School done looming, attacks

School has officially started. Again. For the millionth time. Fortunately, I'm only taking two classes, my only reprieve from insanity. They both seem like they'll be interesting. One is CS650, Computer Vision, which is basically teaching the computer to interpret images. The other is CS460, Networking, where I write client/server and peer-to-peer network apps. Fun.

I was a half hour late to that class this morning, because I decided to drive to campus. I tried this yesterday with no problem, but I think all the new people got their free parking passes, because I couldn't find a spot anywhere. So I bought the $60 bus pass and I think that will be my main method of transportation from now on. No more circling with the other vultures looking for parking spots.

Dan came over last Friday and watched the Redskins game at my place. I think I can get used to this "family being close by" thing. Surprisingly, they beat the Steelers and actually looked pretty decent at this point. Not like the Lions, who got creamed by the Rams last night on MNF. Ouch.

I finally have a ward again. Everyone has moved in and we've been having the requisite opening socials, name tags, get-to-know-yous and all that. So far it seems like a pretty good bunch. I've seen worse...

School Looms

I just realized that once again I haven't posted anything for a long while. And once again, my selective memory has left me at a loss for words to describe that long while, most likely in an attempt to save you from the boredom of such a description. In spite of this, write I must and read you just might and writing like Yoda I am.

The biggest news right now is the looming weight of school hanging over me. I've become accustomed to being without it and Monday is coming much too quickly. So instead of accept it I've deluded myself into believing I somehow won't be sitting in a classroom Monday afternoon. It's made things much more pleasant. Unfortunately, I'm too responsible to completely deny reality and I dropped $160 on my two books a couple days ago. At least my Computer Vision book is co-written by Czechs and uses Prague Castle for many of the examples.

I've also been inundated with database work lately, which has added to the stress of the new semester as I'd like to get a lot of it finished before school starts. I'm helping a company that does materials and foundation testing upgrade from an inefficient Excel system, creating a tool for a personal trainer to help his clients track of food intake, energy expenditure, etc. and all the calculations that go with, and creating data input and reports that mimic psychological tests previously done only on paper. The good news is that they give me money for it. The bad news is that I have Access oozing out of my ears.

At my real job, I've been heavily involved in redoing the curriculum for CS 100, which involves creating new labs, or rewriting the old ones, and making the necessary changes to the class website. I also updated the CS 450 website for the new semester, but luckily the class didn't change from last semester. I'm completely done with my teaching job except for officially saying good bye. I cleaned out my desk and burned all my files to a CD last week; I just need to get my plant and say adios.

On Friday and Saturday I got a fun family diversion by having Mom, Dad, Heather, Marisa, and Day & Hyde and kids in Provo. We all got together in what was the first decent family-type gathering since I've ever lived here and ate a lot and talked and played horseshoes.

Last night I introduced Marisa to some of my erudite friends. We played Nerts (Demon), during which I got beaten soundly (into 2nd place) due mainly to horrendous luck. It made the host feel good because I beat her in our previous encounter and she needed some revenge.

As for other random news, I went to the driving range, got a henna tattoo and bought a new pillow. I think that about wraps it up.

Football!

Finally, I can watch and hear about something that isn't called "baseball" and doesn't involve "steroids". I caught a preseason NFL game last night (Packers vs. Chargers) and it was a breath of fresh air. Even though the announcers practically announced their engagement to Bret Favre, it was fun to just be watching the game. Welcome to football season!

Sick computer

I was up late last night with a sick computer. In the middle of moving a file I got the blue screen of death. It wouldn't restart in normal mode and it froze trying to start up in safe mode the first time I tried. I eventually got into safe mode, but then it would't shut down. Finally, I got it to shut down normally and boot back up into regular mode. I then proceeded to back up all my files onto my external hard drive, because I think it's finally time for a reformatting. I haven't wiped this computer since I got it nearly 4 years ago and with all the installing and uninstalling of hardware and software it's not a surprise that it's starting to die. It's always annoying to reinstall everything, but I'd rather do this now than lose anything important. So if you need me, I'll be accepting license agreements.

Yellowstone pics

I've posted my pictures from Yellowstone on my web page. They can be viewed here. There are some cool panoramas and stitched shots and as always, if you want to have a high-res version of anything, let me know.

Yellowstone

A friend from the ward invited me on a roadtrip to Yellowstone, so that's where I was this weekend. Annie and Sarah, who are roommates, have a friend (and former ward member) Cathryn who is returning to her native Australia next week. She wanted to see some of the sights before going home and Sarah is also going home to Seattle, so this was a kind of a farewell tour sisterhood bonding moment.

We left Friday night and drove to Bear Lake where we camped for the night. It wasn't the most direct route to Yellowstone, but I think Cathryn wanted to see it. In any case, we were just able to squeeze into a campsite there. It was run by a funny old man who, in the dark, mistook us as "four pretty girls", which became a running joke throughout the whole trip. We offered him a cookie for his hospitality, and his diabetes-induced reply also made it into the trip repertoire: "They're cookies to you, but they're poison to me."

We didn't sleep well that night due to late arrivals at the campsite that proceeded to celebrate their successful navigation by screaming at the top of their lungs for at least 15 minutes, plus intermittent noise afterwards. Not anything worth screaming, of course, just "yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh" and "whoooooooooooooooooo" over and over. They must have been drunk to find that so amusing for so long.

We were delayed slightly in Afton, Wyoming during our drive on Saturday morning. We stopped to take a picture of the World's Largest Elkhorn Arch when a policeman pulled in right behind us. He must have been as confused as we were, because he hadn't turned on his lights and we were all popping out of the car with our cameras. Sarah (who drove the whole trip) had apparently been speeding, but managed to get away with just a warning. The warning worked, because she was paranoid the rest of the trip.

We got to Yellowstone around midday on Saturday after driving through Grand Teton National Park, and entered from the south entrance (map). The northeast area of the park (Tower Falls) was closed off for road repairs, and we didn't have time to go to the northwest area (Mammoth Springs), but we saw a lot of things considering we only had two half days. (Sarah had to be back Sunday night to finish a final paper for one of her classes.)

We started clockwise around the main loop of the park, stopping first at Old Faithful in the Upper Geyser Basin. We couldn't have had better luck; Old Faithful went off no less than 10 minutes after we walked up to it. From there we continued to Biscuit Basin, Midway Geyser Basin and Lower Geyser Basin. If you've been there then I'm sure you're aware that there are some simply incredible sites. Words can't describe the bizarrely colored (and scented) hot springs and geysers juxtaposed in otherwise beautiful forest. There are unbelievably crystal blue pools, red and orange hued rock beds stained by the mineral-rich run off and towers of steam marking the location of boiling and water and geysers.

Since we were going to leave from the west exit, we saved the north section of the main loop for the return trip and drove to Canyon village in the northeast to reserve a camp site. From there we visited the North Rim of the Grand Canyon of (the) Yellowstone. We left the car for a while and hiked along the rim to several look-out points and were rewarded with breath-taking views.

We went back to our campsite when darkness overcame us and while the girls put up the tents I got to the task for which the girls really brought me along - to make the campfire. Apparently, on a previous trip they had barely managed to keep a fire long enough to cook marshmallows and it required constant supervision to keep it going. I, however, lived up to my Eagle Scout award and built a beautiful fire that burned long and warm and we were able to make smores and roast Starbursts (a favorite of theirs).

The temperature dropped slightly during the nights, but it was perfect in my opinion. We had wonderful weather the whole trip and the blue skies with puffy white clouds made for great pictures.

We came back to the Grand Canyon early Sunday morning to finish our North Rim hike and see the South Rim and were greeted with awe-inspring views of Lower Falls lit by the morning sun. Afterwards we continued our clockwise journey towards Hayden Valley in search of buffalo. We were not disappointed. Not 10 minutes into our drive we encountered some grazing by the road and as we stopped to watch they came right across the road all around the car, grunting and snorting loudly. We continued on when we could get through and passed several other herds on our way south to the Sulphur Cauldron area. Here we encountered more strange, smelly phenomena all of which were fascinating. Also, I must mention that all these places are also very accessible; it is incredibly easy to quickly see so many things in the park.

We turned around at this point and headed back out towards the west entrance, stopping to see the Norris Geyser Basin on the way. Here we found a wide expanse of springs and geysers in an immense empty area created by the poisoning of the plant life, with vivid colors and textures. We also saw a 15 ft. spurt from the steamboat geyser, the world's tallest geyser, which can shoot as high as 300 ft.

We left around noon on Sunday and had only a highway detour caused by a brush fire and a stop at Wendy's to break the monotony of the drive home. It was nice to get home and shower and get cleaned up, but I'll definitely have to return to Yellowstone some day to finish the tour.

I have lots of cool pictures that I will be posting shortly, including some great panoramas and stitched pictures, where the viewfinder just wasn't big enough. Plus, I should be getting pictures from the girls as well, so check back in the next couple of days for those.

Low profit diet

As I was eating my high-carb breakfast this morning, I saw on the news that the Atkins corporation has filed for bankruptcy. Apparently they owe $300 million to creditors. So much for the low-carb craze, and good riddance if you ask me. It seems like with all the fad diets waxing and waning in the public eye, we'd figure out that eating less and exercising more is the only way to maintain a healthy weight. At least now maybe I won't be inundated with offers of "low-carb pasta" and other oxymoronic delectables. It's a step in the right direction - now if I could only buy non-low-fat yogurt!