bismark's blog

How you know you are way too tired

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:25:40 -0700

This is my team last night after a few weeks of pushing hard to launch our product:

Yawn.

Re: Reverence

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:43:35 -0700

Tianna wrote the a post about reverence in the context of Doctrine & Covenants 107:2-4 and using words like God, Heavenly Father, etc. in our speech.

I’m convinced that as a culture at large, we don’t give proper respect to deity. Is it possible that as a church culture we still don’t give proper respect? We understand that we shouldn’t use His name in vain… but is that enough?

If the name of God were rarely said, it would draw more attention to His sacred nature. As it is, has God become more of (for lack of a better term) a household item? Do we treat him with the reverence that He deserves?

I had a few thoughts that I want to share:

1) I think it’s difficult to say exactly what this scripture means. Like Tianna says, there are a number of possible interpretations. I think it is also worth pointing out that these verses sound more like a Joseph-ism (i.e. Joseph attempting to explain something according to his understanding) than a Koran-style passage coming directly from the mouth of God (for more on this, take a look at this awesome post on revelation). This pushed the meaning through an added level of interpretation.

2) Jesus had no qualms about speaking about His Father. I really think we should have a more personal relationship with God than we tend to, even to the point that I have a hard time agreeing with the Mormon culture of using archaic language when addressing deity. If our goal is to become more like Jesus, doesn’t that include striving to have such a personal relationship with our Father in Heaven that we can call Him Abba?

3) Using the names of deity as expletives is the most common form of taking the Lord’s name in vain, but it surely is the least damaging. The real sin occurs when people claim to be acting in the “name of God” for their own personal gain (yeah, I’m looking at you, politicians).

4) The Atonement gives us greater access to our Heavenly Father through Christ, which I believe is one reason that we have moved on from things like only allowing the high priest to enter in the presence of God once a year. The Atonement gives everyone that same opportunity anytime they wish.

Given the above points, I think the answer to Tianna’s question is no, these verses do not indicate we should ever avoid talking about God. The closer our relationship with God, the more natural it should be to talk about Him as part of our daily lives.

Why the name change? I dunno. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it really matters.

Slavonian Burger

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:13:21 -0700

I took off a few weeks from Sunday cooking due to July 4th and the Disneyland trip, but I was able to start up again last week. I got really excited when I first saw this recipe for Slavonian burgers and I’m glad I made them: they were great. Mariam had me make them again later in the week with some of the leftover ingredients because she liked them so much.

Here is the set of ingredients, nothing too fancy, which is good for a mageirocophobic person like me.

If my hand are chopping, then who is holding the camera??? On a related note, apparently I can chop garlic.

Here is the ball-o-meat I created after mixing together the beef, the garlic, and the spices. The first time I made the burgers, I was too timid with the paprika and the cayenne pepper. The second time around things were quite a bit warmer.

Frying away.

The buns were definitely the most difficult part of the recipe, and to be honest I am still not sure I got them right. They got pretty soggy after a bit of steaming and the dipping into the broth. They kind of stuck to the pan when I tried to fry them. They ended up being kind of hot and gooey, which perhaps is right? I may never know given the dearth of Slavonians in my life. And no, these are not ciabatta rolls; our local Safeway seemed to not sell anything of that sort.

Here is the final product, fresh green onion and all. That chip in the plate takes away a bit from the artistic value doesn’t it… The green onion dipped in salt was pretty tasty I might add.

And another happy customer, which is definitely my best motivation for doing this stuff.

Thoughts on Disneyland

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:29:36 -0700

Ok, now that we have the travelogue out of the way, I wanted to post a few things I’ve thought about since the trip down to Disneyland. The week before we went, while I was trying to describe Disneyland to Mariam, I told her it was “the Apple of theme parks”. After our weekend there, I’ve decided that it actually lacks in a number of areas, keeping it from being truly great.

Now I’m sure some of you absolutely love Disneyland and my family is packed full of die-hard annual pass holding fans, so I hope I don’t offend anyone by pointing out some of these flaws. Actually, I’ve reflected a bit on why Disneyland breeds such strong devotion, and I think it comes down to one word: nostalgia. Parents take kids, kids love it, parents love seeing their kids love it, good memories for all. Parents take kids again once they are older, original fun memories a remembered, good times are had. Kids become parents, bring their new kids, fun times are remembered, kids love it, rinse and repeat. I can bet that some members of my family probably have some fond memory from almost every inch of that park; no wonder they love going back.

Now if you hate crowds or American consumerism, then let’s face it, you will never like Disneyland (and probably not Apple either). But here are a few things Disneyland could really improve on:

1) The food. Ok, in the two days that we spent in the park, we certainly didn’t get a chance to sample all of the food, but we definitely did eat some pretty terrible stuff. The burger from Taste Pilots Grill in California Adventure in particular stands out as being absolutely tasteless and nasty, all for $10. Aside from that, much of what we ate was pretty generic: try getting some non-blah Dreyer’s ice cream in the park. Perhaps we just never made to it to the good stuff (ok, the deep fried corn dog was pretty good, but greasy late night theme park food is hard to screw up), but the fact that any of the food is terrible is a pretty large blemish on the park (think iPhone 4 death grip). There is no excuse for crappy food in this world. Disneyland should let outside independent restaurants come in and open up shop. The competition would be great for keeping the prices down and quality up. Imagine what all around amazing food would add to the atmosphere.

2) The souvenirs. Full disclosure: The existence of 99% of souvenirs makes me lose faith in mankind. Why anyone would spend their hard earned money on cheap, worthless crap is beyond me. Sadly, I am sure Disneyland makes a large amount of their profits from selling crap shaped like mouse ears. But if they are going to do that, can’t they at least sell something interesting or unique? Why does Disneyland sell the same junk you can find walking down the toy aisles at Walmart? Let me give one example: as you walk out of the Star Tours ride, a couple of really awesome Star Wars-themed travel posters are hanging on the walls. Even I, Mr. Anti-Souvenirs himself, was sucked into the trap and wanted to buy those posters. The ride exits directly into a souvenir shop, so I looked around for the posters: nowhere to be found. The place was just full of crappy plastic light sabers and stuffed Yodas, just like any Walmart across this country. What I am trying to say is: if you are going to sell crap, why not sell crap that is unique and different?

3) The cruft. Like I said, Disneyland basically runs off pure nostalgia, so I know that this last suggestion is probably the most far-fetched: lose the cruft. Animatronic elephants may have been all the rage back in the 1950’s, but now they are just cheesy and lame. Disneyland has enough money, why not real animals? The fake submarine ride just doesn’t make sense to me; why not fill the pool with real marine life? And seriously, please lose the Grand Canyon panorama with the stuffed animals. Things like that, especially for those who have seen the real thing, are always just so stupid and cheesy. It reminds me of the fake Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty in Las Vegas. Just kitschy.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on what could be improved at Disneyland. Let’s be honest, I will probably take my kids someday, and they will take theirs regardless of whether any of the above change. But seriously, those changes would be nice, wouldn’t they?

Disneyland

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:50:41 -0700

Whoa, long time no blog. Time to catch up a bit.

Two weeks ago I took off a Friday from work for a whirlwind trip down to Disneyland. It was Mariam’s first time, so it was fun introducing her to it all. We went with my grandparents and my Aunt Wendi, who is pretty much as hardcore as you can get concerning Disneyland, which was nice. Since she knows all the ways to work the park, we never had to stand in line (those Fast Passes are a pretty good idea) and we always had a great view for the shows. We left the Bay area at around 4 am on Friday and didn’t get back until around 8 pm Sunday night, and it was non-stop the whole time we were there, so by the end, we were both crazy tired. A lot of fun though. Some of the highlights include:

Mariam completely hiding herself for the entire Splash Mountain ride because of her fear of the big drop.
Mariam almost crying because we got stuck in the far back seat on the big roller coaster in California Adventure and then having her say she loved it after we got off.
Mariam and I getting the back row on a late Pirates of the Caribbean ride and.. oh never mind.

Here are a few pics:

Before going in we stopped by to say Hi to Grandma Tic Tock’s brick. She was my great-grandma who passed away two years ago. It’s nice to have that there just a few feet away from the entrance.

Here is the requisite shot in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Quite a beauty if you ask me.

I let Mariam drive on all the rides, including Autopia. This about sums up how I felt the whole time. Wild ride indeed.

As you can see, Mariam got a first timer badge and we both got “Just Married” badges as well. I guess “just” was used rather loosely; it was always a bit awkward when people asked us when we got married and we would say April. Just having that many people coming up to ask was awkward enough already.

And yes, in case you didn’t notice in the last picture, this is Mariam ruthlessly destroying the dreams of small children around the world.

This is me eating a huge piece of turkey.

Saturday night Mariam and I got some time to ourselves so of course we went to Fantasyland to ride on the little kid rides. We did the tea cups right after I ate a corn dog. Bad idea.

Our last ride was the carousel. That was nice.

Off into the sunset…

Here is my most recent attempt at pixel art imitation. This one...

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:04:00 -0700

Here is my most recent attempt at pixel art imitation. This one comes from the NES game Super Dodge Ball. The original screenshot can be seen here.

I like how this one turned out. The thicker lines made it a bit easier.

Pancakes

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:35:09 -0700

When I was a kid, whenever it was dad’s turn to cook dinner, he always made breakfast food (eggs, sausage, pancakes, etc). Given this strong tradition of breakfast food for dinner in the Johnson family, when I saw this pancake post on Salt and Fat, I knew it would make a perfect Sunday evening meal.

The sad truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever made pancakes from scratch all on my own, so this actually was a good learning experience.

Here are all of the ingredients put together. Simple enough for me to understand.

The recipe called for melted butter, but we don’t have a microwave so this is the best I could do.

All the dry stuff.

And now the wet.

And here is one cooking away. We had a big box of blueberries, so adding them seemed like a perfect idea, though there almost wasn’t enough to add to the pancakes towards the end because I kept eating them. Seriously, is there a more awesome fruit in existence?

This was a special surprise for Mariam (she was in the other room reading the whole time).

And here is the final product. Yes, I know I need to work on my presentation skills a bit (this looks no where near as nice as Jim Ray’s photo). And yes, that is turkey bacon. I know, I know, very ironic to follow a recipe from Salt and Fat and then serve turkey bacon, but sometimes the wife wins at the super market.

It was definitely worth it.

Actually, the pancakes were not all that amazing. They ended up being a little too dense and not as fluffy as I would have liked. If anyone has any ideas as to why that may be, please let me know!

Social Networks

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 07:55:10 -0700

Earlier this week the tech blogs started buzzing about the rumored existence of a Facebook competitor made by Google called “Google Me”. Everyone started speculating about whether it could beat Facebook or not, how would it be different than Buzz, Orkut, etc etc.

Without any way to see into the future, it’s really impossible to say what kind of “success” such a product will have. However, while thinking about the possibility of a major competitor to Facebook, I furthered realized just how broken the “social networking” industry is.

You Don’t Own Yourself

Log into Facebook and take a look at all the information about you contained within your account. Your profile page. Your list of friends. Your pictures. Other’s pictures with your face tagged. Notes. Statuses. Likes.

Taken as a whole, this information basically acts as many of people’s entire social presence online. It’s how you interact with friends, it’s how you send out updates about your life, it’s how you express yourself. And who owns all of this data? Facebook.

A few months ago, the trendy thing to do in geek circles was to delete one’s Facebook account out of protest of Facebook’s stupid privacy debacles. Though it made a few headlines, it’s likely Facebook gained more users in a few hours than they lost due to this nerd exodus. Most people probably are ignorant of or plain just don’t care about Facebook’s many issues. But even those that do care are faced with one large barrier: one’s entire social profile and social graph are completely locked within Facebook’s silo.

Let’s say Google release Google Me tomorrow and it is freaking amazing. It has all of the exact features you have always wished Facebook would implement and it also fixes many of Facebook’s problems. So, you go and create a profile. It’s easy enough to copy and paste from your current one on Facebook. Then you think it would be good to have all of your pictures. Well, Facebook doesn’t give you an option to export your pictures in their original resolution, but that’s not a huge deal. But of course, all of your face tags won’t come with… Ok, forget the pictures. Next, it’s time to add back all of your friends. Wait, only three out of your 357 Facebook friends have Google Me accounts? Well crap. I suppose you could try to evangelize a bit to encourage them to move over, but do you really think you are going to be able to convince Great Aunt Gertrude why she should move over to some brand new scary system now that she finally figured out how to comment on her friend’s Facebook walls? Not gonna happen.

So, you have two choices:

Forget about Google Me and keep your social graph intact on Facebook.
Cut out huge chunks of your social graph that has built up over the last 6 years that you’ve spent on Facebook.

Now it’s true many people had a MySpace profile before jumping on to the Facebook bandwagon. However, I think it’s safe to say that everyone’s social capital investment is much larger in Facebook than it ever was on MySpace, adding much more friction any changes.

Nevertheless, Google Me may win. It may just be so awesome that it garners the critical mass of users to make it worthwhile, even to Great Aunt Gertrude. But if Google Me is just as closed as Facebook, we would just be trading one poor master of our social graphs for another. Over time, the number one social network will continue to get bigger and bigger and will continue to suck up more and more of your social graph until there is absolutely no way you could possibly move to a competitor (and honestly, this may have happened already with Facebook).

So what are we supposed to do?

A Real Open Graph

In an ideal world, it shouldn’t matter what social network you are on. If you are on Google Me, you should be able to “friend” someone who is on Facebook and tag a photo of someone who is on MySpace. Why are social graphs limited by these walled off networks?

The thing is, we don’t really need another network: the Web already provides us with one. The Web (graph) is a collection of data interconnected by links (since we all use search engines so much these days, we sometimes forget to think about it that way). If I can create a link here on my blog to any other item that exists on the Web, then why isn’t adding another person on the internet to my social graph just as easy?

It may require defining a new standard of how to connect profiles as friends as an extension of the Web. Unfortunately, that would mean the social networking companies would have to collaborate extensively, something they have little financial incentive to do (have you ever thought how much in dollars your personal information is worth to Facebook?).

Another barrier to the Web as the social graph is the incorrect idea that personal information can be kept private on the Internet. Let’s just be honest: if you post it on the Internet, it doesn’t go away and someone who you never expected to see it will. Five years ago, did you really think your mom would ever get a Facebook profile so she could look through those crazy party pictures you are tagged in? Facebook is not private. Do not treat it as a private way to interact with your friends. Other people will see it.

Once everyone get’s over the illusion of Internet privacy, then perhaps we can start moving to a saner model for social profiles. Why not do it 1997-style and create a personal website containing your public info, public pictures, and links to your public friends? This gives you complete control of your social graph. Sadly, this is not nearly as simple as setting up a Facebook profile, and this is one area where we geeks have failed to help our Great Aunt Gertrudes.

Some of you may have heard about the Diaspora project which is seeking to free our social graphs from companies like Facebook. I think the idea is neat, but so far I don’t have much hope. Even a geek like me yawns when I see feature lists like:

OpenID
Voice-over IP
Distributed Encrypted Backups
Instant Messaging protocol
UDP integration

For Posterity’s Sake

Many of you reading probably think I am making a big deal about nothing. Well, I have one last point to make: Do you want your grandchildren to have records of who you were? Do you enjoy looking at old pictures of your ancestors and hope that your great grandchildren will do the same with pictures of you? Think about this: that last set of pictures that you uploaded to Facebook and then deleted off the camera is no longer yours. Will Facebook be around in 100 years? If it is, will your profile be around? Will your great grandchildren have access to your profile?

Honestly, I don’t have a good answer to all of this. I still have my Facebook profile, but I basically just use it as a place to aggregate my tweets and blog posts. I have made some attempts to control my social graph. One reason I started using Tumblr is it’s really simple export capabilities. I keep local copies of things I write in an archivable format (not .doc). I post my pictures to Flickr which gives me complete access to the original picture file (I don’t use some of their nifty tagging features since there is no portable way to export that data). I only put on the Internet something that I want my mom, my future employers, my Great Aunt Gertrude, and my great grandchildren to see.

If you care about this at all, try to take control of your own social graph. Forget about trying to hide it behind a Facebook privacy setting. Good luck.

More good news on the giving front

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:33:11 -0700

Some of you may remember my post about helping fund Mr. Baltazari Ngowi’s business through Kiva.org.

Well, I am happy to report that the loan has now been completely paid off. I hope that Baltazari was able to put the money for a worthwhile and profitable use.

Follow up on "Do You See What I See?"

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:26:50 -0700

The teacher from the project I donated to earlier this year has posted some pictures and a follow-up note:

…Hands on material is such a wonderful way to extend a lesson. Thank you again for helping to make Science an exciting topic for my students. Your gifts will be well used in my classroom for years to come…

link

I dunno what if any impact having some fun science experiments will have for these kids, but if any of them decides that continuing to learn and work hard at school is just a little more worthwhile than they thought before, that will be some of the best $25 I’ve ever spent.

Tomato-Butter Sauce

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:36:29 -0700

To kick off my attempts at becoming a better cook, I decided to stick with something simple: a four ingredient tomato-butter sauce. Amazingly, I actually pulled it off at it tasted great. Here are a few pics:

Yes, silly me, I used can tomatoes. We even had a bag of fresh, bright red tomatoes in our fridge; I was just too much of a wimp to try peeling them myself. One step at a time I suppose.

Squishy balls of red goop.

Like I said, squishy. Crushing them was just as fun as Neven claimed.

Yeah, this wasn’t exactly “healthy”, but hey, everyone needs to live a little.

So here are all the ingredients (tomato, butter, onion, salt) together in the pot. I was actually surprised how little salt I needed to add, though I am sure the fact that the butter was salted made a big difference.

This is the sauce reduced after about 40 minutes of simmering and occasional stirring. It was amazing how flavorful it became without any extra ingredients. We took the onion out and I actually ate half of it as part of dinner. It was really tender and sweet.

And here is the final product. Both Mariam and I really liked how it turned out and I plan on making this sauce again in the future (next time with fresh tomatoes and maybe a few herbs for variety). Yum!

Like I said in my previous post, I’ve started getting...

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:06:09 -0700

Like I said in my previous post, I’ve started getting interested in creating pixel art. Per Neven Mrgan’s advice, I decided a good start would be to imitate existing pixel art. So here is my first attempt at it: this is an imitation of Lucas from the game Mother 3 in this scene. The one on the left is the actual size, the one on the right in 5x.

I really don’t like how it turned out at all.

A few wedding pics

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:06:46 -0700

Here is a link to some pictures taken by my friend Michelle on our wedding day: Getting Hitched. As usual, Mariam is her photogenic self while I just do my best not looking like a complete dork.

Hobbies

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:59:46 -0700

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what I would do if I was independently rich and I never had to work. I decided that my free time ought to be spent doing those things instead of wasting my time watching t.v. or something. My list is topped by:

Traveling and exploring the world with Mariam
Eating and learning how to cook awesome food
Doing service projects like Habitat for Humanity, soup kitchens, etc.
Programming
Learning how to make pixel art
Blogging

Sounds like the perfect life to me.

Traveling obviously has to wait awhile for financial reasons, but Mariam and I are planning to make the best of our time here in San Francisco exploring.

The cooking thing is something I’ve felt inspired to do by saltandfat.com. I’ve decided to take charge of one meal each weekend to try my hand at making something simple and tasty.

Doing service is something Mariam and I both believe strongly in. Now that our lives have started to settle a bit I hope we can start finding things to do a couple times a month to help out. We both have noticed the extreme need apparent just here in the city so we know there is plenty that needs to be done. I hope to report back soon with results.

Because of work, I am not sure how much independent programming I can really do, but I have been coming up with ideas on how to improve Battleball (hopefully to the point of getting it in the App Store) and a few other new projects. I will have to recheck my contract to see how much I can actually do this summer.

I dunno why I have started feeling an interest in pixel art, though following the development of two iPhone games, Mimeo and The Incident probably has helped. You may remember my first attempt here.. I hope to share a few new pieces with you all before the end of the summer.

Finally, blogging. Yes, I know I have left this blog in a very derelict state for the last few months, but I hope to change that. I was actually inspired by Tangerine returning from her mission and picking up blogging again. It reminds me of the good old days of blogging about daily life at BYU. I would like to get back to that.

Ok, I think that’s enough blog posts for tonight.

California

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:42:47 -0700

So, finally I am starting to get caught up with the present.

Mariam and I are here in San Francisco. It took us a week to find a place to stay, so we crashed at Grandma and Grandpa’s out in Concord. But now we have a really nice little apartment to ourselves near Balboa Park station with only about a 30 minute commute on the bus for me to work.

Work has been going well: I am working on a still secret project here at Zynga, though I suppose in the end very few people will ever know about it since it is all backend stuff. I’ve taught myself PHP pretty quickly, though I keep running into a few gotchas here and there (like paths in require statements are relative to the current directory you are executing from instead of where the script is located.. huh). I’m learning a lot and the environment is MUCH different than Intel. The free food is great and this Tuesday I am getting a (much needed) free haircut from the company’s stylist.

Mariam has been staying busy getting us settled in, though I am worried she is getting a bit bored.. We are still looking for stuff for her to do during the summer to stay active.

The last two weekends have been great: On Memorial Day we took a trip down to Santa Cruz with Amy Jo and Charlie. The weather was perfect walking along the ocean and Charlie gave us a little tour of his old stomping grounds. Yesterday Mariam and I walked around downtown, eating good food, looking for a dress and some running shoes for her.

The weather here is great (Mariam thinks it’s cold), which helps a lot. I feel like I am finally starting to catch back up with life (thus taking a couple hours to catch up on blogging), so now I am just looking forward to the rest of this summer in this awesome city with my awesome wife.

Car crash

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:34:08 -0700

I guess suspenseful endings don’t work all that well when I am writing a bunch of posts quickly in succession, but I am trying to break this up for easier readability.

Anyway, on the way to Target that evening, we pulled over to the side of the road (there was street parking) so I could make a phone call to my dad. After sitting there about a minute in park talking on the phone, I saw some headlights that seemed to be pulling up behind us. Next thing I know we are being slammed from behind. I tell my dad what just happened and I check to make sure Mariam is alright, which thankfully she is. We get out of the car to see what happened and the entire left side of my trunk is crunched and then scrapes go all the way up the driver’s side. The dude who hit us gets out of the car stinking of alcohol and obviously drunk, so I call the police and they send someone over. In the meantime a nice elderly man from a nearby house lets Mariam sit inside since it’s raining pretty hard and the drunk guy starts acting very strangely by hiding stuff in his trunk and digging around in some bushes nearby. A policewoman shows up and starts taking information, and right away she smells alcohol on his breath and asks him how much he has been drinking. So, thankfully she is really nice and sympathetic to us. The tow truck comes and starts taking away our car while we waited for some friends to pick us up. While we were walking away, the guy was surrounded by three cops interrogating him. I dunno what his final story was.

Both Mariam and I were quite shaken but aside from a sore necks, we were fine. The aches kept me up part of the night and definitely made packing the next day not all that fun.

The insurance company was helpful in getting us a rental car, but in the end we got a pretty paltry sum in return. I suppose if I was the litigious type I could have gotten a lot more from a drunk driver, but I just wanted to be finished with it all. Thankfully we were not planning on bringing the car to California with us anyway, so it wasn’t too big of a deal. The car was of course totaled.. I guess I could feel bad about such a lame ending to my first vehicle, but I really didn’t have the time to think about it too much.

Just another one of those stories we will be able to share with our kids.

Post-Wedding School Craziness

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:21:43 -0700

Our time in Park City was great. We stayed at the Waldorf Astoria Dakota Lodge which was quite fancy and very empty since it was in between seasons. We felt very posh ordering, well, Waldorf salad for $25 a plate through room service. It was a much needed two days of relaxing so we could survive the craziness that lay ahead.

So, yes, I still had finals to do. I know, I know, not the best way to schedule things in the world, but it seemed to be the only way for things to work out. It made for an interesting two weeks in Madison. My days were spent finishing up classes, my TA responsibilities, and projects, while my evening were spent helping Mariam set up our very temporary home that we won’t be back into until August. A few nights I ended up going back to campus to keep working. Definitely stressful and definitely not fun.

But my final projects ended up going really well: my professor was impressed with our networked game physics solution in the iPhone game and our brute force CRC32 cracker/Google Engine hack actually ended up working.

I found a guy from Spain to sublet my old apartment for the summer, and we got him all situated, which was a nice burden off our backs. And the sister of the visiting professor from India told us they were going to take our other apartment for sure, so we made final plans to buy the couches, microwave, and bed that she had requested. Off course, she decided to screw us over and not take the apartment after we spent the time and money getting those things because she found another apartment for $50 cheaper a month. Sigh. Mariam did a good job stopping me from sending some very angry emails.

But even with all of that stress, the night after everything at school was finished, I was starting to relax. Mariam and I went to the Institute graduation pizza party and we said goodbye to my friends from the single’s ward. Then it was time for the fateful trip to Target to pick up a vacuum cleaner with some of our giftcards… Until next post! Dun dun dun!

The Wedding

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:08:44 -0700

Well.

Hi again everyone. It’s been awhile.

I think I have a bit of catching up to do. Where to start…

I guess that whole wedding thing would be good. I wish I had had the time to blog about this a little closer to when it happened, but life got set at ludicrous speed ever since that fateful week…

I should mention being married is awesome and Mariam is great for having helped me survive the last month and a half.

Anyway, the wedding week. Insanity.

Monday: Picked up my suit (no, I did not wear a tux during out morning wedding and that’s the right thing to do).

Tuesday: Moving day. I spent the morning filling up boxes with my mom at the old apartment and dropping them off at the new one. Drove up to the homestead that evening to finish packing and get ready for the flight.

Wednesday: Flew out of Milwaukee early in the morning to get us into SLC early afternoon.

8:22 AM: sausage egg and cheese biscuit regret.

Weather was unimpressive to say the least.

3:20 PM: in Utah. and once again the weather sucks.

Mariam still was not done with finals, so I just had a second to say hi to her before she went into the testing center. Got in a bit of relaxing before I gave Mariam a ride up to Draper so she could go to her friend’s bridal shower. Obviously wanted to spend more time with her but I figured I would be with her plenty soon enough. We had actually hoped to have Mariam all packed and shipped by Wednesday, but that obviously didn’t happen, something I ended up regretting.

Thursday:

12:02 PM: I think my fingerprints are burned off from the lye in the oven cleaner I was using. Stupid BYU cleaning checks.

Thursday morning was filled with cleaning up Mariam’s apartment and buying the Mariam’s wedding dress. Yes, this was a sad story: Mariam had sent her measurements to her mom so she could wear her mom’s wedding dress. Well, something went wrong and the dress was too small all around. So we had to buy a new dress two days before the wedding. I was forced to stand outside the store with my eyes clothes while Mariam and my mom made the final decision then I was brought just to swipe my credit card (a shadow of my future married life perhaps??). Anyway, thankfully it worked out and she looked beautiful anyway. That afternoon was mom’s graduation extravaganza, which was good for her (amazingly the ceremony only last around and hour and a half). That evening Mariam’s parents and brother landed in SLC around midnight, so Mariam and I drove up to meet them and make sure their rental car worked out alright. Which of course it didn’t (apparently you can get debit cards in Mexico without your name on it, which of course won’t work for renting a car). So after a few frantic phone calls and some stress, we decided to just stick with the original plan of having them stay up in SLC and having us just be their transportation. In the end it worked out fine but during the 2 am drive back to Provo all alone after an already crazy week, things seemed to be falling apart.

Friday: Only a few short hours later it was time to drive back up to SLC to pick up Mariam and her family and then to go down to the Draper Temple for Mariam’s endowments (I will never really understand why she had to choose that temple…). We almost got stuck in traffic making us miss our appointment but with the help of Google Maps and some quick maneuvering, we found the backroads that got us there on time. The ceremony was great with all of our family there and afterwards we pigged out at Chuck-O-Rama (my dad’s idea). Friday afternoon turned into crunch time for getting Mariam packed and moved out, which was quite stressful and tiring. I was completely dead by 8 pm and collapsed immediately into bed when I got to the hotel room.

9:28 PM: I’m tired.

Saturday: The 8 hours of sleep felt closer to 1 given how dead I was still feeling Saturday morning, but I wasn’t going to let that get me down.

6:20 AM: Way too crazy and stressful of a week leading up to today. Thankfully she is worth it.

Of course the wedding needed one last obstacle, so the Joseph Smith Memorial Building’s parking garage was closed due to a car slamming into the entrance doors over night. A few phone calls took care of that situation then I just kind of stood back while people started filtering in for the breakfast. Mariam was late, but we all forgave her.

Here is a picture I snapped of her during breakfast.

The whole thing was just kind of surreal and I kind of felt like I was floating along as we talked with friends and family, ate, etc.

Finally it came time for us to walk over to the SLC temple. While Mariam changed they left me in a small room with some chairs and a pitcher of water. Quite a nerve wracking 15 minutes of pacing around and trying to beat cotton mouth. She finally came in and she was beautiful and things just floated on smoothly from there. We had a bilingual sealer perform the ceremony which was really nice for Mariam’s family. The whole cliche thing of not hearing anything that was being said and just feeling really happy looking across the alter at each other was pretty much spot on.

I had this set to autopost while we were in the temple.

It was short and sweet and after a round of hugs it was off to get changed again for pictures. Of course Mariam took a lot longer than me, so once again I had another long, nerve wracking wait. Thankfully a nice older temple worker sat down and talked to me about how he used to do programming for physics simulations back in the 80s before they had math libraries or floating point chips, etc. A nice diversion to keep me sane.

Pictures were fun. Here is a small collection that I hope to expand in the near future once I get a few more of the pictures: link.

Finally it was all over; all of our friends and family were gone and we were left just saying goodbye to our parents. My uncle Jeff and aunt Kristine (both speak Spanish) were awesome helping out and being tour guides for Mariam’s parents for the rest of the day which let Mariam have one less thing to worry about. We said our goodbyes and that was that. I was glad to finally be done and to just have a little bit of time to breathe and enjoy my wife before the next bit of craziness began.

First video of our “working” iPhone game. Sorry for...

Wed, 12 May 2010 15:32:18 -0700

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

First video of our “working” iPhone game. Sorry for the blurriness, it was shot with my mom’s Flip camera.

I am making progress on my iPhone remake of the Atari 2600 game...

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:54:00 -0700

I am making progress on my iPhone remake of the Atari 2600 game Warlords.