Historical Travel Wiki Has Launched

I created and launched a new website this week that shall soon be taking the world by storm. Probably not, but hopefully it will get me a good grade in my history of creativity project. The site is at www.historicaltravelwiki.com. It's a wiki, if you don't know what that is, think wikipedia. Anyone can log on and edit the content. It's a collaborative project with the whole world.

This particular wiki is devoted to the idea that traveling and seeing the world is more fun and more interesting when you know some history and facts about what you are visiting and seeing. Before this next Monday the 14th (when the project is due) I'll be filling out some demo type pages, probably for places in Utah and Hong Kong. If you have anything to contribute about any place you've been I'd encourage you to get on and share your experiences and expertise.

P.s. Mom, if you wanted to design me a better logo that was about 135x135 pixels I wouldn't reject it. But definitely don't spend much time on it (or any if you're busy or just don't want to) as I don't think I'll be doing much with this site in the future.

My next resume might actually look good...

Today I sold my soul (or at least my summer) to ParentLink. I'll be working for them full-time this summer and most likely part-time for my last year of college. You can check out the link to see more of what they do but the high level overview is that they make software to help increase communication between k-12 parents and teachers. I should be working more on developing in-house projects. The main programming language is python. It should be interesting, I'm pretty excited about it. I tried to think of downsides to it before I accepted their offer and couldn't really come up with any so... If you have any keep them to yourselves because it's too late now.

Garfield is hilarious and not funny at the same time

I don't like Garfield. It turns out the comic strip is much funnier if you take Garfield out of it entirely. Also, if it's live action and then throw a weird music video thing at the end it raises the humor level significantly.

Long tail feathers

Sorry I only ever post to this anymore when I have a new post on my other blog but... like Kuris Blow once said "that's the brakes." The post this time is a bit longer because it's inspired by a book we had to read for the class The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. If you're looking for a good nonfiction account of a guy tracking a hacker in the late 80's this is a good one. I like it. And now I'll throw in a random picture or two for good measure.

Another duck

I just posted another one to the other blog. It's due Thursday morning at 11:00 or so. Anybody who wants to tear it apart....go for it. Also, some people asked and the assignment for posts on that blog is to write a paragraph about something from our reading for the class period. In order to get points it needs to be mechanically correct and show that we put some thought into it. Thanks for the help.

new duck post

I just posted a new one on my other blog. It ready for any writing help. Thanks everybody.

Technology is like a duck

Hey everybody, for my CS404 class I'm required to post all of my writing assignments to a personal blog. So, I started another blog titled "Technology is Like A Duck" located at hectorsduck.blogspot.com. You may or may not be interested in anything I write about on there but either way I'll be trying to post to it a couple days before the posts are due and would welcome any editing from qualified persons (or even semi-qualified persons). I just put the first post on and it's due tomorrow by class I believe. If you have any suggestions you can comment on them. Please don't be offended if I don't take your editing advice, I may just not have read it in time before it was due (or maybe I like it better my way). Oh ya, there's no explanation for the title other than it was the only thing I could think of at the time. Thanks everybody!

Here's the technology and duck related pictures I was able to find. Just to make it interesting.

Best New Years Ever!!!

So, we may have lost most of Christmas Day to leaving Christmas morning and the International Date Line and everything but we made up for it a little bit with New Years. For anybody who doesn't know we were here for the last week or 8 days: For those who don't recognize the picture, that's Hong Kong. I'll see if I get time to post more about the rest of the trip later but after reading my Mom and Kelsey's blogs about their awesome New Years' I thought I would share a bit about ours. I think it has a bit of a different tone than theirs though. The morning of New Years Eve we got up early as usual due to the jet lag. We rode the subway out to Lantau Island to a special subway line. Can you figure out from these pictures where the train went?
If not then you probably just don't know the destination exists. Or you don't know Angel well enough to know that there's only one thing that makes her that excited. Here's a little bigger hint: That's right, the train goes to a big sign with Angel standing in front of it. Oh ya, and Disneyland is behind the sign and to the right. We got there right when the gates opened at 10:00 and figured we would check it all out and leave in the middle of the day for a while and then come back at night for the New Years festivities because the park is so small. But we actually spent the large majority of the day in the park. We watched a couple of the shows and checked out most of the rides. Took this extremely Hong Kong style picture in front of the castle: If you combine these two pictures you get a pretty good idea of what the castle looked like when they lit it up at night.
The big square in the middle was a big screen. They set up a few of them around that area so they could show pictures of a pontiac muscle car and other stuff bouncing around and spinning with neat effects in the background while they played techno music for the New Years dance party. Obviously totally necessary but, not the best placement. Then here's us on Main Street and I believe the countdown started right when this picture was taken. You'll just have to imagine the castle in the background since you don't see it with the flash and you don't see us without it. Then the countdown , the kiss, and sitting around waiting for the hordes of people to clear out of the park and the area around our hotel where the rest of Hong Kong was. We got back to our room at about 2:00am. It was mostly cleared out by then. Overall, the best and most memorable New Years to date. If it's any consolation to Mom or Kelsey we were about 17 hours ahead of you so at least we weren't really having fun at the exact same time you were having your New Years "parties." I'm sure that helps.

A Gingerbread Tribute to Assassinated US Presidents

So, I had to do a creativity project for my history of creativity class. This is what I came up with. Angel really made most of it and had a large part in my idea. So, most of the credit belongs to her.

Overview


Honest Abe in the balcony with his wife (notice the flying buttresses)

It's a pretty sweet how-to

So, I did it. I actually did something I said I would. There is a screencast (a video of my screen with me talking) showing how to set up google reader so you don't have to manually check blogs for new posts (or any site with an RSS feed for that matter). Check it out here.

google reader

So, I'm planning on making a little screencast video thing when I get time to show how to set up google reader on igoogle. When I do I'll let you know. If you're feeling adventurous you can try to figure it out on your own. igoogle, google reader gadget. It's not too hard.

www.hectorscout.com

Sorry, last post today. I recently bought a web domain. It's www.hectorscout.com. I'm hosting it on my own webserver since I recently got a public ip. I'm also going to be hosting and developing a web site www.sutekistuff.com for my buddy Joe Harding and his business partner Ryan Blanscett's side ties business. So, you should go check those out... they're not that cool yet.

Another Jazz Game, Same Jacket

So, we went to Salt Lake, again. And we saw a Jazz game, again. And we met the president of the United States....Again. OK, maybe not that last part but I like Forest Gump. Anyway, we did get to go to another Jazz game. This time it was because Angel's sister Wendy and her husband Lee went in on season tickets with some other couples and this was one of the games they had four tickets for. It was the home season opener. They played the Rockets and even though they lost (Tracy McGrady scored like 48 points or something) it was still a fun, entertaining game. And this time I had advanced notice so I could get stuff done and didn't have to bring my laptop in to do homework during the game. The seats were better too. Good times.


These are phone pictures so they aren't quite as good but I think that's Yao Ming at the top of the key there. We saw a jazz dancer chick walk past him at one point and she came up to the waist on his shorts. It was humorous.

Kitty Kat Friend

This is Angel with our little kitty cat friend that shows up every so often in our backyard. He's super friendly and Angel likes him because he's still small. She claims she only likes 'em when they're small. I think if we got one small she would still at least kind of like him when he got bigger.

Quick expanation

Ok, so the quick explanation is that the pictures are what we did last weekend. We went through Employee Canyon in Zion's National Park in southern Utah. It was a fairly long hike on a non-existent trail followed by six rappels between 100-200 feet. I loaded the pictures while I was at work since we didn't have fast enough internet at home to upload those pictures. The plan was to write a much more detailed explanation of them later at home. However, due to spending the weekend doing that and sadistic professors (mostly just one of them) I haven't had anytime. We got internet installed yesterday though so that's good. Ok,I need to go work on moving in still. Oh yeah, Angel got some free tickets from the parents of one of her kids since they all love her so, here are a couple of pictures from the Jazz game this week.

expanation later

I'll explain later

Rad Racing

So, the other day I was just minding my own business at work when in walk a guy and a girl. Of course, my first thought was great a couple of jerk probably want to rent a computer (because I have good customer service skills). Then I noticed that something was different about this guy. He was wearing this:



Needless to say, I was stunned. Obviously, I got him the best computer and monitor we had, I needed to know where he got it. My first thought was that he must have made it himself, paint roller and stencil style just like the movie. I must admit I was a little disappointed to find that he had just purchased it. Actually his sister bought it for him. Turns out you can get your very own or only $15.95 + 4.95 s/h at www.radtshirts.com. Not a bad price. Although I haven't convinced myself yet. It's quite a bit cheaper than buying the movie these days. Anyway, the world is a better place with them in the world. And if you don't know the significance, shame on you (neither did the girl with the guy wearing the shirt).

Seven things

I've been meaning to write one of these things for Angel and myself but am just now getting time, kind of. So, here we go.



1. Everybody seems to do first date stuff here. Angel claims we never had a first date. She's pretty right. However, if we did have one it would be the time that Angel came and picked me up from the airport when I was coming back from Denver after a trip there about a month or so after getting home from the mission. She picked me up because I told her I'd buy her a frostie if she did. So, that was the first thing we did. We bought frosties and ate them at the top of the now non-existant crossroads plaza. I'm not going to go through the whole day but it included eating Blimpies in the lobby of the Marriott, shopping for wedding gifts for some one(we bought a Holmes fan and Trivial Pursuit), watching skaters in Park City, buying Slurpees in Park City, watching Master and Command in Rick and Pam's basement, and ended with a smooch or two.

2. I proposed to Angel in the Art Museum at the University of Utah. I knew she would say yes since we had set a date and scheduled the temple 3 or 4 months earlier. One of the things that originally caught my attention with Angel was when I overheard her tell someone else that she was interested in art history. I always knew I wanted a wife who was into art. I'm pretty sure she was inspired to say that right then. We both like to go check out the art museums though we don't do it nearly as often as we would like.

3. Angel and I have never spent a night apart since we've been married.

4. Angel will begin her professional career as an elementary teacher this year teaching fourth grade. I still have this and next year of school before I start my career as a computer programmer nerd guy. We figure we have a pretty good setup in this. Angel will go and make a difference in people lives and make the world a better place, and I'll.....make money.

5. Angel and I live (temporarily, until the beginning of October) in BYU family student housing. We are abnormalities here. We don't have kids and Angel isn't pregnant. I haven't seen anyone else in this situation in the vicinity. We also go somewhat out of our way not to know anyone. This is partly because we're only here for about two months and partly because all the people here are wierdo BYU students. (I'm pretty positive they're all scared away by my beard and assume Angel is the BYU student. They probably think I'm keeping her here against her will.)

6. Angel and I both speak Chinese. No we don't really speak it at home (except praying. For some reason I can only pray in Chinese) and we don't play on teaching our kids anything except funny stuff. However, we do use it to make fun of people in public in front of them and just generally send messages to each other that we don't want other to know about. Unlike spanish we can be quite confident that no one else understands what we're saying because if they did they would either by chinese or a return missionary from our mission.

7. Angel and I eat burgers, pizza, sandwiches, and pasta. We've never gone out for chinese food except for mission reunion type stuff. Chinese food is no good. American Chinese food is way better than the authentic stuff but still, why would you get that when there are so many other better options.

So, that's a few things about us. If you want to know more then too bad. Here's some bonus information for you. We aren't one of those couples that always hangs out with other couple and plays board games and stuff. We haven't gotten sick of each other yet and don't see that happening anytime soon so we just enjoy each others company as much as we can.

Welcome Angel to the club!

Despite being a lifelong Utahan Angel drank her first caffeine free dr. pepper today (although she did make me pour it in a glass so it wasn't in a gold can). In celebration of this momentous occasion I have decided to change this from my blog into our blog. One of the reasons you haven't seen many personal pictures on this blog has been that our camera broke a little while ago. So, after a really long time I finally bought one. It came last Friday I think. Why then don't you see any pictures here? It doesn't turn on. That is a less than desirable trait in a digital camera. Since we spent the week moving and doing tons of other stuff I haven't had time to get it figured out yet. Moral of the story, we now have two broken digital cameras. When I get a working one I'll try to post some pictures of our new temporary home in BYU family student housing. Anyone who knows us knows we're extra super excited about it. I'll go ahead and throw in a classic picture of us for you. If you don't recognize this one then we're sorry for not sending you a Christmas card. We would have if they were free.