Do these commercials have the reaction that they intend?

When I see this one I believe they want me to avoid drugs . . . however, the feeling is one of such whimsy. My impression from this ad is that drugs are fun.



This one makes me think gaining weight is awesome. I don't feel like avoiding heavy foods, I feel like reveling in them.



Am I the only one? I know what I am supposed to think because of who pays for the ad, but the way they make me feel is exactly opposite.

Chad Vader goes to the Dentist

This last week someone posted a video of his kid messed up on laughing gas and pain killers after a trip to the dentist, pretty funny. 11 million views in a couple weeks.



But, what's funnier was the community response. Here's Chad Vader's (Darth Vader's ne'er do well son that works as a night manager in a small local grocery store) response. This is one of many.



"Don't put that in your vent Chad!" Awesome! . . . I'm a nerd.

If you liked the secret . . .

If you find the 'science' found in the secret compelling, you may still (in spite of that) find the following review helpful.

Ari Brouillette - The Secret Saved My Life

Scroll down to the first review. If you like his criticism, you will also enjoy his other book reviews, click on his name.

New youtube contest (the onion)

Make a video that's "actually good"

Bachelorhood

My cousin Jen took me to a magical place this week. A group of her friends have xbox 360 parties. They have about 5 tvs and as many consoles. They set them all up and play from 10PM until dawn. Here's a picture:

You can see the 2 tvs on the left and right and above them is an HD projector screen, about 10 ft diagonal.


Also the latest qik video (on the right) is of the same.

Homeless James Bond

This one's great, homeless James Bond. "Consumed by my dream!"

Very cool video, 1 year in 40 seconds

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Some more charts

more music charts

Pugs Puppies

Little puglies

Couple of video from the Coldplay concert

King of men . . .

Some guys just have everything going for them.

Bluegrass Evening

Wednesday night at the Rocky Mountain Pizza Company on Wasatch Blvd. the local bluegrass musicians get together and jam. I used to go with buddies when I was still single. I really enjoyed the music and the atmosphere. So, Traci and I have gone a couple of times since returning home to Utah. The problem is that in the last few years either my tastes have gotten better or the pizza there has gotten worse, because the food is not good. However, the bluegrass hasn't changed and that's what I really go for anyway.

I took a little video with my phone, my cousin Jen went with us this week and you can see her long, flowing hair in the shot.



There were about 30 musicians there this week. You can hear them playing pretty well in the video, but it sound much better live. There just folks, and you can tell they love playing. It's one of those things.

New Feature - Qik Feed

I finally broke down and jailbroke my phone (pun, pun, PUN, pun). Jailbreaking the iphone allows you to add functionality that apple hasn't approved. One such function is Qik. Qik is live streaming from my phone. So I can take videos from the phone and while I am doing so, if you are watching my blog, you'll be seeing what I see. There's a 2 or 3 second delay, but it's pretty close to live. So, enjoy it.

Also, if nothing is being recorded live, you can watch the latest video by clicking on the Qik button on the video, it will bring up thumbnails of the last few videos I have shot.

Granted the quality is low, but I think . . . this is mindblowingly cool. I'm a geek like that.

There's a video from this morning of the spider that we set up in our office, instead of working. Beautiful.

Up in the Night

I have been remiss in my blogging duties of late, so I guess this blog post will tell you why.

I got a new job a couple of weeks ago, nothing profound, it's a $12 an hour temp job at the Univeristy of Utah. I do billing for the hospital, which means that I call the insurance company and say, "I want my two dollars!" Or $200,000, as the case may be.

Anyway, it pays the student loans until I can get more gainful employment.

I have also been working for Famous Fashions Found. They are an online fashion retailer. We are in the process of moving the site to a new host will all kinds of new capabilities, like affiliate marketing, promotions, and stuff.

This is what a day looks like for me:

Traci wakes up early, like 6:00 to get ready for her work, she's on the 4 10s with the state so she needs to be into work by 7:30 so she can go home at 6:00. Long days, but it means that she has 3-day weekends. Usually I try to sleep for another 30 minutes or so because then I will be ready about the same time and we go into work together. We are living in Sandy for a few months and we both work downtown so we drive together.

So, I start work around 8:00, and I am off around 4:30. Then I go over to the library to wait for Traci and work on Famous Fashions. We drive home together at 6:30, get something to eat for dinner, and maybe relax for a few minutes, that makes it about 8:00. I will then try to put in a few more hours of work before going to bed.

I do this every day but Friday, when I can leave early because I don't have to wait for Traci. Saturday this week involved winterizing the rental house, looking for a washer and dryer, and then another days worth of work on Famous Fashions.

Now some of you might be medical residents or something like that, and you are probably thinking, "Wow, sounds like a pretty light week."

The temp job at the U is low stress, the hospitals and the insurance companies have computer systems that talk to each other, so I am not so much collecting on bad debt as I am correcting information in the computer system so the bills go through correctly and get paid. 80% of the time after the hospital staff has input the information into the computer system, the billing goes out, the insurance receives it, and pays the bills without being without and human intervention.

Going from being not busy at all, to very busy, has messed with my routine. I haven't been to the gym (although I hurt my back 3 weeks ago, so I wouldn't have been for 2 weeks anyway), I haven't been posting fascinating blog entries, and worst of all, I haven't been able to watch nearly as much TV. That's not right.

So, the other weird thing is that I am having trouble sleeping, so it's about 5:00AM right now, I have been up since 3:00, can't sleep. I guess I am off to the gym, I was up to running 3 miles, before the injury, I'd like to get back to it soon.

Thumbs up . . . , or down???

I found this new video called "WSYK." I can't decide if I like it or not, what do you think??


What Should You Know: Understanding the Financial Crisis from openSermo on Vimeo.


What Should You Know: The Bailout from openSermo on Vimeo.

Interesting or annoying?

Why I no longer speed, and how I got married . . .

I almost never speed. There is something humiliating about being pulled over that I just can't stand. My natural reaction to being stopped by a cop is to get angry and act belligerently. Of course, this makes the situation worse, so I suck up my pride and act contrite. The process of stuffing my ego down into my stomach is supremely painful for me, so I just don't speed. It isn't worth it. It's not about the fine, it's about the pride.

Let me tell you how I became this way. When I was still single, I was interested in this girl. I took her out a couple of times, but she wasn't giving me any signals. She was nice, pleasant, when I asked her out she said yes, but no signals. At the time I was still shy and afraid of rejection, and in need of signals in order to make moves in progressing the relationship.

So, after a few dates, I became frustrated and insecure and began to wonder if there was any potential there or not. I was really interested in this girl, which made things worse. Had I been willing to walk away, it would have been easy to make a move and accept rejection if rejection was the response.

I noticed that this girl was really friendly with my roommate and I began to wonder if she was interested in him. In retrospect, it was probably that she liked me, and my roommate was safe, so she was buddying up with him, in order to have more in common with me. (I don't mean that she didn't like my roommate, they were friends, but I don't think she was interested in him in that way.) But, at the time, I was jealous of their relative ease and decided to back off a little.

This is where we get to the part about speeding. There was a ward activity (this girl was in my ward) where we all went down to Moab. I drove a lifted Toyota Tacoma at the time. I thought that truck was pretty cool. I drove it down to Moab, planning on doing a little 4 wheeling and showing it off. (In this, I was dissappointed.) I had a friend from high school who was in the ward with me on the drive.

I had gotten my first speeding ticket a few weeks earlier. A motorcycle cop (who was not on his bike at the time) saw me speeding and furiously waved me to pull over as he ran after me. Being afraid of the consequences if I didn't stop, I complied. (Today I might just keep driving and if he caught me pretend I didn't see him in the rearview.) Being pulled over by a cop on foot is humiliating. So I got a ticket. It was a good one, too. I think it was like 13 over the limit.

So, on my way down to Moab we went through Price. Those of you who have been through Price understand that most of the revenue in Price comes from out of town speeders. I got pulled over as we entered the city limits because I didn't slow down fast enough. I was probably about 15 over the limit again. He ticketed me for that, ticketed me for not having a front license plate (lame!), and ticketed me for driving with an expired registration. This added up quickly. I was at $450 or something for all that.

So, I was pretty upset, but trying to let it go and focus on the fun of the Moab trip. No sooner had I left the Price jurisdiction and entered the next one, but I get pulled over again (this time I had slowed to 9 over the limit.) So I get a second speeding ticket, expired registration ticket, etc. (He did me a favor and let the front license plate thing go.) My tickets at this point are adding up to about $800-$1,000. So far, so fun. I am really upset the rest of the drive to Moab.

We finally get to Moab after it got dark. We took a turn off the road to follow a dirt road just for kicks. As we get to the end of this dirt road, it dead ends and I need to turn around. As I am trying to turn around, I back off the edge of a cliff and my truck is high centered, perched on rock. Three of my four 33" mudders lifted completely off the ground. We weren't going anywhere.

The next day it took us about 3 hours of jacking up the truck and building a rock driveway to get it back onto the dirt road. When we finally did, the truck ran, but it had crushed some of the fluid lines, dented the bottom of the truck, and bent the drive train. When I accelerated it would make a lovely grinding noise. I did get it back to SL safely, where I promptly turned it into my insurance company.

Anyway, so the trip started out GRRREAT!. During the trip this girl tried to talk to me, but I gave her the cold shoulder. I was in a foul mood and I was convinced she was interested in my roommate and was just being nice to me. She later asked me what my deal was and explained that she was interested in me, but by then I had moved on and there was another girl in the picture that I ended up dating for a while. The problem was that I was really interested in this one that got away and I was always wondering what things would have been like had I not imagined myself out of the deal.

So, after I had some time to reflect, I vowed to myself that if I was ever interested in someone who didn't respond again, I would pursue her until I got a clear message yeah or nay. The next serious relationship I had was with Traci, my wife, and wouldn't you know, Traci gave few and conflicting signals in the beginning of our courtship. But, because of my experience, I would not back down without a fight. Turned out to be a really good lesson.

And that is how I got married and why I don't speed.

The winner is Traci, the winner is TRAY-See, the winner is Tray-SEE.

I have uploaded clips of Traci's Price is Right experience. I put them on my blog, even though she clearly has first dibs, because I need the traffic. She'll post them on hers as well, I am sure.

You should watch for the following highlights.

Traci (winning showcase showdown) Velociraptor Punch!



Seductive Traci



And finally the "Rock On!!" version of "Should I do it?"



Here are the videos:

Part 1


Part 2



I am married to someone who WON THE PRICE IS RIGHT!!! I bet you're not.

Last week was Mary, Martha, Katherine

This is a hike up Big Cottonwood Canyon. There are three lakes that you can visit. They are all small, but when we got to Katherine, there were some folks up there fishing, in shorts, in the rain. The trail head starts at Brighton Ski Resort. It was a pretty moderate, 2 hour hike. It did rain on us a little this week. It wasn't too bad. The area up at Brighton is really pretty.

Start:

Lake Martha:
Lake Mary and fishers:
Lake Mary, this one is the largest, I just didn't get a good photo:

A Donut by any other name . . .


This is a Dunford Donuts, Chocolate Donut. You can find these all over Salt Lake City, in 7-11s, in Albertson's, in Dan's. These are my favorite Donuts in the whole world. When I went to the MTC, my parents sent me a box of these. Whenever we came back from Indiana to visit family, we get these. I have looked for these Donuts in other places. I have looked in California, I have looked in Vegas, I looked and looked in Indiana, all with no luck.

So, the other day I looked up this, King of all Donuts, and found out that they are called Dunford Donuts and are made by a company in West Valley. I am not sure why Dunford hasn't taken their Donuts national, but if they need an MBA to help out with that project, I am looking for a job.

These are the greatest donuts in the world.

Propaganda wars - music/film Piracy

I know that this is an old issue, but it's one dear to my heart. I saw the South Park clip today and it inspired me to put together this collection of videos.

RIAA - Would you steal a car???



South Park - Doomed to a life of only semi-luxury??



Kid Rock - Stealing is Stealing Warning: Some foul language



Parody of the Anti-piracy ad