Where we've been....

We have been in Disneyland!


We decided to go to Disneyland for b's birthday and have spent the week here. I thought I would just add a quick post while chillin' at the hotel before we have to leave. I think we are ready to be home, after a week of constantly going going but I don't think that we are ready for Utah weather. The weather here as been so nice, high 60's to mid 70's all week, jacket weather at night, just about perfect.



I had to post a picture of b and her favorite princess, Belle. She did get to see all of the princesses that they have here. I didn't post while we were here because, just not enough time and internet access isn't free. Will post more about our fun trip later. The kids had a blast but I think they are ready to be home.

Working Out

Bought my first, well second gym membership ever. The first one was to the West Valley gym center right before I got married. I think I went to the gym more on my mission then at any other time in my life, think I was in better shape too. T has had a membership to 24 for some time now, she got a much better deal than I got but my deal from Costco wasn't so bad.

The hardest part about the gym is trying to find the time to get there. That's been T's biggest hurdle. They do have childcare but there has to be a certain adult/child ratio and the jet counts for 2 kids and they have to be open, so that's hard. I think the only time that I will have will be early in the morning before work. Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm NOT a morning person and this will be next to impossible.

Haeli signed up with T and I talked Jeremy to sign up with me so hopefully that will help with the motivation of getting there. I'm finally realizing that I'm really not going to be young forever and need to do something to stay in shape. I keep falling apart, my back is still a little off from January and I don't heal like I use to.

I guess we'll see how this goes, if it goes.

Wednesday Tunes

This is from a friend of a friend, if you visit his vimeo site he has some more cool videos.


powerlinerflyers from wes johnson on Vimeo.

Kiss Me

I am Irish! So, I suppose that my kids are Irish as well, it might be better if you kissed them. Nothing really to talk about, we don't do anything special or fun for St. Patrick's day. My sister, Marcee...on the other hand, seriously, we had to tell our kids that the leprechaun didn't come to our house because we are not leprechaun. Aunt Marcee is part leprechaun so he visits their house and leaves candy and crap. It's fine if you enjoy celebrating all the holiday's, it's just hard for all the other parents who don't. We have to listen to our kids talk about how their friends went to breakfast to eat green pancakes, and how their friends got candy from the leprechaun. I told our kids that we don't want leprechauns in our house, cause leprechauns are naughty and will just make a mess out of our house. Besides, we buy so much candy, that we don't need a reason.

And really! What next, give your kids stuff for Boxing day? Earth day? Mother Earth could visit and leave dirt, rocks and plants around the house!

Delicious

mmmm....well, this post isn't about good food, maybe I'll do one of those in the future. This post is about a sweet website/service that I love.

If you use only one computer to access the internet, then this website/service won't be that beneficial for you, or if you don't use your bookmarks. If you do use your bookmarks and use more then one computer to access the internet and you don't know about delicious, let me introduce you to one of the greatest things on the world wide web.

Why this service is so awesome? There is so much information online, millions of websites, with plenty of them that are worth visiting more then once. Remembering all those websites can be cumbersome and nearly impossible. Bookmarking a webpage to remember it is the best way to keep track of worth while websites.

Delicious is an online bookmark that allows you to bookmark web pages and access your bookmarks from any computer with internet access. This for me is a total life saver! I use way too many computers for no real apparent reason, other then I have two personal computers and two work computers. It also is helpful if you use computers at the library or school where typically you wouldn't bookmark.

Lets say for an example that while at work I come across an interesting website, or someone twitters a cool website, I take a quick look at the website and want to come back to it later when I have more time.

Without Delicious:
I bookmark it on my work computer, when I get home and want to better check out the website I have totally forgotten what the address was and spend half the night trying to find it. Eventually I give up and have to wait until I get back to work to look up the bookmark to re-find the website and write it down so I can find it at home.

With Delicious:
I bookmark the website on delicious, when I get home I log onto delicious and pull the website right up. Or if I'm out of town, using my laptop, I log into delicious and pull up any of my bookmarks.

Prior to using this service, I had different bookmarks on different computers, when doing research for a paper using different computers, this is not a good thing. Having different bookmarks on different computers is just a pain and sometime frustrating.

There is also a delicious toolbar shortcut that allows you to bookmark the website without ever leaving the website. You can share your bookmarks, or keep them private and you can view webpages that other people have bookmarked.

Now, you can sleep at night knowing that you no longer have to write down websites that you find on one computer to re-find them on another.

Wednesday Tunes

Not sure if I'm going to continue Wednesday tunes on a regular basis but at least when I have a cool video or song that I really want to share like this one.

That time of year......................

UGH!! It must be that time of year where everyone gets sick! By everyone I mean that I have been deathly sick over this last weekend. Thought I was going to die for at least a day. Everything hurt, couldn't get comfortable, couldn't sleep, couldn't stay awake, laying down hurt, standing or sitting were not options. Oh ya, and T left me with the kids and goob is sick. Goob has some junk in his lungs and his winter long ear infection. Luckily the other kids are good and I am feeling better.

We haven't been up to much of anything. So you'll be seeing a lot of post that have nothing to do with the family. T is busy doing taxes, so if any of you need a tax accountant give her a call.

I love Dilbert

It ain't easy being green

The new fad, or not so new anymore, is to be green. Whatever that means? Years ago it was the environmental movement, tree huggers and dirt lovers. Now its the green movement. I wonder what the next name will be? I have always been part of this group from since I can remember. Not always the most faithful or best practicing but have always felt the need to protect our precious planet. I do what little I can without going too much out my way or making life too difficult to do my part. We recycle, and................well, that's about all I can really think of that we do that would be considered green. What else is there? Hum......here I have gone years thinking of myself as a bit of an environmentalist and I don't even know what I've done to consider myself one. I care, that has to count for something?

Anywho...

A few months ago, sometime last Summer we bought these bags, pictured below. Thought, hey, we should move past recycling and start reducing what we use. We have always recycled our plastic bags from the grocery store but with these reusable bags, we won't even need the plastic ones. Here we are, months down the road and our reusable grocery bags work great! We use them to put food and books in when we go on trips, we use them all over the place, really great bags. And as a bonus we have used them maybe three times to put our groceries in! Smiths gives you five cents a bag.

No really, I feel bad that we don't use our bags more for groceries, they're even in our car when we get to the grocery store. Somewhere between getting out of the car and having a basket full of groceries we forget all about them. By the time I remember I'm standing in the checkout line (self checkout) and I think "CRAP!! I totally forgot my reusable grocery bags! I can't get them now because I have a basket full of food!"

Well, the bags are great! We use them all the time, just not for groceries and we love them. We will try harder to use them more when we go out shopping. Plastic bags are very bad for the environment, the making of the bags, and most of them end up stuck in a tree or in the ocean somewhere.

The Man

George Clooney is the man! Not only is he a top notch actor and the sexiest man alive for two years in a row but he uses his celebrity status for good. George spent some time in Chad, just outside the Darfur region to try and draw attention to the journalist who were there reporting on the genocide and atrocities that are occurring. Nicholas Kristof has a series on Darfur in the NY Times.

The difference between celebrities who voice their opinions and everyday you and me who voice our opinions, is that celebrities have a much larger stage and more people listen to them. People often complain when celebrities get involved with politics, usually that the celebrities don't know anything and shouldn't be talking about it. But if you or I had that stage and audience, we would be using it to promote our political views. Ok, I can't talk for you but I do know I would be using my fame as a political stage. I think that some celebs know more about a specific issue then most politicians do.

Couldn't figure out how to post this video on Kristof and Clooney in Chad, so its linked.

The 801

I guess we are getting a new area code come March 1st. I think I knew this was coming but it was so long ago when it was in the news, I completely forgot about it. It makes no sense to me the way they are doing it. If you don't know or your like me and forgot all about it, here is what they are doing;

They are adding a new area code 385 to accommodate all the new #'s due to cell phones. They are not changing the boundaries of the 801, if you have an 801 area code now you will continue to have an 801 area code. If you get a new phone number, your area code will be 385 if you are in the 801 area code boundaries. I personally think that they should have split the 801 area code. This way, if I know you live in Ogden or Provo, I automatically know what your area code is, I don't have to guess if it's 801 or 385.

Now, no matter who or were you are calling you need to dial the area code first. For those of us who only use cell phones and most of the people you call are already saved in your phone, no problem. Just make sure that if you don't already, save the numbers with the area code. If you have a rotary phone, you might have some issues, more then just having to dial the 11 numbers every time you call someone.
More info

Blog Changes

So, if you visit my blog often you might have noticed some changes. I'm hoping the changes will get me excited about blogging a little more regular, more then once a week. One of the things I added is the flickr bar. If you don't know flickr, it is a photo sharing site that is free or you can pay a yearly fee for a pro account that offers some bonuses. If I was a little more into photography I think that I would go for a pro account. The free account only allows so many pictures to be downloaded a month, so I don't have many pictures on my flickr account. Mainly because after a month, I forget, then I remember, I max my limit and by the time I remember again it's months down the road.

The flickr pics on my blog are set on random, so every time you check my blog it will be a different set of pics. Just thought I'd let you know, so if you see some picture of a building or something a little odd, your not thinking to yourself "why on earth would brad pick that picture to post on his blog".

The Fox and the Hedgehog

While driving the other night, I can't remember where I was going and I rarely drive outside of going to work or school by myself so this was a strange event. Anyway, while driving and listening to the radio, I listen to a lot of talk radio, well not a lot because I don't drive much, and T hates it but will put up with it a lot better then b. b gets very upset and complains about listening to news and just wants to listen to her music, right now it's the hot and cold song. I have a hard time listening to music stations, they all play too many crappy songs and I would rather listen to something where I might actually glean useful information. I am a bit of a news addict, but really I could quit listening/reading the news whenever I want, though that wouldn't make any sense. Where was I...listening to my talk radio, KRCL, they play a wide variety of music and have a wide variety of talk shows. This night they were talking about the concept of "The Fox and the Hedgehog".

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. This comes from a Greek poet, Archilochus, who made the statement in a poem. No one knows what he meant when he said it and I'm sure there are people who would love to philosophy about it for days. I'm good with what others think it means.

Right away I knew, that I was fox.

So here is the synopsis of the The Fox and the Hedgehog; Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay critiquing Leo Tolstoy and other authors and thinkers using “The Hedgehog and the Fox" philosophy he writes about the sentence “taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general....those on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; - The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes"

There are other sayings that basically mean the same thing, "Jack of all trades and master of none", one for Utah, "your knowledge is like the great salt lake, big and shallow, you know very little about a lot things". Maybe this is why I moved towards planning, which is very much about knowing enough about a lot of things but never a great understanding of any one thing. This also explains my short attention span. I pay enough attention to pro-sports and sporting events like the Olympics, Xgames and Tour de France to be able to participate in conversations. The only reason I really care to watch award show's is to be able to talk to it for the next week. I also have a hard time studying one subject, something in that subject will reference another subject and that will catch my attention, so I'll have to check that out, while checking that out, I'll run across something else that looks interesting and instead of sticking to one thing and coming back to the others, I just try and fit them in all together. Maybe that's why I can never remember anything I study.