Napoleon Dynamite

If you are a fan like me you probably know that Napoleon Dynamite is available on DVD now. Jon Heder was on the Late Show with David Letterman as Napoleon to promote the release. He did the top ten list. I am pretty sure that it is the funniest top ten list that I have ever seen. If you are any kid of fan of Napoleon Dynamite you should check out this video download.

Napoleon Dynamite Top Ten List

Hawaiian Christmas

I grew up in Colorado. It was always cold there during the holidays and Utah is no different. I spent this Christmas in Hawaii. It was strange because it was warm and it rained instead of snowing and when it rained it wasn’t even cold. Despite having a warm Christmas it was great. We spent a week on Oahu. I was there with Kim and her family. We stayed in Waikiki. I heard that 1.2 million people live in Hawaii and 1 million live on Oahu. We did a lot of snorkeling and went on a submarine and visited Pearl Harbor and the Polynesian Cultural Center. We went to the north shore and saw people surfing some huge waves. I really like snorkeling. At one spot we went to we saw a sea turtle. It was probably twelve to eighteen inches in diameter. I followed it around for a long time. It was just taking it easy, cruising around. At the same place I saw a moray eel about three feet long. It was swimming and I think that I startled it. It went back against a rock and started glaring at me and moving its mouth. I thought that it was going to eat me. I just learned from the above link that it could have caused more harm to me than I thought at the time. I am glad that I didn’t try to touch it or anything. I don’t think that I like eels very much. On the submarine that we went on they took us to some ships that were sunk on purpose to create artificial reefs. On the biggest ship there was a turtle just sitting on the deck. I would guess that it was about four feet in diameter. It was getting cleaned. Sort of like the whale wash in a Shark’s Tale, which just so happened to be the in-flight movie on the way to Hawaii. It was fun to spend time with Kim’s family and to be in such a beautiful place. I look forward to the next time that I can go to Hawaii.

Halo 2 is Probably the Best Game Ever

I had the opportunity to beat Halo 2 this weekend. This was special because I don't have a tv or an Xbox right now. I think that it probably took about twelve to fifteen hours to beat. I had heard that ending was pretty open ended but I was still surprised. I beat it on normal. Some of those levels towards the end were ridiculously difficult. I don't know if I am going to be able to beat them by myself. I was impressed by the toughness of the brutes. I hope that at some point in the future I can play as a brute rather than an elite.

I have a presentation in a few hours on the Stationary Low Power Reactor accident of January 3, 1961 at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho. I had the opportunity to learn a lot about it for this presentation. That sort of thing fascinates me. For anyone who doesn't know, three technicians were preparing the reactor for start up after a down period. One of the control rods was wedged in the reactor. It needed to be removed a small amount to attach it to the control drive mechanism. Too much force was applied by the technicians and when the rod broke free it came too far out of the uranium and caused the reactor to go prompt critical. There was water in the reactor that acted as a moderator for the reaction. When it went critical the water flashed to steam. The temperature increased to almost 4000 degrees in 4 milliseconds. The force of the steam hit the top of the reactor vessel. The vessel did not fail, but it was propelled upwards until it hit the ceiling and then settled back into its hole. Two of the technicians were killed instantly by blunt trauma. One was impaled to the ceiling. The third technician died two hours later. This was the first and last fatal nuclear reactor accident in United States history to my knowledge. Even without a containment structure the radiation from the reactor was contained within a 3 acre area. The only contamination found outside of the three acre area was iodine 131. The three technicians were buried in lead caskets and encased in concrete. Some accounts say that their hands were buried separate from their bodies. Despite all of this I think that nuclear power is great and we should have more of it.

On the other hand, for a different class I am finishing up a term paper on the correlation between levels of testosterone and depression and marital status, which I don't find nearly as fascinating. It is also interesting but not as interesting as things blowing up. If you are between the ages of 40 and 70 and you are feeling depressed you should have your testosterone level checked. You never know with these things.

Today's Accident

Today I was in an accident. More accurately my car was in an accident. I was working on a job site and I heard a crunch, but thought nothing of it. The guy that I was working with said, "Hey, I think someone just hit your car." Sure enough, they did. My car was just parked in the lot minding its own business. The job that I am working on is an addition to an existing fitness center. I guess the lady was done working out and then she was in a hurry to leave. She was parked next to my car (there were no other cars around) and she cranked the wheel too hard and smashed the passenger side of her suburban into my little teal escort. I was proud of the escort. It only sustained a little bit of damage. The turn signal light is now cracked and there are some scratches on the bumper. The passenger door of the suburban got worked. It was all dented in. The lady that hit my car was very nice. She was very apologetic. She went in to the fitness center to get her husband, who was also working out, to back the suburban up so that the damage could be assessed. He was furious. He threw things and swore a lot. She said that she just got her car out of the shop last week, but it wasn't her fault. So, the police came and everything was fine. They are probably going to fix the damage without making an insurance claim. I think that I am just a little bit too laid back for things like this to happen to me. I end up getting screwed more often than I should. I don't even care about the scratches. I plan on driving the car until I have to pay someone to take it away so I dont need to keep up the resale value. I do want to get the light fixed because I know that the chipped part will fall apart next year right before I have to get an inspection and I will end up paying for it out of my own pocket so that I can renew my registration. That is how things work for me. I should mention that a few months ago I had my other car at a different job site and it was hit also. That one was a lot more serious. One of the windows got broken and the whole side was scratched up. Whoever hit me that day didn't stick around to tell me. It was a hit and run and I ended up making a claim on my own insurance. So, the moral of the story is either: walk to work, people drive crazy after they work out or, park as far away as you can from other vehicles.

On a lighter side a friend of mine pointed me to a great website today. I think that the prices are a little steep but the tees sure are funny. You should click on each tee and see the funny blurb about it. I laughed out loud. Your retarded.

Bustedtees.com

King of Procrastination

Here I am procrastinating again. School is almost over for the semester and here I sit writing on my blog instead of writing three reports and preparing one presentation and studying for one final. It is like a curse. It seems like I can’t not procrastinate even if I want to. I always end up doing things at the last minute. It seems like I can get things done faster if I wait until the last minute. When I am close to the deadline I am forced to focus and get it done as fast as I can. If I am not close to the deadline then I get distracted easily and find other things to do rather than what I need to. Sometimes I find myself doing the dishes and dusting rather than writing a paper that I am trying to get an early start on. I probably clean more when I am procrastinating than when I am cleaning. Over the last few years I have tried to break the habit. Even at the beginning of this semester I was doing pretty well. Until I got about half way through I was one day ahead on everything. It was actually pretty nice and much less stressful. Last week I had two assignments, one presentation and two reports due on Wednesday. There I was Tuesday night and all day Wednesday getting it all together. It is beginning to look like this Tuesday night and Wednesday will be much the same. Old habits die hard.

The Great School of Graduates

I never even considered attending graduate school until recently. My professors have been talking about it a lot. The more I learn about it, the more it sounds like a good idea. I wish that I had learned some of the things that I am learning now a few semesters ago. I wish that I had known that I could have been working for one of my professors doing research or something as an undergraduate. I think that would have been a much more valuable experience than I have gotten at the job that I have had for the last two years. I enjoy my job but it doesn’t have very much to do with mechanical engineering. I always thought that I would just get my bachelor’s degree and get a job. It didn’t appeal to me at all to go to graduate school . As I get closer to my degree and I get to choose the things that I want to study, I enjoy it more and more. I think that graduate school would be more of the same. I would love to learn more about rapid prototyping and then start my own rapid prototyping company. It is an important decision. I think that another reason that graduate school is looking better and better is because I could put off making a career choice for a little longer. Making big decisions makes me nervous.

Trust Issues

Yesterday I was reading a newspaper article about a guy that was recently arrested in Canada and extradited back here to Utah. The story goes like this. A young woman from the Salt Lake Area was serving an LDS mission in California. She met this boy in her travels. This boy was homeless and had no family and no education. This missionary's family had a history of helping people. They were always helping someone in their home. So the missionary told the boy to go to Utah and her parents would take care of him. The boy was fifteen at the time. The homeless boy moved in with the missionary's family and started high school where he did very well. Better than anyone expected an uneducated homeless boy would do. He even dated some of the high school girls and got baptized into the LDS church. He graduated from high school and got a job at a computer store. Things began to fall apart for the boy when his employer found out that he was using customer credit cards to purchase computers and then sell them. That little scam was to the tune of $100,000. Boy disappeared before the authorities could nab him. All this happened some time ago. Things like that probably happen every day. No body is perfect. The twist on this story is that the boy wasn't a boy at all. When he met the missionary in California he was already a return missionary and no where near fifteen years old. The whole thing was a lie. He lived with this family for four and a half years as a kid when in reality he was an adult. The thing that amazed me about the story was the level of deception. When I tell a little lie my stress level goes through the roof. I can't even comprehend living a life that is nothing but lies. What drives someone to this level of deception? The story reminded me a little bit of Mark Hacking. I feel like deceiving people is becoming more common. It seems to me that the truth isn't so valuable anymore. It scares me because how can I know who to trust? I could assume that everyone is lying to me until they prove otherwise. The problem with that is this guy carried on his charade for four and a half years. Is it better to withhold trust until it is earned or to give it freely until it is violated?

Article
Salt Lake Tribune
Deseret News

Ungrateful Ninja

I have thought about starting one of these things for a while. I thought that I wouldn't have anything interesting to say. Maybe I won't. Today I happened on a few things that amused me. Actually I laughed out loud. So here they are.



You may have guessed that mine is Ungrateful Ninja. This is also a fun one.

Gangsta Name Generator

My gangsta name is Green Egg Jungle Robba in case you were wondering.

I have been listening to Unwritten Law a lot. I think they are great. If you like the punk rock you should check them out. I really like the guy's voice and when I went to see them last time I left with some great memories. It was soon after their acoustic album was released and so I had really low expectations for a rockin' show. Scott Russo came out by himself with an acoustic guitar to start the show. I feared the worst. It was a good song and I like the acoustic album but I wanted to see a punk rock show. After one song he threw the guitar into the audience and it was immediately torn to pieces. My wife was horrified. She had identified it as a Taylor guitar and wanted it for herself. Anyway, the rest of the band came out and the show was great. We were on the balcony and you could see down into the back stage area from the side of the balcony if you went out onto the roof. At some point during the show Scott went out there and seemed to be having a fight with someone that I would assume to be his girlfriend. He stayed out there for quite some time and the band just kept jamming on the same song. I think that most of the audience thought that everything was just peachy. When Scott returned he went over to talk to Steve Morris, the drummer. We could see and hear what Steve was saying (he was yelling over his drumming) but not what Scott was saying. Steve said things like you don't need her and she's no good for you. I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something like that. So, the show went on. After a great set the band left the stage for the back stage area. I headed out onto the roof to see what might be going on. I wasn't expecting anything special. Anyway Steve was talking to the "girlfriend" and getting in her face. Apparently that wasn't what Scott had in mind because they started punching each other and then one or both of them were bleeding. So there was no encore set that night and security kicked me off of the roof. I probably wouldn't have gotten any more details anyway. It was fun for me to see what went on behind the scenes. My guess is that Scott and Steve got over it and they don't even remember that girls name anymore. Anyway, if you were at that show in Salt Lake at Bricks a few years ago and you wondered why there was no encore performance, now you know.