I hope they call me...

...on a mishun... Good times, good times.

Being a missionary is awesome! It's sweet because you work hard and you're tired and yet, you feel really good! If I could only be a missionary again: no bills to worry about, no car to worry about, nothing to worry about except my companion, the people in my area, and that pesky neighbor dog that likes to chase bicycles. However, there's nothing quite like being a returned missionary, or as we called it in my mission, the Great Transfer North.

Heather-Marie, good luck on your mission. Please, please keep us posted as to where you go and when your farewell (oops, not supposed to have those anymore) is.

Okay, Jon, I don't know what Zombo.com was supposed to be, but I listened to it all the way through the loop and then, well, it looped. I don't want to sign up for any newzletter. :) Now, I must say that the Pandora site was pretty impressive. I just wish Flash didn't consume so much CPU time on my machine. I typed Weird Al Yankovic into the search and it immediately found a song by him and started to play it. It was cool.

I was also going to ask you about Joomla. Do you use it? If so, how do you use it (or what do you do with it?) Also, have you heard about a new technology called Ruby on Rails? It looks pretty cool.

TTFN

I was going to wait...

...to tell ya'll, but, yeah, Jason...I am going on a mission. :) One more interview and I should be waiting for that all important, life-changing envelope. :) Wa-who! :)

Happy day

:) Reports of my underenthusiasm are greatly exaggerated. I believe my exact words were, "Cool." I was not un-enthusiastic. When, then, is this going to take place and where and what should I bring to eat, etc.? It does sound like fun. Anywhoo.

Also, to everypeoples who care, I had a second interview with a company down south-a-way and it looks like if they can get the budget for a contract position for me that I might have a job. The WSU-place is reclassifying the position I applied for earlier and it will pay more, so if I don't get the first job, I'll still have this one in the worx. Wish me luck.

Also, it is Joomla!'s birthday tomorrow. It will be 1.

And you thought that when Cap'n Whomever-SciFi said, regarding some blurry camera footage, to his Ops Engineer, "Freeze and enhance" that it was impossible! Well, it's not.

Hmmmm. Looks like they finally got the timing down right.

Ok, bye.

More like most repetitive website ever

Jon-thats annoying....so did Beth tell ya about the big "Brittany and Anderson family reunion with Andersons Jon, Beth, and Lauralee (did I spell her name correct?) and Bailey's Brittany?" I hear all you said was "yeah, great!" Curse you and your lackage of enthusiasim!!!!

The very best website EVER

I simply cannot describe the awesomeness of this website. It must be experienced firsthand. This is truly the epitome of Web 2.0.

But if you don't like that, maybe you'd like the second best site ever.

DCI on ESPN2

So everybody should watch the Drum Corps Internation World Championships on Tuesday, Sept. 5th at 6pm local time. It'll be really cool because....well, just cause drum corps is really cool!! I'm not sure where I'll be watching it yet, but I'll probably be at my girlfriends house, unless somebody wants to open up their place for the evening, in which case, I'll probably do that. I'd open up my house but we don't have cable/satellite and with my girlfriend, well her house is a kinda small. Well, talk to ya'll later.

P.S. If you go to my myspace page (yeah, i'm one of those people... anyways) you'll see a funny family guy clip and a small preview of Phantom Regiment's show!!!

Take that!

The good news for today is that polygamous leader Warren Jeffs is now behind bars. He can no longer marry young, innocent girls off to these sick bastards who just want to have some fun. (Pardon the language, but I'm very passionate about this.) He faces charges of sexual misconduct with a minor stemming from marriages he performed. One such marriage is alleged to involve a 13-year-old girl. Now, come on, a sexual encounter between a 13-year-old girl and a middle-aged man can leave the girl injured, both physically and emotionally. Obviously, Mr. Jeffs had absolutely no concern whatsoever for the safety and wellbeing of this girl, and possibly (or probably) many others. I'm absolutely elated to see him finally at the mercy of the long arm of the law.

A Moment of Silence Please

One of my jazz idols has passed away. Maynard Ferguson, the king of the stratosphere, passed away last Wednesday due to complications with an abdominal infection. During the last decade or so, Maynard traveled with the Big Bop Nouveau, a six-piece band that packed a real punch. I had the priviledge of seeing them live at Bountiful High School in 1995.

Listeners desiring to familiarize themselves with Maynard's recordings can start by listening to the Grammy-nominated theme from Rocky: "Gonna Fly Now." Other great charts by this master of faster are "Conquistador" and "Coconut Champagne." I will never forget the many hours I spent in the band room at my high school playing along with recordings of Maynard Ferguson as he belted out the painfully high notes time after time. During those months, I spent so much spare time in the band room that I went for almost six months without getting my hair cut. This guy, I thought, was truly amazing.

Maynard, I'm going to miss you.

Kid's got a set of lungs

Just in case anybody avoids reality TV like me and didn't catch this when it was (apparently) aired, you should really watch this. I can't hold a note half that long to save my life.

Welcome Back!

I just wanted to take a second and welcome you all back to school. I hope the summer was good to you. I know it was pretty good to me. How was band camp for all you folks in marching band? Gol, I miss that!

Anyhow, I just wanted to say welcome and wish y'all a successful semester in school.

Heather-Marie, are you going on a mission or something? What's up with not being present for 3 or 4 semesters?

Chao!

olleH (ole'!)

So, I was sitting the other day and realized that I haven't been to the blog in awhile. It is very true that very few people have made comments on here lately. I think I will help in changing that. :) I hope all have had a most wonderful summer. As some of you (the ones still going to Weber) might notice, I will not be there this semester (or the next 3-4 or so...depending on when I leave). I wish I could tell you where I'll be, but I can't, yet. :) So, with that, I must tell you all that I will miss seeing everyone everyday. Good luck with classes and so on.

I must thank Jason for the much-needed update on the Rootisms. That gave me a good laugh and brought back some fond memories of the VFW thing. :) Keep it up!

With that, I think I will end this blog, er... posting...thing. :)

Best wishes!

G'day to you too

Hi, Batman! It's nice to see some not-so-oft-seen faces (er, postings) on here. I don't have that much to say this time except that I have a couple of new Rootisms. I caught them while I was listening to an Ogden Concert Band concert (...) the other day in the Layton amphitheater. Of course, Dr. Root was conducting most of the concert, which did involve some Tooele Twisters, to use his own words (brief strong wind strong enough to blow away a goodly portion of the music.)

So, without further achoo, here are the new Rootisms.

Keep the Rootisms coming. Send them to jason[dot]schill[at]gmail[dot]com.

Soooo

Hey I was just checking the blog and realized in like the whole last month no one but jon and jason have blogged at all, so I thought I would post and say hi. I saw all you marching band kiddies out the other day whilst I was at work, so far, so good, have fun this year! I miss everyone and I hope that all is well with all y'alls!

Batman Out

Not so sharp

It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the
system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine
some of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very
sharp, probably not someone here on campus.
-- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, in
Georgia Tech's campus newspaper after the Internet worm.

Taken from output from the Fortune command on Persephone (schillclan.homelinux.net).

OOoooooh AAaaaaaah

Pretty.

Digg had a link about Kevin Mitnik's site getting hacked. Lawls.

And this is an interesting look at Google's latest endeavor.

And these are some of the bleeding-edge of development robots out there.

Excess

Here's a bit of excess (for all you car audiophiles out there.) If you can figure out how you would install one of those in anything smaller than an Abrams tank, let me know. :)

Party Pending

This Friday evening, my house. My sis, Beth, is hosting it and said to invite everybody.

Also, for those who need a cheer up or just like off-the-wall stuff, this is how a video blog should be done. Sara's friend guest hosts.

Five bundles of fur and teeth

In recent weeks, it has been the pleasure (or misery, depending) of Kristin and me to watch over and raise five little kittens. When we picked them up, they were orphaned on our neighbor's porch and she didn't want them. So, we took them in and started to care for them. They have been a real headache, but they're so cute. We often used to have to get up at midnight to feed them, only to return again at 4 a.m. When we got them, they were only 12 days old and couldn't move very well. Their eyes were mostly still closed as were their ears. However, now, at 6 weeks of age, they are active, energetic and fully aware bundles of joy. They play with each other and roll around on the floor.

Something really strange and awesome happened this morning. We have one Calico kitten that has refused to eat as we have successfully weaned the others from bottles to eating out of a bowl. We have had to continue bottle-feeding this little one for fear of her just not eating. However, this morning, I mixed up the kittens' formula in a bowl and put it in their box. Then, I went and got the regular cat food to feed Psycho, I mean, Orion, our adult cat. The little Calico followed me over to the cat's dish and watched as I poured the food into it. As soon as I got done pouring, she jumped up on the food and started munching away. Just like that! No coaxing, no prodding, no suggestions on my part at all. She just decided that she was done with this baby food crap and took her lumps. Soon, the others came over and started fighting over the food. They all were up on top of the cat's dish (which really pissed off Orion, by the way) munching away at the solid food. So, we have now officially stopped feeding the cats liquid kitten formula and they are now well on their way to eating solid cat food. Now, if we can just get them to realize that the water dish isn't for walking in and choking on...

Anyone want a kitten? I'm posting pictures as soon as I can get the pictures sized for the Web.

So.........................

What does everyone think about a hike either this Saturday or next? Or both?

Suggestions:
- Mt. Ogden
- Mt. Timpanogos

I'd suggest doing the Mt. Timpanogos midnight hike on the 25th. It's a tradition down in Happy Valley to do that the last weekend before school begins in the fall. Last year I went with Aaron and Lena and a girl from orchestra and her ppl. It was a blast. And Mt. Ogden is just a great hike, so whatever is good.

Also, do you want your own wiki? Here you go.

The Uncanny Valley and Other Delights

Have you ever watched a movie, say, like, A.I. or The Polar Express and wondered what it is about CG characters in those films that make them so disturbing? What is it about Aki Ross's character in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within that makes it hard to relate to her? I have this problem from time to time and according to the critics, I'm not alone. I can't say that I don't like any of the aforementioned movies. In fact, I really liked watching The Polar Express. I must admit that I have not seen most of A.I. and if you know me, you'll know that's quite uncharacteristic, seeing as it was directed by Steven Spielberg.

Well, I was doing a bit of research today and discovered the phenomenon known as the uncanny valley, which tries to explain why it is that we have a hard time dealing with photorealistic CG characters. The uncanny valley is an emotional graph that shows our emotional attachment to various types of humanoid characters. The graph starts elevating on the left with highly un-human characters, such as industrial robots and elevates to things like stuffed animals and rag dolls. However, it is at this point that the emotions take a severe negative turn dropping into the valley. Things like corpses and zombies rank at the lowest points on the graph because they are almost human but not quite. This is sort of where those photorealistic CG characters come into play. They're almost human, but not quite. They suffer from some very disturbing "flaws." For instance, subtle eye movements that we consider so natural are often not well duplicated with CG characters. This produces a zombie-like stare. Also, in the case of the Final Fantasy characters, little skin nuances like deformation due to speach and a lack of visible perspiration are to blame for their fall into the uncanny valley. They have a sort of "painted statue" look to them. This is one argument as to why the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did so poorly at the box office.

Sometimes, the uncanny valley can be used as a tool to create emotional attachment/detachment to a character. This is the case with A.I. where many of the characters are deliberately almost human. The same goes for the film I, Robot, where the new generation of robots come with faces that can move. You see, the further to the right we progress on the uncanny valley chart, the more emotional attachment we have for the character. Also, as we progress to the right, the more human the character is.

There, that concludes my discussion of the uncanny valley. I thought it was a particularly fascinating thing to study this morning. Now, go out and watch a good movie.

R

Rather than clutter this blog with lots of images that ppl on dialup would not appreciate, I hereby refer the reader to my photo blog.

It's a fun game I've been playing after work.

Speaking of...

Well, I just got back from another camping trip to Flaming George with my student ward. What fun. My friend Nate had a 12-man tent (that's 6-man tent in layman's) that we slept in. We stayed at Antelope Flats. For those of you who haven't been there it is basically sagebrush and nothing down to the water's edge. We went up Thursday morning. Tin foil dinners. We played Bang! that everning. Bang! is a fun card game that everyone should try. The next day we went out wakeboarding and tubing. Some guy named Robbie had a huge 4-person tube (about 8 ft. across) and a screamin' fast boat. And he could drive that sucker. I was on the first group to go out. He let the line go tight and then would take off and turn hard so the tube would go skipping sideways over the wake and across the chop. We had to hold on tightly just to keep from being thrown to the... ouch of hitting the water at 30 mph. His boat could go 50 or 60, but I doubt he was taking us that fast. Sometimes the tube would drop 3 or 4 feet off the side of the wake. He would also take you in a big loop which made a big wake and then double back and slide the tube sideways pretty fast across the wake from the first pass. Very jarring and very fun. My knuckles are all bruised from hitting the tube. It was as good as most theme park rides I've been on, and even better since there was more of a chance of being thrown from the ride. We were laughing and screaming the whole time. And today I am quite sore, but I'll still go play ultimate here in a little while. We also played Bocce around camp which, aside from the pavillion and campsites and trails, was very un-level and covered with sagebrush and cacti. One place the marker ball got thrown was near where a couple of rabbits were hiding which got scared up when we started lobbing balls at it (at the marker ball, that is - we didn't know the rabbits were there until we started aiming for the marker). The balls were red, yellow, blue, and green which reminded me of Google Earth. Le Sigh. That's the drawback of being a geek: when you go camping you have tech withdrawl for a while. There was glass on the water most of the time with the exception of a few breif rainstorms. We toasted Starbursts and had great dutch oven and devotionals and a lot of that very important element of camping: sitting around doing nothing in the middle of nowhere. Desiree's boat stripped a gear in the starter, so they only got to take it out once, but there were several other boats to go out on. Nate's had a decent sound system in it and I hooked up my PMP (personal media player) and tape adapter to it for tuneful cruising. I'm sore and tired and happy.

Ricky, sounds like you're having a blast. Although, by the time you read this you will likely be done with finals. I imagine you're looking forward to these finals much more than the finals you have for school each semester. I can't wait to hear stories and watch your show. I wish I could've been here for the Jordan Commons showing.

I got bored at work the other day. Pictures will be posted soon.

Camping delights

Y'know Jon, I just got done reading your blog about your camping trip with your family. Sounds fun. I just got back from camping with Kristin's family a couple of weeks ago and I'm going camping with Kristin this weekend. Of course, I can't give away the location of our camping ventures this weekend for in the [likely] event that Kristin should read this blog, she would find out prematurely where we are going. :)

Camping is a fun venture. Injuries always seem to come as part of the package. Hopefully, however, the injuries sustained are not serious ones but are ones that can be [fairly] easily laughed off. During my last camping trip, I sustained an injury, but not one with any loss of blood or skin. You see, when we go to Ferron for the annual Fink family reunion, we always bring lots and lots of ATV-type vehicles to go exploring on. Well, our family is the only one that brings motorcycles; the rest bring quads or side-by-sides. The motorcycles are more fun to drive than the more car-like quads and side-by-sides, but they do suffer from one drawback: they get stuck in the mud easier. Kristin's dad managed to get our "big" motorcycle mired quite badly in the mud during a long trip. When he and his son got back to camp, they recruited me to drive the smaller motorycle and help them see if they could get the bike unstuck. Well, to make a long story short, we couldn't get the bike unstuck so we decided to leave it on the mountain until morning. On the ride back to camp, I was trailing Kristin's dad and son, driving the small motorcycle. They were both on a quad. When I passed a certain tree, a bee came out and flew straight into my neck and stung me. Let me tell you, there's nothing like going 25 mph on a dirt bike and getting stung by a bee. Not wanting to lose my lead, I decided not to stop to remove the bee, so instead I simply plucked the bee and stinger out of my neck. As I was pulling the stinger out, bolts of pain were shooting up and down my neck. Suddenly, around a bend, a car came towards me. I had to maneuver the bike, remove the stinger and avoid a head-on collision all at the same time. It was fun.

So yeah, camping is a great thing. I can't wait to go again!

Now, I do have to put in a plug for a fairly cool software package. It's the CodeThat suite. It's for making cool JavaScript menu systems for web pages. I'm still trying to figure out how to use it properly, but the concept seems really cool. Caveat: you have to run the program as an administrator. Other user levels will not work with the program. The program is free for personal use on a single web site. Use beyond that scope requires purchasing the program (which can be expensive.)

Fortune: Look! Before our very eyes, the future is becoming the past.

only 5 more days

Hey everybody!! How ya'll doing? I'm still haveing the time of my life although, it's kinda sad cause in 5 days, it'll all be over. That being said, I wanted to let ya'll know that this thursday, DCI quarter finals will be broadcast live down at Jordan Commons and that all ya'll should go!!! Not just to see me (although that is a good bonus!!) but just to see some drum corps, cause it is just plain awesome!!! And we are going to RIP THE PLACE A PART!!! My family and girlfriend will be going so if you go, don't hesitate to say hi, that's if you recognize them.... Well, talk to ya'll in 6 days or so!!!

Ricky
SUTA

Or the man inside the AT-ST... kinda

Go Nipon. For only $300k you can get (only in Japan) a nice robot for you to wear.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Sup yall?