"I don't want to get big"

So here's a quick rant of mine.

I like to work out - and I try to push myself. Be it running, mountain biking, weight lifting, boxing, raquetball - whatever I'm doing, I like to try and be the best I can be. Same goes for school, work, etc. Work hard, have no regrets.

So it ticks me off when people are out of shape &/or fat, and they tell me they don't want to lift weights/do pullups/ do pushups because "they don't want to get big." Guess what? Those people are ignorant.

All the literature says that you have to be consuming a great deal of protein in order to gain excessive muscle mass, and in all probability you'll need to be on creatine and other types of growth enhancers. Me? I just think you're lazy.

How about instead of telling yourself "I don't want to get big" you tell yourself "I don't actually want to burn calories in the most efficient way possible because it might hurt a little bit." And then we can go on an 8 hour hike and we'll see who is in better condition for it - you or I.

Now back to studying.

Charge Cards

So I never realized there was a difference between a charge card & a credit card - however an article I just read explained the difference in a very simple way. Read it HERE.

Lone Survivor

So I've had Lone Survivor sitting on my table for about 4 months now, and just haven't gotten around to it. Friends and family have read it and told me it's awesome, I just haven't gotten around to it.

Anyway, here's an article I saw on Drudge that just makes me feel more for the guy...

Clarity Tunnel

Friday night I went out to a place called Clarity Tunnel. It's a tunnel that was built long ago for the Ft. Worth - Denver railroad line, and is now home to many bats. Unfortunately we didn't get there in time to see the bats fly out - it was already very dark - but we did see some bats flying around & feeding.

The tunnel itself was in really good condition - and the guano wasn't too thick!
The tunnel was a lot taller than I was expecting, and a lot shorter than I was expecting too. But it was great to get out of Lubbock and do something a little different.

Ryan v. The Headlamp

I started my new part-time job yesterday doing Patents for Texas Tech - should be pretty fun. But because of that and some other things going on, I didn't get home until 10 PM. I still had some studying to do, but rather than do that, I opted to replace the batteries on an old headlamp. Little did I know what I was beginning...

Of course there's a backstory - I own multiple flashlights, headlamps, etc. This particular headlamp I've owned for about 9 years, and I distinctly remember buying it before my first foray to Nutty Putty Caves. It's not an LED, but rather a heavier but more powerful "straight" beam, that really focuses the light and lets you see a good 20-30 feet.

Well, the batteries I had in there had corroded a bit (they were a couple years old), leaving a nice layer of alkaline material all over the electrical contacts. So I got some q-tips & rubbing alcohol and cleaned it up, replaced the batteries - no light. Cleaned some more - no light. Now the fun begins. I'm not one to back down from something like this...

So I busted out my multimeter - checked the voltage on the batteries - both at ~ 1.6V, right where they should be for out of the box AA batteries. Put them in the light, check the contact points, reading just below 3V, right where it should be for 2 batteries in series, accounting for added resistance of the light. Good so far.

I look at the bulb - filament looks good. Change the multimeter to measure resistance - picked up a small resistance, meaning the light circuit wasn't broken. It should still be working. I swap bulbs anyway - nothing. Measure voltage inside the 'cap' the light sits in - voltage good.

At this point I'm becoming frustrated - either both of my bulbs are busted and I don't know how to use a multimeter anymore, or something isn't making contact. So I took the next step,

and hit it. Repeatedly. and it worked.

Swapped bulbs, made sure both bulbs are still good (they are), cleaned up my tools and was done. 11:30 PM, over an hour on it, but it works.

Goodbye Old Friend

So I got rid of an old friend the other day - my 'Y Rocks' shirt.
My buddy T-Rav* and I bought these shirts in August of 2000 at a BYU rock-climbing club movie presentation. They cost $3 each, and I think it was a good investment.



















Unfortunately, mine finally needed to be thrown away. The collar was busted, the white had turned to a yellowish white gross color, and you can see there was a large hole in the right armpit.

The shirt and I had many adventures together...

Makin' Sausage

So what did I do today? I made sausage - from scratch.

We start with pigs & a gun.

Then we gut it and skin it.

Then we chopped it into pieces, took the meat off, ground it up and out came sausage.

It was a different experience. It's been awhile since I had killed & ate anything, and I think it's important to do it sometimes to remember where our food comes from. Now I have a couple packs of sausage in my freezer from a pig I helped slaughter - Pretty cool.

Carlsbad Caverns

My spring break has been a little different this year (ranching, lounging by the pool, and studying?), but my parents came into town and we went with my sister & her family to Carlsbad Caverns yesterday. I'd never been, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

First of all, where is Carlsbad?
It's down towards El Paso, about 3 hours from Lubbock. Pretty close by Texas standards.
The caves themselves were most impressive - absolutely huge. Pictures don't do it justice - the immensity of the caverns dilutes the ability of the camera to capture it. Here some anyway:

The most impressive thing about the caves was how huge they were - this is definitely something everyone should check out - you know, the next time you're in southeastern New Mexico.

The only things I'd recommend to do differently than we did would be to eat before going or bring food with you (though you can only eat in a specified part of the cave). Also, if I ever go back I think it'd be fun to take a Ranger-guided tour and see some more isolated parts of the cave.

Of course the best part of the trip was spending time with my family - here's a shot of me and my dad just before going into the cave.

Would you be my friend?

So I'm kinda particular about the use of the word 'Friend'. These days it seems easily confused with the word 'acquaintance'. I figure a real friend is someone who will come help you when you need to move something heavy in the middle of the night, or actually initiates communications from time to time. Anytime things are too one sided, you know it's not a real friendship.

I bring this up because with the internet social websites I use - Facebook & Xbox Live, the debate is always "Are you really my friend?" Here the rules I've established so far...

Xbox Live: Do I know this person in Real Life? If not, they are not my 'friend.'
Facebook: The same rule applies, but because it's becoming so widespread these days additional corollaries include

• Have I ever talked to you? Would I be likely to repeat this activity?
  
• If I saw you in a room, would I want to talk to you?

Put another way, if I saw you were going to be hit by a train, would I warn you? If not, you are not my 'friend.'

I would guess that many/most of my Facebook friends probably are not the kinds of friends I mentioned at the top of the post - you know, real friends. It's certainly a good way to network and stay in touch with people, plan events & junk. Sometimes it's nice to know what's going on with old roommates and friends you haven't seen in years.

But the freaky dude with 1 tooth that was in my ward when I was growing up for 2 years, that I haven't seen in 10 years & wasn't friends with then, who's son's are a couple of straight idiots, you sir are not my friend.

Simple Math

So the other day in my Copyright class, the professor was talking about certain time limits, restrictions, etc., and when you could act on those limits. He then proceeded to put some examples up on the screen via powerpoint - and got ALL of them wrong. 4/4 wrong. And we're talking simple math here - add 35, subtract 2 type stuff.

I told this to my brother in law Justin, who's also in law school here, and he said that he thinks it's wrong that in law school they put so much emphasis on being able to write well, but it's OK if you can't do simple math.

Because guess what?!? It's not OK. Maybe they need to put a math section on the LSAT, maybe they should have algebra for lawyers, but lawyers need math. Most lawyers probably aren't pondering ways to use calculus to speed up equations (guilty), but they certainly need to know simple arithmetic. Corporate mergers, divorce settlements, advising clients on short-term v. long-term payouts. What are they going to do, hire someone to do the math for them?

Roller coaster

You ever have those weeks that are just complete roller coaster rides? Both highs and lows? That was this past week. I'm really hoping this week is better.

Going Private

I always wonder why people make their blogs private. I've had mine for a few years now, and whenever someone makes their blog private I have to wonder why. I've heard some cases of weird stalker people, and I've had my cases of nutjobs commenting (after which I enjoy mocking them), but I really don't get it. And that's not a knock on anyone - I understand some of the reasons why one might want to restrict access to their blog. Anyway, while I am decidedly against restricting my blog, I decided to post some pros & cons to an open v. closed blog.

Open
+ Anyone can read it
- That means job supervisors, HR, etc., can read it too
+ Friends can find it
+ You don't have to have a google account to access it
+ Maybe someone you don't know well can read about your life and relate to it
+ Higher traffic - if you do advertising

Closed
+ No weirdos
- People can't really search and find your blog
+ If you're into copyright violations & image theft, this is a great way to restrict access

Anyway, from personal experience I'm guessing that most people that restrict access probably are trying to protect their children from being gawked at by deviants on the web, and I get that. I just don't really think it's that frequent to negate the positive factors having it open provides.

Plus, isn't the idea of a blog to allow people to stay in touch? I started this blog so people could know I was alive when I went to Iraq, and now I use it in part to maintain contact with people I don't see often at all, sometimes for years. I dunno. Maybe once I have kids I'll feel differently.

Addicted to Crossfit

I have a confession - I'm addicted to Crossfit.com

A couple years ago I went to the website and it didn't really impress me all that much. A few weeks ago I checked it out again and found it much improved, and since I always am looking for new and creative ways to workout, thought I'd give it a try.

It kicked my trash. The first day I almost threw up. That is, I was gagging and had to hold a towel to my face to control my breathing.

Here's why I think it's awesome.
1) It posts a Workout of the Day (WOD). You can compare your time with others, but I don't - I just push as hard as I can, see how fast I can do it. If I wanted to start keeping track, they apparently do repeat the WODs - maybe twice a year.
2) They have exercise/video demos. These people are sick, and its addicting to watch them do 50 pullups, or a hundred air squats. They also have videos of combat techniques, which are way fun as well.

I've been doing it, not every single day, but 4-5 times a week now for 2 weeks, and I can tell its working. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a changeup, but also just to anyone bored and looking for some insane videos to watch.

NBA & the Economy

So I'm a fan of Bill Simmons, a sportswriter for ESPN. He wrote an interesting article about the NBA and how it's being affected by the economic downturn, which I highly recommend.

I know I've been pretty negative about the economy, and I'm hopeful that things are on the upswing. I've seen data saying that we've passed through the worst... but I have my doubts. In my mind, the fundamental problem is that we continue to lend $$$ to people that can't repay the loan - be it home mortgages, cars, credit cards, or federal bailouts. And while those have slowed down, they certainly haven't stopped. In fact, it seems like certain people want those loans to increase back to previous, non-repayable rates.

Anyway, with the NBA the cliff note version of the article I linked above is this: that NBA contracts are huge, multi-million dollar contracts, which are completely separate from attendance and revenue streams. That is, the player gets payed for showing up, even if the stadium is empty. That's bad for the owners, because suddenly they're kicking out millions, but not making anything. After all, why kick out tons of money to go watch sports when you don't have money for groceries? Interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years...

Teaching

So I've decided that there are as many ways to teach as there are people in the world. I don't think its any surprise to anyone reading this that most people generally annoy me, so I guess its really no surprise that most of their teaching styles annoy me as well. Between law school and church I feel like lately I've seen quite a variety of teachers, so here some descriptions of teachers that drive me crazy.

The Preacher
Gets up and tells everyone, in a loud voice and with much energy, how they know what's right and insinuate that everyone should be more like them.

The Used Car Salesman
You feel like slime after talking to them. Uses poor analogies, doesn't really pay attention to what the audience is saying, but really wants to get his point across.

The not-quite Spiritual Giant
Trying to be so spiritual that you fall asleep listening to their monotony. Jokes are prohibited here, as is any practicality.

The Bum
Didn't actually prepare the lesson, so you read out of the textbook/manual the entire time. Questions are generic, and you feel like you could have used your time better by staring at a wall.

Socrates
Rather than telling you how it is, they ask you questions to see if you already know how it is. Really great method, especially if you don't like to teach.

OK, so I wrote this after I just got done with a class where the professor drives me crazy, and my mood probably dictated the tone of this post. Still, his teaching style is the absolute worse I ever seen in a classroom. It's not uncommon for him to speak absolute rubish for 50 minutes straight without asking or answering any questions, and in some cases providing incorrect/misleading information. He drives me absolutely nuts. Just a complete waste of my time.

Harddrives

So I was beginning to ponder making a list of some of the cool but unknown websites I frequent, when I got distracted by the topic of harddrive destruction/wiping. I know most people just tune out to this sort of thing, but it's important - think Identity Theft. You throw away your computer, or sell it to someone, and somewhere on the drive is your social security number. Not good.

When I was in undergrad, a buddy of mine took a computer forensics class at BYU. Once a month, the professor would bring in a bunch of old hard drives and they'd have to put together a profile of the previous owner. Scary stuff.

One might think, "I deleted everything, I'm good, right?" Not necessarily. Here's a brief explanation of why not, complete with some neato drawings I made.

Computer harddrives are magnetic based, and record information basically as a One or a Zero. Like this:
When we delete something off our computer, we normally think the data completely erased, and gone back to the 'zero' level on the magnetic tape in the drive. But the truth is, it never gets completely back to zero. It's more like this:

Now, most people don't have the specialized software to recover data when it's in a partial state like this. Some people, like computer forensics guys, police departments, and the NSA can. Oh, and some crazy people too - maybe your neighbor that digs through your trash trying to steal stuff? I dunno.

So what to do about it? There are a couple schools of thought.

1) Wipe the disk. Here's a discussion on how to do it. Basically the fastest way to do this is to fill the drive with meaningless data. This can be random data, as mentioned in the article, or just fill the ENTIRE drive with '1's (not mentioned in the article). While deleting doesn't get the physical data back to 'Zero', when you record data it does become a '1' (or close enough).

2) Destroy the disk. Definitely more fun. There some fun videos on how to do this with extreme prejudice. Environmentalists probably say that this is a waste of resources and hurts mother earth. But it's your stuff, and its your identity.

Weird Month

So I've had a weird month. Rather than write out all the reasons why, here are some short blurbs about the past couple weeks in my life.

• I almost got crushed by a garage door. No, really. It wasn't cool.
• I superglued my face, and got some in my hair
• I hit a bat in my truck. Impact was smaller than the horse I hit a few years ago.
• I was billed for something I returned over 2 months ago
• I made a pinewood derby car that had 7 wheels
• I wrote an excel macro in Visual Basic
• I drove in snow and ice, and had to scrape my car for 10 minutes
  

All of this, while in law school. No wonder I feel super busy all the time.

Home Cafe

I know everybody's interested in where I eat here in Lubbock, so in continuing on the theme today I went to Home Cafe for lunch. From the outside it looks just like a little Ma&Pa restaurant that will probably go out of business anytime soon.

Upon entering, I realized my mistake. The place has a old time Texas feel, replete with old black & white photographs and aging books. Every table is different, as are the chairs. And the food is pretty much made from scratch. I got the chicken fried chicken, which was delicious. This is definitely one spot in Lubbock that people should know about.

Oh, and no worries about it going out of business. At one point while we were there the line extended out the door.

Located at 34th & Gary in Lubbock.

Defensive Driving

So a few weeks ago I got a ticket. It was my first ticket in almost 5 years, so now I get to go to defensive driving. Frankly, I think it might be worth it to drive slow just so I don't have to endure going to defensive driving ever again.

However, I decided to take my course at defensive driving at Home Plate Diner so I could get a free Chicken Fried Steak dinner with it, and ice cream tonight when I go back for the second half.

But oh yeah, my teacher's freaky. I found some YouTube clips of him. Be scared.

Dirty Monkey

you will laugh...