Rivalry.

Last year the BYU vs USU basketball game was a little different than usual. The biggest difference was that BYU head coach Dave Rose refused to bring his team of Cougars (aka cowards) up to Logan to play, and instead insisted on playing on "neutral ground". So all of the students at Utah State who were expecting to see their team play at home, instead had to drive all the way down to Salt Lake and pay for tickets to see their Aggies take on the Cougars at the ESA. There were a lot of frustrated students who just didn't understand why BYU couldn't come up. We were some of them.

This year when we saw that we were playing BYU again, and that this time they finally got the guts to come up to Logan, we were so excited! We couldn't wait to see how loud The Spectrum would get (the arena is ranked as one of the loudest venues in the nation). If you've never been to an Aggie home basketball game, you've got to try it once - it's insane!

X and I decided that we'd have some fun and that we were going to make our own posters for the game. Below is our handiwork:

We ended up going early to wait in line because we knew that the game was going to sell out. I went and stood in line at 10 the morning of the game, and X came to relieve me around 1:30. Then we both waited together the last few hours until the game started. We couldn't believe how many people showed up for the game. The place was packed! HUNDREDS of students were turned away because there weren't enough seats. Needless to say we had a GREAT time at the game. Both teams played hard, it was a struggle until the end, but our Aggies were able to pull through and get us our win that we deserved last year.

We were featured in the school newspaper as one of the top 10 posters at the game, and were even featured on some local newspaper's websites. Check out image 29 here and images 20 and 32 here. But I'd just recommend enjoying all of them.

Our Digs

Well, after living here for 7 months, I guess its about time to show off our apartment to those of you who haven't come up and visited us yet (shame on you!) ;) I have the images setup to show you the "current" view of our apartment, but if you hover over the different images with your mouse it will show you a "before" view of how it first looked when we moved in.

Your First Look

We live on the upper level of a 2-story apartment complex (think of the heat benefits!), and after a short hike up a flight of stairs you'll find yourself in the doorway of our cozy apartment. Right away you'll step into our living room (after passing by our coat closet which also doubles as storage for our large variety of games), but don't be tempted to lay down on our sweet corduroy-blue sectional - its just too comfortable!

The Rest of the Living Room

We also have a nice bookshelf with some good reads. Not to mention a couple of vividly-colored beta fish that you could stare at for hours. And if you like to stare, just not at fish, take a look out our semi-french back doors where our spacious balcony give a great view to all of our neighbors!

Our Kitchen

Our kitchen theme is RED if you couldn't tell (we're still working on getting more red things) and we have a sweet 3-chair table that has hidden "leaves" inside. That's about all I have to say about this part of our apartment.

Our Bedroom

And this is our queen-size bed (part of a 5 piece set we got from a furniture outlet store) in the "master" bedroom. We now have a nice duvet set, and we just need to find some pillows for our shams. We also have another bedroom, but its mostly where we stored all of our junk for the apartment to look clean for these pictures. ;D

Other Random Pictures

This picture was taken on our first load of boxes from the car. I'm standing at about the edge of where our bed is currently.

X playing "Hide-and-Seek" in the spacious closet. You literally can get lost in the closets because they are so big. They are about 3 feet deep, and the doors go all the way to the ceiling!

Some of the decorations X has put up around the apartment. We also got a nice armoire where we can keep our TV and stereo equipment, but still keep our apartment looking nice and organized.

Well I hope this gives you a "taste" of where we live, but we'd love to have you come up to visit and see the rest. I promise there is plenty more that we haven't covered (like the salmon-colored bathroom) and we will even treat you to sushi! Hope to see you soon.

Interviews

HELLOOO from Chicago!

I'm in the middle of my week of busy interviews and wanted to take a minute of my relaxation time here in the hotel to sit down and say hello to everyone. I know you are all probably anxiously sitting around wanting to hear from me (right...) but I think busy is good thing to be.

I have a number of good posts planned to update you on some things we've been doing since we got married, so I know I've said it before, but stay tuned! Finals are approaching so I can't promise anything for sure, but we're taking pictures, so you'll get it all eventually. Its like waiting for a new book or movie to come out. Sometimes the release date changes, but you always end up getting to see it (except in some circumstances, like the movies that were planned, then canceled, for Halo, or Ender's Game... but that won't happen here! hopefully...)

Anyways, good talkin' with ya!

Married

It's long overdue... We're married!

Stay tuned - more to come about the last 5 months of married life!

TOP 5 is moving

I've decided to move my TOP 5 series to a separate blog... ya know, to keep the business stuff away from my personal side... :) Anyways, if you are interested, you can find all the past and future TOP 5's here or at kcstop5.blogspot.com

Cheers!

Finally!

Finals are over!
It's been a long week and it ended today with 2 finals (including one in accounting - yuck!). Now that it is all over, let's take a look back at what happened during the semester, but I was too busy to write about!


Donating Plasma

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That's right. I've joined the ranks of the strung-out junkies selling my body for cash. It was an interesting experience, to say the least, going in my first time not really knowing what to expect. I'd heard all the rumors - "they use the BIGGEST needles you've ever seen!", "It hurts the entire time!", and "It takes like 5 hours!" - but none of them were true. The one thing that did surprise me was the color of the plasma. It looks like pee!



The donation itself wasn't actually even that bad though. Yeah, they stick you with a needle, but aside from the small pinch at the beginning and having to put pressure on your little wound at the end, the whole process is practically painless. It did take me about 3 and 1/2 hours my first time, but that was just because they had to explain to me what was going on and do some tests to make sure I wasn't really a strung-out junkie. Every time since has been less than 2 hours. If I go twice a week I can get $55 for the week. If I can do that every week will earn me an extra $220 a month, and if I can convince X to come with me that often that is $440 a month! Talk about a side-income! With the wedding approaching quickly and looking forward to paying for insurance, rent, and other "fun" aspects of responsibility, we need every dollar we can manage!


GUI Project

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This semester in my GUI (Graphical User Interface) class I was assigned a project to design a functioning traffic-simulation program. I decided to tackle the analysis portion of the program where I had to design the section where someone could analyze difference data sets on multiple graphs. It was a very interesting project, and I really enjoyed the class. I'm so glad that I've found something that I'm good at and that I enjoy doing so much!






Advent Creative

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This is the company that I started working for last September doing web development. I working for them throughout this semester and will start working full-time for them during the summer. Here are some of the websites I have helped build while working for them: Vooray, California Home Trading, Ascend Auto, and Mountain West Anesthesia. It has been great working for them and I've gained a lot of experience!


Planning a Wedding

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This has probably made up the most stressful part of the semester for me. All the planning, looking at options, and talking about the countless options (none of which really interest any guy...) has worn me out. I'm just glad it'll all be over soon. I can't believe this much planning can go into one day! (well, 2 for us. We're having our reception the night before). Hope to see you all at the reception. May 19th from 6 - 8:30!

TOP 5 Barats & Bereta

For those of you that haven't had a chance to experience a Barats & Bareta video, I hope that my TOP 5 favorites will give you a good look into some of their funniest work. Find out more at www.baratsandbereta.com


#5 - "Superhero Dunks"

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#4 - "Just Wonderful"

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#3 - "The Other Son"

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#2 - "Cubicle Wars 2006"

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#1 - "Mother's Day"

TOP 5 Worst Websites

This is a TOP 5 that I've been looking forward to doing. Being a Web Developer, one thing that is vital to my job is creating a website that is easy to use, looks fantastic, and doesn't inflict bodily harm (or cause the user to want to inflict bodily harm to themselves) in any way. These website gems that I've uncovered are lacking in one or more (sometimes all) of those categories. I'll be sure to point out the key ares of a few of them that you just can't afford to miss. Enjoy!

(NOTE: IF YOU ARE PRONE TO SEIZURES, EPILEPSY, OR MOTION SICKNESS, SOME OF THESE SITES MIGHT NOT BE FOR YOU)

#5 - www.paperrad.org

To start us off today we have a website of this... children's cartoon? Not quite sure what is going on here, but if you click on the main image of the page (it says something about solving problems) you'll see a FANTASTIC video that might help explain a little bit more about the site.

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#4 - www.dokimos.org/ajff

My favorite part of this website is, surprisingly, not the headache-inducing background, but instead the error-message at the top of the screen. Be sure you read it in order to get the full experience.

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#3 - www.moire.ch

While this site may seem simple and innocent enough at first, after you start moving your mouse over the various links you will understand why this site makes it onto my list. Be sure you click on the link I posted above because they have updated their site. My link points to their old site before it was updated.

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#2 - www.havenworks.com

This is a REAL news website. People actually come here to get their news. Now why someone would go here to get their news is beyond me, but if they can navigate the page, understand where they need to go, and not strain their eyes beyond belief... more power to them.

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#1 - www.yvettesbridalformal.com

Okay. Just take a deep breath before you head on over to this one. It's gonna be BAD. Once you are at the home page wait for a second to make sure you get the full experience while the page/music loads. Then be sure you click the lady/lamb artwork to head over to the [even better] 2nd page. Isn't the floating image wonderful? Why does it change into that creepy face? Also for your further enjoyment you can view the map to Yvette's location that has been conveniently drawn up in MS Paint (located on the top-left of 2nd page - red text on gray box). Not only is this the worst website I've ever seen, but the music, floating images, and everything else combined together make me question the sanity of whoever designed it!

TOP 5 Feel-Good Videos

This first category consists of videos that give you that tingly feeling, deep down inside, that just leave you feeling happy. I had a few different videos in mind when I created this list, but these were my top picks:

#5 - "National Anthem at Fenway Park"
This video was shot during "Disability Day at Fenway Park", where they had a special needs individual sing our National Anthem.



#4 - "Paul Potts on 'Britain's Got Talent'"
Many of you have probably already seen this video, but I was surprised by how it made me feel. Maybe I'd like opera? I'm still too scared to try it out. But if it always makes you feel like this then I probably could enjoy it.




#3 - "Christian the Lion"
A really cool story, although the video does a horrible job at explaining the story. If you want to find out more about the story search Google here. P.S. the music is really cheesy.



#2 - "Where the Hell is Matt?"
I don't know what it is about this video that gets me, but there is something just about it that I enjoy. Maybe it is just its simplicity, or there might even be a subliminal message, but I think I could watch it forever...



#1 - "CAN"
This man deserves to be father of the century! I don't think anyone can watch this movie without feeling some kind of emotion and spirit.

Introducing... The TOP 5

I want to start a new series of posts called "The TOP 5" in which I will post lists, videos, websites, etc. of my TOP 5 picks in various subjects. Some ideas that I am currently working on include: TOP 5 worst websites, TOP 5 funny videos, TOP 5 Fast-Food Burger chains, TOP 5 feel-good videos, etc. I can't do this alone though, and I'll need your help in coming up with new ideas for TOP 5 categories. You'll also be able to read over my TOP 5's and add comments or add your own submissions on what you think I left out or shouldn't have included. I'll look forward to hearing your ideas!

It's OFFICIAL!!!

In-N-Out Burger is FINALLY coming to Northern Utah! You have no idea how long I (and so many others) have waited for this moment. Tears of joy came to my eyes as I watched this video.

For those of you who have never been able to experience a Double-Double Animal Style, I highly recommend that you high-tail it to In-N-Out when it opens (projected for Fall 2009)

Software Development Isn't A Cakewalk

So I read this blog entry forwarded by a friend to me. It thought it was interesting because I think it highlights the mentality that many people have about computer science. How many time have you said to yourself, "This isn't rocket science, all we need is a programmer to do [insert complicated feature here]". Anyway, I thought it was an interesting and wanted to share it with you to hopefully change your mentality if you ever find yourself in need of someone like me in your future.

Here's the link: http://codeclimber.blogspot.com/2008/04/all-i-need-is-programmer.html

The article rings true to me because I have had several people just over the last semester talk to me about helping them or someone they know to build a website or application. Even my roommate approached me to ask about building a website for his dad to sell something online. I told them it would be a lot of work and that I didn't have time, and they all seemed stunned.

Computer Science is hard work. My boss at work told me that he read an article about how software development was compared in difficulty to physics and rocket science. I haven't read it so I don't know what exactly was said, but if I can get that article from him or if I find it online, I'll post it on here.

Anyways, thanks for listening to my rant. That is all.