2010 Books in Review

In 2010 I read 53 books that I reviewed on my book review blog and I just completed a quick rundown of the genres I read and my favorite books. Read it here.

Hard Questions Answered

You've all probably forgotten when I solicited your questions, but just as promised, following are the answers to the 5-year mailbag.

JTENMAN asks: What do we have to do to get on your blog roll?

Well, typically I only update my blogroll every 2 years - and even then it is with people that I like... ;) But, I'll let this one slide. Consider yourself added.

Anonymous asks: Do you pay a full tithe?

Yes.

Trever and Heather ask (It was actually probably only Heather, but how can I know for sure?): I want to know if you met your goal in high school of going out with 100 different girls (it may have been only 50)?


Hmmmm. How to answer this one without making the whole place feel awkward... First off, my goal was to go on at least 100 dates with at least 50 different girls during High School. I did go on 100 dates, but I was a few girls shy of 50. Now if those dozen girls that turned me down hadn't, then I would have made it.

Funny story though - Just a couple of weeks ago my younger sister Rachelle got really excited because she found my notebook where I kept track of all my dates and who I went on them with. I used stars to signify the number of dates that I had gone on with a particular person - but she (and others in my family) thought that the stars signified the number of times that I kissed the girl on each date. If only my life had been so interesting...

David and Amy ask: Wow, 5 years! I want to know what happened to the Lurpmobile...is it still around or long gone?


You know, I'm not really sure what happened to the original Lurp Truck. If my memory serves me correctly, my older sister and I were driving up to a concert at Deer Valley that one of us had won tickets to. At the top of Parley's Canyon the car crapped out and gave up the ghost. Apparently, the oil needs to changed (or at the very least refilled) every so often so I think that the car was scrapped. Yours truly did not take care of the poor Lurp Truck - or maybe it was punishment for attempting to go to a concert on a Sunday. Oops, lesson learned.

Rachelle asks: Happy 5 years blogging. You certainly started before the blogging craze! I have to go think of a really good question for you.

Apparently, no questions came to mind?

Ben asks: If you were Whit, which of the 3 QB's do you go with as the starter for 2009, and why? How would you rank all 3? (I know this'll at least get a good paragraph out of ya)

This is a tough question (and I contemplated giving the question its own blog post), but here is a short answer about how I think things will turn out.

The freshman Jordan Wynn redshirts and leaves Brian Johnson and (oops) Corbin Louks and Terrance Cain to fight for the starting job. I think that Louks gets the nod simply because of his game experience but that Cain still sees playing time (much like Louks did last year). Louks keeps the starting job, but Cain comes in when the coaches want a wrinkle to throw at the other team. Either way it's a good situation to be in.

Ben (different from Ben above) asks: I'd like to see a tribute post to MJ with a picture of you wearing your MJ shirt.

I took care of the MJ tribute post a few days ago. I'm sure glad I don't have to broach that depressing subject again.

And, here's a couple of good questions for you to post on: 1. What is one thing that have you done over the past 5 years that you are ashamed of?

Now you didn't ask for the thing that I am most ashamed of, but this just might be it. After the Utes beat Pittsburgh in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl they were honored at halftime of a Utah basketball game and the glorious Rocky Anderson (loved in SLC, hated throughout the rest of the state) presented them with the key to the city. Just days before, Rocky had given his State of the City which dissed on Davis County (you don't mess with the DC) and reaffirmed his despise of the Legacy Parkway among other things. I booed him and got a little carried away... People started yelling at me to shut-up and sit down and I'm sure I embarrassed Alison and my Dad... I learned a valuable lesson that day (and why am I blushing about this?). Funny thing is, by the end of his 2nd term, I didn't hate him.

2. If you could choose one commandment to break, which would it be?

This is an interesting question and I decided that I will limit my choices to the 10 commandments. I have no desire to break any commandments that cause harm to another person, which narrows it down a bit. The first commandment to go would probably be keeping the Sabbath day holy. It sure would be nice to have 2 Saturday-type days in every week, so that would probably be the first to go. After that it's a slippery slope...

T.Irwin mentions: seeing as how the 24th is my bday, I vote that you should just say that you created your blog in honor of me :D Just cuz.

Did I mention that my cousin Tina was the inspiration behind starting my blog? Well she was.

The truth is that I had been enjoying reading Tina's twin sister Sandy's blog for quite a while before I decided to start one myself (Sandy started her blog in 07/02). So the truth is nearer to her than she probably expected...

Thanks everybody for humoring me. Maybe I'll make it a blogiversary tradition!

5 years!?

5 years ago today was my first blog post. A blogiversary of sorts. As I couldn’t come up with any suitable way for celebrating short of offering free cake to all visitors of my blog, I’ve devised a secondary plan.

I’ve put it all out there on this thing. The blog has been with me through thick and thin. I’ve poured my heart out on these screens, laughed, cried (my tears stain your screen) and talked a lot about the Utes. Is there anything that I haven’t put out there?

I don’t think so, but on the off chance that there is something that I may not have covered, I’m turning the blog over to you, gentle reader, to ask me anything. It makes no difference whether or not you leave your name, use an alibi or comment anonymously, I’ll treat all questions equally. I won’t promise to answer every question (because there are still some things that I may want to keep personal), but I may surprise you.

Have at it! (Oh yes, and my first blog post is about as interesting as everybody else's – here’s a link)

April Flowers

I’m not usually one to do these marathon posts, but it’s been a busy month, I haven’t made a real post since April 1st, and I’ve got a lot to say.

1. Spend-free April. You may remember a couple of years ago Alison and I had a spend-free April. At that time we did our best to not spend any money on pretty much anything but fresh produce and bread. Alison was on WIC at the time so we were able to pretty much go a whole month without spending. We didn’t think we were really in a position to duplicate the experiment again, but we did set a goal to cut spending on all variable categories by 80% (basically, we will pay our full mortgage, utility bills, etc.) We wanted to trim our spending on groceries, clothing and other household items. I haven’t calculated how we did, but I don’t think we quite made it. It doesn’t help that we purchased a 65” TV this month…


2. Yes. We bought a new 65” Mitsubishi DLP TV. We didn’t expect to get one so soon or so big, but we’re not complaining. Not that we need to justify this purchase to anybody but ourselves, but here are our justifications for purchasing it: We had enough money saved up to pay for a 52” LCD TV. As I was looking at them at RC Willey one evening the salesperson made an offhand comment that if we weren’t going to hang the TV on a wall we could consider a DLP TV (which is around 15” deep). We did and we purchased. We had planned on buying one at the beginning of football season in order to let the prices drop lower, and then we wouldn’t have to pay for an HD DVR until then… But RC Willey was having a good sale (and they paid our sales tax), we had free delivery and setup until the beginning of June and a $150 (or so) gift card to RC Willey that we wanted to use. We have not been disappointed with our purchase. It’s been fun to watch the Masters and the NBA Playoffs on the big screen. We put the TV on the RC Willey 18 month no interest plan because we had just paid off our last big purchase (remember this one?) and what’s not to like about making money on our savings while paying the minimum due for 17 months? But, it turns out that my payment to RC Willey was posted after we purchased the TV and they applied it to both purchases – thus leaving our interest-free purchase from last year not paid off and the TV paid halfway off. Because I don’t want there to even be a chance that there will still be a balance on last year’s purchase, we’ll pay the full remainder off this month.

3. Work. This has been a really good month for me at work. I still love my job and I was able to bill more than 100 hours the last two weeks to my principle engineer as well as many thousands of dollars on another project of my own. It feels good to work my butt off, but I still can’t believe how much I don’t know. I love my job because there is truly a lifetime of learning ahead for me. My company had an open house to show off our new office space on Earth Day. Fitting because we are going for LEED Platinum (no building is yet certified LEED Platinum in Utah, but when all is said and done, ours will probably be the third). We also changed our logo. The new one is shown below:
4. The Jazz. They’ve been a hard team to peg down all season. They’ve got great players and they have a cast that should take them a lot further than they made it this year. They just seem to have so many players that are inconsistent and don’t play hard every game. I definitely think that changes need to be made to the team this summer, but I have no idea what those might be. Part of me feels that a summer free from Olympic obligations and other injury causing activities may allow them to have an injury-free year together as a team and then they’ll go ahead and win a championship. I can dream, right?

5. The Malibu. The Malibu’s registration was due in March and I took it in on the last day of the month and it failed. There were three problems that showed up. I took it to one shop and paid for the diagnostic and they were able to take care of one problem. They told me that the second problem was intermittent and that the third would have to be taken care of at a dealer. I didn’t want to pay dealer prices so I found another shop that could fix the third problem (which they did), but they also told me that the first shop had fixed the entirely wrong problem and that the first problem code was still active in my car’s memory system. I then took it back to the first shop and they tried to explain their way out of what they fixed but they got the check engine light to finally go off. That same day I left work early to take the car back to the inspection point to get a retest done. As I was driving there the check engine light came on. Of all the rotten luck. The next day I was going to return the car to the shop that failed at fixing the first problem when I noticed the check engine light was off. I drove directly to the inspection place and had my car all checked out (but I never turned it off, so the codes wouldn’t reset). The car finally passed and as I looked through my emissions report I saw that the same problem code was still active, but that it wasn’t one that even mattered to pass emissions. $600 later, arrgh.

6. I am reading Amy Dacyczyn’s The Complete Tightwad Gazette – Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle. While many of the tips are too over the top for me or don’t apply, there are many that do and I will try to share some of them here. As always, I’ve got loads of new book reviews on my book review blog. Check them out if you haven’t in a while.

7. I befriended SeaBass on facebook. You should too. I can die happy.

The Audacity of Football

I just finished reading Barack Obama's most recent book, The Audacity of Hope. I won't give a review here, for that check out my book review blog. I did want to point out a few things that I found interesting though.

• After Bush's tax cuts, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his receptionist or most average Americans. Copying the quote from my book review blog:

"(p. 190 - Opportunity, Obama recounting a conversation with Warren Buffet) "I did a calculation the other day," he said as we sat down in his office. "Though I've never used tax shelters or had a tax planner, after including the payroll taxes we play, I'll pay a lower effective tax rate this year than my receptionist. In fact, I'm pretty sure I pay a lower rate than the average American. And if the President has his way, I'll be paying even less."

• I don't actually remember the other items. Oh well. I'll just keep going with other random tidbits.
• In the Colley Rankings (used in the BCS calculations, not to be confused with Austin [shoot your mouth off] Collie), the Utes are the #1 team in America (due to their incredible win over perennial powerhouse UNLV). If the season ended today, Utah would be playing Wisconsin for the Colley National Title.
• According to the Massey Ratings (another one of the 6 computer algorithms used in the BCS rankings), Utah is just a little behind USC for first place. Regardless, if the season ended today, those two teams would be playing for the Massey Title.
• Are we really sure the season needs to continue? Playing Weber State isn't going to help those rankings...
• There's been a wootoff the last few days. While I didn't score a bag of crap (I tried though. The crappy servers were too bogged down) I bought my parents a computer and I got a cheap bluetooth headset.
• YouTube broke when I was watching a video earlier today. You should really check it out. Really, I mean that.
  
• I've been working late the last couple of evenings helping my boss finish a big project. No sweat though, I still love my job.

She would be proud

A couple of things that would make my High School English teacher proud (I never really cared much for English):

• I just posted my 50th book review on my book review blog. I never liked having to do book reports in school, but I usually enjoyed reading most of the books. I started my book review blog as a place to keep my thoughts on books I read. I have a real hard time remembering movies or books after I've watched or read them. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to keep it up when I started, but I'm proud of my reviews.
• Last week when I was on campus picking up my MUSS tickets I also picked up a book in which I was published. It's a journal of abstracts (titled University of Utah Undergraduate Research Abstracts) that will be archived at the Marriott Library. Maybe I'll post the full text of my abstract sometime...
• Tomorrow I'm being interviewed by a consulting magazine. I'll let ya'll know how it goes.
  

Under the Banner of Heaven

Last night I posted a review of the book Under the Banner of Heaven - a Story of Violent Faith on my book review blog. I'd be interested in hearing what everyone else thinks about this particular book (if you've read it) or your general impressions.

One of my favorite quotes from the book helps describe why those of us that didn't grow up in Utah county (or have never lived there, member and non-member alike) always feel a little awkward down there:

"(p. 77) For a person accustomed to the multiethnic commotion of Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York, or even Denver, walking across the BYU campus can be a jarring experience. One sees no graffiti, not a speck of litter. More than 99 percent of the thirty thousand students are white. Each of the young Mormons one encounters is astonishingly well groomed and neatly dressed. Beards, tattoos, and pierced ears (or other body parts) are strictly forbidden for men. Immodest attire and more than a single piercing per ear are forbidden among women. Smoking, using profane language, and drinking alcohol or even coffee are likewise banned. Heeding the dictum "Cougars don't cut corners," students keep to the sidewalks as they hurry to make it to class on time; nobody would think of attempting to shave a few precious seconds by treading on the manicured grass. Everyone is cheerful, friendly, and unfailingly polite.

Most non-Mormons think of Salt Lake City as the geographic heart of Mormonism, but in fact half the population of Salt Lake is Gentile, and many Mormons regard the city as a sinful, iniquitous place that's been corrupted by outsiders. To the Saints themselves, the true Mormon heartland is here in Provo and surrounding Utah County--the site of chaste little towns like Highland, American Fork, Orem, Payson and Salem--where the population is nearly 90 percent LDS. The Sabbath is taken seriously in these parts. Almost all businesses close on Sundays, as do public swimming pools, even on the hottest days of the summer months.

This part of the state is demographically notable in other aspects, as well. The LDS Church forbids abortions, frowns on contraception, and teaches that Mormon couples have a sacred duty to give birth to as many children as they can support--which goes a long way toward explaining why Utah County has the highest birth rate in the United States; it is higher, in fact, than the birth rate in Bangladesh. This also happens to be the most Republican county in the most Republican state in the nation. Not coincidentally, Utah County is a stronghold not only of Mormonism but also Mormon Fundamentalism."

Twitter

With the impending birth of my second daughter, I have decided to set up a twitter feed. From the description on the twitter website:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Basically, if you can't get enough tysqui in your life, then this is just the way to get it. You want more cowbell? I've got more cowbell. You may have also noticed that I added my tweets to the top of my blog. Feel free to follow my tweets here (you can even subscribe to my tweets RSS feed - can it get any better?).

Changes (1)

Maybe the biggest change that's happening in our lives right now is my choice of a different blog template. I've been using that other green template since I started this blog on June 24, 2004. I'm not sure if I like this layout or look any better than my old look. I'd love to hear what you think about it. In fact, I just may throw a poll on here (don't think that I don't want to read your comments though). Here goes nothing!

Isn't It About Time?

I don't think I've updated the links on my blog since sometime last summer. Because of that, many of the links I had were outdated and broken or simply not relevant anymore. Because I'm ditching school this morning, I decided to update my links. Take a look at them. If you're not linked or you're disappointed in my presentation of your name, blog or space let me know, slip me some money and I'll make it worth your while.

Longest. Book. Ever.

Well I'm pretty proud of myself. I just finished the longest book that I have ever read, War and Peace. I usually read a couple of books a month, but this one took me 6 months to read. Granted, I didn't hardly read the book at all during the fall semester, but it still took me a long time to finish it. The book was 1691 pages long and consisted of 15 "books", 2 epilogues and 365 chapters. According to one of the translated versions on amazon.com the book has 597,773 words! That's more than 100% of all books on Amazon. As always, I've posted a review of this book on my book review blog. Read it here.

Not Elementary?

I'm trying to be accessible to all education levels. Looks like I've got to dumb this thing down a bit.

3 Years Already!?

Today this blog is 3 years old! Between this blog and my book review blog I have 195 posts and almost 4300 visits (since the beginning of August 2006). My first post came more than a year before my second (so this 3-year birthday is a little deceiving) but since then I have become more and more consistent in my ramblings. Here's to another 3-years of randomness!

100 Books

Most everybody that reads this blog knows that I like to read. A lot. It's one thing that I can't do while school is in session though, because I get sucked in and end up wasting too much time. I recently finished my 100th (documented, there may be some I missed) book since I returned home from my mission. For your summer reading, here is a list of 10 of my favorite books out of those 100 (the link indicates that I've reviewed the book on my booklist - where you can also see a list of the last 100 books that I've read).

1. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
2. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
3. The Giver by Lois Lowry
4. Truman by David McCullough
5. Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien (I know I'm cheating by including them all in one spot)
   
6. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
7. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (trendy, but I enjoyed it)
   
8. Eragon and Eldest by Christopher Paolini
9. The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz
10. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

Honorable Mentions:

• Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling (you choose which one...)
  
• 1984 by George Orwell
  
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  
• Map of Bones by James Rollins
  
• Sarah by Orson Scott Card
  

New Reviews Posted!

If you're looking for a summer read, check out my book review page. I've posted a couple of new reviews there that you may find interesting.

A Fun Little Addition

If you scroll down a little, you will notice a new "widget" that I have included on the right side of my blog. This shows clips of feeds that I've read using Google Reader and enjoyed them so much that I've wanted to share them. You can also see all of my shared items here at anytime. So next time you're bored, come and check out what I've been reading and maybe if you're lucky, someday one of your posts will end up there. Only time will tell.

To the Google Readers:

Everybody that uses Google Reader (or similar RSS reader) may have noticed a small change recently. Instead of publishing my whole blog to the feeder I have changed it to only show the first few lines. This will force all of you RSS readers to visit my blog and be counted by my hit counter. For everybody that doesn't know what RSS, XML and other 'feeds' are then check out this post by a friend of mine.

I had been trying to use technorati.com to read the blogs that I follow but it never updated the blogs that I read. After reading Ben's convincing post on Google Reader, I have been using it and just love it. As much as I try and use products made by companies other than Google, they always just seem to be a step ahead of the game.
Google Reader allows you to "subscribe" to a blog or other frequently updated webpage. When a new post or article is posted on that site then it is also posted in your Google Reader viewing pane. Therefore, if you check for updates on 10 blogs everyday, but some are infrequently updated, this tool saves you time. Mr. Google is a genius.

My Book Review Blog!

I'm loving this blogging dealio so much that I've gone and done it again. I've decided to set up a place where I can write about the books I read. I've been looking for a good way to do this for a few months but I was never able to come up with anything that suited me.

I finally saw Ben and Jenn Iverson's booklist blog and thought that it was exactly what I wanted to do. So, I've used a template modeled off of what they have been doing. You can see their booklist site here. Just be forewarned, Ben and Jenn both actually know what they are talking about when they have been reviewing books. My reviews on the other hand...

So, when you get a chance, feel free to stop by http://tysquibooklist.blogspot.com and check out my newest reads. Be forewarned though, I rarely read anything during the semester.

Christmas Cheer!

I had a little free time this morning and I decided to make this place a little more festive. As you may have noticed (If your volume is turned on), I added a little Christmas music to the landscape. There are 7 different songs and they all play in random order. I'm not going to tell you what they are but you're welcome to stay and listen a bit!

Big Blog Changes!

I didn't have either lab that I normally have today and I also stayed home from one of my classes. This gave me 7 hours of extra time that I normally don't have on Wednesdays. With some of this extra time I made a few changes to my blog. The biggest one involved updating the type of template that I used to organize my layout. With this new template, it is now many times easier to add blocks of html code to my blog.

You can probably see the addition of an mp3 player (special thanks to www.myflashfetish.com)




as well as the scrolling marquee (from www.profiletweaks.com).







Now this blog is the place to be!