Preview of what's to come

It's been a good year and I've achieved a lot over the past 12 months. I've also learned a lot about myself but the thing that has been completely clear is that I am a total bookworm. I also learned that I like to keep in shape as well (sorry sister, no six pack yet though). My wife has definitely confirmed her skill and love of drawing as well as she's been studying practically non-stop all year.

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I am not much of a goal guy and so last year I didn't really set any goals for myself at the beginning of the new year. However, in about March I decided that I wanted to read 250 books for the year. I achieved that goal! As of right now, my total is at 262 and I suspect I'll add a few more to that number before the end of the year.

Having read so many books, I have written a lot of reviews, and if you want to look through them all, then here you go. However, like last year, I'll be putting together a few different lists over the next couple of weeks, so here's what you have to look forward to:

• Top 5 audio books


• Top 5 series (at least 3 books)


• Top 10 books

On top of my posts for reading, I will be adding a couple of other posts:

• 2011 goals (I'm actually setting some goals this year)


• Top 5 movies (maybe I'll make it 10 if I can remember them all)

I look forward to some more blogging and you'll see that reflected in my goals for 2011.

Reading and More

Time sure flies. I haven't been very good at updating the blog here about what has been going on. So here is a quick glimpse of what's new and happening.

As most of you know, my wife has been going to school. That has kept her pretty busy and left me with lots of free time. Probably my new favorite hobby is to read. When we moved into our home about a year ago I started to read again and with my new Kindle I usually read a couple hours or more a day. I keep track of all my reading and books on Goodreads(post devoted to Goodreads to come).

With reading, our TV doesn't get much use. In fact, we usually turn the TV on for 2 hours a week. Typically on Sunday evening we will watch Extreme Makeover and Desparate Housewives. That is it. I don't even turn the TV on to watch sports (instead I tend to use a site like justin.tv). We don't have cable and some of our channels don't work. Whenever I see an awesome deal on TVs (Slickdeals) I have to remind myself that this would be the most pointless purchase. We just don't use the TV.

The time that I do watch TV is in the morning. I have been getting up every morning and going over to our clubhouse that has a pretty nice workout facility. I run 3 times a week and usually turn on Sportscenter while I am there. However, I have started listening to a lot of audio books now on my phone and so I don't watch a whole lot. I do turn it on though.

I went to the theater for the first time in almost a year last week to see Avatar. We saw it in 3D and it was alright. I quite enjoyed the film itself and the graphics were absolutely awesome. 3D technology, however, has a long way to go. The glasses are pretty limited and hurt my eyes. They also make it so the colors aren't as bright in the film. If I was going to see it again, I probably wouldn't go to the 3D version of it. I would definitely see it in the theater though as I am sure the film just won't be the same on DVD. My wife didn't really like the movie. I would give it 8 out of 10. And yes, it's better than Titanic in my opinion. I am laughing at the difference between those movie sites. Clearly, times have changed.

I have been trying to come up with good food ideas. With Anya going back to school, I typically get to make the food. I like to make homemade bread, lasagna, and chicken enchilada casserole. If you have a favorite recipe, leave it here. I will post a more detailed post about preparing food at some point.

Work is going good. Still using and working with Drupal. In fact, there is a group meetup coming up next Tuesday in our offices downtown, if anyone is interested.

I know this post was all over the place, but I wanted to get caught up.

Russia - A Unique Land

Well, it's almost here. Just a few more hours and we're taking off for the Motherland. I can't believe it's been 3 years since I've been home from my mission! It is certainly crazy. Even crazier is that Anya and I will be celebrating our 2 year anniversary while there. It is going to be great to get away for a bit and relax some. It has been 2 years since we have taken a vacation so this is a well deserved break.

As I head back to Russia, I have a much better understanding of what the Russian culture is like than when I was serving my mission there. Not only have I had time to think about my mission and learn from it, but I've been living with a Russian now for 2 years :). A lot of people are still confused about what Russia is really like and I still get funny questions all the time. As a result, I have decided that over the next 2 weeks, I am going to be writing blog posts about the things I find unique and peculiar about the Great Mother Russia. Really, these things may not be unique to Russia but they are differences between Russia and America (the two countries I have spent so much time in). Here is a list of different topics that I plan to blog about:

• McDonalds in Russia
• Train
• Apartment Buildings
• Street Conditions (roads, drunks)
• Rionok
• Bus/Tram/Gazelle
• CDs/DVDs and Copyright Laws
• Grandmother's selling
• No bags in stores
• Church Members
• Moscow Metro
• Food/Candy

If you have any preference about what I blog about first, or if there is something else you would like to hear about, please leave a comment and let me know. I hope that others will make comments on my posts who have also been to Russia so we can get some different perspectives on subjects. As a warm up, here are a few pictures from the great country:

The first thing people think of when they think of Russia. (Moscow)

How most of Russia actually looks (see those beautiful homes in the background). (Izhevsk)

And yes, Russia really is beautiful. (Samara)

Long Time, New Home

I know it has been several weeks since I have written, but things have finally settled down. We got into the new home without too many problems and we had a lot of help. We are loving the new place, and I think that the thing I love the most is all of the space! It is so open and there is so much room. I guess the worst part is how much of it gets underused. One of the main reasons I haven't written for so long is because I haven't taken pictures. I finally got to it, and so here they are:

The office:


My timeout room:


The family room:


The dining room and kitchen:


Loving this:


The empty living room:


You can see the full album here.

Also, here are a couple of videos that I did of the house:





Let me know what you think! As soon as we get the couches then I think we are going to start having people over. We are super excited and are super grateful.

New Home

We are buying a new home! Our first one! Most of you already know this, but I haven't written this until now because I was waiting for the loan to go through. We do all the official closing stuff on Wednesday the 25th so hopefully all will go well that way. The home is in North Salt Lake. Here are some pictures (I know they are small, but that is what I have for now. More will come later).

We are both super excited (obviously). I do have to give a big thanks to Tyler. He recommended Margaret Malherbe to us as a realtor, and we could not be more happy. She was absolutely awesome and she made sure we understood all of the contracts and what we were getting into. Her number one motto is honesty in real estate. She wasn't worried at all about making a sale (which in this economy is pretty impressive). She only worried about the fact that we were getting a great home. It was lots of fun with her and I will gladly recommend her to anyone (I recommended BJ to her already) - especially first time homebuyers because she takes you through everything that is going on.

Oh yeah, the home is brand new (no one has ever lived there). We love the idea that we will be the first time people living in the home. There is pool and work out facility just across the street that is part of the club house. We made the offer at the beginning of February so to be in the home by the end of the month has meant a lot of stress, but it looks like everything will work out. More to come later!!!

Specs: 3 bed, 2.5 bath, 1700 sq. ft., 2 car garage


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Nimfahtography

I recently redid the Nimfahtography site for my wife's photography using Drupal. If you haven't seen the new site, check it out. If you want to see all of the technical details of how I did it and why I did it, you can see the write up here. This is just one example of something you can build in Drupal in less than a week (working a couple hours a day on it).

Done and Done

Yes, I am officially done. The only thing not yet official is my diploma - I am still waiting on that to come in the mail. Other than that, I am working full time and not doing any more schooling for the time being. It is a nice and relaxing feeling right now and I am very much enjoying it. My brother's wife, Christie, and my wife planned a graduation surprise party for us on the 26th of December with several of my family and friends attending. I would say it was a great event, but unfortunately, I was down and out the whole day, with a lot of it spent in the bathroom :). I felt really bad, but I understood that everyone had a good time and BJ ate my share of food. Thanks to Christie and to my wife for the great time. Here is the video that my wife put together for the party!


Oh yeah, I have been enjoying lots of sports programming with my time off, specifically bowl games. Only another 5 days to the big Utah game. I am so excited.

Forgotten

No, I haven't forgotten to write on my blog, I just haven't had a lot of time and I haven't know what to write about. I wanted to quickly write about one of the things I love most about the holiday season. It was a tradition that every other year, my family would go to see "The Forgotten Carols" by Micheal McLean. It has been a few years (4 or 5) since I was last able to attend, so this year Anna I decided to go. We absolutely loved it.

If you have never been or heard the carols, I strongly recommend that you try to go next year (it is already complete this year here in Utah). The songs are wonderful and I love them, but there is simply a different spirit with seeing the whole story that you can't get from listening to the songs or reading the book. I found my favorite of the carols that someone made a video of, and have posted it here as well.



I absolutely love The Forgotten Carols.

Tooth

I know that I said Anna would be bloggin' about her teeth, but she decided against it (I am unsure why). Well, I had to get these pictures from her that she took and put them up. I am not putting them up right on my blog so that you are warned. They are disturbing (they were much more disturbing in the larger quality). So, if you click on the link, you've been warned.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE TOOTH

Let me know what you think.

Don't Say This...

I get these things forwarded on to me all the time. Usually I don't look at them (sorry), but I watched this and had a good laugh. My wife really liked it too. Good thing I have never said any of these things.

AWS

Before I get in to my main point here, I have to say that my wife is awesome. She had her tooth pulled on Friday and she is doing well. I know that it hurts like no other, but she has been strong through it all. Expect to see a post about it soon on her blog.



This past week I had the opportunity to got to a conference with my job. The conference was all about Amazon Web Services (AWS). For those of you who don't know, AWS is basically a hosting company for your website (i.e. the place where I keep all of the files, pictures, etc.).

The cool thing about AWS is it's all about the cloud. I know it sounds funny but it is a pretty simple idea that is taking over the internet. The cloud is suppose to be more secure and more reliable. With a normal hosting company, you have a machine where all of your information is sitting, and if that machine goes down then you are hosed until they get it back up. With the cloud, they replicate your data across a few different machines in different locations, so if a machine goes down, your data should still be available because it is sitting on another machine somewhere.

Probably the coolest thing about AWS is its flexibility. You pay for what you need. For example, if I have a super busy site, and lots of traffic, I am going to want more servers on the back end servicing those requests. But what if I am a company who doesn't have a lot of traffic on my site, but tomorrow I release a new video that becomes hugely popular. With a normal hosting company, you call, ask them for more machines, pay a lot of money, and eventually get it. With AWS, you turn the machines on yourself (through the internet), they fire up, and you pay for them while you use them. When traffic dies down, you can turn the machines back off, and you are done paying for them.

All in all, we learned a lot about the different services that AWS provides and how they all work and so forth. We also heard from some companies that are using AWS (I can only remember Podango right now). I love learning new things about technology.

In a couple of days I will post something about life, since I know some people are probably tired of all the technology :). In the mean time check out AWS and enjoy.

Raging Fun

My wife and I recently enjoyed a day at the water park. It was my wife's first time ever at a water park and she had a blast. I did too for that matter. Now, to be honest, we were both a bit worried because of those clouds overhead, but actually it turned out to be a bit of a blessing because there was hardly anyone in the park. I guess everyone got scared and decided not to come.

While were there, we did meet one Russian lifeguard that started to talk to us in Russian. Darn, you think no one understands and then out of nowhere someone says something to you in Russian. At least we were just chatting :). We absolutely loved it and it was probably one of the funnest days we have had since our honeymoon. Only regret that I have is that we didn't go earlier in the summer because now we probably don't have a chance to get back.



So, that is my beautiful wife and I together. Of course I had to hang around on the ropes. My wife wouldn't join me though so I am the only monkey in this picture.

Raging waters is pretty cool, but the coolest waterpark I have ever been to would have to be Schlitterbahn in Texas. It has tons of huge slides and some of them feel like they go forever.


We don't have the money to go to Texas just for a waterpark though, so for now Raging Waters will do. Regardless, the day was a blast and we really enjoyed it.

Planetarium

So Anna and I recently got a pass to the Clark Planetarium (formerly known as the Hansen Planetarium). The pass itself cost $50 (that's a dual membership), and that gets us in to anything and everything for the whole year. We have already gotten our money's worth out of the pass - we have been to 5 shows already. Since the shows cost either $6 or $8, that would come up to be at least $60. And that is in less than a month.

I don't only like the price though, but the entertainment there is very good and educational (for the most part). Anna loves the 3D movies and they are very exciting. I myself am always up for a great laser show (these are the not so educational part of the planetarium). Both are quite relaxing, and the laser shows are a blast.

We still have lots of movies to go see and we are looking forward to it. The planetarium is a great place for dates and overall an inexpensive way to spend some time with that one you love the most! Oh yeah, check out my review of The Alps.

Tire Trash

So, about 2 months ago I noticed that my tire was going flat and so I filled it up. It continued to go flat pretty quickly. Well, the guys at Jiffy Lube told me I definitely needed to take it in and get a new tire. So, I took it in and there was a problem (I had driven on it when it was low so they told me the tire was ruined). We replaced the tire (for way too much) back on June 28th. So, I noticed about 2 weeks later that the tire was going flat again, so I filled it up and decided to take it back in.

This past Saturday, we were on our way to take it to the tire place when, well, things didn't go so well. We were on I-80 and driving down to State Street. When we were getting close to the exit, it sounded like the road was really bad. As we kept going we figured out it wasn't the road but the tire. Well, as you know there is no where to pull off on I-80 with all of the construction, so we got off on our exit and pulled off as soon as we could. We got out and here is what we saw:



My wife had her camera with her since we were going to get a new lens for her after that. Fortunately, when I bought the tire I had bought a full size spare and I drove on that until Monday as they didn't have any tires big enough. I think Anna and I are both really thankful that neither of us got hurt. That tire is nasty though!

Movie Time

So, my wife and I have been watching a lot of movies lately and we have been enjoying that. We watched Step Up 2 a couple days ago, and to my surprise I enjoyed it. I sure wish I could dance, but since I can't I get a joy out of watching other people do it.

Also, we watched Drilbit Taylor and that was pretty good. Owen Wilson is always funny and my wife really likes watching his movies. She has also watched the first two Pirates Of the Caribbean and loves Johnny Depp (I swear all women do). Anyways, here is a clip of some sweet moves.