Month: January 2018

A little over seven years ago, I shaved off my long-time goatee. This is pretty much how I felt:

To this day, most people can’t guess how old I am. To my surprise (and, I must admit, my great pleasure) they generally pick something in the mid-30’s. There’s something to be said for a babyface.

Today in seminary I was teaching about faith, and how sometimes we’re asked to believe in something we can’t see or even understand. For example, take quantum tunnelling: we hear that it’s possible for an electron to literally teleport from one side of a wall to another, without covering the distance between. That’s so far outside what we expect in our world that it’s hard to wrap our brains around. But it’s absolutely true, backed up by experiments and a whole bucketload of math.

So, I thought it would be fun to show the class the “bible” of quantum mechanics, my old college textbook!

I wrote out an equation describing tunnelling and potential wells and stuff, but the class screamed in horror. Math at 6am doesn’t go over well.

Zaque, talking about his friend Lainey, who he beat in an epic game of Exploding Kittens:

A couple of days ago, a meteor streaked across the sky in Michigan and slammed into the ground (technically becoming a meteorite at that point). This is an awesome photo supposedly showing it:

It reminds me of that classic quote from Aliens: “Nuke it from orbit– it’s the only way to be sure”. Yikes.

I’m in Washington, D.C. tonight for a business trip, and after finishing a day of meetings and an awesome Italian dinner, I decided that hanging out alone in my hotel room wouldn’t be all that exciting. So I grabbed Steven (my fellow Zinger) and we headed over to the National Mall.

We walked along the reflecting pool to the Washington Monument, which looked really cool all lit up in the cold winter night.

Nearby was the World War II Memorial:

We continued on to the Lincoln Memorial to see Uncle Abe.

We had planned to stop by the Jefferson Memorial as well, and maybe even walk past some of the other federal buildings (Smithsonian, National Archives) but it was so frigid that neither of us could feel our fingers any more. And I was wearing gloves! So we packed it up and headed back to the warmth of our hotel rooms.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll drop in on a few other landmarks. It was cool to see these after many years, and be reminded of the inspiring history of our country.

Yesterday as I was riding the train at DIA to the concourse where my airline was, I noticed a sign in the car that gave a phone number and said I could provide feedback by texting the car number (17, in my case). So I did.

I figured very few people ever give feedback about their train car at DIA, and those who do are probably griping about something. So why not provide some positive feedback? Maybe Maximillian really enjoyed my comment. I’m not sure what the “appropriate department” would be, nor can I imagine what it must be like to be a guy like Maximillian, who apparently spends his day waiting for incoming texts about the DIA trains. But hey, if I can brighten someone’s day with a simple text while I’m riding the train, so be it.

I was working on my business taxes, when all of a sudden the software shut down and the desktop went black. After a second, I received a nice message from Windows:

Seriously, Windows? Right in the middle of my work, with no warning whatsoever? I would at least expect a little prompt like “Holy cow, there’s a super duper critical update that I absolutely need to apply right this very second regardless of what you’re doing! Save your data and click ‘OK’ to begin!” Nope. So I get to re-enter all of the tax data I’d been working on.

Sigh. Windows.

Last weekend when we took Alex to BYU I decided to buy a CTR ring at the bookstore. That stands for “Choose the Right” and is intended as a simple reminder to be a better person.

I first bought one that was a size 11, because that’s what the little ring sizer thing indicated for my right ring finger. But as I slipped it on and walked out of the store, the ring was sliding around my finger… I knew it would drive me nuts in no time. I returned to the store and asked if I could exchange it for a size 10.5. Sure thing. I slipped that one on my finger and was much happier with the fit.

Later, I wanted to take off the ring, but found to my surprise that I couldn’t. It had gone on pretty easily, but absolutely wouldn’t slide back over my first knuckle. I put lotion on my finger and tried pulling and twisting, all to no avail. Today I was walking outside (roughly 30 degrees) and thought maybe the cold would shrink my finger or something. Nope. I’m really not sure if or how I’ll get this thing off.

I suppose it’s a sign of sorts that I really need to be reminded to choose the right.

Forever.

My wireless keyboard at work suddenly stopped working, and a bit of searching on YouTube showed me that it was almost certainly because the rechargeable battery (it’s solar-powered) had faded. An $80 wireless keyboard without power is pretty much worthless without that $8 battery, so I ordered one from Amazon.

It came in a surprisingly large box with warning labels on the top and all the sides about how dangerous lithium batteries can be:

Wow, you’d think it was a bomb or something. So I guess they trucked it across the country for me. I opened the box and saw the nickel-sized battery inside:

No padding or anything… just this little innocuous-looking thing that apparently strikes fear into the hearts of passenger airline pilots everywhere.

The other evening, Zaque went over to his friend Ma’ata’s house. I’m not sure what they did, but at some point during the evening, apparently she painted his fingernails.

Ahh, the things teenage boys will do to humor teenage girls…