stupid photo of ice

Yesterday I spent a good hour and change shoveling my driveway and part of the sidewalk and moving all the snow into the backyard. Why? If/when it happens you'll know about it. Anyway, after dropping of a shovelful of snow in the back I started looking at my house. Notably the icicles on it. It looked pretty, in a high school photo class assignment way. Never-the-less I shot it...after I finished moving the cubic yard of snow.



Oh yeah, check the red signature. Awesome isn't it?

Daybreak

So the other night I just drove around. I wasn't going anywhere specific, I was just going for the sake of going. I wound up in Herriman out by where Kennecott processes the heavier metals they unearth. To get to that lovely and scenic local I had to drive through Daybreak, a housing development that Kennecott started. It's a tremendous mess of one way streets and roundabouts, but it seems nice enough despite all that (and being miles away FROM ANYTHING GOOD). On my way back I noticed a collection of seemingly perfect ledges in a shopping area.

Before I get too far along, the whole place seems way too nice just to be a housing development. It's either A) a cult that's going to attempt to take over the valley or commit mass suicide or B) a huge cover up for what could only be a disaster of epic proportions that Kennecott somehow had a hand in. It's just weird out there. Anyway, back to the story...

I pull into a parking lot, hop out and begin to look around.

Side note: I feel that now is as good a time as any to let you know that I was wearing my gray hoodie, green beanie and black knit gloves. Sensible people would realize that I was just trying to keep from freezing to death. Idiots in an almost too perfect housing development/cult epicenter would think I came to rob people blind. Sorry.

All the ledges are the perfect height: just below knee high. And there are flat gaps galore! It's a hell of a spot. Or it would be if everything wasn't knobbed. (But hey! They have a fire pit that's going day and night!) I decided that it would be a better idea to go back in the daytime, so I left.

That was Wednesday. I come back Friday to be greeted with 36 degrees for a high, a fierce, bone chilling wind (Remember the fire pit?), and a family who was having their family portraits taken.



I came for the ledges, but I stuck around for the giant metal guy leaning into the wind. How I missed him I'm not sure, but there he was.





Daybreak may be full of cultist freaks who have been mutated by whatever is buried under their houses, but they do make a guy feel welcome buy having a fire going.

My Biggest Miss... photographically

So these photos have been sitting around for a year now, and nobody has really seen them which is really disappointing to me and the guy who owns the car. The car is a turbocharged Integra Type R, and this is a busted feature:

How I'd make "The Next Iron Chef" cooler

"The Next Iron Chef" is a show on the Food Network that is searching for the ubiquitous 43rd American Iron Chef. If you remember them seminal Japanese version then you'll remember they only had 4, but the Iron Chef Italian never won and wasn't included with the rest. Why America needs so many, I'll never know, BUT I do know how to make the search show infinitely better.


Rivals my ass!

First allow me to introduce you to the suck-fest that is the current format: Iron Chef hopefuls are presented with a challenge, they attempt challenge, whoever wins said challenge gets some perk for the elimination challenge, they compete in elimination challenge, present food to the judges, judges judge then kick one chef back into obscurity. This works well and makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

What could make it better? Direct competition! Skip that first, useless challenge and let the judges at them. Then the judges pick the two worst and they face off in Kitchen Stadium.

Liking it so far? If so, good! If not, bail now cause I doubt anything I have to say from here on out will bring you back.

Here's the kicker: In the judges challenge in the current format they occasionally have to work with weird ingredients (like the OG JDM series did ALL THE TIME!). What I'm proposing is they work with weird (and/or alive cause nothing is better than watching nervous folk have to kill a fish flopping around a cutting board)ingredients in the elimination challenge! Used to cooking with chicken, fish, pork and beef? Well get used to working with insanely rare and impossibly expensive sea urchin! Winner gets immunity from the next week's elimination challenge until there are too few contestants for immunity to work out.

Genius, I know and thank you for recognizing my brilliance.

Verizon Android phones

I went to Verizon today to get something fixed on my bill ($45 for unlimited email and web? I THINK NOT YOU CORPORATE ASSHOLES!) and, while waiting, I took it upon myself to play with the Motorola Droid phone.



It was alright, but I didn't like it. Here's why: It's too clunky. It's small yes, but it doesn't feel like a new phone (specifically one that's competing with the iPhone) should. Having an actual keyboard is cool, but at the same time I'm used to typing on a touch screen that's a lot smaller than that one. Also having to go into landscape mode to view teh interwebz annoys me to no end. I only look at UtahHondas.net in landscape mode, everything else is viewed in portrait mode in my world. I really dig the Android OS, it kicks the shit out of Windows Mobile.

Side note, ever have something on your phone just suddenly stop working? Happens to me about once a week. The Windows start thing just disappears, along with everything along the top of my screen (battery meter, service indicators, volume). It's so much fun having to turn my phone off then back on just to be able to fire off a text.

Android feels more fluid,and easier to use. Windows Mobile makes me feel like either a dunce when something goes wrong, or like I want to throw the phone into traffic

So basically I'm not getting a Droid because I don't like it. I'm also not getting one because it'd run me $200 and I'm not dropping that kind of cash on a phone...on a phone that isn't an iPhone. But there another phone!



It's the HTC Droid Eris. I know it's only running Android 1.5 and it's basically a rebadged Hero, but it felt better. It felt better in my hands, playing around on it felt smoother, and it looked better.

Cnet.com gave both phones 4 out of 5, but I give the edge to the HTC phone. Now all I have to do is count down the days until I'm eligible for an upgrade and save my pennies

Yeah, about what I said last time...

So on the Ruins last week Brad got completely shit faced hammered and picked a fight with Darrell. If you recall last week's (or whenever the hell I posted it) post I said Darrell is a solid fantasy pick cause he flies below the radar and doesn't start shit. In light of everything that transpired I still stand by my statement (cause I refuse to be wrong on this!).

The upside of the beating, and subsequent dual booting, is that they're still on good terms AND Darrell beat his prediction of "dropping you in 3" by annihilating Brad's face in 1 fell swoop. I mean Jesus Christ, look at his face!



The biggest lesson we can take away from this is DON'T PICK A FIGHT WITH A GUY WHO KNOWS HOW TO BOX. Unless you KNOW you can fight better than him, then don't fight him. But this all goes out the window when you've downed a bottle or two of wine.

Unfortunately this week's episode comes when my brother (and wingman for all things TV related) is gonna be out of town. Our University of Utah Runnin' Utes are gonna be in Vegas for the Las Vegas Invitational... Whatever the hell that is. All I know is that he's in Vegas, I'm here alone and Thanksgiving is being pushed back to Sunday the 29th in the Chandler house. My loss is your gain. I'll end up watching it on Wednesday, and I'll probably throw something up soon there after. Probably with a lot more profanity too

TV

Last night my brother and I caught up on our shows. Our shows are Criminal Minds, Tosh.0, and Real World Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins. The first two don't drum up much interesting conversation, but The Ruins (and The Real World) are over analyzed and picked apart by us like we're two coaches breaking down film. Here's what our breakdown produced:


#1 Derrick and Darrell should be your some of your first fantasy picks*.





(Yes, I said fantasy picks. There has to be a reality TV fantasy league somewhere. Hell, Simmons has probably got one going, lord knows he talks about it enough on his podcast.)

(Side note, buy his book. It's 700 pages long, and I only made it through 14 pages before it got ripped away from me but I laughed a lot in those 14 pages. Plus it can stop a bullet. Back to the issue at hand...)

(*This all depends on the scoring system. If it's based on performance in the challenges, then pick these guys. If it's about fighting, getting wasted, flashing and sleeping around then pick up Tonya. She's money in all of those categories, but for the purposes of this blog it'll be about performance in the challenges)

Derrick and Darrell should be your top, if not, #1 picks. They don't cause any drama, they dominate in the challenges and they don't lose the elimination challenges. Most of the time you see them in the background or in the odd interview but they're never getting trashed and kicking someone's face in. They almost always make it to the final challenge and they usually win the final challenge.


#2. Cohutta is a fucking gangster



Why? #1 He was nailing Kelly Ann on his season of The Real World and almost knocked her up. Man's game

#2 He killed a bear! That's where he got the bear claw he wears around his neck. I like to think he killed it either with a bowie knife or his bare hands.

#3 His last name. It's Grindstaff. How fucking gnarly is that? Fucking gnarly, that's how gnarly it is. It sounds like he should be killing hoards of trolls or something while riding a a horse through a lightning storm.


#3. The game is like the mafia

You meet the leaders one one one away from everybody else, you've gotta promise them something and if you don't they throw you to the lions. If anyone is the don it's gotta be Evan (who coincidentally is a great fantasy pick. He wins all the time, he starts a lot of stuff AND he gets around... At least this year he did, but he loses points for plowing Veronica *shudder*)

Those are just some of the observations we've made. All that said, I'd be on that show in a heart beat. Unfortunately I'm not "controversial" (read: not an alcoholic or man-whore) enough, and neither is my brother.

And I'm not athletic enough. I'd drag whichever team I'd be on down. I'd be like Eric, except probably not as funny oand definitely not as fat.

I'll be back next week with a breakdown of episode 8, which looks to make my first point completely useless

the little things

I'm gonna go ahead and say that you bought the shoes you're wearing (if you're wearing a pair, if not go put some on or at least put a pair next to your computer) because they look good and/or they're comfy. I bought all of mine because of those reasons. Except the internet thing. This guy doesn't buy his shoes off the internet cause most of my shoes aren't the same size, but they fit exactly the same.

I digress

I grabbed my Herman 2's, Hsu's and Koston 1's because they looked good, they were comfortable and...

Because the insoles looked awesome.

Seriously. You may think I'm an idiot, but that was the tipping point. And here are the insoles so you can see the awesomeness:

Herman 2's


Hsu's


AL50's


Koston's

More from the trip

While Garrison was getting his 5050 Nick was skating in the street. After Garrison got his everyone joined Nick.



Security cares... Not really


Mach Ten 360 flip




Jovi doing his best switch 180, me doing my best attempt to rip off a Ray Barbee add


"Wake up Jeff, put your shoes on, we're at Grandma's house"

Guth Family trip

A couple days ago I hit up Guth for a pre-work sesh. The usual heads were there: Garrison, Jovi, Nick, Mikey, Cale, and some others who aren't really relevant to this story. And Jeff was there. It was the first time I'd seen him since he blew out his knee (speaking of his blown out knee, he went in for surgery this morning to get it taken care of. Get well homie!) and he was mobbin around on his cruiser.

Eventually the talk of going skating came up, and some of Garrison's spots came up. There was a bump to bar and this thing called the Swamp Rail. Eventually (45 minutes, pretty quick for Guth truth be told) we piled into the cars and went to the rail. Here's what we got:



Glenn got out of picking up a family member so he could come and try front boards. Try being the operative word


Glenn's board shot into the swamp after a bail...


...And everyone came to survey the incident. Jovi saved the day with a giant ass hangar


Next board up for a trip into the swamp was Garrison's


Perched like a bird


Cale said it best: George of the jungle

Lesson Learnin Time

So this week I've had 2 shoots in which I've learned some very important lessons. Let's start with the first shoot and what I got out of that:



Lesson 1: Fresh Batteries every time, all the time.

If you poke through the massive 4 picture set on flickr you'll notice that there's a lot of flat light going on. Why is that? Well it's because my transmitter/receiver set was low on batteries, specifically on the receiver side. That meant I had to be hella close to the receiver in order for it to fire. By hella close I mean 18 inches, therefore the flat light.

Lesson 2: Do not piss off the locals, cause they were there first. I managed to piss off the neighbors when I took this shot:



From what I was told (I was being yelled at in Spanish, so the owner of the car had to translate) my flashes were lighting up their house about 125 yards away. I didn't understand much, but when I heard "policia" and "aqui" I decided to change my set up.

Lesson 3: Photoshop when you need to.



Look at the CRX. Look closely at it. Look around the passenger side headlight. Notice something? It's the flash I used to light up the Civic. I was going to take care of that, but I got lazy. And now it haunts me, like the beating of a hideous heart!

That was Wednesday, now on to Thursday's shoot:



Lesson 4: Chicks > Cars

Don't get me wrong. When I saw it coming down my street I thought it was an R35. It's a gorgeous car, no arguing about that. And the owner's girlfriend (my friend Kathleen) is equally gorgeous. This brings me to my question: Which photo is more popular?:

a:


b:


If you guessed A then you're wrong. B currently has 24 views while A has 16. This trend is true of every photo on my flickr page where there's a girl and a car. The girl picture always has more, no matter what. Hot girl pwns record holding Supra, 9 second Civic hatchback, drift car. There is one odd trend, but that's another topic for another day.

Lesson 5: Look before you leap.




I'm catching a lot of flack for these two shots in particular. Why? The glare from the over head lights and my reflection in the front bumper. Did I notice the glare? From the moment the owner parked the car, but I didn't care. It looked cool and and brought out some of the more subtle lines in the car. My reflection, on the other hand, I noticed when I was in Photoshop cleaning up the front bumper. I would have nixed it, but the owner and his girlfriend don't seem to mind (or if they do they aren't telling me) so I'm in one of their pictures.

Learn from my failings and you will succeed! Well, maybe not succeed but you'll do better.

AND I made a literary reference somewhere in this post. First person to correctly identify the reference (title and author of oiginal work, and quote the reference back to me) gets a free reasonably priced lunch on me!

My Aunts' trip to The U

A few weeks ago my mom had surgery and her sister's flew out to Utah to help my brother, father and I take care of her and hold down the house. My mom bounced back pretty quick so My brother and I took them up to the U for a tour. Here is what transpired on our adventure:



First stop was The Huntsman Center, where Jason (my brother) spends 40-ish hours a week. He also works at Starbucks and is a full time student.


Jason gave us a little tour of the basketball office. Inside there were the MWC Regular Season Champion and Conference Tournament Trophies. We share the Regular Season Champion title with The Team Down South and New Mexico, but the Conference Tournament title is all ours


The Huntsman and it's newly refinished floor. My Aunts were nervous when we all walked in and it was dark. They were scared when Jason wandered off to turn on the lights, and they were in awe when the lights came on.


Here's some detail of the floor. MWC logo in the keys, UTAH on the baselines.


There are my Aunts!


There's Jason, running the clock so my Aunts can see the scoreboards lit up and shot clock light behind the backboards light up.


This guy is the reason Coach Boylen is our coach. He found this a week before he interviewed for the Utah job and saw it as a sign. I think it was a good sign, Coach B is the fuckin man


Jason had to go turn off the lights after he showed us the locker room. This is the view looking out of the home team tunnel. It's intense, especially if you can imagine the stands full of screaming fans.



Here's some of the better drawings on the temporary wall in the Starbucks in the University Hospital. Chris, a nurse, started it by drawing every employee at Starbucks on the wall one night. Soon everyone with a Sharpie took it upon themselves to add it the drawing. Most of it sucks