Team Meeting

We did a video conference for our group project on November 26th. It was a surprisingly good experience. I highly recommend using Google Plus for any video conferencing with multiple people. It automatically expands the video of whoever it detects is talking. We didn't run into any major technical difficulties. The Google Plus site makes it easy to set up, it's done run over the internet browser so you don't have to download anything (except a plugin). We were able to work on our google docs/presentation all while chatting and listening to the conversation. Using headphones made me feel like I was in the room with everyone and the world wherever I was disappeared completely. The only small issue we ran into was that I had to close a door because my microphone was picking up other people talking close by which the other group members could hear. One of the most important things is to have a good group of people to work with, and our group happened to be excellent. I really enjoyed working with Kevin, Scott, and Scott. Way to go guys!

Forgotten Carols

Yesterday my wife and I went with some friends to see the Forgotten Carols at the UVU Convention Center. We happened to have leftover tickets since my wife's parents were going to take us but then couldn't make it for scheduling reasons. I've seen it a couple times before, but this time the story and it's moral made more sense to me than previous times.

For those of you who haven't seen it before, it's about a nurse who works too hard who ends up taking care of an eccentric older man who sings songs to her and tells her stories about Jesus. You quickly figure out watching the story that the reason the old man know about people from New Testament times is because he's John and has been alive for about 2000 years. Despite how hard she resists to keep up the shell she's built around her from the challenges she's faced in life, that shell starts to break down as the old man continually treats her like a best friend.

I had never really picked up the significance of the last song that she sings in the play until this time through. The words are "All I ever wanted, all I ever dreamed of, everything I hoped, everything I prayed for couldn't hold a candle to what I've been given. I've been given what I need."

To be honest I never really cared for this song or the lyrics the previous times I've seen the Forgotten Carols. However, for some reason this time it touched me differently. I connected better with the main character. She became a hardened person because of the challenges she's faced in life, but after John showed her genuine friendship, she realized that she doesn't need to be sad about life not turning out the way she wanted it to. Rather, God gave her those experiences and even hardships knowing that in some way she did not expect, they would bless her life and make her into a better person.

Admittedly I'm not a person who's had to face an major losses in life, but I do know that everyone faces different challenges. Responding to those challenges with faith in the Lord will make us better people.

Rootbeer

So me and my wife have become connoisseurs of Rootbeer. It happens to be our favorite soda, and neither of us really drink a lot of soda other than Rootbeer. Rather than just the stuff that comes out of the soda fountain at the fast-food restaurant or the 2-liter of soda you can get at the grocery store, we really like trying obscure brands in glass bottles. It mostly started with Barqs. We lived in Alabama for a few months for work two summers ago, and out there it was common to find Barqs in a bottle in convenience stores or restaurants. We haven't found anywhere that sells it since. We have tried many other brands and have begun making a list rating our favorites:

Barqs 10
Jones 9.8
Sarsaparilla 9.8
Stewart's 8.5
Brigham's Brew 8
Virgil's 7.5
IBC 5
Frosties 5
A&W 4.5
Sioux City 3.5
Dog and Suds 3
Bundaberg 0

One of the best parts about Rootbeer in a bottle is that the soda lasts better in bottles, meaning most companies will make the soda with real sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup. Our ratings are usually based on taste (apart from just tasting good or not, some Rootbeers are made with a heavy taste of liquorish which neither of us likes), and amount of carbonation. Barqs in a bottle is pretty much perfect. Jones also has a great taste but needs just a tad more carbonation. Sarsaparilla isn't technically Rootbeer but is more like the grandfather of Rootbeer. We often buy Sioux City Sarsaparilla which has a great taste very close to Rootbeer. Stewarts is one of our fall back brands. It's not spectacular but meets all the general requirements and is a good 4 pack to have in the fridge when you want a good Rootbeer. Brigham's Brew we tried only recently. It could use a tad more carbonation but overall has a good taste. Virgil's is mostly cool because it comes in a really cool bottle. It's downside is the liquorish taste. IBC tastes good but is way too carbonated. Frosties is undercarbonated with a decent taste. A&W is a rather poor Rootbeer with little flavor. Sioux City Rootbeer (as opposed to the Sarsaparilla) has a very heavy taste of liquorish and we rated it rather low. Dog and Suds was overcarbonated and tasted like liquorish. Bundaberg scored a zero because it was such a bad taste we couldn't drink it and threw it away.

Provo recently opened Pop N Sweets, which has walls full of obscure brands of Rootbeer. It's sort of a haven for people like me and my wife. We've been trying new brands there and will continue to add to our list of ratings. Feel free to post opinions or favorite brands here in the comments. Pop N Sweets doesn't currently carry our favorite, Barqs. We requested it to them and expect it to be in in a few weeks. They said they'll carry anything at least once and will continue to carry it if it sells well. I expect that Barqs will sell very well and seems like exactly the type of thing they ought to have there, so we may finally have found somewhere to get Barqs in Utah. Anyone who likes Rootbeer and has tried few or no bottled brands, I highly recommend that you look into it and it might just change the way you drink Rootbeer from now on. Good luck!

Professional Dress

Today in the personal presentations for class, I saw a number of the presentations on various subjects. Out of all the ones I saw, only one used an acronym to highlight the main points, and as such I can only remember the main points on one of them. For that reason, I've decided to discuss the presentation on personal appearance for business purposes.

We were told that an interviewer makes a decision about you within about 10 seconds, most of which depends on your appearance. For that reason, it is important that we have a clean professional appearance for business purposes. The three main points to keep in mind were:

Message

Audience

Concept

Basically, we need to know what message we would like to send, who our audience will be, and what concepts to keep in mind hen decided how to appear for business meeting.

Nice job everyone today on your presentations!

Video Interview

I was assigned to do a mock video interview with Alyson Peterson and to write about my experience here.

One thing I noticed about doing a video interview is that it required a great deal of preparation. I spent a lot of time preparing my PAR stories, notes, and a copy of my resume to be prepared for the questions she would ask me in the interview. It also occured to me during the interview that I wanted to avoid the impression that I was looking at notes. The interview will be much more effective if the interviewer feels that your answers are all off the cuff, and to give this impression you must maintain eye contact and look away from the screen as little as possible.

The biggest problem we ran into was predictably technical difficulties. For some reason the microphone on my computer was not working, and I wasn't able to quickly identify the source of the problem. Rather than using FaceTime on my Mac as we had previously agreed, we had to use Skype from my iPad. Alyson mentioned in her response email that this created a very dark image for the interview and that next time I should choose better lighting.

I reallly appreciated this experience mostly because it taught me that next time I will need to test my interviewing technology beforehand, because it would not look good to an employer to be all prepared to interview me just to find out awkwardly that we would have to make multiple unsuccessful attempts at connecting and my inability to fix the technical problem.

Multi-Stake Conference

Many of you were probably at the multi-stake conference last week with Elder Ballard. My favorite two things he mentioned in his talk were these:

1. The reason the prophets and apostles don't talk about "cool" stuff more often is because we are still working on the little things, like reading our scriptures, saying our prayers, and keeping the commandments. "When you're all doing that stuff, then we'll tell you where Kolob is."

2. All of us think we're too busy to do those things. "If I could put a camera on you and follow you around with it, you'd see how much time you actually waste."

He's absolutely right about both of these things. I do frequently use the time excuse because of work, school, and homework. I do however manage to find a little bit of time in-between all of that to do things that I enjoy, like sitting and watching a movie or a show once in a while. If I really made prayers and scriptures a priority over the little things I like doing (or really made scripture study something I like doing right along with the other things) I'm sure I could find time to fit it into my schedule more often. I certainly remember being close to the scripture and prayer during my mission. Personal study was my favorite part of the day, and since then I've left a lot of project for studying the scriptures undone. I'll make a commitment now to do better about it.

On the Job Hunt

Some really good advice I got the other day from a friend of mine when looking for a job is to look on the Marriott School website and find Alumni who are currently working at the company I'm interested in. Their email addresses are listed and you can contact them to get an idea about the company, and potentially for them to even recommend you. The same advice was given yesterday in class by Mrs. Fueston. Definitely something to keep in mind while looking for jobs and internships.

Other good ideas for looking for jobs are BYU Bridge, LDSjobs.com, LinkedIn, and networking.

To be honest, I thought the mission could be really stressful and school could be really stressful, but job hunting I think beats them both. It's like you're racing against everyone else trying to get a job before you. The job you find can affect the rest of your life. My wife had the awesome idea of fasting this week, so we're going to try that out. I know Heavenly Father is mindful of me and my family at this time and I also have faith that as long as I do my part and diligently search, I'll find what's right for me.

Cosmic Space Dust Lazers

Saturday we had planned on taking my wife's little brother up to Rock Canyon to do a multi-pitch climb, since he doesn't have a ton of experience climbing outdoors. Unfortunately he wasn't able to make it, but we did invite a couple who we regularly climb with. The four of us went up to a climb we have been planning to do for a while, called Cosmic Space Dust Lazers. Our couple friends went first and we followed close behind. It goes up about 300 feet in three pitches. I lead the first and third pitch, meaning my wife lead the second pitch. She was very brave as the pitch on a lead had several moments where a fall would have been rather dangerous. Of course she is always tied in and I can stop her fall eventually, but if there is a lot of distance between bolts, you can fall quite a ways before the rope catches. Even more important is how "clean" the fall would be. If you would just fall into the air, there's nothing to be afraid of. If there are jagged rocks in your way before the rope catches you, you might get pretty banged up along the way.

At one point, her next bolt was in an awkward position. She noticed that there was a crack leading up to the right of the wall the bolts were on. Deciding that this might be the easier way, she went up the crack. She then discovered that she didn't have a way to get back onto the wall with the bolts. Leaning around the corner, she also discovered that her next bolt was below her current position. This meant that she was well above the last place she had clipped in. I suggested down-climbing and going up the right way. She said it was too sketchy from where she was to try to go back down. A fall at this point could have injured her. She became nervous. I felt rather helpless as I couldn't see where she was from my belay station, and since I had to hold the other end of her rope, I had no way of going to help her. She said a small prayer to herself, and bravely worked her way around the corner back onto the main wall, and carefully managed to get herself clipped into the next bolt, bringing her back out of danger of falling.

After this experience, she told me how this could relate to life experiences. It might look easier to go off the designated path, but if you do, you may find that it's much more difficult to get back on the path than it would have been to stay on it in the first place. You're lucky if you manage to do so without getting hurt.

I'll certainly keep this in mind both in life and in rock climbing.

In the end, this was an incredibly fun climb. We had sandwiches at the top like we enjoy doing, we got to spend time with friends on a cliff 300 feet in the air, and then we rappelled all 300 feet back down to the bottom.

General Conference

This week I didn't have any crazy stories about climbing. Mostly because today we stayed home and watched Conference instead. So today I'm going to talk about my favorite speaker, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. He gave an excellent talk today in the second session of General Conference. It seems like every conference, he blows me away with his testimony. Today his talk was about helping the poor. I certainly need to repent in this aspect. My wife on the other hand knows people who are struggling financially and she's been actively trying to get our family to pool together to help them out. I appreciate the example she's setting for me. I especially appreciated the scripture that was quoted from Isaiah 58:


6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

 7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

I had never before considered that fasting to the ancient world would have been so similar to fasting in the restored Church, that you would choose not to eat bread and give it to the poor instead, going hungry and donating what you would have eaten. I'm a typical poor college student. I appreciate the help I've received from my family and friends during this time, and I hope that one day when I have a real job, I'll be able to provide assistance in the same way that other's have helped me.

Lead Fall

In previous weeks my wife and I have been able to climb in Rock Canyon nearly every Saturday. However today despite our best hopes we couldn't because of the rain. We had wanted to take some friends of ours who happened to be in town, but ended up climbing at the gym in Provo instead. It's called the Quarry. We love climbing there because it happens to be the place my wife and I met.

My blog this week however won't be from today, but from Thursday morning. I woke up early enough to make it to the Quarry at about 6 a.m. They open early like this twice a week for people who want to go before work/school. A friend of mine and I frequently meet there early to get some lead climbing in. Lead climbing is a type of climbing which involves starting a route without a rope already set at the top. The name implies that the leader climbs the route first, and then the rest of the group can climb more easily because the rope has already been run through anchors at the top of the climb. If you slip while climbing a "top rope" setup, you will barely fall at all because the rope is always anchored above you and catches you almost immediately. On a lead climb however, the difference is that you have to set anchors along the wall while climbing. This means that many times during the climb, you may actually be a few feet above the last anchor. If you slip, you'll fall double the distance from you to the anchor below you, plus a few extra feet usually because of stretch in the rope.

Given that understanding of how lead climbing works, I have done it frequently and it always makes me a bit nervous. If I sense that I won't be able to make a part of the climb without taking a lead fall, I'll stop and take a rest. I also try to climb routes that are much easier than what I would be willing to do on a "top rope" climb. This strategy has worked for a long time. I've taken small falls before but nothing worth telling about. On Thursday morning however, my last climb of the day, I found myself in a spot where the places I was holding on to the wall with my hands and feet weren't the easiest to hold onto. I was worn out from having done several lead climbs. My last anchor was a few feet below me. My next anchor (or "quickdraw") was right about at eye level. I couldn't hold on well enough to try to climb back down, to try to clip into my next quickdraw, or to continue the climb. I only held on for a moment, long enough to think, "Well, here it goes. My first huge lead fall." In addition to being a few feet above the anchor and the stretch in the rope, my friend had also left quite a bit of slack in the rope because he knew I was close to the next point I needed to clip in. He's also used to the fact that I don't take falls, because if I sense one coming I take a rest to avoid it. All of these factors combined, I was in the air for quite a long time. Long enough to think, "I'm ok. The rope is going to catch me any second now." As the rope caught me, my friend came well up off the ground, again adding to the total distance I fell. Having been close to the top when I started the fall, I can estimate that the total distance of the fall was about 25 feet. Surprisingly it didn't scare me at all. I definitely felt a bit of an adrenaline rush, and truth be told I had a huge smile on my face. Both of us laughed for a while.

What did I learn? Taking a lead fall isn't so bad. It's actually sort of fun!

So what? I've been very careful for a very long time to avoid taking a lead fall, all to discover after having gotten my first one over with that I don't need to try so hard to avoid them anymore.

Now what? I'll be able to start pushing myself harder, especially at lead climbing, so that I can improve my climbing abilities, climb with more confidence, and take fewer breaks.

Obviously the picture isn't from when we were climbing in the gym on Thursday. It's me lead climbing a route with my wife a few weeks ago.

Green Monster

Saturday my wife and I again hiked up into the canyon with all our gear, intent on climbing the Green Monster for the third week in a row. Today we had more time to play with, so we planned on waiting until it was open even if that meant waiting a while. Sure enough, there was a group on it when we arrived, but we still had quite a hike up a steep trail with a lot of gear before we could set up the route. You have to rappel down to this climb because the base of the climb is about 30 up from the trail on a ledge. We worked our way very slowly up the steep trail. Just as we arrived at the top of the climb, one of the other group's climbers was finishing his route. We asked how much longer they would be on it, and he said that he happened to be their last climber.

They finished up and pulled their rope off the route. My wife and I both scrambled to the top of the climb and clipped ourselves into a bolt at the top of the ledge. We were now standing about 80 feet up from the base of the climb. I set up the rope for the rappel, but the bolts we were rappelling from were about 5 feet horizontally away from us, meaning we'd have to awkwardly work our way over to the bolts before putting weight on the ropes. I made my wife go first so I could make sure she was set up properly (I've done more rappelling than she has).

Both of us were feeling a bit nervous at this point. We decided to say a prayer. I said one with my eyes opened, praying that everything would be ok and that we would be protected. We both suddenly felt calm, that everything would be ok. My wife slowly lowered herself onto the ropes, and then rappelled to the base without any trouble. I then reached over and grabbed the ropes and rappelled to the bottom as well. I probably won't do that part again, and least not with my wife up there with me, just because you have to get pretty much onto the 80 foot ledge before you have something to clip into.

We then had an excellent day of climbing, finally climbing the route we had been wanting to for a couple weeks, and a different route nearby.

What I learned: First of all, two people on a sketchy rappel, especially when one of them is your wife, isn't the best idea. Second, Heavenly Father is watching over us and protecting us. Prayer is powerful and can bring that feeling of comfort that everything will be ok.

So what?: We had a great time doing this climb after doing the rappel that made us so nervous. It was definitely worth it, and we were reminded of Heavenly Father's love for us.

Now what?: Like I said, I probably won't do that rappel again anytime soon. At least not with my wife up there with me. We can finally check this route off our to do list. In the future if we ever get nervous climbing, we will definitely remember the power of prayer.

Tinker Toys

Today, my wife and I woke up early to hike up Rock Canyon. We've been busy all week long with typical work and school responsibilities. We look forward to chances that we have to do fun adventures together, especially ones that involve lots of gear and climbing tall things. We had limited time and had come up the canyon with only one goal, to climb the Green Monster. We've made this hike a couple of times already and always find the Green Monster occupied when we get there. We woke up extra early today in the hopes that we might beat the crowd. Unfortunately, we got there just as a group of about 8 people were setting up to climb it. Finding out that it would be occupied again frustrated both of us, and we both had bad attitudes the rest of the time we were climbing today.

We didn't have enough time to go and find anything else on our to-do list, so we had to make due with a nearby wall, called Tinker Toys. I lead one of the routes, but there were few places to clip in as I climbed, making it a rather dangerous lead climb. In a couple of places I was pretty nervous about taking a long fall. I managed to make it to the top without falling. My wife wanted to lead it as well, but I talked her out of it because of how dangerous of a lead climb this was compared to most lead climbs we do. We climbed a couple different routes before we had to start heading back.

What I learned: Wake up much earlier than you think you need to if you'd like to find the wall that you want to climb unoccupied when you get there. Also, don't get frustrated when things don't go your way, that way you can enjoy plan B for what it is, despite not getting to do plan A.

So what?: Perhaps climbing isn't the most important thing in the world to most of you, but to me and my wife it is our favorite activity together. It also happens to be the way we met. As opposed to the rest of the week, which involves being apart at our different jobs or in different classes, climbing together is just pure fun and adventure together.

Now what?: Next Saturday I'm sure we'll be up in the canyon again, but hopefully this time with more hours to play with, a better attitude, and perhaps even earlier so that the wall we want to climb on isn't taken again.