Bizarre Bradyisms

Finding a House

This entry is going to sound negative.  Well, I suppose it will not only sound negative, it will be negative.  All I can say is that I am more than just a little upset with how housing is set up in Provo.  I had kind of been looking for a place to live for this fall since about the end of June, but nothing really came up.  I, along with the rest of the group, put off trying to find a place until the beginning of August.  We really hadn’t found a place (Kyle was doing a lot of the searching, mostly through Craigslist) because everywhere we looked was either zoned for single-family residential (meaning those who live there have to be related, i.e. husband & wife & children) or old, crappy, un-maintained houses built in the 1920’s or completely unfurnished.  Not really finding a way to overcome the first two obstacles, we all realized that we could probably furnish a house within a short time frame.  So, we found this one place, went to see it, loved it (it was a real house with no shared walls, backyard, garage, etc), sent in our applications and credit reports immediately and were all under the assumption it would be ours.  I talked to the owner and she seemed to like who we were, but to make a long story shorter, she ended up renting it to someone else who had applied like a day or two before.  AAHHHH!  I was so mad!  I really was having a hard time trying to calm down that night.  This meant we had less than a week to find a place to live, or so I thought. 

I soon realized after having started to pack on Sunday night that our contracts ended on Monday.  Everyone hurried and started packing and dumping their stuff at family members’ houses.  I left left my in the apartment’s front room for three days and slept on the couch during that time because the new renter had already started moving in.  I spent that entire week first looking for places to live as a group (Me, Kyle, Josh, and Mike) only to find more frustration in the prejudice that exists in the area for young, unmarried guys.  Supposedly we are not very clean and orderly.  If they only knew.  After that, I tried to find a place for just myself and time after time, place after place, I got continually rejected.  When my boss found out, he even starting calling around to see if he could help find a place.  All without success.  Technically, I could live somewhere but I can’t handle living in small, tight, dark places and pay ~$300 to do so.  Where I live is just too important to me. 

It is now Friday, I am still sleeping on the couch, have moved all of my stuff into a rented U-Haul truck and am so worn out of trying, I just don’t know that to do next.  I think I must have personally visited 20-25 apartments / houses and don’t think I can do it anymore.  I talked to my Grandma and she is going to let me drop my stuff off in her garage in Salt Lake until I figure things out so I don’t feel pressured to make a wrong decision because of time pressures.  I’ve talked to my parents and they have offered to let me move home if that is what I feel like that would be best, and believe it or not, I am actually considering it.  Part of me feels so frustrated with Provo right now and is willing to do anything to get out of here, the other part of me thinks that if I go home I will be a failure.  Who wants to be the 24 year old living in his parent’s house?  Now I know I wouldn’t be a failure per say, but I guess just not what I expected to be doing at this stage in my life. 

The moral of the story: life is messy.

Family Reunion and a Train Ride

I was able to go back home to Colorado at the beginning of the month to participate in what could be considered the first biennial or triennial (still to be determined)Dirk & Robyn Lamprecht family reunion.  Everyone in the family was there, my nephew and niece included, however Colin couldn’t make it because he is still serving his mission down in Argentina.  The interesting part is that I decided to travel there by train.  Yes, you read that right, a train.  There is actually a train that travels from Provo, Utah to Denver, Colorado.  In fact, those are just two of the stops that the Zephyr (the name of the train) makes on its way from California to Chicago. 

I ended up buying my ticket about 5 days before I was going to leave and because there is not a real “station” in Provo where I could pick-up my tickets, they required me to have them FedEx-ed to my house for $12.  If I had ordered them the day before, I could have had them sent to me via standard mail for free.  Oh well.  You win some, you lose some.  My train was supposed to arrive at like 5:50 in the morning so I had Josh drive me to the platform down in south part of town so as to not have my car parked out in the open for almost two weeks.  I assumed I would be the only one there waiting, but much to my surprise, there ended up being around 5 or 6 people there too.  The train didn’t show up until after 7:00 and according to some of the people who were there waiting with me, that is normal.  One person even mentioned that in one particular instance, the train was 8 hours late.  8 hours?  No wonder people don’t travel by train anymore.  So I got on the train and simply enjoyed the view.  Although it was a 14 hour trip from Provo to Denver, it was fun not having to worry about driving and traffic and the weather.  A great experience.

My family (Dad, Mom, Eliza, Bryan, Kambria) was all there waiting for me at Grand Central in Denver which was nice.  Also, I was a little confused about how the luggage worked because when I boarded the train in Provo, this large, intimidating black guy told me to leave me bag outside of the train and he would take care of it, so I did.  Assuming he checked it, I went into the station in Denver waiting for it to come out of the luggage door.  However, I was a little suspicious and ended up asking someone and they said if I didn’t have a claim ticket for my suitcase, there was no way it would be coming out in the station.  I then ran back to the train and found the black guy who took my bags and we both went searching through three of the train cars to finally finding them.  A good thing too because I realized they didn’t have my name on them at all and they would have been on their way to Chicago to never again return. 

I arrived on Friday night but I spent the next few days just relaxing at home and helping prepare for the upcoming reunion.  Some of us even went to the parade of homes on Saturday after they heard how much I enjoyed the one in Utah.  They were amazing houses that one day I hope to be able to have. The disappointing part of this parade of homes was that there were only 5 to visit. Now granted, they were all right next to each and didn’t require driving all over the place to get to them, but I had a lot more fun seeing the variety of the ~40 or so I visited earlier in the summer.   I actually would make a few changes in my dream kitchen, but I still like seeing one and grabbing ideas and thoughts from ones I visit.

We officially left on Wednesday for the reunion and those who had to continue working joined us later on Thursday and Friday.  My mother’s friend from work had this cabin that their family owned near Crystal Lakes that she let us borrow for that weekend.  It was a cute little cabin with two actual bedrooms and a nice kitchen and family area.  There was electricity and plumbing, thankfully, but because it was a septic tank and not a leech field, it was requested that the outhouse be used if at all possible.  I ended up sleeping on the floor next to the door (or even outside on the deck one night while staring at the amazing stars).

In order to repay the favor for letting us use the cabin, the guys in the family spent one afternoon taking down the dead trees that were on their property and pulled them up with car closer to the main driveway of the property and cut a few of them up with the chainsaw.  It felt really good to get some actually physical labor going on.  With a number of scratches on my legs from wearing shorts and the beginnings of some blisters, we all called it good. 

 

The rest of the time at the reunion was spent enjoying each other’s company, walking the dirt paths all around the area or spending time at the lake.  It was definitely beautiful.  One afternoon we also went looking for a few geocaches (GPS-based treasure hunts).  Sometimes a few of us watched a movie or played a board game.  When we got bored, others got inventive with my camera – see Bryan’s self portrait below.

  

 

All in all it was a wonderful time to spend with the family and I loved almost every minute of it.  As a side not, I forgot my razor back in Provo and not wanting to shave with a real blade, I decided to see how much I could grow it out.  While I still can’t do sideburns, I found that my facial hair is in fact red.  Funny that.  So, the train ride home was just about the same as coming over.  It was around 14 hours and I learned that there are a different class on people who ride the train: the crazies you see on the streets every now and then as well as some outstanding people who are just trying to raise a family and spend some time together.  I actually sat right next to someone who was originally from Springville, graduated from BYU, was now living in New York while her husband worked on an animated film, and was coming back to visit her parents.  The world gets smaller every day.

 

Its a Karaoke Jam

It had been awhile since we had done a Karaoke Party at our house, so Kyle started to get things organized and talked to the right people to pull it all together.  Initially, we were going to have it outside on our back patio like normal, however, the weather turned ugly at the last minute.  Not wanting to ruin the equipment if it were to rain, we tried to make do by having it in our front room.  All in all, it actually turned out great because this time we didn’t have to wire all the speakers and reciever up and then tear it down in the end, but just use the surround sound already setup for the TV.  All that was required has to have Kyle’s projector do a reverse screen display through the open frame we have from our kitchen to the front room.  I think if we were to do this again, we would keep it inside no matter what because it was just so easy. 

In fact, for the event I even talked to my new roommate Jake, who is a big audio guy, to find and sell me a nice mixer I could use to add some additonal mikes (we had a total of six this time) so more could participate.  I think there were around 20 to 25 people who actually ended up coming at some point during the night.  Fun times.

  

 

 

A review

After publishing the most recent post, I remembered a few things I forgot to mention.  Although my birthday on a Thursday, I didn’t do anything until Friday night when my friends actually found out it had been my birthday the day before.  We all went bowling and I while I didn’t do great, I wasn’t as horrible as usual  (I’ll need to get some pictures of the event from someone).  Then we showed up at Borders for the Harry Potter Book 7 release at like 11:00 PM only to find a lot of people waiting a numbered waiting list into the 10,000s.  Not wanting it that badly, I decided I would get it the next morning at Walmart or something.  We left Borders and had dinner at Denny’s until like 12:30 or 1:00 in the morning.  (A funny fact about that night: we ended up sitting at 3 different tables over the course of the night due to preferences, a broken glass, and other circumstances.)  The following morning, at like 6am, I did go to Walmart and then spent the next 18 hours or so reading book 7.  It was pretty good, and I am glad she actually closed the series and didn’t leave anything unresolved to try and milk more money out of it. 

During the summer I had been working a lot, usually around 35-40 hours a week, sometimes up to 50 hours.  I was able to complete a lot of projects and deployments for some of the clients that I had (one even took 5 hours on phone talking to a Microsoft employee in India about SBS and Exchange) and I was able to help and was able to help train some new employees that had been hired.  Additionally, I got my boss to sign off on the idea of letting me go to a bunch of free IT industry training and get paid for it, which was great.  One of them was Intel’s “Premier IT Professional” event where they served you breakfast and lunch while showcasing some of their new technologies such as the vPro and their upcoming quad-core processors.  Also, one part that I really enjoyed was where they instructed everyone there how Intel’s internal IT department tracks their expenses, profits, and in turn, their revenue so that they can justify their costs to management.   It was actually quite fun. 

Another training I went to was Fluke Network’s wireless training event where learned about their new products available for wireless network deployments.  Some of the tools they let us use were their $20,000 site-survey device for new WiFi installs.  I even got a certificate stating I attended, although I don’t think it is actually worth anything in the real world.  The best one however, was a Cisco event held at SLCC in Sandy.  It was an all day thing with 8 classes available, of which you could attend 4.  They showed us their new UC500 device (all-in-one switch, router, access point, and call manager for small businesses), their fiber channel switches, wireless management software, MARS device (network access control and monitoring), and their advanced routing and remote access applications.  For those that don’t know the tech side of me, I am what could be called a “Cisco Snob.”  In other words, if it has the label “Cisco” on it, I want it for my own.  Oh, I forgot to mention that I learned about the Cisco training after having been invited personally, through a Qwest representative, up to Cisco’s corporate sales office for a one on one showcasing of some of their upcoming products.  After that, their regional manager took me out to lunch and bought me something fancy at real Japanese restaurant.  Yeah I felt special. 

While I am talking about work, I want to write down all of the companies I worked for so that I can remember them and have an actually written record of it.

• Brahma Group, Inc.
• Utah Neurological Clinic
• AquaTech Pools and Spas
• Fillmore Spencer Law, LLC
• Holmes Homes
• Canyon View Medial Group
• American Fork Clinic
• Maca Supply
• American Consulting Technology and Research
• University Properties
• Wasatch Energy

Finally, due to someone’s suggestion (I forget who), a group of friends got together and went ice-blocking up at Rock Canyon Park.  It was a first time for me and although I enjoyed it, I was very good at it.  For some reason, I kept falling off at the same place on the hill.  I think I must have been trying to balance too much, if that is even possible.  And then some of us played tag while running through the park’s sprinklers.  Later on, some police showed up and chased after these teenagers who were setting off fireworks and one of the officers lost his firearm clips in the grass.  Eventually we all joined together and searched for it, but without any results.   Sorry coppers.  Anyways, I was able to check one other thing off of my list for the summer.