and that more than anything made it great.  I just need to keep this up for the rest of my life and things will be great! ;)

Mediocrity

I love conference weekend.  It is such a great opportunity to learn.  I will talk about that a little more later.

 

On Sunday we had a hymn and testimony meeting that was really good.  Everyone had the opportunity to go up and tell their favorite song, bear testimony of a principle it taught and then we should sing a verse from it.  It really was great.  I love these types of sacrament meetings!

On Tuesday I got a pair of video cards to replace my current card.  They are not really that much better than the current card but they will allow me to run all three of my monitors at once.  It should be really fun to enjoy the games like that.  Best of all the upgrade is only costing me 60 dollars.  Still a lot on my student budget, but within my range.

On Friday I finished the epic project that was packing my stuff.  Once a year I take all of my stuff out of where I keep it and spread it over the floor.  I then take the time to evaluate what I have, and either throw re-pack it, throw it away, or send it off to DI.  This year I am happy that I was able to throw out 3 large trash sacks of stuff, and send 2 large boxes off to DI.  I still have an incredible amount of stuff, but it is getting closer to the stuff that I actually should keep long term.  This next year is crazy, because except for a a small box and a half of mission stuff all my stuff will be in one house.  I haven’t done this since the I was a Junior in school.

 

Saturday and Sunday were of course conference.  I had a really good time at all of the sessions.  Saturday night after general conference our family all ate ice cream sundaes together, and then proceeded to watch skits from the onion.  It was really a lot of fun.

The next day I was surprised to see snow covering our yard, but I guess that is just life in Utah.  The apocalypse is upon us, and spring will never come…  Well, maybe that is over the top, but at times it sure feels that way.

Later that day I headed over to my sisters for dinner and several birthday parties, mine included.  It isn’t my birthday yet, but since my brother won’t be there for mine, we did a mini birthday party with it.  It was fun, and my sister did make a really good carrot cake.

So overall it was a pretty good week.  And, oh yea, I forgot, I am helping write my first paper.  We are submitting it to the IEEE for publication.  It may not get into that particular publication, but nonetheless it is great to start helping with publishing in our lab.

 

As for my thoughts on conference, there were two that really stuck out.  The first was the importance of covenants.  Several times is what stated that the power of the marriage covenant was enough to conquer problems in a marriage.  To me that is really such an amazing concept.

The second idea that hit me was that we live beyond our privilege, and a large part of that is because we are mediocre at being obedient.  At by we, I mean me :)  A lot of time it is like I am a B+ student.  I am not failing at being righteous, I am above average, and heck I am doing well, but I am not an A student.  And why not, because I am unwilling to follow all of the commandments as well as I should.

On the Sabbath, I go to church, I don’t shop, and I try to read my scriptures a little more.  But do I really not partake of weekly activities?  I may not do homework, but I do sometimes play video games.  While neither of these may seem bad, they are both activities of the week, and not really appropriate for Sunday, and yet I still partake of them.

Another example is the media I watch.  I am not entrapped in pornography, I don’t watch rated R movies, and I don’t listen to music that is full of sweating.  Yet still I watch PG-13 movies that endorse life styles that are inappropriate.  I watch shows that have sweating.

As you can see, these things are not hideous sins, but they are not living up to my full responsibilities.  Because I do not live up to those full responsibilities I also keep myself from receiving all the blessings that I could receive.

I spend so much time trying to justify why I shouldn’t do these things, instead of just doing better.  I think we all have things like this, where we are doing well, but we are not fully obedient.  We find ourselves happy to live not perfectly obedient, but somewhat obedient.  And at the same time we are living not quite up to our potential.

With conference I have made goals to try and fix some of these areas.  I hope that all of us can make goals to do a little better.  And that is why I love conference.  It gives us the chance to move our lives forward in very positive ways.

Planning for the future

This has been a pretty good week.  I started of the week trying to fix the TV Tuner at our house.  It just suddenly stopped working.  I must have tried about 30 different things to get it working.  I eventually was able to restore part of the channels by day 2, but that wasn’t good enough for my uncle, so we continued to work on the problem.  We think we came up with a solution on day 3, but then just as we were about to start trying that out, it magically started working.  Oh the wonders of electronics :)

On Tuesday I bombed my test.  I think I have only done so poorly one other time in my college career.  Usually I think of getting a 90% as bombing a test, but this time I just hope I got about an 80% :/  Pray that my teacher will be nice to me.

That day was made even more stressful by the fact that we had a group project due in one of my classes the next day, and my team was performing less then admirably.  One of the team members had done their section so poorly, that I had to do a ton of work to get the project even working.  It was just so stressful.  I can’t wait until I start graduate school, and I don’t have to take classes that are not going to help me any more.  Oh how nice life will be then.

 

Thursday is when I finally made decisions about what I am going to be doing for the next two years.  I have decided to remain at BYU and get my master’s degree here.  My professor is really excited to help me get published, and do a lot of amazing research.  It is both of our goals to help me get accepted to a top 10 program for my Ph.D.  Hopefully with a couple published papers, attending at least one high level conference, and doing a summer research internship, I should be a strong candidate for those graduate schools.

I am excited for all of this.  Like I said I have also chosen to spend two years getting my master’s degree.  I could finish it in a year, but I don’t think that is what is best in my life.  School is good, but I think that I have focused too much on it up to know.  Taking two years to finish my degree will allow me to only take 6 credit hours a semester, plus audit three of math, and maybe a religion class and a dance class.  This will be really nice in that it will  really help me finish all my work in the lab, and then just have time outside of work to do the more important things in life.

With that in mind I have really spent a lot of time settings goals for next month.  I love setting goals!  Now if only I was at good at keeping them as I am at setting them…

 

On Friday I moved where I sit in the lab.  I also took another one of the students graphics cars (with his permission), and now my whole setup is a lot sweeter.  The only thing it is missing is a third monitor, but I got the equipment I will need to set up three monitors at home, so at least I will have it in one location.

 

So that is where I am at now.  I am just in the middle of a transition phase.  Soon I will be starting off life as a graduate student.  I am excited for it, but also a little nervous as I don’t fully know what it will be like.  But, I guess that is what makes life such an adventure!

Fun times

The week started out with my back just killing me.  Apperantly sleep was not the things to help the little back discomfort I felt after our cabin trip.  I must have hurt something snowmobiling.  Sitting down became a 10 minute process of easing into a chair without dying from pain.  And for any of you that know how high my pain threshold is, you can just image how bad this was.

Wednesday was much of the same stuff.  I was just in crazy amounts of pain.  Apparently the pain also makes me stupid, as I forgot that I even had class in the afternoon.  Hard to get more air-headish then that.

The one good thing was that even though my back was killing me I was able to stay pretty focused on my school work.  I was actually able to get completely caught up in my course work.  Yah!

 

Thursday and Friday were pretty normal days.  Luckily on Thursday my back pain was starting to go down.  By then I had probably popped 20 vertebrae back in to place.  On Friday the back pain was nearly completely gone, and I danced around in joy, and promptly hurt myself again!  Ok, that was facetious, I didn’t really hurt myself.

 

Saturday, now Saturday that was a good day.  In the morning I presented research that I have been doing.  I was able to express myself rather well.  I even had one of the professors who was judging tell me he thought that my presentation was the best of the session.  I also had my professor talk about me doing some stuff to help write a paper.  This would probably be the first paper that I will get my name on.  Wish me the best of luck.

In the afternoon I tried doing some planning for the coming months.  I am thinking that I will actually not be going back to China this summer.  The reason is that I still have not found an internship, and I am not willing to wait until the last second to find one.  I have applied to several, and if they work out, then I will go through with it, otherwise I will put it off to next semester, when I am a better candidate for internships anyways.

If I do stay here, I will probably move my entrance date for Grad school up to spring/summer.  It is looking more like I will go to BYU.  I am really interested in the research I am doing, and Rochester lacks a security program.  We will see how it turns out, but this is probably for the best.  I can use my time at BYU to determine the area I want to continue researching for my Ph.D., and hopefully become more appealing to those programs.

I am also probably going to move back into the FLSR.  I really enjoyed my time there, and I still have a bunch of my friends there.  We will just have to see how things fallout.  Hopefully it all works out.

 

That night I got to watch the BYU vs. Gonzaga game.  It was really fun to watch.  BYU really played great defense, and shot wonderfully.  If we can continue to play like that I think there is a really good chance we make it into the Elite Eight and then the Final Four.  I am really hoping for this, as it would be great to see BYU’s current team make school history.

After the game I just chilled with the guys in the Russian house.  Sean suggested the craziest thing I have ever heard.  He wants me to learn the guitar, and then start a band with him, Jordan, and Pasha.  OMG, I actually think I might do it.  I am starting to think I will take two years to finish my master’s degree, which means I will have more free time, and this would certainly be something fun to do.

Maybe our band could be an opening act for the great band LCD

Fun in the snow

I had a really good week this week, with all of it culminating in a cabin trip.  The week leading up to the trip was pretty crazy though.  First I needed to get caught up in all of my work to the point that I could miss two days of classes.  I also worked 20 hours, and prepared a presentation for a research conference that I am presenting at next semester.

On Thursday I even got to help a friend do their programming homework.  It was fun to go back to the basics.  It is also fun to see just how much things have changed.  I remember things like this taking me time to think of, and now it all seems so easy.  I guess I have learned something in college ;)

 

On Friday I headed up to the family cabin.  It was really clear until we actually got to the access road that leads to the cabin.  The snow had melted and refrozen, making it a difficult drive in.  We had to push one of the cars when it got stuck, but in the end we made it just fine.

That night we didn’t do much, just settle into the house.  The next day started the wonderfulness that is the food at the cabin. In the morning we had a fabulous breakfast quiche, followed at lunch by some wonderful homemade soup, with dinner being a delightful parmesan chicken.

The day itself involved some light sledding and watching the BYU basketball game.  Even though the game was a little sad, it was great being able to relax for the rest of the time.  We ended the day by watching Just Right and a Rascal Flats concert that was broadcast on TV.

 

Sunday was quite.  We didn’t go to church because we were snowed in.  It was fun watching feet of snow fall from the roof, like mini avalanches.  We did go for a little Sunday ride.  It was just beautiful how everything look covered in the snow.  I wish I had brought my camera.

Monday was the last day at the cabin.  In the morning I went with my Uncle and some of our friends shooting.  It was an old 22 caliber pistol.  I was the first to  nock down any cans, but we all ended up hitting them quite a bit.  All good fun.  It was been a long time since I have been able to go shooting.

After that several of us went out snowmobiling.  This time was my first time going through the fresh powder.  It was so much fun, though you really have to throw your weight around to go where you want to go.  Certainly not the easiest thing. 

After that we packed up and headed home.  It was a nice and smooth drive.  Overall the weekend was just magnificent.  I feel recharged for the rest of the semester before me.  I did tweak my back a little, so hopefully it will cool down before not too long, but other than that everything is great.

 

Well, I hope you all had as enjoyable weekends as I did.  Wish you all the best!

Two good weeks

Well, I guess I forgot to write my blog last week.  I have been updating a bunch of my programs I use for e-mail and contacts so that they will sync with my new phone, and somewhere amidst all of that I accidently lost the outlook task that told me to write my blog.  Without those I can’t remember anything for more than five seconds. :)

 

I was offered a job by Qualtrix two weeks ago.  After hearing how much Jordan Plater talked it up, I was quite surprised by the low offer they gave me.  Most likely I will not take it, but maybe I will make a counter offer, though it is doubtful they would be willing to accept a counter offer that is about twice what they offered me.

On Thursday I had some really sweet curry.  Cameron, a family friend who is leaving to enter the coast guard, came over and made some curry.  I guess it is in the Japanese style, but whatever it was it was really good.  I certainly have missed by Asian foods since coming back to the “land of butter”, so it was good to get some.  It was also really fun to spend the evening with a bunch of my family and friends.

I had more Asian food when I went with another one of my friends, Naomi, to eat some Chinese hotpot.  It was really good food.  There broth tastes amazing after you have cooked all of the foods in it.  My favorite part is drinking the soup at the end.  The meats were also all really good.  I really do miss hot pot, it is so good.  What I miss most is the individual hotpots they had in China.  Those were just amazing.  It was also fun to spend some time with a friend that I have not seen in two years.

On Friday I helped Jared beat the entire set list of country music for the country track pack on Rock Band.  Is there anything better then an afternoon sitting around listening to country music?  Certainly, but not too many things are.

 

This last Sunday we had my cousin Ashlyn’s birthday party.  Once again it was great seeing all of my family.  That is really what I missed the most being in China.  It is great being so near to my family, and being able to see them.  I also got to play a new game called Spot It.  It really is a lot of fun.  I will just have to make sure to never play it with Brandon Carroll, or he will kill me in it just like he does with set.

This week was one of the most productive weeks I have had at work.  In just this week along, I finished up the main projects I was working on, wrote two new servers, and started writing a new mail client for our code-base.  So in these last two weeks I updated years worth of code, it feels rather good.

Wednesday was a sad day though.  I have really gotten into BYU basketball.  I have to admit that I was worried what not having Brandon Davies would do to us on our game this Wednesday, but I didn’t imagine it would go as bad as it did.  We were killed by New Mexico.  What worries me about this the most is that New Mexico has now kicked our buts twice in a row, and I am afraid another team in the tournament will see how they played against us, and use that style to also kick our butts.  I think BYU’s team is still really good, I am just not sure if we will be able to do as well as we have in the rest of the season.  Sad day :(

On Saturday I went to Zuppas for the first time.  I was actually really interested to see what the food would be like, since I know it is my cousin’s favorite place to eat.  It was actually pretty darn good.  At the prices they have I might just have to go more often.  It was crazy packed at the store though, since they were giving out free desserts that night.

I also decided to be silly and get the chocolate fondue for myself.  It was sooooo good.  It was a little expensive, and I thought dipping brownies in chocolate was a little excessive, but it was delightful.  I am going to have to buy myself a fondue pot and due chocolate fondue soon.  Well, maybe not soon, but rather when I finally have discretionary funds again.

 

So, overall two really good weeks.  I will be going up to the cabin next weekend, and I am really looking forward to that.  Maybe I will even take my camera so I can get some pictures.  Until then, I hope all of you are well.  I can tell that my friends in China are still having sweet adventures.  Thanks guys for keeping me jealous of not being in China ;)

我靠!

That is exactly what this weekend felt like.  One thing after another.

 

The week did start out well.  On Sunday I was able to go over and see my little nephew Kashe.  He is so cute, even when he spit up most of his bottle all over me :)

Then there was valentines day, which was a wonderful reminder of just how single I am, and how that seems likely never to change… sigh…  I did get a crazy amount of work done at the office though.  In just three days I worked 20 hours, and was able to make real progress on the implementation of our system.

When I got home I saw the aftermath of Valentines dinner here.  I unloaded the dish washer, and then to keep my angel of an aunt from having to wash dishes when she got home from a wonderful valentine excursion I set to washing all of the dishes by hand.  It took me over and hour, but I enjoyed doing it.  It was great to see how happy she was when she walked in and saw she wouldn’t have to do dishes.

 

Tuesday was also a good day in that I got to see one of my friends I haven’t see in nearly two years.  She went off on her mission when I was still in Washington for an internship, and got back when I was still in China.  I have loved being able to see all of my friends back in the US.

 

Not too much happened on Thursday, but the real “fun” started on Friday.  When I got home I saw that my phone and license plates had arrived.  I was so happy, everything looked to be going awesome.  Unfortunately when I opened up my registration on my car, I see that they had registered it as a rebuilt car, which it isn’t.  I got way to over-worked about the whole thing, and was kind of miserable because of it.

I do love my phone, but getting it all setup was a pain in the but.  It runs everything through a windows live account, the problem was that I have my most important information split between two windows live accounts, so I had problems with getting everything worked out.  After about 2 hours Friday and Saturday I had everything working, but that just felt like four wasted hours.

Sunday had its own adventure with me trying to make carrot cake with limited supplies.  It actually turned out ok for being so rigged together.  We didn’t have carrots, so instead I had to use freeze dried carrots.  We didn’t have enough cream cheese.  I forgot to re-hydrate the carrots.  The cake needed 45 minutes to cook.  You name it, it seem to go wrong.  The cake actually turned out decent, which is just a miracle.

Then on Monday (today) I go to drive to school and do homework.  I get to school just to find the building I needed locked up.  I had meant to get after hours codes from my professor, but never got around to it.  On top of that at the same time I got the e-mail from Cornell letting me know I didn’t make it into their grad program.

 

See, just one thing after another.  Who knows, maybe the sky will fall on me tomorrow   Ok, I know things really are not that bad, it was just a little much this weekend.  Didn’t help that I saw pictures from Harbin, and once again sad that I didn’t stay in China.  Oh silly Scott.

 

I hope that I took all of the bad luck this weekend, and that the rest of you had amazing weekends.