In The World…

I read an article today that might have changed my life.  Seriously.  I’m not even joking.

Are you a procrastinator or an incubator? [cnn.com] (please ignore the “Oprah.com” bit…)

The gist of the piece is that there is a difference between procrastinators and incubators.  While they outwardly appear the same in how they do work and handle deadlines, there are distinct differences.  Specifically, the quality of work.  Let me tell you a little story.

Back in college, I was taking GB-450, Business Law & Ethics, which was a requirement for graduation in the college of business.  People always dreaded this class because the professor was tough.  Anyway, we were given an assignment to write a 8 or 10 page paper about something or another.   I chose to employ the same method of writing papers as I had for years which consisted of the following. I would get home from work between 9pm and 11pm the night before the paper was due.  I would then turn on some Mozart and start writing.  Often, writing all night. The papers would just dump straight out of my head and onto the page.  No outline. No first draft.  Just write the thing.  I knew that while it appeared to be procrastination, I just trusted that the content would be there.  In the week or 2 leading up to due date, as I was working or playing or whatever, bits and pieces of the papers would pop into my head.  Phrases… Ideas.  I’d just squirrel them away for later.

Anyway, I finished that particular paper and turned it in the next day in class.

About a week later, the professor had completed reading and grading the papers.  That was the good news.  The bad news was he spent almost an entire class day absolutely railing on the overall quality of these papers.  He was quite angry with them.  He just kept talking about this was a senior level class and the work was entirely unacceptable… so on and so forth.  As he’s going on and on I’m just dreading more and more getting my grade.  I knew I didn’t spend much time on it so how good could it be?

He hands them back and I only got a 98 on it.  The people around me were getting 63’s or 47’s.  I think one guy behind me actually got a 19 if I remember correctly.

I never realized that the possibility existed that it wasn’t “procrastination” at all.  I have always known that I really need a deadline to get motivated.  I also know, that I’m certainly not above working my ass off to meet deadlines.  In fact, I honestly can’t remember EVER missing a deadline.  I’m sure it’s happened but I know it hasn’t been recently.

It turns out that after all this time, I’m just an “incubator”.  That is actually a load off my mind.

Seeing this article almost reminds me of the first time I read this book and discovered why I was tired all the time.  This one wasn’t as profound, however.  But that story is for another blog post.

That little quiz they have at the bottom of that article, I believe I would rate myself as 4’s across the board.  What does that tell ya?

Incubator, out!

Today, February 4th is an important day.  For it was 1 year ago today that our own Murphy was issued into this world.

Hey, give us a break.  We don’t have kids yet, this is what we spend our time on.

Early on, it was touch and go.  He wouldn’t sleep at night, consequently, we didn’t sleep at night.  Slowly but surely, he got things figured out.  So did we.  He’s gone all the way from looking like a gerbil to being 57 lbs of goofball.  All things being equal, he’s a pretty good boy.

In honor of this momentous day, let’s look back at where we’ve been with this set of photos.

Just 3 Weeks Old

2 Months Old

6 Months Old

9 Months Old – Obedience Graduation

10 Months Old – Christmas

And a few pictures taken from his birthday today…

If you just can’t get enough Murphy (lord knows we can’t) you can see a couple other sets of him in the following places:

• Murphy at See Spot Walk ‘09
• The Day We Brought Him Home

Happy Birthday Murph!

Everyone out there, do me a favor.  Next time I mention that I’m thinking of doing some sort of home improvement project myself, just repeat those words to me.  “Just get a professional.”  It would certainly save me a bunch of time, frustration and body soreness in the long run.

Why do I mention this?  Well, this past weekend Jess and I decided it was finally time to get a water softener.  Our water in Meridian is super hard (with dissolved minerals, you sickos).  We’ve wanted to get a water softener since we moved in almost 2 years ago.  Our shower walls are slowly turning orange.  The funny thing is, we put aside most of the cash we got for the wedding in an envelope with the specific purpose of buying a water softener.  It just took us this long to actually pull the trigger.

Well, the time had come and Jess was able to convince me that we could totally install it ourselves.  And by “we”, she meant her dad and I.  So, Saturday morning we headed to Lowe’s full of resolve that it was to be that day.  We had grand plans to crank this mother out and be enjoying our soft water that evening.

Hang on there, Sparky.  As is always my problem with things like this, I don’t know what I don’t know.  I did know that having looked at the plumbing for the softener (that our house was built with) meant that piping was going to have to be cut.  See the above image. I guarantee this fact added at least a solid year to my procrastination.  There was no handy-dandy screw off ends here.  Also, this isn’t PVC pipe either.  It is something called PEX which I’d never heard of. Of course, this requires a special tool we gotta rent.

Having purchased all the crap we’d need and planned our attack we started in.  This PEX clamper-tool-dealy-thingy (which resembles bolt cutters) was a bitch and a half.  Let me tell ya, compressing that bastard took everything I had.  This was compounded by the fact that final rings needed to be compressed behind the water softener.  I’m basically dry humping the water heater trying to get enough leverage and strength to do it.  It very nearly didn’t happen. Not to mention that I could hardly get out of bed the next day with my back, shoulders and arms all jacked up.  When we were “finished” I didn’t have enough strength in my arms to even close the tool. But I digress.

Long story short, we get all of the new piping cut and connected.  It comes time to test for water fastness.  I am happy to report that NONE of the PEX ring seams had a single problem.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that the threaded pieces leading into the softener itself were dripping.  Very slowly, but dripping.  Shit.  Well, we disassemble and unscrew them… re-teflon-tape them and reassemble.  Same thing.  We tried tightening.  We tried more teflon.  We tightened some more.  No dice.  It was at this point where we were out of ideas.

Fortunately, we still had usable water (thanks to my massive PEXing) so we didn’t have to spend the weekend like backpackers in the wilderness or anything.  However, the bucket under the tubing told a different story.  Honestly, I’m just glad that at this point I didn’t have water cascading around the garage looking like Old Faithful.

This is what always seems to happen to me.  Every project I do I can get 80% of the way done.  Then comes some curve ball and I’m basically dead in the water (no pun intended).  Something on my end is always different from the instructions.  When that happens, I don’t have the knowledge necessary to adapt the plan and continue.  Usually at that point I get frustrated that I shot an entire Saturday on the project and am just going to have to call someone in anyway.  F-bombs and flying tools usually commence.

This morning, the good people from A-1 Plumbing came out.  The guy was really nice.  He even complimented me on my PEX seals.  He told me about a guy who tried this a few weeks ago and every single one of his PEX joints was leaking.  At least I got that going for me.  Anyway, a couple hours and 300 bucks later we are up and running.  Not to mention that there were a couple pieces that he did and I didn’t even know about which could have cause us MUCHO problems in the future.

I guess I’m just not enough of a “manly” man to know this stuff. It is time to admit to myself that I really don’t know what I’m doing.  I suppose I wouldn’t expect a plumber to build me a website either.  There is a reason these people exist.  Just bite the bullet, pay the money and have it done right.

Thus endeth the lesson…

I’m just blowing up all over the place!

I was contacted via Twitter by the editor-in-chief of the Arbiter (Boise State’s Student Newspaper) the other day as they were seeking true die-hard Boise State fans to profile leading up to kick-off of the Fiesta Bowl yesterday.  Needless to say, if you’re looking for die-hard, you need look no further.

Here is the profile they posted.  Basically a handful of questions that I answered.

Pretty cool stuff!

By the way, I will be getting to my Fiesta Bowl reaction soon.  I’m still digesting that one.  What a game!

Go Broncos!

Yes, that is what I’m going to call myself from now on.  I’ve been published.  How cool is that?

Ok, some back story.

A couple months ago I saw a tweet from @TheBlueMag that they were soliciting fan photos for their winter edition.  I also got a Facebook message from one of their editors who had seen my Boise State photos on Flickr.com asking if they could possibly use some of my photos.  Of course, I replied right away and said I would be pleased as punch if they did.

Then came the waiting for the issue to come out.

It finally did last week.   By the way, all Bronco Athletic Association members get this with their membership, but you can also order subscriptions.  If you are a Boise State fan at all, you gotta get this thing.  End of pitch.

Anyway, in their fan photos section on page 92, they selected 4 of my pics!  All of which were taken from my seats, in row Z of the upper deck.  5 rows from the back of the stadium.  Needless to say, I find this whole thing completely awesome.  I’ve never had a photograph in a magazine before.  And even though I was not compensated monetarily, I figure I will still be able to refer to myself as a published photographer.  That’s got a nice ring to it, don’t it?

Below you will see the page, with my photos circled in red.  Click on the image to go bigger.  You can also go here to view the entire page.  On that site, if you flip to the next page, you will see my name in the photo credits.  Yes, I get geeked about this stuff.

Here are the 4 photos they chose, on Flickr.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Jess and I went to the Idaho Botanical Garden’s annual Winter Garden Aglow this past weekend.  It’s always fun to see the lights.  I’m glad we went when we did, because it has been raining all this week and there is nary a speck of snow left anywhere on the ground.  I’m sorry, but viewing Christmas lights is something that simply MUST be done in the snow.  It just makes them about 100x better.

This year, we seemed to be in attendance with a lot of really naughty little kids. Jess surmised that it had to do with the “perfect storm” of kid-dom.  Christmas, night time, and snow.   Anyways, there were kids throwing snowballs.  Kids running around off trail.  Kids having uber-meltdowns. One boy, “Austin”, about 3 or 4 years old was with his mom and grandma.  He was running around like a dog off leash.  They were imploring him to come back and drink his cocoa but to that kid, they may as well have been speaking Chinese.  Never slowed down. Never looked back. Never acknowledged they even existed.  The only reason they caught him (as he was running off the trail) was that he got boxed in by plant/Christmas light displays.  He was like a wild animal.  Unreal.

Anyways, I did bring the camera to shoot some shots.  I got a couple traditional shots of the lights.  But, since I don’t have a mono-pod or anything to help stabilize night shooting, I decided to go another direction as well.  Deliberately moving the camera with a slow shutter speed in order to “streak” the lights and create funky effects.  I really like how some of these turned out.  Notice that the LED lights actually flash really quickly, so they look like dotted lines when the camera is moved. Interesting. I present to you a selection of my Abstract Christmas.  The whole album is available on Flickr.com as well.

As always, click each image to go to it’s Flickr page.  Some of these images look much better when viewed full size, which you can do there…

And, a few of the more traditional shots I took…

Merry Christmas everyone!

This week will bring along my 36th birthday.  Holy crap, that sounds really bad.  THIRTY SIX?!  How in the hell did that happen?  I mean, I don’t feel significantly different from 32, or 28, or 25.  When you’re a kid, you think about when you’ll be an “adult”.  Honestly, I’m still wondering…  It’s gotta happen one of these days, right?

It occurred to me, that at 35 you are half of 70.  Granted life expectancy now is mid to late 70’s, but if you kick at 70, nobody looks a that as a great tragedy.  Whoa.  That is a sobering thought.

With such a birthday coming, I’ve been thinking about aging.  Stages of life, if you will.  Of course, we have the epic speech by Billy Crystal in City Slickers.  But I think I can expand on it a little bit. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I don’t personally know the older ranges… I’m educated guessing)

Age 0
You’re born.  You obviously don’t remember this, and probably for good reason.  Ye olde play-doh fun factory of life would probably not be something you want to look fondly back on.  You are the center of attention, even if you don’t know it.

Age 1-2
You start to figure things out.  The walking. The talking. “NO”.  You know… The essentials.  You may have some friends you recognize from day care.  The most important toy is always the one the other kid has.

Age 3-5
The last years before you enter the forced hierarchical structure that is school.  This is a golden time.  Your parents are the smartest people on the planet. I remember very well hanging out with Mom all day.  She worked from home sewing, so I would crawl around in the closet full of fabric and listen to daytime TV.  Occasionally make a run to the bank or grocery store.  All I knew was that my older sister wasn’t around and didn’t get to do any of this fun stuff.

Age 6-12
Now you’re in school.  You have a ready made gauge for ranking everyone.  When you’re in first grade, all you know is everything is new and you’re the youngest in the school (except for those wimpy kindergartners but they don’t even go to school all day).  Once you jump to 2nd grade, you realize what all the fuss is about.  You instantly know, you are not the youngest, and thus, the most lame.  Everyone older than you is cooler, everyone younger is not.  That is just the way it is. School is the dominating force in your life.  You spend the most time there.  The year feels SO long.  It might as well be 5 years between Christmases.

(more…)

That was a bystander’s quote about Murphy I overheard as we were walking by today during Boise’s annual See Spot Walk fund-raising event.  Basically, a couple of thousand dogs and their owners take over the streets of downtown Boise for an hour or two to raise money for the Idaho Humane Society.

Needless to say, this was Murphy’s first attempt at this.  Actually, it was my first go-round too.  I was nervous he was going to be a total ass.  Some days at training he’s such a shit that I don’t want to walk him any more.

When we first got down to the park, he was barking and lunging, wanting to play/attack every dog he saw.  Um, and there were a lot of them.  However, I got his mind engaged with the training routine that the fine folks at Scotch Pines Training have told us.  After a few early struggles, he calmed down and we actually walked through a gigantic sea of dogs completely without incident.

We also got to meet up with one of his litter-mates, a sister that looks exactly like him.  Named Sammie.  It was funny to talk to her owners and hear the same sort of stories about their dog as Murphy.  Eating grass, check.  Loves socks, check.  Very amusing.

Once the walk started, Murphy couldn’t have been better.  Heeling right at my side for the most part.  I was even able to put the leash over my shoulder, which is something the dog trainer says we should be able to do.  He was awesome.

It was actually a LOT of fun.  Seeing all the different dogs was a blast.  Murphy seemed to have a grand time as well.

Below you can see some pics taken from the event.  You can also go to the Flickr.com set.

Enjoy!

On the way down to the park.

Practicing “Sit”

Murphy and Dad

Murphy (right) and his sister Sammie

Here is your See Spot Walk Mascot shot!

Here’s the Scotch Pines Training results

Murph with his Gem Doodle’s family

“Hey dad, what are you doing… huh?… Huh?”

We’ve made it. The day 9 full months in the making is finally here.

Boise State vs Oregon.  On the Blue. Kickoff in exactly 10 hours.

I have broken out my good luck gear.  See, this is the gear that won the Fiesta Bowl in 2007.  It is the good luck orange coaches polo and orange Bronco hat.  It worked at the Fiesta Bowl.  It worked at Oregon last year.  2 years ago, I forgot the hat when we went to Washington.  So that loss is on me.

More than just Boise State v Oregon (if it is possible to be bigger than that) it is the official kickoff of the football season.  I cannot describe how happy that makes me.  I get to wak e up on Saturday to the dulcet tones of Corso and Herbstreit on College Gameday.  I get to park my ass on the couch and watch 4 games at once for about 16 hours.  That may well be my definition of heaven.

I’m bringing my camera tonight so watch this space for any good pics I may capture.  However, if Boise State loses, you may not hear from me for a while.

C’mon Broncos.  Let’s do this.

I guarantee I can beat it.  Here’s the story.

So, I’m working from home today.  I spent the last night coughing and nearly choking to death on phlegm to the point that I “slept” in the other bedroom so that I wouldn’t keep Jess up all night.  Upon arising  and hacking up a loogie the size of New Jersey, I decided that instead of subject my fellow coworkers to my respiratory issues, I would just log in and work from home.

Anyway, lunch time rolled around.  Jess reminded me that if I’m sick, I really should eat something.  I headed to the kitchen to see what I could find.  Ahh-ha… I know, I’ll have a nice big peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Haven’t had one of those in a while, that should hit the spot.  What else can I have?  Yes… good… we have a box of individual size bags of Sunchips that we got from Costco specifically for lunches.  Perfect.  Throw in a Pepsi and you have a pretty solid lunch.

I set about chowing down my sandwich (on 8 grain bread, I might add).  Trustworthy PB&J will never let you down.  If it wasn’t for those things I probably would have starved to death in childhood.  Also, I’m a bit of a strange eater when it comes to lunch.  More often than not, I don’t mix foods together.  I eat one thing, finish it, move onto the next.  Don’t ask me why, I just do.  If it’s a burger and fries, the fries go first, then the burger.  But, if its a sandwich and chips, the sandwich goes first.  I know, I’m weird.

Sandwich done, I open the bag of Sunchips to finish off my lunch.  I’m happily munching away while I work, as I’ve done hundreds of times before.

Let me preface this next part for those that might be squeemish… proceed with caution.

As setting, let me state that my office is fairly dim.  I don’t have the overhead lights on, and the shaded window has drapes on it. Really, the only light is from my monitor and a bit from the hallway, which is plenty.

As I was about 3/4 of my way through the bag of Harvest Cheddar chips, I began to ponder what those dark spots were on the chips.  I had noticed them upon starting, but in the dim light they appeared to just be another “grain” in the chips or perhaps larger clumps of seasoning.  Ummm… no… I’m not that lucky.

After piecing together my more recent history with Sunchips, I was fairly certain that Harvest Cheddar chips really didn’t look like that normally. Something was amiss.   That is when I looked a little closer, and came to a horrible HORRIBLE realization.

That’s not seasoning.

Again, squeemish people move on now.

They were ants.  Dead ants, specifically.  All curled up on themselves like dead ants do.  The bottom of the bag was FULL of them.

For the record, I chugged the rest of my Pepsi in about 2.4 seconds.  I can’t say I totally felt the urge to puke, but it did cross my mind.

Now I specifically remember eating one chip that had 20 or so specks on it.  Thinking nothing of it, I popped in and chewed away happily.  Hindsight being 20/20 and all, I think it did taste a bit… off…

I think the worst part now is that I still have bits of the chips stuck in my teeth.  Which, of course, means I’ve got bits of masticated dead ant in my teeth as well.

Ok… that thought is making me want to puke.  I’m off to brush and rinse with Listerine about 24 times.

Of course, I couldn’t NOT post a picture…

All told, I think I’m off Sunchips for awhile.  Oh, and Frito Lay?  Prepare to get a piece of my mind.