I Can't Feel My Legs

I couldn't fight the urge anymore and rode my Harley in to work today. Yes, I rode the bike into work. In February. I know, I'm crazy :) It was a warm and wonderful 25 degrees for the 15 miles between my house in Spanish Fork and work in Provo. It should warm up to the low 50's by the afternoon and I expect that the ride home should be much more enjoyable.

President's Day Music Picks

Here are my music picks for the weekend:

• Matisyahu - King Without a Crown - Jewish Reggae. Gotta Love It. Master Fob, Chris, I think you would both dig this artist.
  
• Daniel Powter - Bad Day - Love the video. Love the song. Holly, I think that you would like this one.
  
• Erasure - A Little Respect - This song has a viral quality. I heard it in an episode of Scrubs and had to get it :) I'm warning you... don't listen to it.
  

Hearing Voices

Something that you have to account for in professional software development is that your software may be used by people with disabilities. Many government agencies will not purchase software that is not "508 compliant"; i.e. doesn't work well for users with disabilities. Blind computer users, for instance, use special programs that will read the text on the screen for them.

Fortunately, I don't have to write the software that reads the screen. I just need to make sure that the user interface that I design and code will work well with the screen readers. Unfortunately, it is really easy to overlook certain problems in the UI because the problems aren't visible just by looking at them. Instead you need to "listen" to the UI like a blind user would to figure out where the rough spots are.

I spent a good portion of yesterday tracking down one such bug in our address selection dialog. I installed JAWS to read the text on the screen for me as I navigated through the UI with my keyboard. It always amuses me to have my computer talk to me... although I think that it would get old really quick.

Have you ever wondered what it would sound like to send an email if you were blind? Listen to this audio clip if you would like to find out :)

Lesbianism

I found this in the comments of someone's MySpace account and just about died laughing. Master Fob, I thought that you would particularly appreciate this :)

To My Dreamgirl Valentine

Here is a short video serenade (no barbershop, I promise) for my Dreamgirl on Valentines Day. Happy Valentines, Holly!

Sundance

Holly and I went skiing this weekend at Sundance. Neither or us had ever been skiing before. Here are the pictures.

This Post Has No Inherent Purpose

This post has no inherent purpose. Rather, it serves the secondary purpose of displacing my last post, "I Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty", from the top of my blog :) I thought the pictures were pretty funny at first, but now they are starting to disturb me a little bit.

I also noticed that none of my posts currently displaying on my front page, other than that one, have pictures of me. I wouldn't want someone incidently stumbling onto this page to get the wrong impression of me :) So, here is a picture from my snowshoeing trip last weekend to balance things out a little.

I Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty

Don't ask...

OK, feel free to ask, just don't expect a good explanation.

Cheap Tricks in C++

I came across an interesting bit of C++ code today as I was helping a co-worker troubleshoot a compiler error that he encountered while attempting to upgrade the compiler that we use for our build process. Here is the code (which has been modified drastically for the sake of clarity):

template<class T>
void *AllocateGroup(IAllocator *pAlloc, int count)
{
  void *pData = pAlloc->Allocate(sizeof(T) *count);
  for( int i = 0; i < count; i++)
  {
    new(&((T*)pData)[i]) T();
  }
  return pData;
}

What really confused me was that we were calling 'new' but totally disregarding the result of the memory allocation done by new. It also confused me at first that we were both calling the IAllocator and using new. What was going on here? As far as I could tell we were leaking memory, except that when I examined the disassembly no 'call's were actually being made. I was confused.

T in this particular template instantiation was a MyObject. This is what the MyObject class looked like:

class MyObject
{
public:
  void *operator new(size_t size, void *p)
  {
    return ::operator new(size, p);
  }
}

The operator new had been overloaded to take a void pointer, but as far as I could tell it wasn't doing anything special with it. It was just passing it along to the global operator new. The breakthrough occurred when I realized that the global operator new does not take 2 parameters. That meant that we were overriding operator new somewhere. I did a search across the codebase and indeed found an override of operator new deep within the bowels of our toolkit. Here is what it looked like:

void *operator new(size_t size, void *p)
{
  return p;
}

What the hell? An operator new that does nothing other than return the parameter that was passed into it? And then, all of the sudden, things began to click into place. This operator new was designed specifically to do absolutely nothing. The original code in the template function actually did the memory allocation using the IAllocator and then was looping through each member of the array and forcing the constructor to be called by using this goofy no-op version of operator new.

I want to know who dreamt up this egregious hack. The funny thing is that there is a much simpler way to solve the problem with much less goofiness. If the MyObject class was modified to look like this:

class MyObject
{
public:
  void *operator new[](size_t size, IAllocator *pAlloc)
  {
    return pAlloc->Allocate(size);
  }
};

then the template function could be reduced to this much simpler and easier to understand block of code:

template<class T>
void *AllocateGroup(IAllocator *pAlloc, int count)
{
  return new(pAlloc) T[count];
}


Music Spree

I went on a music shopping spree this weekend and picked up 4 new CD's at Best Buy on Friday night. I got:

• Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams
• Gavin DeGraw - Chariot
• Jem - Finally Woken
• Linkin Park - Meteora

Although I am happy with all my purchases, I would say that Meteora was my best buy. The sound of Linkin Park is best described as a mix between hard rock and rap. Their music tends to be a little angsty, but I've been in an angsty mood lately. They've got a beat that is addictive and I love the sampling that they do (particularly in "Lying From You" and "Nobody's Listening").

I was a little worried about the Gavin DeGraw CD. I like the songs that have been played on VH1 but I was worried that the rest of the album wouldn't be that good. I have been pleasantly surprised by the rest of the album and dig the alternate versions that come on the bonus CD.

I bought the Jem CD almost entirely on blind faith in Chris' reccomendation. After listening to the whole CD I realized that I've heard a number of the songs (or at least bits and pieces of them) before in various movies, commercials and TV shows. I particularly like the song, "They".

Tao Teh Ching

I finished reading the Tao Teh Ching this weekend while I was getting my oil changed at Expressway Lube in Spanish Fork. It could be that I just haven't attained a proper state of enlightenment but I wasn't all that impressed by the book. I felt like Lao Tzu spent as much time extolling the virtues of the Tao as he spent actually explaining the principles of the Tao.

I had an English professor in college that did the same thing. He spent half the semester talking about how much we were going to get out his class. He told us how previous students had told him that his class had changed their lives. I was excited at first. After all, if an English class could change my life for the better, then I wanted to be part of it. As the semester wore on, I began to have my doubts. If the professor was actually going to change my life before the semester ended he was going to have to eventually stop talking about how he was going to change my life and actually start teaching me something.

What I got out of the book was that the Tao was about leading a simple life and finding happiness in your everyday life. While I agree with this as a general principle, I felt like Lao Tzu took the concept too far. Here is a passage (#26) that particular disturbed me:

Therefore, the Sage, travelling all day,
Does not part with the baggage-wagon;
Though there may be gorgeous sights to see,
He stays at ease in his own home.

In my opinion, life is all about exploration and adventure and finding beauty and "gorgeous sights". To advocate not seeking "gorgeous sights" is like telling someone not to live.

Despite some general disagreement there were a number of passages in the book that I agreed with and enjoyed. Here are a couple of my favourites:

Passage #9

As for holding to fullness,
Far better were it to stop in time!

Keep on beating and sharpening a sword,
And the edge cannot be preserved for long.

Fill your house with gold and jade,
And it can no longer be guarded.

Set store by your riches and honour,
And you will only reap a crop of calamities.

Here is the Way of Heaven:
When you have done your work, retire!

Passage #11

Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub;
It is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges.

We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful.

We make doors and windows for a room;
But it is these empty spaces that make the room livable.

Thus, while the tangible has advantages,
It is the intangible that makes it useful.

Cleaning House

I didn't make any plans for today so that I could spend the day preparing my house for company later this week. About midway through the day it occurred to me why I hate cleaning so much. It's because I take about 3 hours worth of work and stetch it out over 8 hours. I get easily distracted and take lots of "breaks".

The ironic thing is that if I just worked nonstop for 3 hours I wouldn't have to set aside an entire day for cleaning. And if I didn't have to set aside an entire day for cleaning then I would probably do it more frequently. And if I cleaned more frequently it wouldn't even take 3 hours to do a thorough job of cleaning. Ah, if only I were a wiser man.

Breakin' the Law

The law was thrice broken today on the Ohana Utah (minus Lisa) snowshoeing trip out to Stuart Falls.

1. When we pulled onto the road that goes up to Sundance, there was a big flashing sign which read, "Chains, Snow Tires or 4 Wheel Drive is Required By Law". We kept on driving anyway.
2. When we pulled into the parking lot above Aspen Grove we were in a U.S. Forest Service Fee Area. We didn't pay the fee*.
3. About a half mile up the trail there were big warning signs prohibiting us from going any further on the trail under the penalty of a $1000 fine and 6 months in jail. We went anyway.

Breaking the law is cool :) The hike was awesome because there was no one else on the trail except for us. We were snowshoeing through deep, powdery, virgin snow... we deflowered the virgin snow.

* I have an annual pass but I just forgot to display it in the car before we left. We did have a ticket when we came back, but I just wrote my annual pass number on the ticket and dropped it into the pay box.

So Long Sallie Mae

Or in case you have trouble reading the small print:

Dear DANIEL L CHRISTENSEN,
Congratulations! This is your official notification that you have completely paid off the student loans starred(*) below.

Hurrah!

I actually made the final payment just before Christmas while I was in Hawaii. However, the "official notification" didn't arrive in the mail until today.

A Poem That Doesn't Rhyme

I'm doubting my endurance.
Will I cross the finish line?
And even if I do,
Does the finish line care?

New Music

KT Tunstall - Black Horse & The Cherry Tree - Whoo Hoo. Whoo Hoo. She's got a wicked new sound that I love.

Jack Johnson - Upside Down - From the Curious George movie soundtrack. I really need to add some more Jack Johnson to my music collection.

Beyonce & Slim Thug - Check On It - From the Pink Panther movie soundtrack. I know, I know, It's a little "pop-py", but I like it anyway :)

Nelly Furtado - Hey, Man!, ... On the Radio, I'm Like A Bird, Turn Off the Light, Well, Well - I just bought this album last week and I love it. Thanks for the recommendation Chris!

Engineering vs. Support

I remember when I used to get paid to write code for a living. I liked my job back then. Recently I feel like I am working in support rather than engineering. A couple of months ago, management decided to have engineering spend more time responding to issues in the newsgroups. They thought that it would be a good idea to make the whole development team more accessible to our customers. Generally, I agree that this is a good idea.

It becomes a bad idea when people start taking issues outside of the newsgroup and contact you directly for every little issue that they encounter. I feel like my entire day today has been spent dealing with customer issues. Again, I would like to re-iterate that interfacing with customers is not a bad thing. But we have an entire team of support people whose job it is to do that. As a "for instance", on an average day, I send and receive about 10 emails through my work account. Today, I have already surpassed 40 emails and the day isn't even over yet.

I want my old job back!

Fun in the Snow

I had an awesome time in West Yellowstone this weekend. The snow was fresh, deep and fluffy. In fact I think that it was snowing the entire time that we were there. Unfortunately, none of us got a ton of photos. We were all too busy riding. The ones that we did get are posted here.

Rough Start
Things got off to a bit of a rough start on Friday morning. As we pulled over to the side of the trail to rest I spotted a big park down below us in a valley. It was inaccessible from our current location but I figured that there would be an opening further up the trail. While the other guys were resting, I told them that I was going to scout ahead to look for a place to get down into the valley.

I found a makeshift trail that led into the valley less than half a mile from where the group had stopped. I pulled off of the trail so that I could swing the sled around and rejoin the group but managed instead to get stuck in the snow. Ironically I was less than 50 yards off the trail, but was obscured from plain sight behind some pine trees. By the time that it occurred to me that I should go wait for the group on the trail it was already too late; they had sped by hoping to "catch up" with me further up the trail.

In the meantime, I was stuck in snow that was chest deep. After spending about half an hour trying to dig myself out, I finally gave up and flagged down a guy on Ski-Doo that had a tow rope. We busted his nylon strap twice before we were able to finally successfuly exhume my sled from it's snowy grave.

The whole time that I was stuck, I felt horrible for being so stupid as to go off on my own. I imagined that everyone else was worried sick and had spent the last hour in search and rescue mode. I discovered when I met back up with them at the condo later that morning that they had never even stopped to look for me. They had just assumed that I was cruising ahead of them on the trail.

I was uncertain whether or not I should be flattered that they were so convinced of my competency that they couldn't possibly have imagined that I had run into trouble or if should be offended by the fact that they were essentially indifferent to the fact that I had gone missing. I'm going to go with flattered :)

Slow Learners
We apparently didn't learn our lesson from my little expedition in the morning. History managed to repeat itself on our afternoon ride. We weren't half an hour into the ride when we came upon a clearing in the snow off the trail. Rand was in the lead at the time and questioned me via hand signals (we couldn't hear very well over the sound of the sleds and with helmets on) which way we should go. I signaled back to him that we should stop and play for a while.

Apparently, either Rand or I were not fluent in snowmobile hand signals (Oh, who am I kidding, I was making the shit up as we went) and Rand mistook, "Let's stop and play here", for, "Let's forge our own trail through the woods instead of following the main trail". So, as the rest of us began to play in the deep snow off the trail Rand vanished into the distance. Fifteen minutes later, when the rest of us were tired of playing, we finally noticed that there was one less person in our group.

This time we were a little more coordinated in our search effort. We split up into pairs so we didn't get further separated. One group tried to follow the trail through the woods and the other group waited back on the original trail. When that plan didn't produce any results, we switched up and sent one group up the official trail while the other stayed back and waited. Just when I was convinced that we were going to have to admit defeat, Rand came buzzing around the corner on his sled.

It didn't take a third incident to teach us to always ride in pairs.

Trying to Kill Ourselves
We all managed to survive the weekend despite our best efforts to kill ourselves. There were a number of "accidents" but fortunately no injuries. I think that I won the prize for the most violent spill. It was on our second day of riding and we were off the trail in a little park. The park was separated into a higher and lower area by a medium sized hill.

I was acting more on impulse than forethought as I decided to go cruising up the hill at high speed. I mean, if there's a hill you have to go gunning up it, don't you? The only problem was that my faceshield was starting to fog up a little bit and I really couldn't make out the terrain in the snow. I knew where the hill was and I figured that as long as I knew that I would be OK. What I missed, however, was the little 2 foot dip right before the incline of the hill.

I hit that dip at about 40 mph and was sent tumbling over the handlebars. I wish somebody had captured it all on video because I imagine that I must have looked pretty funny doing somersaults through mid-air. Fortunately I landed pretty clean and didn't hurt anything. My snowmobile was undeterred by the lack of a rider and continued it's way up the rest of the hill without me.

Gunning For Free Gas
It turns out that our snowmobiles came with a free tank of gas for every day that we rented them. The only hitch was that you had to have them back to the rental place by 5PM in order to get them refueled. At 4:30 on Friday afternoon we were on our way back from the Lionhead Loop and about 30 minutes away from town. As we pulled over to rest, Dale informed me about the free gas rule and taunted me that if I could get us back by 5PM that we would all get free gas in our sleds.

I think Dale came to regret saying that, because no sooner had the words left his mouth then I hopped back on my sled, fired up the engine and went tearing off down the trail. I was hauling ass. I was taking corners so fast that I had to hang my entire body off to one side to keep the tracks on the ground. It's not so much that I cared about free gas, but I wasn't going to back down from a challenge :) 15 minutes later the entire group pulled into the rental place with plenty of time to spare.

Home Sweet Condo
The second best part of the trip (second only to the snowmobiling itself) was the place that we were staying at. I had managed to find a condo to rent for the weekend. I had pretty high expectations just based on the photos on the website, but the actual unit far exceeded my expectations. It's not that it was very fancy or extravagant but it was just very homey and comfortable.

There were beds for 8 people, a full kitchen stocked with dishes and cooking utensils, a pantry partially full of food left by previous occupants, a comfortable living room with an awesome leather sofa and even a washer and dryer. We didn't really use the washer, but the dryer was certainly handy for drying out and warming up all of our snowgear at the end of the day.

The biggest benefit of the condo was having the kitchen. We had originally planned on eating out for most of our meals, but the kitchen was so convenient that we ended up eating nearly every meal in. I became the unofficial cook (a title that I usually welcome) and prepared both breakfast and dinner for both of the days (Dale helped on the second night) that we were there. The best part about accepting the unofficial title of cook is that it left the official title of dishwasher open for someone else :) Fortunately, both Jay and Dale were pretty good about accepting that title.

Given my recent trend of healthy eating, meals were prepared with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. Although noone really complained, several of the guys found it rather amusing that a bunch of guys on a snowmobile trip in West Yellowstone were eating things like steamed sugar snap peas, fresh broccoli, fresh cut cantaloupe and red grapes. It may very well have been the most healthy guy's weekend in the history of guy's weekends :)

If you need me, I'll be in Montana

West Yellowstone, Montana that is... I'm heading up for the weekend with some friends to do some snowmobiling in one of the most beautiful snow covered places on earth. After a very hectic week of finalizing our plans, as of about 15 minutes ago, we have finally settled on who's driving, where we're meeting and when we are leaving. Thank God that's over. Although we are only going to be gone until Sunday, I think that I have packed enough gear to move to Montana indefinitely. What exactly do you need an Xbox, a barbecue grill, and 2 bottles tequilla for on a snowmobile trip? I'm not sure, but I'll let you know :)

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

I started piano lessons last night at Art City Music Academy in Springville. It's something that I've been meaning to do for years but have perpetually put off. I even bought a keyboard (actually it was a gift from Dad) several years ago with the intention of learning.

It was kind of a terrifying experience to start something new like this. It seemed like such a good idea in my head as I imagined myself learning to play. But as I sat in the lobby waiting for my lesson to start, listening to kids not even one quarter of my age playing much better than I will probably ever be able to, I couldn't help but ask myself, "What the hell am I doing here?".

Fortunately, once my lesson started some of the fear melted away. My teacher, who is 7 years my junior, told me that I was learning much faster than most of the 5 year old kids that he normally teaches. Phew! What a relief :) Actually, once we got started it was kind of fun. We were largely covering notes and rhythm but I still had the opportunity to pound out a few short melodies as I was learning the keys.

I think that my biggest challenge is going to be whether or not I can get into a habit of practicing regularly. I have heard from several people that success in learning to play comes not from the lessons themselves but from the amount of practice that you get. So, as you all see me over the next couple of months make sure to ask me if I've been practicing lately.

Blazing My Own Trail

I did some snowshoeing in American Fork Canyon today. It was in an area that I had never been to before near Tibble Fork. The official trail was actually a cross country ski trail. and there were signs asking people without skis to stay off of the groomed trail. I took the signs to heart and decided to just blaze my own trail through the snow. That is what snowshoes are for after all, isn't it? The snow was probably five or six feet deep and, on average, I was sinking about a foot with every step that I took. On top of being really beautiful, snowshoeing is much better exercise when you get off the trail.

A Night at the Opera

I went to the opera for the first time in my life on friday night. I saw Puccini's, "La Rondine" (The Sparrow) at Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City. The music was beautiful; there were spots where it gave me chills.

The opera was sung in Italian and super-titled in English. My only complaint was that we were seated so far to the left that to read the super-titles (which were hung from from the underside of the mezzanine) you had to shift your focus away from the stage. This made it difficult to just get lost in the music. I was tempted a couple of times to just stop reading the super-titles, but in the end I was just too curious to know what was going on.

The heroine, Magda, is the kept woman of a rich and powerful man, Rambaldo. She dreams of finding true love. In an attempt to relive one of her fond childhood memories of being in love, she sneaks out of her house dressed as a grisette (a working class woman) and goes to Bulier's, a parisian night club. At Bulier's she is accidentally thrust into the arms of Ruggero, the son of a friend of Rambaldo. Although they come together accidentally they quickly fall in love and run off to the French Riviera together.

Magda never tells Ruggero anything about her past or who she really is. Just as Ruggero is (basically) proposing to her and speaking of their future together, Magda decides that she can't bear to live the lie anymore. But she also knows that if she were to tell Ruggero the truth that it would devastate and humiliate him. So, she tells Ruggero that they simply can't be together and that she must leave him for his own good. The opera ends with Magda leaving Ruggero; both of them broken hearted.

I was pretty disappointed by the ending. I'm not one of those people that needs a happy ending, but this just felt like the tragedy was invented. Ruggero was basically telling Magda that he didn't care about her past and that there was nothing that she could tell him that would make him not love her. I guess that the real tragedy was that Magda didn't have enough trust in Ruggero's love for her.

Four Year Old Wisdom

I was testing a bug yesterday that required me to load my personal Outlook data file from home. My personal file is a good test case because it is old, large and contains several thousand email messages spanning several years. It's been years since I have actually run Outlook at home (I prefer Thunderbird now), but I still have basically every email that I sent or retrieved between the years of 1997 and 2002 in an Outlook data file.

The moral of the story is that when I opened up the data file, I realized that I had started typing a reply to an email that Holly sent me 4 years ago that I never actually sent... or at least I don't think that I did anyway. The message was still sitting in my drafts folders. Here is the [partial] content of that message:

[...] Although, I wouldn't give it too much consideration, considering that "utter disappointment" has become a common response from me as of late.

That previous statement reminds of a bumper sticker that I saw recently. It read, "If you're not pissed off, you're not paying attention". I think that I've been paying way too much attention lately :) Actually, in all seriousness, I thought that it was a pretty clever saying. It ties in nicely to some recent thoughts I've had regarding the "secret to happiness". My theory really isn't earth shattering or even original, it basically boils down to, "ignorance is bliss". Of course ignorance doesn't always look like ignorance. On a good day, ignorance can look a lot like a busy schedule. The secret to happiness then, is to fill up your schedule with so much crap that you don't have time to "pay attention" and get pissed off. I suppose a more positive spin on the saying might be, "If you're pissed off, get off your ass and do something" :)

New Toy

I finally broke down and bought a black 30 GB iPod tonight. It's amazing that I held out this long. If I continue to travel as much as I have been lately, I'm sure that I will get plenty of use out of it. Right now, I'm sitting in front of my computer typing this while listening to my new iPod. That is particularly ironic considering that the speakers that I have hooked up to my computer are exponentially better than the little earbuds that come with the iPod. But, I have a new toy and I must play!

Wisconsin Weekend

I just got back from spending the weekend in Wisconsin. I alternated between visiting my friends Chris and Shannon in Madison and Holly in Milwaukee. Despite a lack of grandiose plans (we didn't climb any mountains or swim across any oceans) the weekend was still a lot of fun. Chris and Shannon are the type of friends that are fun to hang around even when we aren't doing much of anything. We did get out for a couple of short walks at Parfrey Glen and Natural Bridge State Park, played several hands of cards, ate good food (God Bless the Mammoth Muffins), watched Transporter 2 (laughably implausible but still entertaining) and went to the Milwaukee County Zoo.



Holly has been fighting a cold for the last week or so and was losing the battle on Saturday night. We cancelled our plans for Saturday night so that she could get some much needed R&R. By Sunday she was feeling better and we went to watch several of her friends play volleyball and then joined them for dinner afterwards. It was a lot of fun to finally meet a bunch of the people that I've heard her talking about for the last couple of months. I imagine that her friends had heard a thing or two about me as well and I could feel myself being silently judged (one her friends, Angie, wasn't so silent), but I think that I made a good impression... or at least good enough :)

It was also kind of cool to see Holly's "thing". Wow, that sounds kind of dirty when you read it the wrong way :) By her "thing" I mean league volleyball. Even though she wasn't playing on Sunday night, I still got a nice introduction to the atmosphere, the sport and the people. Now I understand a little better what it is that she does with her life several nights a week. There are much worse things that you could do with your life; it looked like a lot of fun. Hopefully the next time that I am in town I will actually be able to see her play.

Jogging

I went jogging for the first time in a very long time this morning. I'm still not sure what came over me. I got up, went down to the basement to workout like I normally do, sat down on my recumbant exercise bike and I even started to pedal as if I was going to do my normal workout. And then all of the sudden, I got off the exercise bike, went back upstairs put on some warm clothes and headed outside. Before I even fully realized what was going on my body started to break into a jog. It was a little frightening, but the most frightening thing of all was that I kind of liked it.

I didn't exactly pick the best day to pick up jogging; it was 20 degrees this morning and there was ice on the sidewalk. But still, I persisted. Like I said, I'm not sure what came over me.

I thought I was in pretty good cardiovascular shape before this morning. I haul ass on my exercise bike, and I think that I was a force to be reckoned with on some of the hiking trails in Hawaii... I may breathe a little heavy but I have pretty good stamina. But for some reason jogging was just kicking my ass this morning. I would jog a block and then have to walk a block. I think that I have found myself a new challenge.

2005 Highlights - A Year in Pictures

I was going to write a long-winded year in review post, but I decided instead to just let the pictures do the talking. I took about 1200 photos this year with my digital camera as I travelled around the country and the world. Fortunately for you, I reduced this down to just 63 photos and set them to music. Here is the video, or if you prefer you can view the pictures here.

A Negative Vocabulary

I've noticed something disturbing in my writing as I've been working on my memoirs from my Hawaii trip over the last couple of days. I seem to have a much greater vocabulary for describing negative experiences than I do for positive experiences. As I look back over some of the writing that I did (that I haven't published to the blog yet), I spend several paragraphs detailing every aspect of some trivial negative experience, but then will only dedicate a few short and simple sentences to the positive experience.

That would be OK if the amount of writing dedicated to any given experience was proportional to the relevance of the experience. The problem is that the general positive experiences that I had over the course of the vacation exponentially outweighed the couple of trivial negative anecdotes. But you might not guess that from reading what I've written so far.

In the movie, Orange County, John Lithgow plays father to a son who is considering a career in writing. He asks of his son, "What do you have to write about? You're not oppressed. You're not gay." He seems to be implying that there is a natural connection between writing and bad experiences. Is this true? Is it easier for everyone to write about negative experiences than positive ones?

The Snowshoeing Trip That Wasn't

All week I've been meaning to call ahead to the ranger station at Bryce Canyon to make sure that there was going to be enough snow for our snowshoeing trip this weekend. When Friday came and I still hadn't called, I decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. I already had hotel reservations at Ruby's Inn and it was too late to cancel them even if there was no snow on the ground. Fortunately, I was with an adaptable group of people who were happy enough just to go hiking and sightseeing in Bryce when we discovered that there was very little snow on the ground.

Click here for more pictures

Of course I was familiar with Marci and Steve G. but this was my first time meeting Brenda and Steve L. who were both friends of Steve G. They were both a lot of fun to hang out with. Steve L. was kind enough to drive us down to Bryce in his pimped out Tahoe.

We did a short (roughly) 6 mile hike that started from Sunrise Point, walked along the rim to Sunset Point, descended into the canyon on the Navajo Loop Trail, continued through Queen's Garden and back up to Sunrise Point. Well that's how it would have gone anyway had we not decided in a moment of bravado to go off trail to hike to some formations that we could see in the distance.

Although Marci and I led the charge, Steve G. quickly passed us up and disappeared over the horizon trekking up and down the rolling hills. Eventually everyone else ended up stumbling onto an old horse trail, but we had already lost Steve. We spent a couple of minutes shouting into the canyon and hoping to hear Steve's response among the echoes of our voices. After a little bit of backtracking on the horse trail I spotted Steve G. in the distance standing atop aforementioned rock formation. I signaled, he descended, our group was reunited, and all was well.

All was well except for the fact that now we were kind of lost and disoriented. Of course, we could just backtrack up the horse trail, but what fun would that be? We voted and "pressing on" won out over "backtracking" three to two. A mile and a half of trail later we finally reconnected with the Queen's Garden Trail and then ascended back up to the canyon rim.

Succumbing to the Forces of Evil

I finally gave in and bought a cell phone when I got back from my trip to Hawaii. After borrowing someone else's cell phone for the 5th time in two months it occurred to me that I really just need to get my own. I wasn't quite ready to commit to a monthly fee or a 2 year contract, so I just picked up one of the T-Mobile To Go phones and bought 1000 minutes of service. I figure that if I use it enough over the next couple of months that I may upgrade to a regular cell phone plan and get one of the really cool new phones.

My Hawaiian Vacation - Day Two: Christmas Day

Check out the video, and the pictures.

We woke up early Sunday morning to watch the kids open their presents. For some ungodly reason Church was at 8:00 in the morning and was followed by a baptism that the family needed to attend. So, the plan was for the kids to open and play with their gifts from "Santa" before Church and then wait to open everything else up after Church... sometime around noon. Talk about cruel and unusual treatment of children :) Jaron and Kayla seemed to be so excited that they were bursting at the seams as they came downstairs to the living room where all of the presents were. It's always fun to watch kids on Christmas morning.

While Mom and the Muh's went to church, I decided to check things out a little. Jenni was letting me use her car while she was visiting in Utah. It was actually a pretty sweet deal considering that she drives a BMW. It's not brand new but it was still pretty nice and was a lot of fun to drive. It kind of made me think about trading in my Cavalier.

My first order of business was to find a) an internet connection and b) coffee. I figured that I could satisfy both of those needs at a Starbucks. I don't know why I'm so nuts about having an internet connection. On any given day it's not like I expect to have something really important arrive via email that couldn't wait a couple of days. But being connected has just become such an integral part of my life that I feel really uncomfortable when it's not there. I think of it kind of like indoor plumbing. You don't spend a lot of time thinking about how great it is to have indoor plumbing until you stay at a place where you have to take a shit in an outhouse.

The other reason that I wanted to find an internet connection was that my laptop had recently been re-imaged and I forgot to put my mapping software back on it. I use the mapping software pretty regularly when I travel to plan out all of my trips. I wasn't sure if it was going to be as necessary when I was travelling on an island as opposed to riding through the western United States, but I still felt uncomfortable without it.

It didn't take long to figure out that there was a flaw in my plan. It was early on Christmas morning. Nothing was open, not even Starbucks. Still I parked in their parking lot and managed to pick up an open wireless network from a nearby residential area. I've said it before and I'll say it again: God bless unprotected wireless networks :)

I wasn't able to download very much of my program before it was time to pick Mom up from Church. She didn't want to stay for the baptism, so I ran her home. I was going to head back to the Starbucks to resume my download when it occurred to me: I'm in Hawaii... what the hell am I doing sitting in the parking lot of a Starbucks? With my newfound clarity, I pointed the car in the direction of the beach and other tourists in Waikiki and started to drive.

I didn't actually make it all the way to Waikiki before I started to worry about the Muh's getting home from Church and making the kids wait even longer to open their presents. It was still a nice ride. It felt incredible to just be driving down the freeway with the windows rolled down and my arm hanging out of the window. I love the feel of the sun beating down on me. It was a gorgeous day.

When I got back to Mililani, Tina and the kids were home, but Ernest was still wrapping up some things at church. After Ernest got home, we finished opening all of the presents. I didn't think that I was going to have many presents considering that most of my presents had already been mailed or otherwise delivered to Utah, but there were still a few presents for me under the tree. Mom gave me an international cookbook and Tina gave me a copy of the "Tao Te Ching". The copy of the Tao Te Ching that Tina gave me actually has the original chinese text opposite the english translation. Even though I don't read Chinese, I still thought that was pretty cool :)

My luggage finally showed up at around four in the afternoon. I hadn't showered or changed clothes in the last 24 hours, so I was pretty glad when things arrived. Of course, rather than shower at that point, I thought it would be an even better idea for me to go to the beach and jump in the ocean. Earlier in the day when I was drving around, I had the brilliant idea of going to the beach at least once every day that I was in Hawaii. I mean, that is why you come to Hawaii after all, isn't it? To soak up the sun and salt water?


Despite the fact that the beach is normally not a Sunday activity, Mom accompanied me to Ko'Olina, which is one of her favorites beaches. Ko'Olina is a collection of manmade lagoons. They are very pretty but feel kind of artifical (since they are). She just walked around the beach while I jumped in the water. It felt great to submerse myself in the sea. I had forgotten how much I love swimming and floating in the ocean.

My Hawaiian Vacation - Day One: Travelling

Check out the video, and the pictures.

It all started on Christmas Eve day around noon. It was such a beautiful day in Utah (nearly 50 degrees) that I almost didn't want to leave. When you go on a trip to a tropical destination you hope to be leaving behind miserably cold weather. Marci, Malina, Jenni, and Grandma picked me up at my house and took me to the airport. It was kind of ironic that Jenni was visiting Utah from Hawaii while I was going to be visiting Hawaii from Utah. Fortunately, she did get back to Hawaii before I left and we got to spend some time together.

I planned plenty of extra time at the airport because I was expecting Christmas Eve to be ridiculously crowded and understaffed. What I found was just the opposite. The airport was empty and I basically ended up spending an hour and a half sitting at the terminal and waiting for my flight to leave. You would think that I would have spent the time reading one of the 5 books that I brought along, but instead I did some writing on my laptop.

My flight had two scheduled stops. I had to switch planes and airlines in Las Vegas, and then again in San Francisco. The connection in Las Vegas was not terribly tight but enough so that I didn't want to waste a lot of time in between flights. When I got off the plane I talked to one of the gate agents to find out where my connecting gate was. It told him that I was on a U.S. Airways flight. It was actually a U.S. Airways flight that was operated by United and serviced by Ted... whatever the hell that means. Which of the 3 airlines was I actually supposed to go to?

I got routed to the opposite end of the airport. It was so far away that there was actually a tram that I needed to catch to get to the other terminal. When I got to the other terminal, I had no choice but to exit security to get to where I eventually needed to go. Of course, since I didn't have my boarding pass yet for my next flight this now meant that I needed to go to ticketing to get my boarding pass before going back through security.

I stopped at the U.S. Airways counter and was met with blank stares. They didn't know anything about the flight that I was on. After a couple of minutes of panick and confusion they eventually looked at my itinerary and noticed that it was a U.S. Airways flight operated by Ted so I needed to check in with them. When I got to the Ted counter, the lady started to freak out. Apparently my flight was already boarding and it was all the way on the other side of the airport that I had just come from. So, I had to run across the airport, take the tram, and then run through the terminal to make my connection to San Francisco. The interesting thing is that the gate that I left at was only two gates down from the one that I arrived at. Had the gate attendant not had his head up his ass, I could have saved a lot of trouble and running around.

Apparently I wasn't the only one that thought it would be a good idea to fly to Hawaii on Christmas Eve. The gate at the San Francisco airport was packed with people and they had overbooked the flight. Normally I would offer to get bumped, but I didn't want to make Tina come pick me up from the airport on Christmas day and besides I had gifts to deliver to the kids. Unfortunately, my seating assignment hadn't been made yet and I had to wait until everyone else was on the plane before I got my assignment. I was the second to the last person that actually got a seat on the flight.

Of course, being the second to the last person to get a seating assignment I got a choice seat directly in the middle of the plane blocked in by people on either side of me. I tried to sleep but couldn't. I thought about getting up to walk around to try and beat the Chlosterphobia but the people on either side of me were sleeping and I didn't want to wake them up. So, I just sat there. Slowly, but surely, losing my mind. Just when I thought that I couldn't take anymore, the pilots voice rang over the intercom that they were making their final descent into the Honolulu airport. Hallelujah!

After spending half an hour watching the luggage carousel spin endlessly and fruitlessly until no more pieces of luggage were being ejected from it's bowels, I got in line to speak with the United baggage people to figure out where the hell my luggage had disappeared to. Apparently I wasn't the only one who was missing luggage. There seemed to be an inordinate number of people looking for luggage considering the size of the flight that I had just come in on. When I finally made it to the front of the line, I discovered that my luggage was still sitting in San Francisco and would be delivered on the following day. They didn't tell me why the luggage didn't make it; just that it didn't.



Mom and Ernest picked me up from the airport. Apparently Ernest had been expecting me to call on my non-existant cell phone so they were rather late coming to pick me up. Fortunately, because of the debacle with my luggage the timing was perfect. They were just pulling up for the first (or maybe the second) time as I was coming out to meet them. I was greeted by hugs and a a beautiful lei. After getting Tina's address back to the United folks so that they could deliver my luggage the next day, we pressed on to Tina and Ernest's house in Mililani.

Hawaiian Vacation Video

I was hoping to get my pictures posted online and to write a narrative on my blog about my vacation but this day has quickly vanished out from under me and it's getting late. So, here is a slideshow that I threw together of my vacation. Hopefully more will follow over the weekend.

Warning: The slideshow contains pictures of me without a shirt on and may frighten small children or causes epileptic seisures in people who are sensitive to bright light reflected off of pale white skin.

On My Way Out

I'm all packed for my trip to Hawaii and am just waiting for Marci to show up to take me to the airport. I put off packing until the last minute, and just barely finished in time. Unfortunately, I will probably be relegated to dial-up internet access for the next week and a half so I'm not sure how often I will be able to update. I will try though :) Merry Christmas!

Zarro Boogs

I just whittled my bug list down to Zero Bugs. Hooray! I'm sure that it won't last long. In fact, I wouldn't be extremely surprised if several more bugs 'magically appear' by the time that I get into work tomorrow. Oh well. At least I have the night to revel in my bugless-ness.

Second Times a Charm

I got back out to Stuart Falls on my snowshoes today. This time I actually remembered to put batteries in the camera before going. So, you can check out the pictures here.



As I approached the falls, I noticed a little red dot up near the top of the falls. "Hmm", I thought to myself, "Surely this red dot cannot be of natural origins. In fact, I'm quite certain that this is an artificial red dot that has tainted my picturesque frozen waterfall.". As I got nearer I could make out that the red dot was in fact moving. As I got nearer still, the red dot grew arms and legs. This red dot was in fact a person who had climbed several hundred feet up the frozen waterfall. Crazy bastard!



As it turns out I probably could have done this hike today without snowshoes. There was plenty of snow, but the trail was packed so hard that the snowshoes were almost overkill. In fact, as I was relaxing at the waterfall, a group of 6 people showed up behind me, none of whom were wearing snowshoes. On my way back I went out of my way to walk off the trail in the deep snow just so that I could feel like I was justified in wearing my snowshoes.

My Email is Better Than Yours

I just got accepted into the Yahoo Mail Beta today. The new web client is incredible. It sports tabbed email, a virtual message list, integrated search, inline message preview, a reading pane, drag and drop, context menus, and many more goodies. I'm loving it! Click on the screenshot to view it full-size.

Malina's Dance Recital

I had the distinct pleasure of attending my niece Malina's dance recital this evening. It was adorable. The whole thing was captured on video and can be downloaded here. Unfortunately, I don't think that I did a very good job with the video camera. I wish that I had zoomed in on Malina instead of always trying to get the whole group in the frame. Oh well, you live you learn.

Down At The Bayou

Met some friends after work at The Bayou on State St. in Salt Lake. I had never been there before but it was pretty cool. The Gumbo was incredible and their beer menu, consisting of more than 200 varieties of beer from all around the world, was awe-inspiring. After starting off with a safe Oregonian beer, I decided to go international and tried a New Zealand beer (not very good), followed by an Armenian beer (not too bad).

What I'm Listening To...

Soul Meets Body - Death Cab For Cutie
Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield
Chocolate - Snow Patrol
You're Beautiful - James Blunt

Mad Debugging Skillz

My kung fu was strong today. I managed to slay two really annoying bugs that have been occupying space in my buglist for far too long now. To earn my kill I had to chase both bugs down into the lair of the nefarious MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interface).

The first bug manifested itself as a lack of any and all address books when you installed GroupWise after Outlook XP. I had recently chased down a similar bug against Outlook 2003 and assumed that the two bugs were related. The previous issue had to do with how the MAPI stub was routing calls to the extended MAPI implementation. I verified that the calls were being routed correctly, but still wasn't getting any address books. I was about to write up an incident with Microsoft when it occurred to me to try running a test app against my MAPI profile to see what address books I got back.

When I ran the test app, I could see in the debugger that I got the correct number of rows back when I queried the root address book's hierarchy table, but none of them were being displayed to the debug output. Upon closer inspection, I realized that there was a bug in my test app. I was specifically looking for the ANSI version of PR_DISPLAY_NAME but I didn't specifically ask for it when querying the rows. Instead, I was getting back the UNICODE version of PR_DISPLAY_NAME.

It turns out that the address book application had the exact same bug. We were getting results back from the MAPI subsystem but since we weren't looking for the UNICODE display name, we ended up skipping over all of the address books because they looked like they were unnamed.

The second problem was that the DLL for our Message Store Provider was failing to register when anything other than Outlook was set as the default mail client. I was getting an error message that no default mail client was installed or that the default mail client wasn't capable of handling the call that I was trying to make... or something like that.

It is precisely the error message that you would expect to get when trying to use extended MAPI against a mail client that didn't provide an extended MAPI implementation. The problem was that registering the Message Store Provider DLL shouldn't have been making any MAPI calls. All it is supposed to do is modify the mapisvc.inf and register a COM server for our free/busy support object. It's basically just registry and file access.

I was able to trace the problem to a line of code in the ATL CComModule class that was calling 'ocslen' to determine the length of a string. When I stepped into the assembly for the call I noticed that ocslen was inlined to call a function called 'MNLS_lstrlen'. This function was resolving to mapi32.dll and was causing the MAPI subsystem to load and generate the error message... a stupid string length call. What the hell?

After some investigation, I discovered that in 'mapinls.h' lstrlen is #defined to MNLS_lstrlen. Bastards! I was able to resolve the problem by making sure that 'atlbase.h' was included before any of the MAPI header files.

Congratulations, if you have actually managed to read this far into this post. Unfortunately you don't win anything except for my respect :) I don't normally post this much detail about work, but I was pretty happy to have solved both of these problems today. What a pain in the ass.

It Only Hurts When I Walk

My new snowshoes weren't the only thing that I was breaking in on the trail yesterday. It was also the first time that I had worn my new boots hiking. I was hoping that wearing them day in and day out for the last month would have broken them in already. Alas, I was mistaken. Over the course of the two hour hike, I managed to rub off a significant portion of the skin on the back of each of my heels.



It probably goes without saying that I didn't get back out hiking today like I mentioned that I probably would in yesterday's post. Actually, I guess that it doesn't go without saying, considering that last night I told Master Fob that I was going to just suck it up today, tape up my ankles and head back out on the trail. I'm glad that I came to my senses. Even just the incidental walking around that I did today while I was grocery shopping nearly brought me to tears with every step.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

I bought some new toys today. As mentioned in an earlier post, I've been itching for some outdoor activity lately. So, I had planned on going snowshoeing today. I was going to just rent a pair of snowshoes from Outdoors Unlimited, but over breakfast at the Village Inn (a chicken portabella skillet) I talked myself into just buying a pair. I figured that this was something that I could see myself really getting into and there was no sense paying a rental fee today if I was just going to end up buying a pair in a couple of weeks. Although, now that I think about it, in a couple of weeks I'm going to be in Hawaii and shouldn't have much need for snowshoes :)

Anyway, so I stopped by Copeland Sports in Orem and picked up a pair of Atlas Snowshoes. I'm kind of an impulse shopper. I didn't do any research ahead time. They looked like a good pair of snowhoes, so I bought them. I'm sure that if I was to go online, I could find them for half the price that I paid for them at Copeland, but then I wouldn't have had them to go hiking today.

I had done a little bit of research on a good place to go snowshoeing. I found an article in the Salt Lake Tribune (it was actually a weekly feature called "Short Hike of the Week") that detailed a short hike in City Creek Canyon. The article began with the phrase, "Dust off your snowshoes", and featured a picture of two hikers trudging through the snow on snowshoes. "Perfect", I thought to msyelf. I probably could have found someplace closer, but this was a surefire bet. I mean they had a picture and everything :)

Well, after an hour of driving up to North Salt Lake, I finally arrived at the trailhead... and was shocked and appalled by the lack of snow on the ground. The picture in the article had lied to me! Sure I could have worn my brand new showshoes in 2 inches of light and sparse snow, but I probably would have looked pretty foolish. Not one to be discouraged easily, I decided to go with plan 2.

Plan 2 was to head to the trailhead of my favorite summer hike, Stuart Falls just above Aspen Grove. I had no idea whether or not this trail was even accessible over the winter. But I figured that I would hike as far up the trail as I could and turn back if things started to get too hairy. I was pleasantly surprised when I got to the trailhead and discovered that there were plenty of snowshoe tracks already in the snow. I should have come here first and saved myself an hour of driving back and forth to Salt Lake.

I learned a valuable lesson on my hike today. Wearing jeans to go snowshoeing; yeah, that's not a good idea. About half an hour into the hike my pant legs were completely soaked from the snow that was being kicked up by my showshoes. Shortly after that they had frozen solid. I was a little worried that I might get too cold on the hike, but it was a pretty warm day so I decided to press on anyway.

The hike was totally worth nearly freezing to death. When I finally got to Stuart Falls, I just stood and looked at the waterfall, and looked at snow covered mountains towering above it, and I thought to myself, "There is so much beauty in this world". I know it sounds corny or like I line that I stole from the movie "American Beauty" but it was a genuine thought. A second later I also thought, "Life kicks ass". Thinking those two thoughts are the reason that I love the outdoors.



Unfortunately, the above photo was the only one that I was able to take before the batteries ran out on my camera. The ironic thing was that I had actually made a special stop at a 7-11 to buy batteries for the camera before I went hiking. They really would have come in handy had I not accidently left them in the car at the trailhead. I am actually thinking about going back tomorrow and doing the hike again. If I do, I'll make sure to take plenty of photos.

I'm going to Hawaii

I just got off the phone with Dad, and he decided after reading my blog that he wanted to fund my trip to Hawaii over Christmas as my Christmas present. Thanks Dad! To the family that I will be visiting in Hawaii, I hope this last minute plan is not an inconvenience to you. I am more than happy to stay in a Hotel if you aren't able to put me up for a couple of days. I will arrive in Hawaii on Christmas Eve, leave on January 4th and then be back in Utah on the 5th. What a crazy life! Thanks again, Dad.

Status Report

Work - After floundering for the last couple of months, I feel like I'm finally starting to get my groove back at work. We are currently working on a service pack for a major release which means that we are primarily in bugfix mode. It's not always the most exciting work, but I'm starting to cruise through my buglist, and I was even able to sneak a renegade feature in while noone was looking :)

This is also about the time that we start working to design the next major release of the product. This is something that I'm usually pretty excited about, but I've been having a tough time getting into it this time around. I think that it's because we have recently hired a full time usability guy that is now responsible for doing all the fun parts of the design work that I used to enjoy doing; like mocking up screenshots of new features. We also did so much design work for the last release that we could practically take all of our leftover ideas from last time and turn them into the feature list for the next release.

Finances - I've heard from several sources now (one of them very reputable) that bonuses this year are going to be slightly less than they were last year. Although I'm always glad to get any sort of a bonus, I'm still kind of bummed. I think it's mostly because I heard several weeks ago that bonuses were going to be better this year than last and my expectations had been elevated. My expectations were also a little higher this year since I feel like this year more than any other that I've worked here, that I really busted my ass and went above and beyond the call of duty to get things done.

I was hoping to use the money to make the final payment on my student loans. Yes, I was one of those irresponsible people that borrowed way more money than I needed to go to school. Oh well. Even in the worst case I should have the loans paid off in the first couple of months of 2006. I'm kind of pumped for two reasons: (1) It's going to feel awesome to know that my education is finally bought and paid for and (2) It will free up $1000 a month for fun money; and trust me, I've already thought long and hard about what I can do with an extra $1000 per month :)

Fitness - As of this morning there is nearly 70 lbs. less of me than there was 6 months ago. I never could have imagined that I would have this kind of success. Yet, despite all my success, I'm still not happy with where I'm at. My next goal is lose another 5 lbs. by the end of the year and then another 25 over the next 3 months. I haven't a doubt in my mind now that I will be able to pull it off.

However, I have kind of hit a temporary brick wall lately. I've been hovering within a couple of pounds of the same weight for the last couple of weeks now. It's frustrating because I feel like I'm working out harder than ever and I haven't significantly modified my eating habits. One possible explanation is that I'm not dropping weight because I have been putting on muscle mass as the result of stepping up my weightlifting over the last month or so.

I am currently spending an hour on the exercise bike 5 to 6 times a week in the morning (running at about 75-80% of the maximum resistance) and spending an hour lifting weights 4 to 5 times a week at night. I know, it's nuts. But I feel great. Although, I have to say that I much prefer the spring and summer months where I could get my exercise through outdoor activities instead of being holed up in my basement.

Adventure - It's been way too long since I've had a good adventure. Discounting the time that I've spent with Holly lately (which may very well qualify as adventurous), I think that the last minor adventure that I went on was when I climbed (most of the way up) Spanish Fork Peak, and the last major adventure that I had was Barcelona.

This weekend I hope to find some adventure out in the snow. I'm thinking of doing either some snowshoeing or some cross country skiing. One of these days (real soon) I'd like to try downhill skiing but it doesn't quite feel right for this weekend. I'm thinking that I'd like to take a weekend sometime and head down to Brian Head Ski Resort in Cedar City to learn to ski. Their rates are reasonable and I've heard that the slopes are much less crowded down there.

For next weekend, assuming that there is enough snow by then, I'd really like to head down to Bryce Canyon National Park and hike the rim in the snow. I stopped by Bryce Canyon earlier this year with Owen and Kim and the red rock formations look almost surreal blanketed in snow.

In the longer term, I'm planning a snowmobiling trip with a bunch of guys from work up in West Yellowstone. We are planning for the last weekend in January. I can't wait. I was up there a couple of years ago with Dale and Bethany and had a blast. It should be twice as much fun though with a group of rowdy guys (well, as rowdy as a bunch of Software Engineers get anyway).

Christmas Plans - Unfortunately it looks like I won't be able to spend Christmas in Milwaukee with Holly like I was originally hoping. Her schedule over that week is such that it would be an inconvenient time for me to visit. Oh well, hopefully we'll get a chance to see each other sometime in January.

For a fleeting moment, I had considered hopping on a last minute flight to Hawaii for the week. But then I looked into the price of last minute flights to Hawaii over Christmas and had second thoughts. I might have still considered it if my bonus had been really spectacular but it looks like that's not going to be the case. Sorry Mom :(

Ironically, I may end up in the midwest anyway over Christmas break. I was talking to my buddy James last night and we tossed around the possibility of getting together for New Year's. James currently works in Milwaukee during the week but then goes home to the Twin Cities on the weekend. So, if the plan comes together, I may end up flying in to either Minneapolis or Milwaukee.

Whatever the case, I've decided that I don't want to be in Utah for New Year's this year. I don't think that I can take another alcohol free New Year's eve. Although now that I think about it, I got pretty shitfaced last year; Montri's family came down from Colorado and I tied one on with his brother and sister. That was fun :) Montri's sister, Missy, spent the entire next day puking her guts out. She should have known better than to mix pink champagne and Thai whiskey. Silly girl.

A Private Life

A friend commented to me the other day that my boycott of blogging personal thoughts and experiences is making it a pain in the ass for him to keep abreast of my life. Now he actually has to, like, talk to me to figure out what I've been up to. Blogging really is a much more efficient way of keeping up with your friends. From the blogger's perspective, instead of retelling the same story, or sharing the same thoughts several times over with multiple friends and family members by email or over the phone, you just post it once to the blog and it's there for everyone to read. From the blog reader's(*) perspective, you benefit from additional information that might not have been shared with you in the old fashioned world of direct communication. Of course, if you are reading this, then you are probably already clued in to the superiority of blogging and I am preaching to the choir. If you are reading this through an RSS aggregator, then you get extra bonus super geek points and I am really preaching to the choir.

(*) - Is there an official term for this? I was thinking 'blogee' but that's more like the subject of the blog, not the reader.

Feeling Better

I woke up this morning feeling much better. Maybe I did just need a good night's sleep. Or maybe, as FoxyJ put it, there was just something in the air yesterday.

Torpor

I am glad that today is almost over. It's not that it was a bad day; nothing necessarily bad happened. I've just spent the entire day in a state of torpor. Even as I sit here typing this I barely have the strength or motivation to keep my head upright. I feel like I just want to let my whole body go limp and melt into a pile of ooze on the floor. It's been that way all day.

I might think that I was getting sick, except that I don't feel that sick. I might think that I didn't get enough sleep last night, except that I was in bed at 11:30 last night and slept until 7:30 this morning. I might think that I was hungover, except that it's been several days since I've had anything to drink at all and several weeks since I've had enough to drink to produce any sort of an effect on me.

In short, I don't know what's wrong with me. I can only hope that when I wake up tomorrow I don't feel the same way. Wish me luck.

What's That Smell?

Over the last couple of days, I've noticed the distinct smell of burning electronics whenever I entered my office from another room in the house. It was strong enough to make me take notice but not so strong that I went searching for the source of the smell. Well, this morning, I discovered the source. When I came into my office this morning I noticed that the power light on the computer that I use as my web server was flashing and that the computer was pretty much otherwise dead.

When I tried cycling the power little wisps of white smoke started to float out of the back of the power supply. That's usually a pretty good sign that you have a dead power supply. The three of you that read my blog regularly may have noticed that it was out of commission all of this mornning. I stopped by Staples on my way home for lunch, picked up a new power supply and now my blog is operational once more.

Turning Thoughts Into Words

From "The Adolescent" by Fyodor Dostoevsky:

Ah! so you, too, suffer sometimes because a thought won't go into words! It's a noble suffering, my friend, and granted only to the chosen; a fool is always pleased with what he says, and, besides he always says more than he needs to; they like extras.

A Thanksgiving Feast

I am happy to report that for the second year in a row nobody has died as a result of my Thanksgiving cooking. All of Ohana Utah congregated at my house yesterday evening for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I was responsible for the Thanksgiving staples (roasted tukey, cranberry sausage apple stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, praline sweet potatoes and thanksgiving sweet potatoes), Ben and Jessie brought the pies (a wonderfully delicious chocolate pecan pie and a traditional pumpkin pie), Marci brought a veggie tray and jello, and Lisa and Les brought the rolls.

Here is a photo of some of my handiwork:



And this is what it looked like after the devouring:



Unfortunately there is not enough of a difference between the two pictures. I'm afraid that we are going to be eating leftovers for the next week or so :)

A Perfect Weekend

As I sat next to Holly in bed this morning eating breakfast, she told me that this weekend had been a perfect weekend. Wow, a 'perfect' weekend. 'Perfect' is a strong word and yet I tend to agree. I couldn't help but feel that we had created something beautiful this weekend. It wasn't tangible but it was still real. It was a beautiful memory; a beautiful experience. Hopefully this will be only one among many more beautiful and perfect weekends which still lie ahead of us.


Click on the picture above to see more pictures from the weekend.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Watch it, love it. It's too bizarre for words.

Priceless

400 thread count brushed pima sateen sheets: $150
Shower curtain for guest bathroom: $20
Matching towels for guest and master bathrooms: $80
Smelly Candles: $20
Carpet Cleaning: $130
Maid Service: $100
Convincing Holly that I'm not a slovenly bachelor when she comes to visit this weekend: Priceless

Cliff Jumping

As requested by Master Fob:

2 names you go by: svoid, Daniel

2 parts of your heritage: Huh?

2 things that scare you: Transvestite hookers and awkward silence. But especially moments of awkward silence with transvestite hookers.

2 things you are wearing right now: My Harley T-Shirt (from Barcelona, Spain), Fruit of the Loom Boxer Briefs (from Spanish Fork, Utah).

2 of your favorite bands or musical artists (at the moment): I don't like answering questions about favorites, so instead I will list a couple of artists whose albums I have recently purchased and enjoy: Aqualung, Anna Nalick, The Killers

2 favorite songs (at the moment): "Waiting for the Night" by Depeche Mode, "All These Things that I've Done" by The Killers. I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier.

2 things you want in a relationship (other than real love): Trust, Adventure, Passion, Honest and Open Communication, Humor, Comfort. Oops, I guess that I want more than two things in a relationship.

2 truths: (1) A question this open ended is begging to be answered by a humorous and witty quip. (2) I'm not clever enough to think of anything humourous or witty to say.

2 physical things that appeal to you (in the opposite sex): Who would have thought that this would be the most difficult question for me to answer? I've answered every other question and had to come back to this one. I think that the reason that I'm struggling with this is that I can't deconstruct my attaction to the opposite sex. What appeals to me is the whole thing. There aren't parts or things that I find particularly appealing in a general sense across all women. Some trait that I might find appealing or attractive in one woman may not produce any effect in me when encountered in a different woman. That leads me to believe that it wasn't really that 'thing' that appealed to me but that it was the woman herself.

2 of your favorite hobbies: Riding my Harley, Shooting Pool.

2 things you want really badly: Love, To be happy with what I see when I look at myself in the mirror. Hopefully one will facilitate the other.

2 places you want to go on vacation: Australia, Russia.

2 things you want to do before you die: Katie Holmes and Jessica Alba... at the same time. Just kidding (unless Jessica or Katie is reading this right now, in which case I'm totally serious). No seriously, I would like to travel and see the world and to learn to play the piano.

2 ways that you are stereotypically a dude/chick: See previous question.

2 things you are thinking about now: Whether or not anyone will be offended by my response to the question before last. Whether or not I care.

2 stores you shop at: Albertsons, Target.

2 people you would like to see take the quiz: Holly, Chris.

Oh yeah

Oh yeah, here are some pictures that we took at the Miller Horticultural Domes. Click on the picture below to see the rest of the pictures.

Memoirs of a Weekend in Milwaukee

I would like to tell you about my weekend in Milwaukee with Holly, but I'm struggling to find the balance in between informational and intrusive. I'm tempted to just give an itinerary of events, but somehow I think that leaving all perspective and reaction out of the accounting would make for a pretty boring post. The whole dilemma reminds me of an excerpt from the opening paragraph of Doestoevsky's, The Adolescent; a book which I picked up this weekend. He writes:

I am not a literary man, do not want to be a literary man, and would consider it base and indecent to drag the insides of my soul and a beautiful description of my feelings to their literary marketplace. I anticipate with vexation, however, that it seems impossible to do entirely without the description of feelings and without reflections (maybe even banal ones): so corrupting is the effect of any literary occupation of a man, even if it is undertaken only for oneself. The reflections may even be very banal, because something you value yourself will quite possibly have no value in a stranger's eyes.

I'm going to try something new and just list random good memories from the weekend. They are not in any particular order, chronological or otherwise.

• Watching Holly laugh as she discovered the picture that I picked for myself on her smell phone.
• Getting "lost" in the corn maze at the Miller Horticultural Domes.
• Using the wrong inflection and saying, "I liked that?" when what I really meant was "I liked that!". Holly, unphased by the question responds, "Yes, I think you did".
• Listening to a bunch of hair stylists shout at each other in Ukranian while waiting for Holly to get her hair done.
• Doing about 90 miles per hour down I94 from Madison to Milwaukee trying desperately not to be late for my breakfast date with Holly.
• Being treated to breakfast at Perkins by Holly. She sneakily stole the check while I was in the bathroom.
• Hanging out with Mom (Holly's Mom) before going out to the movies on Saturday night.
• Staying up all night with Holly before my 6:30AM flight back home on Sunday.
• Standing at Holly's workplace amongst the jobless, homeless and disabled all dapperred up, reeking of cologne, and holding a dozen roses in my hand waiting very nervously and uncomfortably for Holly to finish up with her client and come meet me.
• Seeing the look on Holly's face when she realized that I had actually flown all the way from Utah to take her out to lunch in Milwaukee.
  
• Hearing the phrase, "I can't believe you are actually here in Milwaukee", about a 100 times while we were having lunch together.
• Hearing about one of Holly's friends asking her, "What did you do to him in Mankato???"
  

Additional Flushes

For some reason this amused me in my sleep deprived state this morning. Apparently this is a problem in the Detroit airport...

I'm freakin' out, man

So, I'm sitting in the bathroom in the Denver airport and I hear over the intercom, "Just to remind you, Detroit is in the eastern time zone. Please adjust your clocks accordingly." What? Detroit? What city am I in? Was I that out of it this morning?

Apparently I was. I am sitting in the Detroit airport right now and not the Denver airport. It makes sense now that I think about it. That's why the flight was so short. Detroit is much closer to Milwaukee than Denver is. It also explains why I was hearing flight announcements for destinations like Flint and Kalamazoo. I thought it was really strange that there was a direct flight from Denver Colorado to Kalamazoo Michigan.

The good news is that discovering that I am in the Eastern time zone instead of the Mountain time zone just shaved 2 hours off of my layover.

Sleep Deprivation in Denver

It's 7AM and I'm sitting in the Denver airport. I didn't sleep a wink last night. Not wanting to waste a single minute of my visit to Milwaukee, I was hanging out with Holly until 3:30 in the morning. My flight was scheduled to leave Milwaukee at 6:30 in the morning. I decided that it wasn't even worth trying to sleep for an hour before waking up at my originally scheduled time of 4:30.

I was dragging ass by the time that I got to the airport. When I checked in at one of the Northwest electronic ticketing kiosks, I discovered that my flight to Minneapolis had been cancelled. Instead I was going to be routed through Denver and had an extra 25 minutes before my flight left.

I felt like the walking dead by the time that I got to my gate. I chose a seat where I could lean back and rest my head on a pillar behind me and tried to get some sleep. As I drifted in and out of consciousness I glanced up at the monitor displaying the flight information above my gate: departure time, 6:55AM, current time, 542. I drift back out of consciousness again. What time is it? Departure time, 6:55AM, current time 542. Good, still plenty of time.

One more time in and out of consciousness. Departure time, 6:55AM, current time 542. At this point it should have disturbed me that I had been in the airport for more than 45 minutes and yet not a single minute had passed according to the clock I was looking at. It should have, but it didn't; I was too disoriented. Later I would realize that the reason that the clock never changed was because the current time that I was looking at, 542, was actually the flight number and not the time at all.

As I slept I dreamt that I heard someone calling my name. It sounded something like, "Will the passenger Daniel Christensen please report to gate...". Wait, was that a dream? I open my eyes and look around. The terminal is empty. All of the other passengers that had been surrounding me during my last period of consciousness had now vanished. Had I dreamt them too? I was confused and disoriented. My flight didn't leave until 6:55 and it was still only 542.

Still I thought that I had better check with one of the gate agents. For some reason I looked around and tried to locate the source of the voice. It occurred to me that the voice must have come from the PA system and that the direction of the voice would not only be impossible to discern but would be totally irrelevant even if I did. Still I looked. As I scanned the terminal I was disturbed by how empty it was. Not only were the passengers gone, but all of the employees seemed to be as well.

I finally located a lone gate agent. As it turns out he was actually manning the gate sitting directly in front of me, but as you've probably been able to gather, I really wasn't all that lucid at this point. "I think I heard someone call my name", I said to the gate agent. "Are you Daniel Christensen?". "Yes, why?". "You really need to get on that plane. It's about to leave without you." Holy Crap. I had almost slept through my flight departure.

The flight from Milwaukee to Denver was way too short. I passed out as soon as we got into the air and what felt like 2 minutes later we were touching down in Denver. This was and probably will be the only time in my life that I wish that the flight would have dragged on for hours longer than it needed to. Why couldn't they have just circled for a couple of hours? Didn't they know that I needed the sleep?

So, here I sit in the Denver airport. I have nearly 5 hours to kill before my next flight leaves. I figured that 5 hours of dead time in an airport justified the $6.95 for wireless internet access. I have books to read but I don't think that my mind is clear enough to handle reading Doestoevsky right now. Then again, I'm not so sure that it was a such good idea to write either.

Belated Novelloween

I know that Halloween was a couple of days ago now, but I just got this picture back from my sister. Marci and Malina decided to come to Novell this year for Trick or Treating. I had invited them in previous years but it seems like there was always something else going on. Malina came dressed up as Pocahontas. We had a lot of fun walking around to all of the offices on my floor and collecting candy.



I felt obligated to explain to everyone that we bumped into that this was my sister and niece and not my wife and daughter. One of the guys on the Agent team seemed relieved to hear the explanation. He told me that he had been certain that I didn't have kids since I rode a Harley and people who ride Harley's just aren't married and don't have kids. He was confused when he saw me walking around with Marci and Malina.

My candy supply was almost overstocked this year. I went from giving out single pieces of candy to giving out two pieces to giving small handfuls. As time wore on, I was worried that I was going to have to take a bunch of candy home with me and starting stuffing large handfuls of candy in the halloween bags and buckets of confused and delighted children.

Survival

Today was that fateful and dreaded day where the company I work for enacted the lay-offs that have been rumored for the last couple of weeks. Fortunately, I am still employed. In fact, my team has weathered the storm fairly well. Unfortunately, we did not escape unscathed. Two of my team-mates have been given walking orders. I'm sorry to see them go and wish them both the best of luck.

These boots are made for walking...

I bought a new pair of boots tonight. My other boots were literally falling apart after this weekend. I'm not thrilled about the white stitching and I think that it may take a while to get used to the higher ankle but they are awfully comfortable and seem to be pretty durable. The yellow laces were replaced by black ones before I even left the store.