Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Ironic that I bought my first Apple product within an hour or so of Steve Jobs' death. I got home from the Apple store, looked at my computer, and found out.

Associate

Last month I had some big news - the firm I've been working with as a contractor hired me on as a full-time associate! Ironically, it was a year to the day that I had moved into my current house. It was a hard year, well... it was a hard 4 years giving up my job in Salt Lake, moving to Lubbock, graduating without a job, moving to a new city with barely any money, and just working and trying to meet people and get my name out there.

But I feel led to where I'm at. The partner I work under is an LDS Bishop. The founding partners of the firm both went to Texas Tech Law. The work is good, the opportunities are good, and people are asking me to do more and more. The work I did before finding this firm, patent research, is paying off in the work I'm doing now. I'm grateful for the time I did that.

Here's my work profile page: Ryan T. Ward

Understandably, I'll probably try not to put anything too inflammatory on this blog - no reason to burn bridges - though links to Economic pieces may continue. I do hope, however, that having this job will allow me to afford to do more adventure stuff than I've been doing. I feel like when I was in the Utahs every week, and sometimes every day, was an adventure, and that's been lacking. I'm hoping I can do a little more exploring and see some stuff now that I have a job.

Life and junk

So I realized I never posted any pics from Florida, so here's a picture of Dave and I on the boat coming back from fishing.

Then last weekend I was sick, but had already signed up to run a race called the MetroDash. It was an obstacle course involving cargo-nets, flipping tires, jumping obstacles, carrying stuff, etc. It was a lot of fun, and Travis and Kelly came out and took pictures of me doing stuff. I was pretty happy with my performance, especially since I was pretty sick all week before the race.

Why the Jobs Situation Is Worse Than It Looks - US News and World Report

Here's a 'fun' follow-up to my previous post. In other news, I went to Florida and went deep-sea fishing with Dave last weekend. Pics coming soon.

Why the Jobs Situation Is Worse Than It Looks - US News and World Report

Decline and Fall of the American Empire

"Above all, America must rediscover the qualities that originally made it great. That will not be easy."
- Larry Elliot, Decline and Fall of the American Empire, The Guardian, June 6, 2011

Back to the ISLAND - LOST

I loved the television show LOST. Over the 6 years it was on, I had dozens if not hundreds of conversations with people about the show. Usually these conversations formed one of two types:

One type concerned what was actually happening on the show - "What is the Smoke Monster?" , "Are they dead?", "I hate Ana Lucia."

The other type concerned why I liked the show - the characters, their relationships, their struggles, all while dealing with this crazy, "I'm on an island with no flip-flops" experience.

Of course, usually these questions were broken down almost exclusively by the type of person that was watching the show. Some people really did care that there were polar bears on the island and wanted a reason why, other people didn't care at all. I was in the second camp. Usually when someone would come up to me and start going off on the list of unanswered LOST questions, I'd actually feel bad for them. They wanted answers to something they weren't going to get answers.

It was like they didn't get it. The show's producers and writers weren't out to answer every question and make sure you understood exactly what the island was or did, or how some dude turned into the smoke monster. If you want answers to everything, there's this show called Mythbusters you should check out.

Now that I've complained about the complainers, I think there are some things that LOST could have done, particularly that final season, to not frustrate so many fans. The whole Daddy issue with Jack I felt could have been resolved better, and not so awkwardly at the very end of the very last episode. I really thought it was lame when Sayid and the Man-in-Black/Fake Locke were talking, and everything was explained to Sayid, but they skipped out on the conversation and all of a sudden Sayid's crazy. I thought Crazy Claire was a little too crazy.

But here's the thing, despite those changes I would have made, I loved it. I loved the relationships, I loved Sayid taking one for the team, and I really enjoyed seeing Sawyer and Miles play cops the final season. I loved Hurley being Hurley.

Obviously this write-up's been hanging around for awhile. At first, I didn't just want to be another person writing about the end of the show... and then life happened and I kinda forgot about it. But the 1 year mark hit last week and I got thinking about it again, and I'll tell ya - I loved waiting for the new episode every week. It was the only show this decade I've watched as it aired ('24' lasted a little while), and I question whether that will ever happen again.

Offroading in Duck

Last weekend I went down to Duck Beach, NC, for an annual gathering of East Coast single Mormons. Got in Friday night, spent all day Saturday on the Beach and then at parties, went to church on Sunday, took a nap in a hammock, and then I went offroading on the beach in my truck. After that, hung out with some friends, went to a party/crabbing on the beach, and the next day went paddleboarding before racing back to DC for dinner with my parents.

The weekend was good, and pretty much exactly what I expected - it felt like a 3 day long party, with moments of solitude interrupted by lots and lots of eating and conversation.

My favorite moments were 1) Offroading on the Beach and 2) Stand up Paddleboarding

When we went Offroading, we had 3 four-wheel drive trucks in case anyone got stuck, and sure enough, we got out on the beach, I slowed way down, and the truck behind me got stuck. Then we deflated our tires and were off to the races! I loved speeding around 30 mph on the beach, only a few feet away from the surf, listening to a little Johnny Cash.

We had been looking for wild horses, and didn't find any, but not for lack of trying!

Stand up paddleboarding was hard. A little nerve racking to be standing up on a board in the ocean with the waves bouncing you a little. Once you got out past the breakers it was pretty easy, but getting through the surf was a challenge. Really enjoyed it, and hope to do it more in the future.

A number of people have asked me what I thought of Duck, and the overall 'Mormon weekend' experience. For the most part, I thought it was exactly what I was expecting. I will say, I was way tired by the end, so maybe that idea of relaxing at the beach was totally off.

Jackson + Ragnar

This weekend was great. It started Thursday about noon, when I left work to see my new nephew, Jackson Javier Ward, who was born Thursday about 8:30 AM. That was cool. Matt and Raquel were kind to let me in for an hour or so and see him, hold him, and get to know him a little bit.

And looking at this picture makes me realize just how pale I am.

Then I left DC with some friends and ran a Ragnar relay. It was 197 miles long, and we had 12 runners on our team. I was the first runner, with legs of 5.8, 7.6, and 8 miles (in that order). The hard part of a Ragnar is the lack of sleep. I got about 5 hours in 2 days, and going into that last 8 mile run I was not in a good place mentally. Afterwords, after running like 21 miles, I got a little tight, but I'm doing better now.
The other hard thing about this race was the weather, which I was a little underprepared for. It was supposedly going to be 75 degrees and sunny on Friday when I was running. Instead when I started running at 8 AM on Friday there was a slight drizzle and it was about 50 degrees. And I only had short sleeves and shorts to wear. Eventually I made it to a Wal*Mart, where I got a long-sleeve T-shirt for $7.

Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture above, it says NY Giants on it. YUCK. It may have an encounter with either a trash can or some paint in the near future. Boys from Dallas don't wear Giants shirts around. It ain't right.

Talents

So as I was talking with my Mom last night, I told her that I think one of the talents I've been given is the ability to see (and when I get upset, point out) the flaws of others. In other words, I can put people down and realize what sorry wastes of human flesh they are like nobody's business.

Thinking about it the past day or so, I've decided that I need to make more efforts to lift people up and encourage them. It's easy to break or destroy things - anyone can break things. The challenge is making something worth having.

Spring in DC

So I realized the other day that I haven't posted in awhile... I've been staying busy. I joined a Crossfit gym, I've been doing contract work with a law firm, I went to Dallas, and lots of other stuff. I'll post more about the job and stuff if/when it becomes permanent, but I'm excited to be working there.

But I have been enjoying DC as the transition from winter to spring occurs. A month or so ago we had a good snow, and I snapped the pic of the Lincoln memorial, which I think turned out well.

Today I went mountain biking after work. This was effectively the first time I'd been mountain biking since leaving Utah 3 1/2 years ago, and it was awesome. Even when I was getting cut up by thorns carrying my bike around a foot deep, 200m long puddle. I will bleed for the price of Glory. I actually think that mountain biking in the East might be more my style, other than the lack of slickrock and huge vistas. I like the rolling hills, the dirt.

275

Once upon a time, I benched 250 on a base far, far away, pretty much just to get a t-shirt. See here.

I've had the goal, pretty much ever since then, of benching 275, which was the next t-shirt I could have gotten, and the closest I'd ever come was 265.

Today I benched 275, and it felt great. In the past 2 months I had decided to make a serious run for it, and this morning I just decided to max out, and my roommate seemed willing to spot me, so boom, done. It's nice when a goal becomes an achievement.

Freeze Fest

FreezeFest IX from carpeybiggs on Vimeo.

My buddy Tyler posted this video on Facebook. There was some question as to whether or not its been doctored, but I think its real. Regardless, its awesome, and makes me miss the West.

The Proposal

My buddy Derek recommended this video, which I'm passing on. This dude made a video to propose to his girlfriend, and its amazing. He made muppets which resemble the two of them, and made a video about them. This link tells the story of how it was made, etc.



It uses the music from the Heartless video I shared some time ago.

Umm...

So I have a kinda funny dating story from this past weekend... I asked out this girl last week, nothing fancy, just hey, lets go get dinner on Saturday night. She said she couldn't, she already had plans and couldn't go. Then she clarified and said, "not a date, but other plans." I said OK, no worries, and then got invited to a party Saturday night.

She was at the party. Yeah... So on the one hand, maybe her plans fell through and she decided to go to the party last second. Or maybe she would rather go to a party than spend time with me. Ouch.

And girls wonder why guys don't always want to Cowboy up and ask them out.

NASA video

I've thought a lot about how the lack of a frontier has caused a paradigm shift in America, and how we push for advancement and how we treat one another as a society. Does it make us lose our edge? Become a nation of wussies? Lead to supermarket shootouts? I think the 'talking heads' on TV (and the internet) can cause us to forget about TRUTH, and how opinions matter zilch in comparison.

I've wanted a new frontier, and after watching this video I thought "The frontier is whatever you are pressing forward for in your life." Maybe its a degree, a job, a family, losing 20 pds, or joy and laughter. But there has to be a push to go beyond ones boundaries.

I guess one way I thought of it was this: In 1800, people in London didn't have any real idea of what/where the frontier was. They didn't care, they were worried about putting bread on the table. In 1492, most Europeans didn't care about the frontier, they were worried about putting bread on the table. In 2011, do most of us care about the frontier, or possibly our personal frontiers, or are we worried about putting bread on the table?