Deseret Book's Christmas catalog came today, 75 days prior to Christmas. That would be roughly 20% of a year.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Sunday, October 07, 2007
What I've Been Doing
So I have been deliberately avoiding blogging for several months now, due mostly to my dissertation and partly to looking for a job. Whenever I sit down at a computer and feel the urge to blog I tell myself that I can't justify doing any writing that is not for my dissertation. So a few weeks ago I got sick of feeling like my hands were tied and I sat down and wrote 60 pages in a week, and about 10-15 pages since then. The rough draft is finally finished, and I'm just waiting on my professor to finish reading the last chapter so I can make some more changes before I declare it done. And then, after that... its Doctor Nick! Hi Everybody!
But I have been doing other stuff besides the dissertation and job hunting (another thing that has not gone according to plan). The garden was amazing this year. We had nearly as many tomatoes as our first year that we planted a garden in Provo- the garden that gave birth (a pulpy, tomatoey birth) to salsa night. We harvested hundreds of tomatoes, and more sweet and hot peppers than we could use. So after making several batches of the fresh salsa, which seems to disappear within hours of making it, we made some cooked salsa and canned it. Along the way we also canned chopped tomatoes, peaches, peach jam, spaghetti sauce, cilantro lime salsa, super hot salsa (like 100 jalapenos distributes among 7 quarts of salsa), applesauce, and hand picked and pressed grape juice.
We have enough salsa to give us over a quart a month for the next year. The grape juice (5 quarts) will be our celebration beverage for thanksgiving, Easter, and maybe christmas. We're so domesticated it makes me sick.
On the employment front, I thought I'd have a job in Seattle by now, but when you have a PhD its like the company doing the hiring wants you to have specialized in the exact project the company is working on. So I'm looking into some of the national labs that like to hire physicists with broader backgrounds. In the meantime, I'm a substitute teacher for the local high schools in the southern half of the salt lake valley. Last thursday was my first day- I "taught" AP european history, and by teach I mean I showed a movie for all three periods. Substitute teaching has taught me several things in the one time I have done it so far:
1. Movies get boring after watching just 85 minutes of them, then starting over and watching the same 85 minutes, then starting over and watching the same 85 minutes...
2. Especially if the movie is "A man for all Seasons" (which was great the first time, but not after the process described in 1.)
3. I don't like most teenagers.
4. I especially don't like teenage girls. If Lucy turns out like some of these girls that were in my class, she will go to a military school.
5. I'm glad I'm not in high school anymore.
6. High school bathrooms are worse than old, run-down gas station bathrooms. I already knew that, but it was sobering to see it again after 10 years.
7. Teenagers are for the most part evil little plotting liars who despise doing anything that resembles learning or acting like an adult. This might be responsible for numbers 3 and 4 above. 4 is there because for some reason the girls were just really *itchy about it.
8. This experience has only strengthened my resolve to get a job, even if its in Iraq, or Mississippi.
That is all.
My Dirty Little Secret
You know how everyone has something (or many somethings) that makes them, well, just a bit wierd? Here's one of mine.
I love to reorganize my bookshelves. Seriously love it. Approach some kind of zen-like peace love it. There's something about handling books that calms me. I've been encouraged by several "bookish" friends to "keep my books at the library" (aka, sell all but the most precious--no more than one shelf full for the entire house--and then rely on the library/interlibrary loan) and I actually think that's a pretty good idea except for the fact that I can't quite seem to give up the possibility of rearranging my own bookshelves now and then.
Lately, I think I've found my new favorite way to organize books: by color. When I read a book, I tend to become rather intimmately aquainted with its size, shape, and color. I remember those physical details almost instinctively, and often far better than I remember little details like titles and authors. Plus, there's the added bonus of having a sense of visual order imposed upon the normally chaotic bookshelf. So color organization really seems to work for me.
Today, during the morning session of conference, I was watching Lucy and thought "hmm, why not take the plunge?" I'd experimented with sections of shelf in color before, but today I decided to fully commit: three whole shelves. And I love it. Wierd, huh ...
For the Confused and Downtrod
I wish something like this had been around when I was in middle school. It would have seriously upped my popularity quotient.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Great Moments in Pointer History
I'm too lazy to look up what number this should be, but this comes to us via comedian Demetri Martin. At this video (starting at 9:00) the pointer comes out. The pointer goodness then continues here.
Bonus links, here he is on social networking and Jokes With Guitar.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Free Stuff
You guys are all so great you deserve free stuff.
Mind you, you get what you pay for in this case ... but oh well. We're writing cards to less-active girls tonight for mutual, and we're out of money in our budget for the year, so I made some cards for the girls to use. They're attached here for you to download and use next time you have a card emergency. There's two on a page (bonus free stuff).
Directions: Download. Print. Cut paper in half lengthwise (the way that makes sense; you might want to fold it first to get a good line). Fold each card down. Write. Mail and/or deliver. 
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Dancing Machines
So I just learned that blogger has a very convenient video uploading feature.
At a recent get together Lucy taught Gracie how to dance. Look at them go! I love how much they enjoy being together.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
Girls Gone Mild
If you have a daughter, or have a son that will date girls, or are currently dating yourself (as in you are dating, not you dating you) you should read this.
What do you think?
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Why does Congress have such a low approval rating?
I have often pondered over the years why politics is so messed up. I mean, why is it that politicians can’t seem to just get the things done that people want them to get done?
For example, congress’s approval rating is something like 25% right now, several points lower than President Bush’s approval rating. Is it really that hard to do your job so that more that a quarter of Americans approve? It seems like you should be able to get a 50% rating relatively easily.
Some possible answers I have considered for why the national legislature is so widely disliked:
1.) Power has a tendency to corrupt. Many of these powerful men and women have been caught using their power in a corrupt manner.
2.) The American culture is not as homogenous as I have a tendency to think. Maybe there are so many different views on how the national government should act that congress can not please all or even most Americans. Each segment wants something that is contradictory to the wants of the other segments.
3.) Members of congress have a tendency to “play politics” too much. Instead of spending their time researching, writing and passing laws, they spend their time accusing other members of the government of no-nos. They propose laws or block passage of laws based on campaign contributions from lobbyists and not on the general good of Americans. They transparently and consistently hold members of their own party to a lower standard of morality and ethics than members of the opposing party.
This has been the extent of my pondering up until a little while ago. Though I think there is some truth to each of the above answers, I have recently become convinced that there is at least one more answer to the question.
4.) Americans don’t know what they want, so congress can’t give it to them. Or in other words, even at the individual level, many Americans want contradictory things.
I guess in some ways this is an extension of #2.
I first considered this one time when I was watching PBS and they were doing a report on a “town meeting” they (PBS) had conducted with some community college students about Social Security and what some solutions could be to the predicted shortfalls in the future. (This was way back in 2005.) Anyway the students almost universally were not interested in any solution that would give them less in benefits (or risk of less in benefits) or increase their contribution burden. There was only one student interviewed who said something to the effect of, “The status quo is unsustainable, therefore I see a reduction is benefits – such as indexing benefit increases to prices instead of wages – as one of the only reasonable solutions.”
When the concept first hit me hard was a few weeks ago when I was reading some columnists' reactions to Michael Moore’s “Sicko”. More than one columnist mentioned the finding of some survey that the majority of Americans want nationalized health care. In my mind I scoffed. I bet if they asked the same Americans if they would like their income taxes to increase by a few percentage points the majority would say no. Yet it is extremely likely we wouldn’t get the former without the latter.
As I started thinking about this more I realized that I am guilty of it too. I want the American government to concentrate their efforts on our numerous domestic problems. I also want America to do what it can to relieve suffering around the world. I want the low prices and competition that would accompany free trade agreements and repealing tariffs, but I also don’t want American workers to lose their jobs and livelihoods. You get the idea.
So I think that we Americans have a tendency not to approve of Congress’s actions while we fail to realize that the alternatives could have been just as bad or worse.
Actually, I think that having unrealistic expectations is a general problem in America, perhaps bred of continuous prosperity. We want to ask what our country (or insert spouse, company, school, community) can do for us instead of what we can do for our country.
This is still kind of a half baked thought, so tell me what you think.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Jared gets published
Okay, so it isn't quite as exciting as an actual academic publishing, but I've still written something that's been submitted and printed in an official publication, and it's kind of exciting to me. The fact that it's an internal Navy publication also does not bother me.
If anything does bother me, it's the fact that I don't have a byline. But I get past that too, rationalizing that I don't want to be associated with the stupid spelling and style errors that Navy copy editors insert after reading my flawless text. It's kind of upsetting when you look back over your work and see that some idiot with a higher pay grade than you has changed the word "aircraft" to "aircrafts," as if that were the plural, or even a word.
But, like I said, I have indeed been published, so it makes me happy. And I can point out what I wrote and tell people it's mine, so who needs a byline, right?
If you'd like to check out my awesome articles, you can check out the first one in the spring 2007 edition of the Treaty Times on page 5, and the latest one in the summer edition on pages 2 and 3. I'll be drafting a fall article soon, but it won't be published until around October.
The articles don't open correctly in Firefox for some reason--you'll need to use Explorer. Happy reading.
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