Distorted Reality

X's laptop has a cool program on it called Photo Booth that lets you take pictures with various effects added to them. Needless to say we have had a lot of fun with these effects and have turned out a bunch of funny pictures. I wanted to share some of our favorites that we have taken over the last year:

This one always makes me chuckle. With my eyebrows pointed down and my creepy smile, it looks like I'm up to no good

X looks just so sweet and innocent in this picture! No one would ever guess there's a raging spirit within...

This one always reminds me of this kid named Ganton who worked with me at Adagio. Gotta love the double-chin action

X looks a little... handicapped in this one ;)

I think this one and the one above it make me look like a black guy...

For some reason I always thought this one made me look like Joe Camel...

Talk about a cleft chin!

My tiny mouth, raised eyebrow, and the little tuft of hair at the top make this one a priceless little gem

This one is my ultimate favorite. I don't know what it is about this picture, but the look on my face just gets me. I couldn't stop laughing after we took this picture, and it still makes me laugh every time I see it

It's amazing how different these effects can make you look! Which one is your favorite? Leave your vote in a comment below!

2nd Time's the Charm

I can now officially call myself an engaged man again. I must say it feels good to be able to say that I'm "taken" and that I know there is someone else out there who wants nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with me. This entry is dedicated to the love of my life, Katherine X Howell!

Lots of people (Allison) have been bugging me to get a blog posted about how the proposal happened, so this is here for those of you that just love to here this kind of mushy stuff. If you don't care for the "Awww..." moments, I suggest you leave now!

As some of you may know, my first date with X was to the Jon Schmidt concert last year. I took X again this year and was hoping to propose to her that evening. I wanted to propose to her under the stars out on the QUAD, and every day that week it had been clear skies and the stars were very bright. But lo and behold, the day of the concert it was overcast and rainy. Perfect. So I had to bail on my plans for that evening, but I kept a watchful eye on the weather.

It was a whole 2 weeks until another clear night up here in Logan! X and I had gone to the USU basketball game that evening and when we came out I noticed that the sky was clear. I was pretty excited. We hung out for the rest of the night until about midnight, and then I walked her home. On my way home I texted her and told her I had noticed that the stars were really bright that night, and asked if she wanted to go star-gazing. She gladly accepted and so we started getting all dressed up for the cold.

My first task at hand was finding out where I wanted to keep the ring. I didn't to put it in my pants pocket because it would really bulge out when I sat down, and I didn't want to put it in my coat pocket, because X likes to keep her hands warm in my coat pocket. I ended up deciding to put it in the hood of my hoodie. It was ingenious! It was a nice little pocket for it, it didn't bulge, and there was very little chance that she would reach in there for anything.

We left and drove up to the QUAD and laid out some blankets to look at the stars. We ended up getting to cold sitting on the ground so we decided to stand and do a sort of cuddle-dance as we looked up into the sky. It was at this point that I said my "back was itchy" and reached into my hood to grab the ring box. Of course I made it seem like I was scratching my back so she had no idea. I'm a sneaky one! Then I put my hand behind her back again and we continued to dance/cuddle for a little bit. I was really lucky though, because right after I took the ring box out X offered to put my hood on for me, so I got it out just in time!

After a while X was starting to get tired (I could tell because she was putting her head on my shoulder and I could feel her leaning a lot of her weight into me) so I knew I was going to have to act soon. I told her to look up into the sky and see if she could find any stars that she liked. (***MUSHY ALERT!***) As she was looking up into the sky I told her that I could see a beautiful star. She asked me where, and I told her right in front of me. Then she looked back up into the sky (and I secretly brought my hand out from behind her back) and I told her that I could see a sparkly star. She asked me where again and I directed her gaze down in-between us where I had the ring. She gasped and I got down on one knee and proposed.

The funny thing is that X was more interested in how I managed to do it all rather than answer my proposal. I told her I would tell her everything if she said yes. Now she knows. :)





A special thanks goes out to Andrew Hardman who came out and endured the cold night to take these awesome pictures. Thanks Andrew!

MasterControl

I know it seems like it was forever ago, but I thought I should post something about the internship I had this past summer. I was hired by MasterControl, Inc. as a software engineer to work on their document control software. Now I know what you are thinking... "What kind of a name is MasterControl?" I was thinking the same thing when I applied for a job. It just sounded like some big, robotic machine that would walk around and say "I am MasterControl" over and over again in a big robotic voice. I imagined that it would probably look something like this:


Anyways, it turned out that MasterControl was a lot more than just that, but unfortunately I am signed to secrecy about what exactly it was that we worked on while employed there. But we had a whole lot of fun and I learned that I never want to test software for bugs! They had us work in a couple of different departments and everyone's least favorite was verification. That department is in charge of making sure the fix that a programmer made actually fixed the problem and didn't make new problems. It was pretty boring those 2 weeks!

There were 5 interns that were hired on for the summer, but only 4 ended up showing up on the first day and we all made it through the entire summer. Here is a picture of us interns. My, don't we all look so happy?

From left to right we have Chris Derrick, Jonathan Mitchell, Brandon Johnson, and me!

INTERN BIOS
Chris Derrick: Chris is a student from the University of Utah. He and I didn't seem to get along very well from the start, but it probably had something to do with the fact that Brandon and I liked to pull pranks on him all the time. Some of my favorite ones include:
-Installing a program on his computer that allowed us to send custom error alerts to his computer and eventually ended up convincing him that his computer hated him.
-Causing his computer to shutdown anytime that he tried to open Internet Explorer.
Ahhh. Those were some good times.

Jonathan Mitchell: Jon (Yes its Jon, not John. Get it right!) is a student from Brigham Young University and is originally from Oregon. Jon liked to eat Hot & Spicy Cheez-Its and got me hooked on them over the summer. I didn't really get to know Jon very well over the summer as he spent most of his lunches playing video games, playing with his rubik's cube, or talking to his wife on the phone.

Brandon Johnson: Brandon is a fellow student from Utah State University and was probably the best part of MasterControl for me. Everyday I looked forward to hearing his sassy remarks and together we'd think of new ways to trick Chris into thinking his computer was possessed.

SUMMER ACTIVITIES
MasterControl had a lot of fun activities during the summer. Unfortunately (fortunately, really) I traveled a lot this summer so I ended up missing some of the events, but here are some highlights on what I was able to do this summer.


The MasterControl Summer Carnival - This was a family event where everyone from the company came and we had food and a water fight and such. My mom and X were the only family that wanted to come with me, but we still had fun (sorta). Probably the best part of the whole thing was the Christmas-colored t-shirts we now have and enjoy working out in. Thanks MasterControl! [Robotic Response: "You are welcome"]


Ping-Pong - MasterControl had a ping-pong table in their conference room, and us interns would take a break about once a week and go play ping-pong for 30 minutes or so to keep us sane. I won't lie and tell you that the occurence of these ping-pong breaks didn't increase as the end of summer neared.


"Dart-Man" - Whenever MasterControl hires a new employee they introduce them at the next company meeting and play a game where the employee can win some cash. Usually they play "2 truths and a lie" and for each person you fool you get $1, but for our meeting when we were introduced they decided to try a new game. Each intern was given 3 "Dart-man", which essentially are sticky darts shaped like little men, and we had to throw them at a wall with different prizes associated with different targets. Some of the prizes included Dinner for 2 at the steakhouse, an old company laptop, gift certificates, and such, but the big prize was a small target (about the size of a small sandwich plate) and it was worth $200! There was also a large picture of a $1 bill and if you hit that with your dart-man then all of the employees each received $1. Everyone who went before me all tried for the $200, and when it was my turn the boss said that he wanted to make things a little more tricky and decided to put the $200 target on top of the $1 target, so if you missed you would end up wasting your chance on the $1 prize. Here is a little diagram of what I am talking about:



<= This is what it looked like before my turn

This is what it looked like on my turn =>

Needless to say I wasn't thrilled that I suddenly felt like all chances for the $200 prize had gone down the drain. So my first two throws I tried in vain to get one of the other prizes, but on my third try I figured I had nothing to lose and so I might as well try for the $200, and if I miss everyone else gets a buck and they'll be happy. So I carefully took aim and made the throw. The dart-man went straight into the $200 target! I was thrilled and everyone was cheering for me. I ended up getting 200 $1 bills because they had so many of them just in case they needed to do a big payout. I thought that it would be funny to roll around in the money like Scrooge McDuck, but I decided not too cause I didn't want to smell like cash.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience at MasterControl. I had a lot of fun, I learned a lot, and felt like I added some value to myself as an employee. The major language I learned at MasterControl is called ColdFusion and having some experience in that helped me get a job up here in Logan so I am definitely happy about that. Look for a post in the future about my new job!

"TAG"

I was "tagged" by Allison and I'm supposed to upload the 6th picture in my picture folder. Usually I just out-right refuse doing stuff like this, but this time my curiosity got the better of me and I had to check what my 6th picture was. Well, I keep all my pictures pretty well-organized into different folders and such, so I went to the 6th folder and chose the 6th picture. And here it is:


This is Amanda after playing the "flour" game in which the loser has to dig their face around in the flour to try to find the hidden coin. Its great fun all around.

I tag anyone who reads this blog?

Pumpkin Carving Extravanza 2008

For those of you that know me pretty well, you know that when it comes to Halloween one thing I get really excited about is pumpkin carving. Every year I like to try something new, and really try to out-do myself from the year before.

This is a picture of the pumpkin I carved last year.

As you can see I like to try new things. Last year I just found a USU logo and created the stencil myself to make it work with my pumpkin. I'm always looking for new ideas and creations to try on a pumpkin.

Last weekend X asked me on a date, and I was thrilled to hear that we would be carving pumpkins for our date. I don't think she knew how much I enjoyed carving, but she soon found out! X did some research and discovered that Macey's was selling pumpkins for 12 cents/lb. so we began our journey Thursday morning to find ourselves the perfect pumpkins.

At Macey's we started digging through the pumpkins and I soon realized that I was going to have to do some climbing to get to the untouched pile of pumpkins in the back. X cheered me on as I made my way to the back, climbing over the pumpkins but distributing my weight so that I wouldn't crush any of the pumpkins along the way. As I was making my way to the back I saw this really ugly and deformed pumpkin and asked X why anyone would ever want to buy a pumpkin like that. She just shrugged her shoulders and we kept looking until we found the right pumpkins for us.

Now before I go any further, you have to understand that choosing the right pumpkin is an art in and of itself. Sometimes you choose a pumpkin based on an idea of what you want to carve; other times you find a nice-looking pumpkin and decide what you want to choose based on your pumpkin. And other times a pumpkin chooses you. This was the case for me at Macey's that fateful Thursday morning, I just didn't know it yet.

After we each chose a pumpkin we walked inside the store to make our purchase. For some reason I couldn't get the ugly, deformed pumpkin out of my head. I kept reminding me of... something... We were waiting in line to pay when it finally came to me. The pumpkin looked like a giant peanut! It was large and round at the bottom, and also large and round at the top, but in the middle it kinda went in and made it look like a peanut. My mind quickly raced as I thought of what I could do with it, when my eye caught on a package of Planter's Peanuts with a big picture of Mr. Peanut on the side. Golden. I told X to wait in line and raced outside to go find my Mr. Peanut Pumpkin before anyone else could find that wonderful (ugly & deformed) pumpkin. I was glad to see that it was still sitting there in the pile, untouched.

Saturday night we went out for dinner to Panda Express, and then came back for a night of carving enjoyment. We had 3 pumpkins to carve, and only knew what was going to go on the Mr. Peanut pumpkin, so we set to work at finding designs for the other two. X came across a few sites with some really good designs, and I found one that I wanted to do. We tried to find another design that would go well with mine, but the only place we could find one was charging money to view the design. So X decided to go with a design out of the carving kit that I had purchased last year. Luckily X had her camera phone with her while we were carving so she snapped a few pictures during the night. I had to run back to my apartment to get my camera after the pumpkins were ready & lit.

Here are a couple pictures of the carving of Mr. Peanut. The pumpkin was so uniquely-shaped the it was really hard getting the stencil to conform to the surface of the pumpkin! I had to tape it up a lot to make it work just right. X thought the tape-job looked pretty pitiful so she snapped a picture for us to always remember.

Here are the final pumpkins that we carved. X did a really awesome job. This was her first time carving using a stencil, and she surprised both of us when her pumpkin turned out flawless. The window pane and spider's web were the hardest part but she did a great job! Mr. Peanut turned out better then I could've hoped for. It was hard finding a usable image online that was large enough and looked right, so I just ended up blowing up the image myself and edited it to work for what I needed it to look like. Photoshop rocks!


You might be wondering about that 3rd pumpkin I mentioned and where it is. Well, we spent so much time working hard on these pumpkins that we didn't get finished until after midnight, so I decided to finish up the 3rd pumpkin Sunday afternoon. Below are the pictures of that one... Mario!

Doesn't the light totally make a difference on that one? After we found the Mario design we tried to find one of Princess Peach, but were unsuccessful at finding any except for the one to purchase. Oh well, maybe next year. Thanks for the fun date X!

Gotcha! starts tomorrow

Well we've had our sign-ups and it looks like we have 29 people playing in this Gotcha! Tournament. It was a lot more work than I though it was going to be to create all the cards and organize everyone's target! I'm really glad that 150 people didn't end up signing up to play!

      Depending on how this tournament goes will depend on if we do it again. We have a couple of friends who write articles in The Statesman (The USU Newspaper) and one of them wants to write an article about us and Gotcha! We'd like to organize a larger game encompassing several different apartment buildings in the spring, but I think it'll depend on how well this round goes if we decide to do another one.

      I know I haven't been doing very well at keeping this Blog updated, but a lot of my time has been going in to getting Gotcha! setup. Hopefully now that everything has been put together I will have more time to actually do something else in my life worth mentioning!

Gotcha!

I remember in high school seeing posters advertising something called "Gotcha!", but I never really knew what it was until it had already begun. Gotcha! is essentially a massive game of tag, except every player is assigned a specific target and there is someone targeting them at the same time. You can find out more about gotcha by visiting www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin_(game)

In my highschool's version of Gotcha!, in order to eliminate your target you had to get them wet somehow - whether it be with a squirt gun, a hose, or a cup of water. Needless to say it sounded like a lot of fun, but unfortunately it was too late for me to join since the game had already started, so I had to sit this one out.

Fast forward to my Spring Semester of my freshman year up here at Utah State University. I was living on campus, and one day I saw a big poster in our hallway advertising a game of Gotcha! I think I was the first one signed up to play! This game didn't use water however - I think it was because they didn't want students to have water guns up on campus or anything. Instead we used chalk. At first I thought it was kinda funny. But then as the game began and we saw how it worked (you'd mark your target with the chalk to "eliminate" them, I thought it really was a good idea. Not only did it NOT leave you soaked after you got eliminated (and upset if you'd just spent the morning getting all ready) but it was easy to clean up the chalk mark! I didn't end up winning that game, but I enjoyed playing. I thought it would be fun to play again sometime.

Fast forward now to last year. I roomed with my friend Dave from high school (who incidentally played in the Gotcha! that was put on by our school) and we talked about playing it a little bit and thought it would be fun to setup a game of our own. It didn't go much further than that, but still I kept the idea in the back of my head. Dave and I roomed together again this year and when I brought up the idea again of organizing our own game, Dave said "Let's do it!" and we began making plans.

Now let me tell you, organizing a game like this and figuring out all the logistics is no easy task! Dave and I have spent countless hours going over different rules, situations, and even legal documents (to make sure we weren't held liable in case of an accident) in preparation to start this game. We've sent emails to the residents living in the same apartment community as us, and over 60 people responded within a few days stating that they definitely wanted to play! We even created our own blog for the participants to visit to find out the rules and how to sign up. Check it out: www.usugotcha2008.blogspot.com. Dave, X, and me all drew up separate logos for Gotcha! to put on fliers and the blog. X's ended up totally being the best, and that is her drawing above.

So next week our registration begins, and we are planning to start the game the week after. We'll make laminated 3x5 cards with the pictures and names of each player and assign those out to the various players as their "targets". And we decided to use chalk! :) All in all it should be a lot of fun. A lot of work too, but I think overall it will be a great experience. I'm glad that I had Dave here to prod me into this, because now I can check "Setup a Gotcha! Game" off my list of things to do before I die.

Beardy

This summer our family was able to go to California to see our grandparents and to visit a few theme parks. Unfortunately I forgot my razor at home, so by the end of the trip I had started to grow a little... let's say "fuzz". Landon thought it was funny to rub my chin, and challenged me to grow out a beard. I'd always wanted to see if I could do it, and X approved it, so I decided to commit to not shaving for a whole month no matter how bad it looked. After about a week I looked really ragged and shabby. But I promised myself that I was going to persevere.


This picture is about 2 weeks into my trial. By now it had already started getting pretty itchy, but I kinda liked the way it felt. X said that it made me look "rugged" and that it was softer than she thought it was going to be. So far so good!



Finally, after 4 long weeks, I had reached my goal. Here is a picture that X took of me with her phone with my "full" beard:


I decided that the beard didn't look too shabby on me, and I kept it for another month. It filled in pretty nicely, and most everyone said I looked a lot older. Several people even said I looked like a crazy beatnik. But X was starting to get tired of it and soon said enough was enough. I had told her that I would shave it off as soon as she asked me to, so when she asked me asked me to shave I did it the next day. Of course I decided to have a little bit of fun with it in the process. Below is a compilation of pictures I took with my phone during the shaving process. I realize there is a lot of blackmail potential in these pictures, but I think they are fun and wanted to share them.

This picture makes me think of a tough guy from the 70's. Big chops and a goatee. Classic. And you gotta love the healthy glow radiating from off the top of my head.

Here you have me with the mustache and chin warmer.

And here is one with just the 'stache. One of my friends kindly put it that I look "just like a greasy mexican car salesman". Thanks Brady. It does kinda look like a mexi-stache though...

And lastly, you gotta go with the Hitler. I took another picture of a better looking Hitler, but it ended up getting lost in the mix, so this is the best you get. I love my expression here. Priceless.


Well, that about does it for me in the adventures of beard-land. I'm sure X will probably never let me experiment around with it again. Although I did discuss the possibility of making a short-film with Brady. It would star me playing 4 different characters - A 70's tough guy, a greasy mexican car salesman, a Neo-Nazi, and me with a beard.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog! This is where you'll find all sorts of updates about me, my life, and all my goings on. Stay tuned to find out about all the craziness that happens to me, and why I say my life is always running a mile a minute. There is a ton going on up at school and life, so i'll try my best to keep you updated on what is going on. Catch you later!