Nothing Left but a Carcass

Ok, we didn't spend our Turkey day in warm, sunny Tucson outside by the pool as we have done for the past several years. Dallas just isn't driving distance and we had an opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with my family this year. We all gathered at a chapel in West Bountiful and we had a good time. We had plenty of good food and fun things to do. I hadn't realized there would be ping pong and I didn't bring my "super-de-duper-beat-anyone-even-if-you-have-no-talent" paddle. Now my rep has been tarnished and everyone knows it was the paddle all along. Whatever shall I do? We all had fun (I think) and my whole family was there except Kimo. Somehow he got a get-out-of-Thanksgiving-with-the-family free card.

Debra just finished a 1-week run of 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat' in the University Avenue theater district. Wow! When I saw her come on stage in the first show ( we saw three!) I couldn't see anyone but her! She was smiling! And singing! And dancing! Wow! After the second show, I could finally see something of the show other than her and it was pretty darn good! Now if only I could get those stupid songs out of my head!

"Where diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid .... they go?"

Sorry, no video or photography of any kind allowed due to "copyright" laws. (I guess the other twenty five gazzzzileeeeon video's from H.S. productions of "Joseph" posted on youtube violating this "copyright" are being pulled at this moment. =:)



** Update- Here are some photos taken by others.


That's Debra just tot he right of Joseph's head.



2 weeks ago Karen and a friend participated in a ball room dance competition at BYU. She has been taking a class at school and, for the past few weeks, has been practicing very hard with her partner. I tell you what, that was a breathtaking experience for me. To see her out there on the floor, being all ... ball roomy. She is so graceful and beautiful. See for your self! (I did bring the camera this time)

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Hey wait a minute... Is she dancing with.... a BOY???? I need to get the the gym. =:)


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They did pretty well in the competition for the 'Cha Cha' but didn't advance past the first round in the 'Samba'

There were two (well three really) more breath taking sights besides Karen at the competition.

Don't worry Natalie, Duke is doing just great! He loves chewing on his treats. What a hansom dog.

Ok, we're way down here at the bottom of the blog. Only you hard core faithful readers (like... two of you ) ever get this far. So here's my secret...

I saw Twilight... twice, and I liked it. Fine, go ahead and report me to the manlihood integrity association.

Up a Creek Without a Camera

I need to get one of those new cell phones with hi-res photography and video built in. I never know when I'll need to snap a pic or a vid and send it off to a loved one. While I'm at it, I think I'll get one with gps, mp3 and a GAA of 2.93. Why do I need such a newly fangled device? Other than needing something besides the stock market to drain my resources, I keep forgetting to have a CCD device handy at some really cool events. My cell phone is always with me, so the more it does, the more I can forget to bring all the other gadgets along to important events in my life, like impromptu trips to the 'Casbah'

Audrey played the Statue of Liberty in her school's patriotic tribute to veterans on veteran's day. Where was my camera? Missing in action.. shot down over Laos and sitting in a bamboo cage considering a future run at the White House, but I digress. Audrey was simply brilliant! She is so beautiful and so... statuesque. It's no wonder all the boys admire her and call out "Hey lady liberty" in the halls of Lakeview Elementry. I hope one day to take her to New York to see her statuistic understudy... and a few other fun things. Someday...

** Update I scraped this photo from the Lakeview Elementery web site. Not very clear, but that is Audrey up there being the Statue of Liberty...

The Halloween candy isn't even close to being gone yet, even with the fact that there was plenty of 'Room on the Broom' for my low carb diet in the early afternoon of the 31st. Even with my previous post being all about the pre-Halloween festivities, there are more Halloween tales to be told. Unfortunately tales are all I have to offer personally. I have no captured memories of my own to share. Fortunately there were others with enough foresight and less candy on their minds to slip their own CCD devices into the corporate headquarters of Omniture inc. on October 31st.

As some of you know, I now work for Omniture in Orem, UT. What most of you don't know is that Omniture goes absolutely insane for Halloween. Many of you (some, many... many, some... have I included everyone?) may not have an idea of what I mean by insane. Let me 'splain'... Each department within Omniture comes up with the wackiest, craziest, over the top ideas on how to decorate their otherwise bland and life sucking cubicle areas into a spooky and wild indoor fire hazard. After a frowny faced review from finance and scathing scowls from HR and Legal, our hip fun loving CEO exclaims "Make it bigger! More insanity! I want to suck all productivity from all employees for an entire week!" For example, one department, I'm not sure which but I have to walk through it to get to the bathrooms, brought in enough hay to cover several hundred square feet of cubeless "open space" and turn it into a western frontier. They had one of the "fish bowl" conference rooms turned into a saloon complete with shelves of non-alcoholic digitally impressed spirits and a real player piano. There was a cowboy camp and a run-away mine shaft, a card table and a bank of wii's being played on a bunch of flat screens donated by those who have real lives outside the office. Another nameless department brought in (as in... into the building) several square yards of sod and created a scaled down football field with painted lines, goal posts, end-zones and essentially simulated the BYU-UofU rivalry complete with real BYU cheerleaders, Cosmo and placards poking fun at BYUisms (those U-frat boys...)

This is getting quite long and I haven't started on my main point, that being the lack of a camera to document this event. Yes I know, many (or is it most?) of you are in a state of disbelief... I know! Darn my feeble lint covered cell phone CCD! So... ah yes, getting to my point... I'll skip the Hollywood tribute to comic book super heroes and villains (yeah, this department won the best decorated and it was pretty amazing) and the realistic recreation of the land of Oz in the executive wing complete with king sized candy bars, custom Omniture suckers (is that a sub-conscious statement?) and hired dwarfs from Las Vegas for munchkins (I'm really not kidding... dang that lint!) I really do need to get on with this. Ok, I'll skip the other 4 or 5 department themes and just say it took my family 2 hours to get through the whole thing. Oh, did I mention the live band? Ok, moving on... btw, here are some captured photons that really only half capture the grandness and scale of this event.

Our team of blessed engineering geekfulness was led by the inspiration and perspiration of Dustin Webb in the development of a robot that plays Guitar Hero. A real robot, not the cheap Japanese kind that simply looks and feels like a real human, walks, eats and plays goalie for the Buffalo Sabers, but a freaking 2X4 wood plank that can play Guitar Hero with 96% accuracy in easy mode! Ok ok, I know by now you're ready to leave my blog in disgust and disbelief ( and I WILL know when and how you leave ) but thanks to some well timed photons and a clear mind, free from thoughts of more candy, there are some actual pictures! Here you go you fact hungry skeptics... Dustin, Tom, Joel, Ivan and Kyle did most of the real work on the project. My contribution consisted the selfless and strenuous task of playing Guitar Hero all night long to provide essential, critical support and sample data while the other guys fussed over the easy stuff like programming the video recognition software and grinding the 2x4 plank into something resembling a semi evolved transitional fossil of birch-wood man. It took almost two months of planning, pizza and a real mad scientist's lab in the cube next door, but it really worked. Very cool stuff.

For the un-geeked masses reading this, let me do some 'splainin' as to how this robot worked. The software, written mostly by Dustin and Ivan, would capture the video from the Guitar Hero game output. Basically the computer program was "watching" the game. It would use super secret, sophisticated, proprietary and possibly even patentable algorithms to "figer out" where the notes were and when to play them. It would then send commands to a circuit board controlling these thingies that would move a metal rod up and down. When the rod moved up and down it would pull a string under tension and eventually pull or release the finger (no not that finger!) on the guitar buttons. Another "Hand" would recieve commands to strum the guitar. Unfortunatly I have no links to video of the robot actually playing the game. Just some samples made during development.

Halloween is just the best. Perhaps after all the candy is gone, I can start that low carb diet again. That is, until the early afternoon of November 27th. =:) Now, what kind of cell phone can I get for free when I renew my contract...