January of the 2016 variety

I don't play a lot of video games because time is valuable and I like to be judicious about how I use my free time. Sometimes I do play video games and Emily likes to watch for some reason (that's honestly the only reason I still play every now and then). That's all just a long winded preamble to say that we played the final saga of Starcraft II and the story and dialogue were HORRIBLE. The game itself was really fun but the dialogue was BAD. However, later in the month we played an old 90's point and click adventure type game called Grim Fandango and the dialogue and story was AMAZING. Isn't that ironic? Video games are awesome because you can temporarily feel like you accomplished something without actually having to do anything! I'm going to start playing video games every chance I get.

We went to go check out places to live in Tempe to see if there was anything good..and long story short we're not sure what we want to do with our lives. We hate moving but we want to move except we don't want to and we should rent a condo instead of an apartment.

There was a couple days this month where it rained non-stop. It was really weird. I took a picture but that's not even remotely interesting but hey I worked hard on that so I'm putting it on here. El Nino is spanish for....the Nino.

We had a game night with our friends who are moving to New York soon. We happened to notice they had "butt" written on their light fixture. They had lived there for two years and had never noticed. That's what we're here for.

What just came in the mail? Oh look, a mattress in a box.

Look, I'm taking pictures instead of helping!

One particular Sunday this month, there was a big marathon taking place on the street our church building is on, so we had only one hour of church and then had to go home. It was...kind of glorious. If you're not LDS, that probably means nothing to you, but that's ok!!!!!!

We went on a hike with the cub scouts on a beautiful Saturday morning. I hope Emily likes that I'm posting pictures of her!!!!!!!!!!!

Driftless: Part 1

I like to sing Tenor, but I only have the courage to do it when I'm singing in a loud group or someone next to me is also singing Tenor. Otherwise I stick with the safe option: Bass.

I consider the Lord of the Rings movies to be some of the greatest films ever. However, I hated the first two Hobbit movies and refuse to see the third one.

Every time a recipe calls for Worstershire sauce, I get very nervous.

I can't stand it it when people talk about politics in church, even when I agree.

"If you reveal TMI, it can make people fell a little less alone." - Justin Hall

I don't care if we have turkey on Thanksgiving and I don't care about Christmas trees.

I'm 28 years old and have never owned a smartphone.

I think I would like to go back to college and get a degree purely for the purposes of education rather than trying to get a job.

The King James version of the Bible makes pretty much no sense to me, I usually read the NLT.

When I'm programming, I love to have the lights off.

I like oatmeal, but I don't cook it. I just pour milk on and eat it raw.

December 2015

December 2015, what a month. The most important thing that happened this month is that..drum roll please.......................

We're debt freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
That's right, we are completely free from any and every form of debt. We feel lighter and happier and....yep, we feel free-er....I mean...more free.

When you get out of debt you have to celebrate. You have to go and buy things because - well, your money belongs to you now, you can do whatever you want.

In this spirit we went to Texas Roadhouse to celebrate. We chose Texas Roadhouse because you can eat peanuts and throw them on the floor. They also have good food.

After you get out of debt, you have to go and get ice cream too so we made a visit to an ice cream place a couple minutes away from where we live called Sweet Republic. They make all their ice cream from scratch with locally produced ingredients and it's just downright delicious. Some of the best ice cream I've ever had.

In becoming debt free, we completed step two of a six step process to get rich slowly. Step one was to save a thousand dollars as an emergency fund. That part was easy for us, we already had 4,000 dollars sitting in the bank.

Step two was to take all our debts and list them smallest to largest, and attack the smallest debt with a vengeance. We only had student loans so there wasn't a lot to list out but we started a 12 month process that made us learn patience, persistence, and delaying of gratification. Twelve months later, we had paid off over 18,000 dollars and completely debt free!

Don't get into debt kids.

We're now in step 3, which is to save an emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses. We're going for the three month emergency fund because if I lose my job as a software developer I'm confident I can find another job fairly quickly. Our aim is to have 7,500 dollars in the bank and we're more than halfway there already!

Step four will be to start contributing 15 percent of our income to retirement. Step five will be to start saving in order to put our kids through college. Of course we would need a kid to put through college in the first place (we know you want us to have kids ASAP).

Step 6 is to attack your mortgage with a fury and vengeance and get that thing paid off. Of course we don't have a mortgage, so either we save to pay cash for a cheap place and gradually move up, or we get a 15 year mortgage and pay it off as fast as humanly possible. I can tell you we're not too stoked about getting BACK into debt, so I don't know if we'll do the second option.

*I forgot to write in my journal, so here's what I can remember:

We watched a documentary about Elephants. People stalked elephants using dung cams. That's a weird thing to remember.

We went to Bookmans to get some gifts for people. Bookmans is a wonderful land of books and lots of other goodies. And of course we got a calendar full of communist/socialist propaganda!

We flew to Utah and there was A LOT of snow. We wanted to watch Star Wars and ended up celebrating Christmas too! We had Christmas on the 20th or something like that, because really, why does it matter what day you actually celebrate Christmas on? So Star Wars...I really liked it at first, but the more I think about it, the more I realize they were just pandering to the fans without doing anything original. I still think it's a good movie though, Emily REALLY liked it.

We flew back  home, then 24 hours later we flew off to Oregon to spend Christmas with the mom side of the family. That was the first time in my life that I had been in Oregon. It's very green and it rained the whole time we were there. Algae was spontaneously growing on the driveway. Thankfully we didn't have to sleep outside because we were in a nice house within walking distance from the beach! It also happened to have a theater (for reals) and a game room. We totally indoctrinated some kids with the board gaming gospel and it was awesome.

I'm VERY excited about the upcoming year. It's gonna be AWESOME.

Bye,

Yesvember 2015

Wasssssuuup?!

That was rhetorical.

Wow, all the amazing things that happened in November 2015!

Great, I overhyped it for no reason. We're off to a great start.

(I'm kind of hyper right now)

Once upon a time, on the eve of November 1, I was drifting off to sleep when the whole frickin' apartment building started shaking. In my stupor, I thought our neighbors had slammed their door really, really hard but after a couple of seconds it was obvious that was an incorrect guess. My next thought was that something exploded and I wondered if we should be fleeing our apartment. Then I thought, could that have been an earthquake? In Arizona? I promptly checked twitter and confirmed my suspicion. That was the most exciting moment of my life!

Emily flew to Utah to welcome Keaton home from his mission in New Zealand.

Emily: We spent the morning making signs and generally walking around in a state of high anticipation. Then when it was time to go the airport those of us were busy rescuing a big black dog running loose in the neighbor and se we left a little late. Genet was very concerned about our arrival time and kept calling for updates. Despite her worry, we made it with a couple of minutes to spare.

Once Elder Davis disembarked all convened for treats (some delicious New Zealand chocolate among other goodies) and stories. I loved hearing all of Keaton's stories in person. We also got some Time's Up in (dynamic duo Keaton & Dad won).

Keaton's report to the stake president was amazing. President Strong had Keaton walkthrough each of his areas and companions and talk about what he learned during each area. I loved hearing about the insights he gained from each experience (good or bad). My mom, dad and Keaton all bore wonderful, pure testimony that ended the meeting on a love-filled note. All in all a spectacular weekend!

Sidenote: We did find the big black dog's owner; although I was all for bringing him home with me.

We had a dinner with a bunch of our friends. We had Hatian beans and rice and had some rounds of Resistance, a game in which you're trying to determine who the dirty lying spy is, then we tried a popular French trick-taking card game called Tarot.

Our ward (congregation) has been designated as the gathering place of the French speaker in the Phoenix area so we have a several French speaking missionaries in our ward. Thankfully nobody was effected by the attacks in Paris, although statistically speaking that would have been highly improbable.

This part may be a little confusing so I want you to pay very close attention.

Emily started training a new person to replace her who they found out didn't know computers very well but she was working really hard so they thought it may work out. Until....

one of the guys she was working for decided he was moving to work for some investment company (which manages a couple billion dollars of assets) and make lots of money (pffffff lame). This meant that replacement chick would have to go part time instead of full time, which she didn't want to do so she said SAYONARA SUCKERS. Anyway, Emily was offered an amazing raise AND the ability to work from home. So now Emily codes for most of the day and does financial planning stuff a little too.

 My co-worker didn't show up for work for an entire week. They put him on probation. He didn't show up the following monday. He no longer works there. I'm going to be involved in interviewing the new person to make sure they know how to program computers (or something?).

Yeah, yeah, but what did we do for Thanksgiving? Millions of you are asking.

Well, we flew to Utah, because why not? And Emily's family lives there.

We found a skeleton (fake) and snuck them in people's beds and closets and various locations!

We played many a game. This is Tragedy Looper - a game of time traveling and solving mysteries!

We gave thanks and ate food! Salivate over pictures of this delicious meal. 

We annoyed Morgan the dog!

We also took family pictures in the snow. We don't have pictures of the picture taking or the actual pictures. It was cold. 

We were excited to come back to some warmness, but the Phoenix area was going through some kind of cold spell. Our heater doesn't operate correctly. It warms you right up but then it doesn't stop, it just keeps going. Instead of trying to fix it, we piled on the blankets and waited for it to get warm. A couples days later, the weather is back to it's normal self. Crisis averted. 

I have a feeling things are going to happen in December.

Identity Politics and the Rise of Donald Trump

I believe the reality of modern day politics is that policy doesn't matter, only personality. I believe that's largely how Barack Obama was elected and that's why Donald Trump is doing so well this election season.

Donald Trump has no plan, and when asked about any of his plans he speaks in confident vagaries. Apparently "conservatives" adore him but he was a liberal just a few years ago and still holds many leftist points of view. He's even left of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on some issues. Yet he's been the front-runner in the republican party for the past couple of months!

I've thought about this at length and have decided we have come to the conclusion that people just don't care about the issues. I have already come to expect this from the left when their main points against Mitt Romney seemed to ranged from Big Bird to Binders Full of Women. However, I expect more from the right. Why has every non-general election in the past decade been a landslide for conservatives? I contend it's because more people on the conservative side are actively engaged even when it's not "cool" to do so like in a general election.

However this whole Donald Trump fiasco has gotten me extremely worried and frankly, sad for our country. Trump doesn't have specific policy ideas on many issues and the policy he does present ranges from hopelessly naive, to straight up progressive/liberal. He's even more arrogant than Barack Obama (I never would have thought that possible). Matching arrogance for arrogance is a very dangerous road to go down.

This is what happens when identity politics enters the conservative movement. Conservatives vote for barely-conservatives simply because they are sick and tired of being pushed around by liberal media and finally someone has the guts to stand up to it. Yeah ok, you got me there, but what is he going to do about Russia and Syria? How is he going to clean up the disaster of foreign policy (or lack thereof) of the Obama administration? Is he going to promote freedom and due process, or just ignore the constitution and congress with executive order in the name of "getting things done". Do you actually think he's going to make Mexico pay for a wall?

Under no circumstances will I vote for Trump, and if he gets the nomination, I'm officially throwing up my hands and giving up on the American people.

Dare to know your principles and how the candidates propose policy aligns with them.
Do some research on the issues every now and then. Try to muster the courage to examine the opposing side of the issue. Our nation's prosperity is not guaranteed, our future will be determined by the decisions we make now.

October 2015 - I am a murderous ghost

Another month, another power outtage!!!!!!!!!!! We were eating dinner and again the power went out. This time, we brought blankets out on our patio and and just laid out and watched the storm. That's the way to do it ladies and gentlemen.

We liked it so much that we now read books out on the balcony in the nice warm winter air. This is what I like to call "me reading at night"

One of our friends that just joined our church came over with her couple of kids to play board games with us. We don't have very many games that are good for kids, but we did borrow a game called Robot Turtles from my brother. It's a fun game that teaches kids the concepts of computer programming. It combines two things that I love, board games and education, and it's not crappy either! After that we tried to modify some of our "older people" games to be suitable for kids. It worked out fine but probably not as good as actual kids games.

The company I work for hosted a conference for all of our clients and I and the other developers made a brief appearance to it and then we retreated back to our office, where we always have the lights turned off (of course). However, social interaction occurred! Emily and I went to a dinner at this sports bar/grill sort of place in Tempe, and Emily got to meet the people that I work with and she said I described our humorous dynamics very well (yaknowwhatImsaying?)

You  know those people we played board games with last month through MeetUp.com? Well, we did it again, but this time we had a halloween party and played played the epic Cthulu themed game Arkham Horror. We stopped one of the Ancient Ones from coming into the world and destroying humanity. No big deal. I think it's name was Shub-Niggurath or something along those lines.  We had one more person show up this time which hopefully means our group is growing. We just need to keep watering it and give it plenty of sunshine.

What did we do for Halloween is the question I know has been on everyone's mind. Well there's a game called Betrayal at the House on the Hill, which I've never played before. Halloween night we got together with some friends and explored this really creepy mansion. Emily of course managed to find a dog to love and cherish. At one point, "the haunting" occurred and I was deemed to be the traitor and I had to go out and read my story. Turns out I was a murderous ghost trying to stop the others from escaping a house which was sinking into an underground lake! How wonderful!



You know what we're going to do? We're going to decorate for Christmas immediately. I'm sick of decorating for Christmas and then before you know it, we have to tear it all down. No, not this time my dear friends. We're going to have more time to enjoy it and you can't stop us. Mwahahahaha!








































RAINBOW!!!!!!!!!!!

The Innovators: a book review

Computers and the Internet seems to have permeated almost every aspect of my life. I now utilize and rely on computers for fitness, education, TV, music, income, and communication. A book about the history of computers? Yes please! After all, I believe history is important in order to gain a perspective and context for our lives, and it can be very inspiring as well. Enter "The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson. The book relates the tales of those who were instrumental in the creation of these machines that speed up menial tasks and brings all of the world's information to our fingertips . The book spans from the 1850's and Ada Lovelace  to Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google fame and many people in between. I'll touch on a couple of main takeaways from this book.

1) Innovators work in teams. It's astonishing how just about every successful innovator worked with one or more people who had different and supplementary strengths. A pattern seen often is a duo where one person is a brilliant engineer while the other is highly adept at business. An innovation doesn't mean much if it isn't somehow brought to the masses, which is why those innovators without a skilled marketer generally aren't successful.

2) The innovators responsible for the advent of the modern computer were almost always people who were interested in the Humanities as well as technology. When I previously read Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, I thought Jobs was a unique case because he so strongly believed there should be an intersection between humanities and technology, but it turns out he was one of many who held the same view. These technology innovators were also artists, poets, musicians, as well as mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.

Who should read this book?

Anyone who wants to learn history should read this book. I believe everyone should learn history, especially those living in this day in age, where it is easy to take our prosperity and ease of life for granted.

 Keep in mind that there's a fair amount of technical detail. I'm no stranger to most of the technology discussed and I found all the little technical details to be very interesting. Those with no or little technical background may not find it as interesting and may want to skim over all those details, but the book remains focused on a compelling story, enough that the technical discussion does not drown it out.

This is an inspiring history of one of the most important and world changing inventions in the history of man-kind. I give this two transistors up.