Happy 200th Post!!!

Yes, for all one of you faithful C.A. followers, it's been a year and a half since I first talked about being cultured and some of my fun English class experiences.  200 posts later, I'm in law school, bleeding out my existence and my future earnings all in the name of placing the letters J-D somewhere near my name.

On a somewhat more pleasant note, here's to persevering!

Chrome Extensions: Love at First Bite

First of all, if you're not using Google Chrome yet and you have a choice (I realize some of you work goons are still forced to use IE 6 . . .) what's wrong with you?

Second, if you're not using Chrome extensions yet, you need to.

I'm currently packing 10 extensions under the hood, each of which is super awesome.

If you're like me, you probably have a two second attention span, so I'll just tell you about five I think you'll be interested in.

1.  AdBlock.  Hands down, this extension is a must.  Have you ever realized how many Web pages have highly bothersome video adds all over the place?  Here's the Men's Warehouse dude challenge:  Try this extension out for at least a week.  You're gonna like the way your Web pages look, I guarantee it.
2. Google Mail Checker Plus.  Gives a very quick and robust preview for your email.
3. Cooliris.  If you search Google Images a lot, this is a huge time saver:  I especially recommend that you make a special search engine in your Chrome address bar as I've explained in a previous post.
4. Google Voice (by Google).  Dead useful if you use Google Voice.  If you do, this is seriously a must, check it out.
5. Google Dictionary (by Google).  Surprisingly useful, this extension lets you define a word simply by double clicking on it and adds an amazingly potent app in your address bar.  Even if you don't use Chrome, check out the dictionary, it's impressive and very straightforward: google.com/dictionary

Again, if you're not using Chrome yet, do yourself a very big favor and start, and make sure you install some useful extensions:  https://chrome.google.com/extensions?hl=en-US

As always, let me know if I can help with anything (I'm probably more geeky than most of my scant readership).

Why I'm a Social Media Agnostic (on the whole)

This (for the most part) is why I don't Twitter, Facebook, or, now, Buzz:



Sorry about the incidental VZ promotion. I actually have a bare-bones T-Mobile plan . . .

(Yes, I realize that this very blog post could be considered "social media";  I think of it as ranting.)

Here's to the Saints

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't watch a second of the Super Bowl but I hear it was a good one.

Who knew that after 43 years the Saints would win the Super Bowl in their first ever appearance?  I didn't.  But then again, I've been somewhat of a sports agnostic for quite some time now so I suppose my opinion doesn't really count for beans anyway.

That notwithstanding, congrats to the Saints on their first Super Bowl victory.  I imagine it must have been bedlam in the streets of New Orleans . . .

(By the way, I think the Stanley Cup is hands down the best professional championship trophy.)

Soiling the wound . . . (the joys of parenting and law school continue)

First of all, I have to give my lovely wife credit for the above title, as she says (after reminding me how she once yelled "eat nanas!" as toddler), "this is [her] area" (and first joke).

Second, I want to thank my concerned mother-in-law for jinxing me. Earlier today in an email, she kindly wished me the good fortune that our daughter wouldn't throw up on me today. For the record, she hasn't, but I think this makes like three out of the past four nights that she has either unloaded the kitchen sink or trash can all over Yours Truly (twice on the same shirt! [it had been washed prior to tonight . . . maybe I shouldn't wear it for a while]).

Finally, I'm still awaiting 3/5 of my law school grades which I naively thought would "magically" show up today, seeing as it's the "deadline" for professors to turn in fall grades (it's like waiting for the LSAT all over again!). Someone stop the madness! Ah well, I guess these are the woes of a first-year law student.

Anyway, with a particularly aromatic weekend and fresh start to a new semester, the only thing that still seems stale are my non-existent grades.

Oh, brave new world!

WARNING, THE IMAGE BELOW MAY SHOCK AND OR MAKE YOU WANT TO GAG.

(I warned you.)

It's the Holiday Season! (well, at least it was)

As usual, pictures tell the story much better than I could.

So here is our experience in Seattle, Christmas Eve at the Space Needle, Leavenworth (3rd anniversary), and so forth.

The number of pictures is plenteous, so I strongly recommend you zoom through them, but do make sure you get a full view of our daughter/grandma keys/towel in the mouth shot, I can't recommend that one enough.

Enjoy!!

The Joys of Parenting: Our Daughter's Welcome Home

You can laugh, I won't be offended.



For those of you glimpsing children on the near or distant horizon, put on a straight face, you're next!

Merry Christmas!

First of all, let me just say, Merry Christmas!!


With that said and a couple weeks off from school, I will probably be putting up a lot of posts for your glancing enjoyment.

As a delicious appetizer, I'd like to start off with some fun videos of of our daughter.

Hope you enjoy them!

(It's our daughter's gift to you.)

BYU Gives OR State a Beat Down

That's right, folks.  You see that poll at the right?  I'll take the shame and admit that I was the only one who voted on my own poll . . . but I did call the victory.

If you didn't see this one, let me say it was almost over before it began.  Sure, it started pretty slow and technically BYU came out down 7-0, but after Quiz dropped a backwards pass and BYU's Bauman returned it like 30 yards for a touchdown, the flood gates broke.

This was one of those bittersweet games where the beat down was so sweet but the nagging commercials and gasping commentary made the thumping so painful to watch.  I'm almost grateful the score was as close as it was because OSU was simply embarrassed and that's got to be rough in the final game of the season.

Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah!!!


Go Utes(?) and Horn Frogs.

Oh, I almost forgot, here's to Max Hall (the man the F-Word calls the psycho ex-girlfriend) for redeeming himself again (this time in a bowl game) and ending his career as the most winning QB in BYU history.  Cheers.

Ode to Law School Finals

Have you ever studied like mad for an exam, gone into the exam, dumped your brain all over the paper, left and wondered what it was you spilled all over the test materials?

Enter law school finals.

Each of my four exams (not including my crazy-difficult lawyering memo) lasted from three to four hours.

I probably enjoyed my Torts (the branch of law, not the cake) final the most; it included torts ranging from Santa screaming profanities, battering a young girl, throwing her deaf father into a Gingerbread house and locking him in, and melted candy cane lights.  And you thought physics were fun!  I do have to say, however, that after two hours of analyzing whether or not Santa's shouting at a four-year-old constituted assault and if some company were liable in strict products liability for the lights melting, my brain felt like the one in the image above.

Here's to law school finals:  As painless and full of nostalgia as a frontal lobe lobotomy.

It's all over! It's all over!!

Yes, folks, my first semester of law school is all over.  Can you believe it?

I can't either.

To many of you, this picture to the left and its attendant sound bite will be utter nonsense.  You need only listen to understand why I put it in.

For those of you who are familiar with the history, can I get a witness, please?

Cracker Barrel

Our daughter says it all on this one.



Okay, except for the biscuits, you can't top biscuits.

CHROME OS: Imagine a world with my nth love.

This post will likely start the F-Word raving and for good reason.

For the past so many days, I can't get Google's forthcoming operating system out of my brain waves.

It will have no local applications. NONE.

Why on earth would I subscribe to such a spartan monstrosity whose sole aim is to galvanize my letharghy, wash my brains out, and fill them with ads?

Speed, simplicity, and security.

Imagine a world where your computer would boot up in 7, count them, 7 seconds and you could be online, zooming away in just three more.

Imagine a world where your system resources aren't bogged down by SVCHost or who knows what other meaningless background processes.

Imagine a world where you don't have to worry about throwing the computer at the wall because Vista told you for the thirtieth time that you don't have permission to access files on your own computer.

Imagine a world where you don't have to update, monitor updates, check Windows update, or even run virus scans or spyware, not to mention random utilities like disk defragmenter.

Imagine a world where you don't have to worry about losing your data through a system crash or a good ole fashioned mugging.

Imagine a world where you can access your data, the same data, where ever you have an internet connection.

Finally, imagine a world where your OS is so self-reliant, that if it ever gets corrupted, etc., it will automatically re-download and fix itself.

It might sound Orwellian, but imagine a world with Chrome (OS).

If you'll excuse the inherent and outrageous blashpemy, this scripture comes to mind: http://scriptures.lds.org/en/alma/36/22#22

Cool Iris in Chrome

If you're like the CA, you love Chrome and you love searching Google Images.

Unfortunately, Google Images is pretty spartan when it comes to picture count on a page.

To fix this problem, install the Cool Iris extension. It lets you display scores of pictures all at once and you can scroll through hundreds/thousands by simply dragging the screen to the right.

Here's where you can get the extension: http://www.cooliris.com/beta/chrome/

Please note that you'll need to be running either the beta or developer builds of Chrome: http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel (Look under "Subscribing to a channel")

Finally, if you'd like a super cool search-from-your-omnibox in Cool Iris search engine, right click in your Chrome omnibox (address bar)>edit search engines>add.

Next, choose a name and shortcut of your choosing (e.g., I use ci for Cool Iris).

Then paste the following into the URL box: http://www.cooliris.com/tab/#url=jsfeed%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fimages.google.com%2F%23%3Fcisearch%3D%s%2520

This way, whenever you want to search Cool Iris, you can just go to your omnibox, type in your shortcut (again, mine is ci, for exampe), hit tab, and you can search Cool Iris straight from your Chrome omnibox.

Please hold your applause. I accept cash, checks, credit cards, and pay pal. Whichever you prefer.

Mr. Potter goes Trunk-or-Treating

Now what you've truly been waiting for, some pictures not necessarily of Yours Truly.

Way back in October, Ginny, Lily, and I went to our ward's trunk-or-treat.

Ginny is a little OCD about projects and so she put together the most impressive trunk-or-treat trunk I have ever seen.

Apparently, the judges thought the same thing because our trunk won first prize!

Yes, I've had to bury my head in the sand on this one since it would seemingly be some kind of "man project" (to win glory, fame, and honor for his family).

Thankfully, Ginny doesn't gloat as much as Malfoy used to.

F-Word, eat your heart out.

Yen

Speaking of words, yen is not only a form of Japanese currency, it also means to pine for something.

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS342US342&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=define:yen

Maybe it's a yearning to spend money?

I love those ducks/geese/birds/whatever, by the way.

Logorrhea

Yet another post I've been meaning to do for a while.

Like the geek that I am, I subscribe to a nifty word of the day feed.

This was on it one day.

Excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness.

I don't mean anything by this picture, it's actually just what came to mind.

However, "talking heads" do seem to have a bit of logorrhea, come to think of it . . .

Locked Out

I won't give you all the details on this one, but I'll just say that a while back, my wife, our daughter, and I were locked out of our apartment for a substantial period of time.

Locksmiths were called, hair was pulled out, and lives were changed. Maybe I'll write a Conference talk about it one day . . .

Too bad our apartment isn't closer to the ground or maybe I could have pulled a stunt like that seen in the picture on the left.

Downloadable Videos: Too Cool for School

Anyone who knows me from Adam will corroborate the submission that I am loathe to praise the ivory kingdom of Steve Jobs.

However, let me just say that while RedBox ($1 movies) is nice, being able to sit on my pants, click a button, and have a movie playing for a slight markup (yes, I know that $3 is three times $1) is joyous.

I'm also an enthusiast for renting in general. There are few movies that I want to watch every other day, so being able to pay a few GW's every time we want to watch a descent flick (which isn't all that often to begin with) is no sweat off my back, especially considering we'd have to rent the movie like four times to equal the purchase price of a DVD.

Some movies are good, but most are not four-times-in-the-same year good.

Here's to the man in the black turtle neck and jeans for making it easy on me (even if I'm loathe to admit it).

BYU beats Oklahoma??

I've been meaning to post on this one for a long time.

Of course, I couldn't watch the game (or, rather, I hadn't figured out how to tap into my school's VPN yet) . . .

Anyway, just because a lot of people often hold BYU football out to be the Boise State of the Mountain West (good record, no real opponents), I had to post on this one.

Too bad they had to get pummeled by the Florida State criminals and rebeat (as in beat down) by the Horned Frogs. At least TCU seems like a legitimate contender.

Ah well, if my research is correct, BYU hasn't gone undefeated since, you guessed it . . . 1984.

Maybe in another quarter of a century we'll pull it out again off again.