Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

I learned this week that even though the new building is the exact same distance as the old one I worked in, it takes less time to get there. Excellent. Something about how driving south on highways is better than driving north on highways or what I usually took: city streets. Plus, it's nice to sit near the people I work with. I feel less...isolated...at work. Less likely to resort to instant messenger to communicate to teammates. :) Oh and my coworkers like that we're nearer to a lot of restaurants. I suppose that's a perk.  read more »

"You gotta bend your knees! Or you'll have to do it all over again!"

-one of the 7-year-old kids in my Primary class, explaining what she learned about baptism today

Rebecca's cold has passed, but hit me with a vengeance. Instead of being a quick hit though, it took all week of sniffles before on Friday and Saturday it knocked me off my feet and I couldn't do anything. This is a mean bug. I don't like it. [yeah...I didn't like it much either. Who would? -beck]

Rebecca officially took a sick day on Monday to finish off her cold while the rest of her work was being packed up for her move. Everyone was in a huff over the coffee machine being packed too early on Thursday, apparently. Her first day of work at the new building will be on Monday.  read more »

What banal mediocrity.

While Eragon was a mediocre book which entertained, it followed a somewhat intelligent path of least resistance to create an enjoyable experience. Eldest was a pretentious long-winded entry into fantasy which can only be categorized under the term: forgettable. Gosh, this was a long book.

Why even write it about Eragon? After 300 pages, the only interesting things were happening to other characters  read more »

I have been working on this program for several days, attempting to start from scratch and write the entire program myself by using what I have already learned from the previous work in file input-output (IO). For this program, instead of copying a tutorial, I determined the design of my program before I began to code and set it within the linguistic parameters of what I knew, which at this point was only IO. We got rid of the textbook and have been tailoring my lessons more closely with what it is that I want to learn.  read more »

Good advice for every guy who wants to have a solid relationship AND play his video games.

1. Find out if your girlfriend has ever played video games before. She may not be a full-blown gamer, but maybe she played Mario games when she was younger. Or maybe she likes playing an Internet game from time to time. If you know her gaming history, you'll have a better chance of finding a game she'll enjoy now.

2. Remind your girlfriend that if you both play video games, you'll be able to spend even more quality time together.  read more »

“Only in America - do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front of the store.”

-unknown

Ah-choo! I started getting the first hints of a cold Tuesday night, and by Friday I was working from home so I wouldn't have to get up all the time to go blow my nose and/or bother coworkers nearby with my flowings and blowings, sniffings and whiffings. Saturday was probably the worst of it, though, and I felt like doing nothing but sitting on the couch in a daze. And so we watched a couple of movies. What else do you do when you'd rather not have to move or think?  read more »

Or, Why Did the American Political System Fail?

Let me state for the record that I believe in global warming. I can't remember a time when I didn't believe that we have been destroying our environment. I believe in doing things about this: I feel better using public transportation everyday, only owning one car, riding my bike, recycling, minimizing energy use, etc. What is interesting about An Inconvenient Truth is not the message it presents (almost all the information was old news to me), but Rebecca's and my response to the rhetoric: it was cringe-worthy.  read more »

Douglas Adam's potency as a satirical/humor writer of science fiction novels (read: Hitchhiker's series) could be attributed to the mainstream understanding of science fiction as a genre. Because of films like Star Wars and others which permeated the consciousness of the American popular arts, Douglas Adams' works of humor captivated a higher level of social experience than had he written a mystery novel.  read more »