Bizarre Bradyisms

My New Blog

Welcome all to my new blog.  I have decided to move away from blogspot and blogger and everything related to those sites. I have wanted to make the switch to my own servers for a while now, but finally got aroung to actually doing it.  (I mean, what else can I use to avoid doing homework.)  For those of you who are wondering as to why, the answer is simple, more power.  Now, I have more control over the appearance and functionality of the site which is cool.  Plus, I get to learn and actually play with a live website while trying to add neat gadgets and such.  In other words, don’t expect the site to be working all of the time and while I will try to reduce such “outages,” I will not make any promises. Also, with time I will be slowly moving all of the older posts over to here when I figure out how to import them correctly.

It has been cold here in Utah for the past 2 weeks.  I mean bitter cold.  Check out the screen shot located below that I took off of my Google Homepage displaying the current weather information.  That is just not right at all.  Have I mentioned recently how much I hate winter.  Yeah, its that bad.  And while I am at it, I will mention another thing that really bothers me.  Drivers.  Utah drivers.  College-aged Utah Drivers.  For some reason, more and more people have gotten into the habit of running red lights, specifically red arrow lights.  Maybe I missed the announcement, but I don’t think that just becuase you are turning means you can fit 5 cars into the intersection and then expect everyone to wait while you leave after the light has already turned green for the other direction.  Oh well.

I am student.  Believe it or not, but it is true.  I think I had forgotten that during the past number of months becuase the only times I was on campus was during the evenings when almost no one else was there.  Now, however, I am actually there a couple of times a week walking amoung my peers and it feels kind of good.  I actually belong somewhere and have people I can relate to.  It is all crazy if you ask me. 

 One of my new year resolutions that I decided to work on was to make sure that I was getting enough sleep and enough exercise, so I have begun going to bed at around 10:00 or 11:00 each night, waking up at aroung 6:30 and exercising for at least 20 minutes.  (I am a bit embarassed to note that I bought one of those exercise videos with the big inflatable balls.  Laugh it up, I know you want to.)  It is really great how much better the days go when I do some physical activity like that.  Plus, I have noticed that going to bed early and getting up early allow one to have like 3 hours to prepare for the day and do all of the little things you never seem to find time for.  Seems odd, I recall hearing a phrase along the lines of, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”  Well what do you know, they were right all along because I feel better and school seems more doable.  I am still waiting for the wealthy part to be fulfilled, but perhaps that will take more than two weeks to see results.

Diversity

While the following is intended to be a rhetorical question and I know that everyone understands in a least a small manner, I am going to ask anyways. Have you ever noticed that one day you can feel like everything is going great and that life couldn’t be better and then waking up the next morning to feel the exact opposite? I not sure I understand why, but it is something I have been trying to recognize recently. However, every time I think about things and I mean really ponder them, I must admit and recognize that life is good. I have an amazing job (how many 23 year old can decide when and if they want to go to work each day), I’m halfway through college (at least), my family is doing well, I’m healthy, and many other things too numerous to mention. Diversity from one day to the next makes everything exciting.

Saturday, I got up at 8am, went to Walmart, bought some paint, and spent the next 6 hours painting one of my bedrooms walls. Whether is is because I like how much better it looks when I am finished or some other crazy reason, I really enjoy doing home improvement projects. However, let be noted that each time I complete a project I am reminded of why I don’t do it for a living. It is not perfect, but it was great waking up this morning and seeing how much cleaner it looked.

I believe I never mentioned that I was recently released as the financial secretary for my ward and then called as a family home evening group leader. The funny part, is that the 2 minute “interview” for the calling took place inside of my car while parked at the bank, with the 1st counselor in the bishopric sitting in the passenger seat. Yeah, I’m telling the truth. It was a first me, and here’s hoping it was a last as well. I bring this up simply because I find it ironic that whenever I am not participating in some sort of activity of the church, in time and without fail, I am soon called to be a leader in that organization. So, if you put two and two together, no, I was not attending FHE, but I suppose I will be now.

I have to also add this small video that I just recently recorded of my roommate dancing in our apartment living room. It was just a funny as it looks here and really made us all laugh. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

[googlevideo]-5906767082569351483[/googlevideo]

No Title Needed

Although I have always bothered by people who blatantly state the obvious without any regard to intelligence level of those around them, I am unfortunately going to follow suit. It has been awhile since I have written anything here. Call it laziness. Call it lack of motivation, call it priorities, call it whatever. As much as I would like it to be otherwise, not a lot has happened since last time. I got my first speeding ticket ever, fall semester of school finished, I drove home with some old friends, spent about a week with the family for Christmas, flew back to Utah, worked for a week, New Years happened, and now school has begun all over again. It is pretty crazy how I can sum up ~840 hours of my life in one sentence. I must add that Christmas was great, very laid-back and fun not to have to worry about anything at all.

I am not proud about it at all but I want to state that I have been placed on academic probation at school which means that if I do not get above a 2.0 average this semester, I will get kicked out of BYU for twelve month period. That would really horrible, so I taking things a little easier for now, still only 12 credits, but a broad range of classes: Financial Management, Latin-American Spanish Literature, Computer Architecture, and New Testament. I only have classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings plus a few hours on Wednesday afternoon and early evening. I am not going to lie and say I am happy about it, but this will get me where I need to be to finish my Spanish Minor, begin to finish my Business Minor and for acceptance into the professional IT major. And then ~2 years from now I will be preparing myself to say “Adios” to Provo and to Utah for a long while to come.

On the other hand, by job has been going really well. I won’t take complete credit for it, but since I stated dressing up for work (ie. shirt and tie) I have noticed that my boss does so now as well and a few of the other technicians have moved beyond wearing jeans. Additionally, I gave a sweet presentation to the three company owners about some projects that I wanted to start on and they all loved it, a lot. So I got an immediate raise, a fairly good promise of another in about a month or two, I will become a Team Lead and eventually have about 5 technicians reporting to me for all of the sites that I am responsible for. I have said it before, and I will say it again, “I work so much to be able to handle going to school.”

On that same topic I was thinking about other reasons as to why I want to have such great jobs while I am still working on my college education and something came to mind. I see friends and people I know who graduate and have an actual degree but then end up staying in Provo for at least another year while they get “experience” to get a real job elsewhere. That bothers me and scares me a little bit. When I finish with school, I want to have multiple job offers waiting for me and be someone who companies will compete for instead of me fighting for them to let me work there. Honestly, neither way is more correct than the other, but there is just something deep inside of me that drives this intense desire to be “needed,” and since I don’t get much of that elsewhere, perhaps that is why I am so focused on my career plans.

I gave a talk in Church yesterday about conversion and true to form, while I think that it did not go very well, other people are overly kind and continually stated it was a great talk (I even found a Thank-you card stuck under my door this morning). I also went on another date with the girl I got set-up with at home over Thanksgiving. It was fun and I really enjoyed getting of the house with a friend, but I’m just not feeling it if you get my drift. She’s pretty, funny, talented, etc, etc, and a great person, but I don’t believe it will ever move beyond just a friendship. However, I am been proven wrong before, so, who knows.

I know that everyone has good days and bad days, but for some reason, the good days for me are getting father and father apart. I heard a quote saying that if you are not happy, you are doing something wrong. I have wondered if I am where I’m supposed to be, if I’m doing what I need to be, and what I must to fix my situation. I think from what I have gathered while conversing with others is that I am not the only one who wants to drop everything, hop on a plane, and just disappear for a year, but I have been thinking it would be fun to kick it around in Europe for awhile. I don’t think I have the guts to do anything that crazy, but you never know.

I have also been thinking that I don’t know how to progress further in life (ie I need someone to call my own). Call me crazy if you want, but I long for the day to come home, eat dinner with my own family, dance with my wife in our living room, have a list of honey-dos, get hugs from my little kids as I walk out the door every morning in addition to all of the related difficulties. Call me crazy, but it is what it is. I need those things in my life and I’m tired of just working to better myself only. But, if this is the challenge that has been given to me during my life time, fine, I’ll deal with it, but if not, can we pick up the pace a bit.

Anyways, now that I have spilled my inner soul to the world, I think I’ll go play the piano again for awhile.