So Much Paper

I should start calling this blog "A glimpse into my nerdy life". My computer has always been something that I have been proud of. Its ability to process large chunks of data and provide hours of entertainment as well as hold all of my important information is what makes it so great. In fact my computer just got an upgrade of how much information it can hold. I now have pretty close to three terabytes of hard drive space. 3! That's one more than two, and two more than one. THREE! I looked around to see how to put that into more physical terms and found a good example. If you are storing just text documents one page holds about 5,000 characters, or 5 kilobytes. So one terabyte would be about 500 million pages of text. So I could hold 1.5 Billion pages of text. That's 1/3 the Library of Congress or 1,200 hours of DVD quality video or over one million high quality pictures or 750,000 songs.
Well all of that aside the sad thing is that I actually have about two of those terabytes full of stuff. Well that's enough about how nerdy I am for now. I'm off to fill my new terabyte with 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Essence of Nerdiness

I have recently started watching a new show called The Big Bang Theory. This show has helped me to get more in touch with my nerdy side. It has also helped me to realize just what exactly the essence of nerdiness is. And here it is for your viewing pleasure.



Who on earth would link their home lights and stereo with their computer? Who would think that it would be a good idea? A nerd that's who.
The essence of nerdiness is taking something that is ordinary and making it louder, faster, have more buttons, also able to cook breakfast, and being able to turn it on from anywhere in the world. I wish that I had thought of this idea before. Now if you'll excuse me I'm trying to hook up my front door to my computer.

Things men should know about women.

Women are a mystery. They are kinda like The prize at the bottom of the cracker jack box, you have no idea what your going to get. There are very few things that we know about them. Men everywhere have made a safe behind Mount Rushmore and in it we have put all the information we know about women. There are 5 pieces of paper. Here are their contents. (Don't tell anybody that I showed you this I could get kicked out of the club)

1. Women don't like it when we leave the toilet seat up.

This is serious buisiness. Some the greatest mysteries about women are what they do in the bathroom. All of those odd nail devices, makeup, cotton balls, etc. But one thing we know for sure. Having that toilet seat down can be the difference between a good day and a bad day. Dont mess with it.

2. Once a month you should always get flowers.
From the ages of about 12 to 50 women go though a rollercoaster ride every month. Once you are dating or married you get to ride the roller coaster as well. Right when the roller coaster goes down the biggest dip be prepared to give her those flowers.

3. Women cannot survive on only one pair of shoes.
Labratory tests were conducted where women were given any number of clothes but only one pair of shoes and only one out of the 2,500 tested made it out of the room. Some scientists have theorized that a pair of shoes that she wants and a boquet of flowers can be the answer to end all arguments.

4. Burping and farting around women is not a good idea.
Around men if you can burp and fart the loudest you earn a badge of honor. Around women burping and farting the loudest will get you a badge of shame. Being able to shatter windows with a single burp is something that I am proud of but my wife doesnt think is so great. Save your biggest burps for hanging out with the guys. Or at least when your away from the windows.

5. They are always right.
This one is really quite odd, just when you think you've won, you have actually lost. No matter what you do or what you say. Any time that you think you may have won she is just letting you believe that you won. Its something they do to be nice. Actually the only reason they seperate men and women at the Olympics is so that we actually stand a change at the events because otherwise would never win another event.

Although we as men have made very little progress there is hope in the future that a sixth piece of knowledge will be found. It is hard to discover more since we are so busy blowing up stuff and racing each other at every stop light but time races on. Who knows what the future will bring.

I could put up a list of things that I know about my wife but this blog in not the place for that. I have learned alot in the little time that I have been married to my wife. I love that I learn new things about her every day. In fact that was one of the reasons that I married her. I look forward to learning more about her every day.

Things every woman should know about men.

We love to flirt with danger; that's why we play with fire, skydive, and bungee jump. There is no way that bungee jumping was invented by a woman because only a man would stand on a cliff and think. "I bet I could jump off of this with a giant rubber band and live" Or perhaps it was a dare, "Dude, I dare you to jump off that cliff with this rope." Once planes were invented only a man could have thought "Hmm now that I can fly I wonder if I can jump out and live" Then women gave us a parachute after watching a few terribly failed attempts.
No matter how old we are we still flirt with danger. Old men behind the wheel are still flirting with danger every time they drive 30mph on the freeway or change lanes without bothering to look. Why do they do this? Because their reflexes are dulled as they get older, or because they become forgetful? No it's because men like to always keep things dangerous. If there isn't a constant danger of sudden death then it just isn't fun.

We love to eat with our hands. If you were to poll men on their favorite foods some of the top ones would be: pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream, candy bars, and so forth. You'll notice all of those foods can be eaten without the use of any silverware. Part of the reason why we love these foods is because that means there are less dishes afterwards. Any food that you can eat entirely without the use of a dish or fork is a good food in our book. The only exception to that rule would be using a knife. In a man's kitchen the only tool would be several different sized knives. The different sizes being used depend on just how big the steak you are cooking is. Even though we like having dishes or silverware, the mores mess you can make on your hands the better. Mess on hands = good, mess on dishes = bad. As I am writing this a giant chili hot dog with extra cheese would hit the spot right now.




Another thing about men that never changes is our quest for more speed. As a baby, crawling is the gateway to running around at break neck speed. It's all about getting from point A to point B as fast as possible. As soon as you can run, the next step is to run faster. And what better way to do this than to get the sweet shoes that have air pumps on them. It was scientifically proven in the 90's that if you pump up your shoes with air it makes kids run faster. That's why Olympic athletes take so long to warm up -- they have to get their shoes at the exactly right pressure.
The next step up from your Air Jordans is a bike. The more speeds that your bike has and the bigger the shocks on it the cooler you are. As a boy this is the first time you get to "pimp your ride". I'm not talking about the streamers on the handlebars that your sister had. I'm talking about chrome foot pedals, a bell on the handle bar to increase speed, foot pegs to do crazy tricks, etc.
From there it's a little wait until you get a car. And then you spend your days drooling at a Ferrari thinking "Oh what I would do with that much horsepower". Decking out your car can now go to extreme limits. I know because I was guilty of it just like any man. Two 12in sub woofers, a giant amp, a sweet fold down CD deck, and of course replace the door speakers to handle all that power. There are car shows where we give awards to people who can customize their car the most. To customize your car and make it do 1/4 mile in under 10 seconds is the ultimate goal of men all over the world.

We have always been obsessed with speed. You don't see any world records for who can go the slowest on the salt flats. That's why we go to drag races. Watching engines fueled by alcohol with 4 wheels attached and a human being strapped to the top going over 300mph down the track. Who doesn't wanna see that. This quest for speed also has to do with our need for danger because part of going to races is wanting to see the crashes. If you go to a car race and not a single car crashes then you just wasted your money.



Men love to blow things up. Sometimes we create things just to blow them up. I think we are the only creature on earth that would spend hundreds of dollars making "fake" buildings and buying cars and explosives and then film the result when you combine them all together. Not only that but the same kind of creatures who filmed all this will pay money to see it all blow up over and over again. This desire to blow things up begins at a young age where we are just attracted to anything that is shiny. Then in scouts finding out what happens when you put everything in your pack in the fire is also a learning experience. That then makes you want to find out what everything else looks like when it gets thrown in the fire. Then your mom gets mad at you for burning your good pair of shoes. The years go on and we continue to experiment with fire until that most blessed of all holidays comes around. The 4th of July. The day where you are supposed to blow stuff up. At first the joy of just lighting and watching the fireworks is enough but then the man's mind begins to wander. "What if I put those firecrackers inside a soda can?" "What if I tape 15 of those bottle rockets together?" Those are questions that must be answered. Those are the questions that lead to this.



Men are actually very simple creatures. Just give us some finger food, a James Bond movie, and if it's possible to be eating and watching the movie while doing 450mph in a drag racer then we are in 7th heaven.

7 Things

So apparently there is more to this jazzed up blogger lifestyle than I'm used to. You can tag people in your blog and then that means you have to do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around. I hear that's what its all about. So Jessica tagged me to do an 8 things post. But I decided that 8 is a terrible number and 7 is much better. So I am officially making a 7 Things post. I also may have added a couple of my own questions.



Why the number 7?
1. I was married to my lovely wife on 7/7/07
2. 7 Is my favorite number and far superior to any others.
3. It is one of the easiest to learn how to write.(1 is the easiest, but it is also the loniest number and who wants that?)
4. There are 7 different delicious food groups. (They are as follows: Candy, Sugar, Syrup, Ice cream, Pizza, Not pizza, Cake)
5. It takes 7 hours to walk from one end of USU campus to the other.
6. If you take 7x10 you get 70 which is how many inches I would like my new television to be.
7. If you take 7x1000 you get 7000 which is how much money it will cost to get the 70 inch TV.



7 Things I learned from watching Disney movies.
1. Always use magic to get the dishes done. It's a lot faster.
2. Insects can be used as a survival food.
3. Hippos make great ballerinas
4. The best way to fix a pocket watch is with jam and butter.
5. Mining dwarfs with colorful personalities make great roommates.
6. Being turned into a Llama isn't that bad.
7. By thinking happy thoughts all the time you can fly to Never Never Land.
Extra points if you know what movies those come from.



Top 7 reasons why I am a nerd.
1. I have had 4 computers in the last 3 years.
2. My computer has 3gigs of ram, 2x 3.2 ghz processors over 1.7 tb of hard drive space and a nvidia 8800 graphics card that is over clocked.
3. I know what all that stuff I just said means.
4. I love taking things apart and making them faster.
5. I think pocket protectors look good for any occasion.
6. I could wire a surround sound system in my sleep.
7. My calculator can do everything except make dinner.



7 Things I'm going to do this weekend
1. Go to Tanner's farewell.
2. Hang out with my awesome wife.
3. Have a lan party with my buddies.
4. Go out to a movie with my brother.
5. Sleep.
6. Get settled in my new apartment.
7. Prepare myself for a week long spring break.

Well I think I'm starting to get a hold of this glamorous blogger life style. I think I'll go put on some blogger bling and get some sleep.

Doesn't It look like Global Warming is winning outside?

After being gone for the weekend my wife and I came home to a very cold house. We spent the next day with the heaters at full blast to get it back to fairly warm again. We snuggled into bed and woke up this morning and opened the door.......



Yup I took this picture this morning. If you look really closely. I mean really closely. You can see the fence that if about 20 feet away from the door. But don't stare at it too long or you may start to see spots.
I love the snow. There is nothing better than about 8 feet of snow. Part of this might be because I served my mission in Sweden. The other part might be because I love driving in it. I don't think I have grown out of that phase were teenage boys love to go to parking lots and do donuts in the snow. As a matter of fact I don't think any men have.
In Sweden they get so much snow and the roads are so small that they have to suck the snow up with a giant snow blower attached to a Caterpillar and then put it into dump trucks and take it to soccer fields. Sometimes the piles of snow can get rather large and still be there into early may. So we really don't have anything to complain about.
Without snow what would this world be? No snowball fights. No snowmen. No snow angels. No snowboarding. No Superman fortresses of solitude. No Iceman from the Xmen. I don't want to live in a world without these things. And of course you don't either. So that is why we put up with the constant shoveling and salting and plowing.
Of course if Al Gore is right we should be coming to the end of snow as we know it. We wont even be able to go to the ice caps to see snow anymore. We will all live underwater with Kevin Costner from Water World and develop gills and fight pirates on skidoos. I know it doesn't sound that bad but remember, no snow. And really Kevin Costner would get kinda boring. Iceman is much more entertaining. But since Al's movie it has just been getting colder and colder every year it seems. So hopefully I wont have to live to see the day when Global Warming wins. I did have to live to see him win a Nobel prize, and it almost killed me. But for now I'm just going to go back to my fortress of solitude and enjoy it.

Why every home should come standard with surround sound

Picture this.

You come home from work and are excited to enjoy the latest james bond film that you just rented. It was amazing in theatres and you are looking forward to seeing it a second time. You put it in you dvd player and go and sit on the couch only to realize that the screen is so small that to read the menus you need to move the couch closer. So you get up and move the coffee table behind the couch and scoot it forward. The movie begins and you cant quite put your finger on it but something is wrong. It doesn't sound right. In the last scene Mr. Bond just blew up an entire building and it sounded like the neighbors just flushed the toilet. So you think to yourself, "Maybe I just don't have the volume up high enough." So you crank it up more thinking that this will give you that experience. But no as you turn the volume up it just gets worse and worse. Slowly you begin to realize that this is just not the same. Tears begin to well up in your eyes. Frustrated and crying you turn off the movie to watch American Idol because it sounds the same no matter what volume you have it at.

Sadly this is a true story for many Americans. Especially the part about American Idol. Why else would their ratings be so high? A simple three letters could stop all of this madness. THX.

There is nothing like watching Transformers and feeling like a car actually flew over your head. Something that should be felt at home as well as at the movie theatres. Not only does surround sound help you better appreciate action movies but it works on any kind of movie. My wife loves to watch Friends and while watching it one day I kept hearing a phone ring on my right side and I thought that I should go grab my cell phone. But then I realized that it wasn't my cell phone ring, it was coming from the movie! When I watch The Office I feel like I am in an office.

This is something that I think every human being should have. Which is why I am petitioning Congress to make an American Surround Sound stimulus package. In this time of economic peril there is no way we can afford not to give every American home its own surround sound system. If not addressed this issue could turn into a crisis of major proportions. Without quality surround sound to enjoy movies people will turn to the streets and riots will break out in almost every state. I hope that this issue will addressed soon. Until then I'm going to go watch The Dark Knight.