Dallas!

Our desktop computer died and the laptop is all but useless. I haven't updated for a while, but that doesn't mean there haven't been plenty of facts to torture! It's time to catch up. I think I'll post several short entries rather than one big long one, so stay tuned!

First off, I now have a shiny new screamer to work on. A Dell Studio XPS with the new Intel Core i7 chip. When I opened up Task Manager and saw 8 cpu windows, I got the giggles! The chip is a quad core, each core being hyper-threaded, which the OS (64 bit Vista) sees as 8 separate cpu's. Very nice and very responsive, no matter how many things are going on. Take a look, you might get the giggles too.

We had a wonderful trip to visit Natalie in Texas in January. We had to take Duke back though. Returning a dog that you love to his owner in Texas who has recently recovered from Leukemia isn't as easy as it sounds! We had to get him a kennel... (No, we didn't ship Melinda with him in the cargo hold)



Becky had to run all over the place getting shots, vet certification, grooming etc etc... We got Duke home and Natalie and the Colonel were happy to see him. That makes it worth it. You can see the happy homecoming at bluesparklyshoes

We all love you Duke and we miss you terribly!

Here are more pictures from the trip...

This crazy bird (A Great Blue Heron I believe) flew to this pond at the Fort Worth Botanical Garden's - Japanese Garden and he stalked and fished out a Koi from the Koi pond... right in front of us. No kidding, this brutal yet beautiful spectacle of nature took place not 10 feet from where we were standing.



Another brutal spectacle of nature... A young boy stalking a squirrel, or is it the other way around...


The bird soon after arriving at the crime scene

Picture perfect! Natalie and the Colonel.



All of us Paulsens love to skate and we helped Natalie learn a little bit before her skating lessons. Please don't look at the skates I'm wearing. It's embarrassing! I thought of taking my own skates with me to Dallas, but... Ok, if anyone on my hockey team sees this I'll never hear the end of it.





Three beauties in one shot. There should be a law...


The cattle drive at the stock yards in Ft. Worth.



Teaching super Nats how to skate. She did great!

At the Japanese Gardens in Ft. Worth










Some things are more beautiful than even the most beautiful gardens.








Sisters!

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)

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


Larger Image

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...

The Spooks are Falling out

Lots of fun Fall time activities to report on. Of course we visited Hee Haw's for the Barnyard fun and corn maze. We've been doing that for several years now and it just wouldn't be fall without the annual corn maze. I thought the maze itself was kinda lame this year, but we had tons of fun and stayed for a long time.

Tonight was the ward Halloween party and as usual the Paulsen family was dressed to kill.

We had an Indian girl and a Mini Mouse girl...

Melinda was so very excited about her costume this year ,and what 6 year old wouldn't! Audrey, of course, lights up the room whenever she is in it with that smile.


We also had a beautiful but somehow... scary girl and a very scary girl, but still - beautiful...

and of course, the scariest costume of all... Math Homework!

Becky took home the "Scariest Costume" award dressed as Math Homework. This just might out-do last year's winning costume of "Sexiest Witch".

Here are some pictures of " El Duke' " I'm sure there is a little someone out there that will enjoy these pictures.

The Speed of Summer

Blinking can be hazardous during Summer months. With the biggest summer events behind me, I wonder how it happened so quickly. Debra and Karen danced in the big show, we all saw Jordin Sparks perform and the Scera, I played a few more shows with Little Wasatch, we flew to Dallas to visit Natalie and her family and we rode roller coasters and saw Metro Station and Boys Like Girls perform and whoooosh!... there went Summer! I'll slow things down a bit.

Debra and Karen work extremely hard to prepare for the Stadium of Fire. They rehearsed 3 times a week starting right after school got out. The week prior to the show they rehearsed all day in the hot sun. Besides getting really good tans, they polished their dance to perfection! Becky went to the all day rehearsals at Lavell Edwards stadium and help keep the girls cool by spraying them with water and making sure they stayed hydrated. What an awesome Mom she is!

Here's the video of the show. The announcer is Glen Beck whom we saw the previous Sunday at the Provo Freedom Festival Patriotic Service. Unfortunately you can't see Debra and Karen... they are dancing in the second row from the left near the top of the screen.







Also as part of Provo's Freedom Festival, Little Wasatch played a 45 minute set in the show tent in downtown Provo on Friday July 3rd. No video is available from that show.

Becky gave Karen some tickets for her and several friends to see Jordin Sparks perform at the Scera Shell in Orem. We had an extra ticket and Becky bought a couple more so the entire family could attend. I wasn't all that excited to go, but go I did. I had visions of Jordin singing to a DJ track with a few dancers and I would much rather see a real band perform. I was pleasantly surprised that there was indeed a live band and a good one at that. I enjoyed watching the drummer play and he made the concert worth while for me. I even started to like the music Jordin played. It was an interesting experience as I have never considered myself capable of liking R&B music, even though I take pride in myself for liking a wide variety of music. With this single event and the right circumstances I found that I really could enjoy a style of music I previously disliked. As an interesting side note to illustrate what a cool world we live in these days, I was able to look up the drummer's name and found his myspace page. I sent him a message complementing him on his performance and received a reply within 20 minutes. That's pretty cool.

My band, Little Wasatch, has played a few shows since my last post. As I said above, we played a set at the Provo Freedom Festival on July 3rd. We also played in American Fork as part of their Steel Days celebration on July 18th. It was a very hot afternoon and as you can see in the video, not a lot of people showed up. If you're into the drums, take a listen to 'Ice Cream Girl'. There is some double base work in there that I think is pretty cool. Checkout the videos at our myspace site.

We just returned form a trip to Dallas Texas to visit Becky's brother and his family... Who am I kidding, we went to visit Natalie and to ride roller coasters! For those of you who don't know, Natalie has Leukemia and has been undergoing chemo therapy since 2006. She is doing well and has a good chance for a full recovery. She was in the hospital when we arrived in Dallas due to side effects from the chemo, but she was only there for 2 days of our week long visit.

While in Dallas we went to see Daily Plaza where president Kennedy was shot. We also toured David's facility where he works as an air traffic controller. That was pretty nifty too. Mostly what we did in Dallas though was play with Natalie, play Rock Star and ride roller coasters at Six Flags Over Dallas. On Friday July 25th we went to a concert inside Six Flags and saw Metro Station and Boys Like Girls which I thought was pretty cool. We also went and saw The Dark Night which was a pretty good movie. It was hot and humid and I even managed to lock the car keys in the rental car while it was running! We had a great time in Dallas. Check out the pictures from the trip.