Wednesday, November 30, 2005

These are a few of my favorite things

I love showers. And by love them, I mean I absolutely adore and admire showers for all the glory that they are and all the truth and light they stand for. Sure, they're technically inanimate objects that only have a limited power of salvation, but once you run hot water through those pipes, a shower becomes a living, caring thing, and that meaningless inability to grant salvation becomes more powerful than you or I can comprehend. We become clean physically and emotionally as we shower, submitting all our cares, worries, and "questionable" odors to the great steaming showerhead which gives forth that beauteous water. (On next week's episode, Freud will enlighten us on how my love for showers is really a deep seated emotional response to the warm nudity of the shower environment.) Ridding us of filth, we are found clean in our sultry, steamy nakedness, ready to face a new day with vigor and vim. I love showers.

Incidentally, I also love delicious food. There is nothing like popping in your mouth a small morsel of chocolate, crafted with care in Germany or Switzgerland or Helsinki or Seoul (OK, that's a stretch). Similarly, there are few experiences which match the sublime delight of good fruit, or the delectability of Thanksgiving dinner and your mother's homemade apple pie. Food plays a powerful role in our life, and has become a huge industry because people just aren't content with the same old cold porridge day in and day out. No, we live in a world where there is variety galore, as China or Mexico or a host of other places are brought forth "authentically" (and here we use the term losely) in little corner restaraunts just minutes from your house.

One pleasure of mine are Dryer's "Whole Fruit" Fruit Bars. They're actually somewhat healthy, when compared to a number of the other sweet concoctions and confections now available, and are a delicious and fruity way to gain a little more Vitamin C in your diet. Though they do have sugar in them, they're all natural, and really quite delicious.

Now, the astute among you have probably guessed where this is going. As I walked into our shower room this evening (Ah, dorm life), and yelled to one of my buddies through his curtain to see how the water was, his response was unintelligible. It took me a moment to realize what was going on, but after a few seconds he confirmed my worst fears: He was eating in the shower, and what's more, he LIKED it. I try to be open-minded about things, but this was just too much. How could I handle a friend of mine ingesting sweet yummies like an ice cream cone in the shower, when clearly such things are against the laws of nature, physics, and my mother? Then again, thought I, it really didn't contradict nature or physics, and I couldn't really think of a time my mother told me not to eat in the shower (As far as I know, she's not actually present during those ordeals...ever). I decided that the plunge must be taken, and it was with a heavy heart I sprinted excitedly to the vending machines and bought a Dryer's Whole Fruit bar.

There are some things that have to be experienced to be believed, and I have to tell you, this is one of them. As I sat (stood, actually) in the hot shower, naked (yes, I've now mentioned nakedness thrice. I suppose I'm dwelling on it, but I like being naked in the shower - who doesn't?), contemplating my day while eating that strawberry-flavored frozen food, I realized that I was, at that point, becoming a more whole person. The fruit bar was delicious, and the yummy coldness inside of me nicely countered the warmth of the shower, creating a combination that almost (but not quite) caused excessive euphoria.

I can only say this: If you have never showered, naked (4!), with some delicious food in hand and in stomach, you must try it. I urge you (As I would also urge you to stick with mostly liquid-based foods, as opposed to turkey or pizza or other things of that slightly more solid nature). I would go so far as to beg, bribe, or cajole, but I don't know who you are and am thus at a disadvantage. But please, try it. You'll like it.

Monday, April 18, 2005

Time

It's been a long time since my last update. Unintentionally. Really.

Fitness: On April 4 I ran approximately 19 miles as a culmination of my marathon training. The intended date is April 23, with the Salt Lake Marathon being the chosen run. I will likely be flying down on Wednesday. The lack of exercise as I taper is killing me, though I plan on running about 5 miles tomorrow to keep things fluid.

Education: I was accepted into BYU and BYU Idaho in March, and also received a $2000 scholarship offer from BYU-I. I will be attending in Provo, and am waiting on scholarship status. Parents took me to The Metropolitan Grill in Seattle for dinner, which was absolutely fabulous. 3.5 hours of eating sumptously sublime dishes wasn't a problem. The checque, however, could have been interpreted as such. Off my tangent, I still don't have a clue what I'd like to study.

Work: I've been doing more work lately. I just completed a Windows Small Business Server 2003 installation which will eventually support perhaps 10-15 people. The server is not taxed heavily; performance reports indicate approximately 2% of processor time is being utilized. I've been receiving more work, and a partnership with Charles H and Adam L is possible. I've also been reading about Apple's new server OS platform, Mac OS X version 10.4 ("Tiger"). It looks fantastic, and I can't wait for some business to come along and appropriate $30,000 for me to set up a redundant server with a fibre-attached RAID5 2.8TB system and failover. Right.
SERVER: 3.0ghz "Prescott" Intel Pentium IV HT on Supermicro P4SCi "Copper River" chipset server board. 2GB ECC DDR-400 SDRAM. 74GB, 10,000RPM Western Digital Raptor system disk. 300GB RAID 5 Array off 3Ware 9500S-4LP SATA RAID adapter (3x160GB WD1600RE drives; 1 hot spare). Onboard Intel CSA gigabit NIC. FAST.

More later.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

This is a picture that was taken in New York City's Central Park durin The Gates art exhibit. The exhibit was created by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. 7500 16-foot tall gates were erected in Central Park at the cost of the artists, with widths ranging from about 5 feet to 16 feet. They follow 23 miles of paths in the park and will be up for 16 days before being taken down February 28th, 2005.

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Saturday, February 12, 2005

Bridge Update

This is a picture of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge taken February 10, 2005. The new bridge towers are expected to be at over 350 of their 510 foot total height by the end of the month of February. They are made of marine-grade concrete and are angled slightly to increase compression strength between the cross-members that will be supporting the bridge horizontally.

The photo was taken at 5:01PM with a Nikon D70 Digital Camera, with the kit 28-70mm lens. The shot was focused manually with emphasis on the near bridge pillar. The effective focal length was 105mm with an F-Number of 7.1.
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