2006 - Year in Review

The year is almost over. For the Squire family it has been a good one. Here is a little bit of our year in review.

January

We started the year like any other since we had been married. Alison was working at WECC and I was working for Dickman Enterprises doing the leather protection for RC Willey. The biggest difference this year was that Alison was pregnant. I started my spring semester at school and ended up doing ok.

February

From what I recall, February wasn't a bad month. I'm sure that Alison and I had an incredible Valentine's Day. We were also able to spend a weekend with the extended Squire family in St. George over President's Day.

March

March was good because of Spring Break and the NCAAs. Alison and I went to the first and second rounds at the Huntsman Center here in Salt Lake City. She won the family tournament pools for both families but I was a close second. I also quit working for Dickman Enterprises and started working for Pacificorp.

April and May

In April I went to an IEEE conference in Boise, ID. While there I also took a tour of Micron's Boise headquarters. It's a huge facility. May found the end of finals week and I began working full-time at Pacificorp.

June, July and August

The summer was a good one. I worked most of the summer full-time and we were able to go waterskiing a couple of times. Ada Elizabeth Squire was born on July 22 at 12:55 AM. She has been a joy ever since. August found us trying to learn how to be parents.

September, October, November and December

I'm cruising now. Fall found me in school again, working part time. Alison quit her job at WECC and has been staying home with Ada full-time. The holiday season was a good one for the Squires.

Doesn't that just sound like it was a wonderful year? Hopefully this next one is just as good!

There's a New Girl in Town!

Now even Alison has caught the bug. She's started a blog of her own. You can see it at http://alisquire.blogspot.com. If she asks where you heard about it, don't tell her I told you. I'm excited to see what kind of juicy info I get from Al's Audibles. She better not share any of my secrets though...

My Book Review Blog!

I'm loving this blogging dealio so much that I've gone and done it again. I've decided to set up a place where I can write about the books I read. I've been looking for a good way to do this for a few months but I was never able to come up with anything that suited me.

I finally saw Ben and Jenn Iverson's booklist blog and thought that it was exactly what I wanted to do. So, I've used a template modeled off of what they have been doing. You can see their booklist site here. Just be forewarned, Ben and Jenn both actually know what they are talking about when they have been reviewing books. My reviews on the other hand...

So, when you get a chance, feel free to stop by http://tysquibooklist.blogspot.com and check out my newest reads. Be forewarned though, I rarely read anything during the semester.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody! I love this time of year. It sure gets busy leading up to it though. It's hard to get into the Christmas spirit before the semester finishes so once it does Chirstmas preparations are always on the top of the list. Alison, Ada and I had a great Chirstmas. We love spending time with family and we enjoy it when our siblings and friends are in town.

On Christmas Eve we visited Alison's grandparents and ate dinner by candlelight at the Squires. Cheryce gave me a multimeter that night (that reminds me, I need to take it off my wishlist...). We slept there because Jordan called home from Jacksonville early Christmas morning - for the record, he is doing well. From Santa I mainly got money.

One of the most exciting gifts wasn't even given to me. I did get to unwrap it though. My parents bought a Nintendo Wii for the family. It's pretty dang fun. I think that they may be a little afraid of things like this happening though.

On Christmas afternoon, we went to Alison's parents to eat dinner. We got a very interesting gift there as well. Alison's grandma's father and grandfather were involved in the founding of the Lewiston Bank. She has a lot of stock in the bank and she gave all of the married grandkids some shares of the stock. They pay dividends twice a year. The stock has split 5 times since she has owned it. Each share is worth ~$125. The dividends will be our Christmas and birthday presents for the rest of our lives. It's a pretty exciting and forward thinking gift.

You can read a rundown of Ada's first Christmas here. Alison and I are always amazed by the generosity of those around us each year. We are so grateful for the nice things that people always give to us. Hopefully everybody out there had great Christmases as well.

The Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl - Utah 25, Tulsa 13

Utah played Tulsa tonite in the Bell Helicopters Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas. They won 25-13. I believe that the spread was 4.5 or something in favor of Utah. This is the first bowl game that I have missed in the last three years. For some crazy reason, Fort Worth, Texas two days before Christmas just doesn't excite me all that much. Either way, it looked like Utah had more fans than I expected to be there. Good for them.

For the most part is was a pretty good football game. ESPN's covereage of the game was much better than their coverage of the Las Vegas Bowl. The standard had been set pretty low though. Tulsa's quarterback (Smith) seemed to be off his game. From what I understand, he's usually a pretty good quarterback but he wasn't in sync today (although he was 20-27 for 158 yards).

On the other hand, Brett Ratliff had a solid game (23-34 for 240 yards), Eric Weddle was his usual self (i.e. amazing) and Utah's second best player this year - Louie Sakoda - was named the Player of the Game. When was the last time that a punter/FG kicker was the player of the game in a bowl game? He's been crucial all season, leadig the Utes to being #1 in net yards per punt. That doesn't happen by accident.

The Utes incorporated a couple of interesting plays. They pulled their old hook-and-ladder play out of the bag (from the Fiesta Bowl) and scored. That play was also the play of the day on CNN. Eric Weddle played quarterback for the Utes' last drive. He ran the ball 7 times and handed off once before scoring.

It wasn't a great season by Utah's recent standards. If they could just get rid of the mid-season slides then they would be set. Next year will be tough with UCLA, Louisville and Oregon State on the docket. I can't wait!

How to Comment

Just like I promised, here is a short tutorial on how to leave comments on a post.First off, find the post that you want to comment or complain about. Click on the 'comments' link below the post and this will take you to the following screen.

Type in your comment (remember that I retain the right to reject any vulgar and unnecessary comments) and type in the letters that show up on the screen (this is to keep the spammers away). Now you can publish three ways:

1. If you have a google account (i.e. gmail, picasa, etc.) you can sign in and publish.

2. If you just want to leave the comment under your name or pseudonym, choose other or,

3. Go ahead and post it anonomously.

Once you've posted a comment, I get an e-mail and the chance to read over it and accept or reject it. I have enabled this feature to keep away any spammers and inappropriate or offensive comments. This is a family site - Happy posting!

1,000 Visitors!

Now I've reached a milestone, haven't I? 1,000 visitors to this virtual piece of real estate that I call home. A special welcome to everybody. This picture is a map of where all of the most recent visitors hail from. As you can see, there is quite a worldwide audience, although not on purpose I am certain. You can see my counter in the right pane near the bottom.

As always, everybody is welcome to leave their comments, thoughts, complaints, etc. In fact, I will post 'How to Comment' in a few minutes.

Hello Deer.

When I went outside to leave for work this morning, I saw a herd of deer just across the court. They were all eating the exposed grass on the hillside. There is usually a herd of deer that 'winter' here in the village. It's fun to see them throughout the winter. The only thing that really makes me nervous though is that they've got to cross Foothill Boulevard to get to and from the mountains. So if you're driving on Foothill, watch for deer!

They let me get to about 15 feet away. They would look up as I walked towards them but as soon as I squatted down to take my picture, they would already be eating and ignoring me. I didn't try to get any closer, although they really didn't seem to care. It's always fun to see wild animals up close in nature.

Family Christmas Photo

We sent out Christmas cards to family last week and this is the picture that we sent with them. What a cute little family!

Congratulations! I'm Time's Person of the Year!

Woohoo! You read that right. I've just been named Time's Person of the Year! You didn't realize that I was a celebrity, did you? Actually, I've guess that they've named all of us the Person of the Year. So congratulations to you too.

Christmas Lights

I finally got our lights up a couple of days ago. I wish that I could have gotten them up earlier but, I guess I was a little busy. Can you guess which apartment is ours?

Sissel and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert

Alison and I went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert in the Conference Center tonite. They had Norwegian singer Sissel as their special guest. It was absolutely amazing. I especially enjoyed hearin Sissel sing. She had an amazing voice. She sang with such power but she was so relaxed. Special thanks to Dan for inviting us!

School's Out!!!

At long last, I've finished another semester. It's always such a relief to be finished. Finals weeks had some ups and downs but hopefully it was mostly good. Here is a quick recap:

1. Final exam in Semiconductor Physics. This was one of the two worst tests that I have ever taken. The questions all had tricks in them and each question had four or five parts to it. If you couldn't figure out the trick (in the first part of the problem of course) then you were up a creek for the rest of the problem. It was an awful exam - but everybody that I have talked to has said the same thing.

2. Final exam in Microwave Engineering. I aced this one. It was great. I'm sure I got an A in the class.

3. Presentation for Analog IC Design. This also went well. The presentation was on the EKG heart sensor chip that I designed. If you're interested, you can download my presentation here.

4. Lab report for Semiconductor Physics Lab. I won't know how this went until it gets graded. It felt pretty good... It ended up being 19 pages (with plots). You can read it here. A picture of the chip we made is shown below.


5. Testing and Design Report for Analog IC Design. This report was also for the EKG heart sensor mentioned above. It turned out to be 17 pages. You can read 15 of them here (The other 2 were full page circuit diagrams).

If you find any mistakes in the reports above, don't tell me because I don't want tp know about them!

Props to Coach Sloan!

The Jazz handily beat the Mavericks tonite at EnergySolutions arena (radium stadium if you prefer, or maybe 'The Dump'...). This win gave Jerry Sloan his 1,000th victory as a coach. He is only the fifth NBA coach to ever do so and is the longest tenured coach of any professional sports team in North America right now. I've always liked Jerry and I hope that the team can continue to keep up their winning ways.

Finals Week...

Welcome to Finals Week! I can't wait 'till its over. I have 5 things to do before I'm done though. They are:

1. Final Exam in Semiconductor Physics
2. Final Exam in Microwave Engineering
3. Presentation for Analog IC Design
4. Lab Report for Semiconductor Physics Lab (12-15 pages)
5. Testing and Design Report for Analog IC Design (10-12 pages)

It looks like there will be some long days ahead - especially considering that I have not really started anything except for some studying. Well, wish me luck!

'Truthiness'

Well, well, well. Did I call this one or what? In last January over Civil Rights Day, the Squire family (my parents, Alison and I, most of my siblings and their kids) was down in La Verkin. While there we played a 'Cranium' type game. One of the little challenges was some sort of a word game. I used the word 'truthiness'. Nobody believed that truthiness was a 'real' word. I, on the other hand, knew that this word had staying power. And now, this word has become the Word of the Year!

First off, congratultions to Stephen Colbert and his genius. Secondly, congratulations to me for being so quick to assimiliate into the Colbert Nation...

You can read an AP article on cnn.com about how 'truthiness' was voted the word of the year here. There was also a Newsweek article written on Stephen Colbert titled "America's Truthiness Teller" that you can read here. It first appeared in the February 13, 2006 issue. Now try and use this word in your everyday speech.

Christmas Cheer!

I had a little free time this morning and I decided to make this place a little more festive. As you may have noticed (If your volume is turned on), I added a little Christmas music to the landscape. There are 7 different songs and they all play in random order. I'm not going to tell you what they are but you're welcome to stay and listen a bit!

How 'Bout Them Jazz?

The Jazz have slumped a little - but they have still kept up their winnning ways. They still own the best record in the NBA at 15-4. I think they've gone 3-3 in their last 6 games. They've had to play some tough teams though.

Today the Jazz were featured in the Cover Story of USA Today. The article is actually mainly about Deron Williams. Take a look at it here.

Tomorrow is my last day of class and then I have finals next week. Wish me luck!

A Slew of Funny or Interesting Videos

It's been a crazy busy week. Nonetheless, I always have time to check out an interesting video or two. You can see I also added the "World AIDS Day' Ribbon to the top of this post. I've got to be honest, I mainly added it becasue it's red and with my green blog background it makes the whole thing look very Christmassy, right? Now turn the volume up, turn the music off (the player is in the top right) and enjoy!

This first video is an incredible one from National Geographic about killer whales hunting seal pups. Seal volleyball anyone? Unfortunately, you have to visit their site to watch - found here.

This next video is one of Alison and my favorites. It's of a baby laughing and we find it simply hysterical and cute as could be. We've got Ada laughing a couple of times - but never quite so much as the baby in this video.

This last video is about giant bat eating centipedes in Venezuela. You can watch it here.

Ada's First Photoshoot

Ada had her first photoshoot last week. Doesn't she look great? She was a little fussy so we feel pretty lucky that we were able to get her smiling at all. She is getting to be so fun.

She also had a doctor's appointment yesterday. She now weighs 14 lbs. 10 oz. and is 25 1/2 inches long. She has definitely stopped growing as quickly as she was before. What a doll!

BYU 33, Utah 31

And what a game it was. Yesterday's game was certainly the most exciting game that I have ever been to (The "funnest game" still remains the 2004 Fiesta Bowl where utah beat Pitt 35-7). The game came down to the last play like few ever do.

Before each home game the MUSS is fed by Red Robin. This game was no exception. To get your food though, you must show your ticket. I couldn't find my ticket so I showed an old one. Then waiting in line for my food I was searching frantically for my ticket but it was gone. I called Alison and had her look around the house and outside around the apartment but it wasn't there either. I knew that I had had it in my pocket so I figured that it must have fallen out. I was planning on just going home to watch the game (darn it) when my neighbor/friend (who sits next to me) called and asked what seat I sat in. He had found my ticket while he was walking down to the game 20-30 minutes after I had. Talk about lucky. I had hoped that this luck would pan out on the field.

BYU started the game on a roar scoring a touchdown easily on their first two drives. It looked like this game was going to be a major blowout for BYU. Utah struggled moving the ball until they were forced to punt near midfield and Utah faked it and Louie Sakoda ran 18 yards for a first down. This swung the momentum Utah's way and they scored the next 24 points and gave Utah a 10 point lead.

BYU fought back, of course, and they traded touchdowns with Utah scoring their last with 79 seconds left to play. This was still too much time for BYU as they were able to march down the field and score with 3 seconds left in the game. here is the final play:


Video: Utah vs. BYU 2006

I was sitting in the MUSS (Mighty Utah Student Section) and we were going crazy when it was looking like Utah was going to win. Utah outgained and outplayed BYU and BYU was lucky to be in the position where a touchdown could win it at the end. Almost all of the stats were in Utah's favor, but BYU was just that much better.

I got to watch most of the second quarter from the field because I was a part of a Chevron gas-giveaway challenge. We stood on about the 20 yard line and cheered on colored race cars as they raced around a track on the big screen. I was the white car (of course the red car won), but it was fun to be down on the field for the big game.

Normally I have been placing the winning team's logo at the top of the post, but I have chosen not to defame my blog with the TDS logo ;). I can't wait until next year!


Free Countdown Clocks at WishAFriend.com

Go Jazz Go!

Holy Smokes! The Jazz are on fire! If you don't believe it, Just check out this weeks power rankings where the Jazz are #1 at foxsports.com, ESPN.com, CBSSportsline.com, NBCsports.com and si.com. They are the only team with 1 loss and the next closest team is the Spurs (who lost tonite) and now have 3 losses and then there are a couple of teams with 4 losses. With the Jazz's 12 wins, they are 1/4 of the way to a good playoff spot.

Tonite the Jazz battled the Lakers at the new EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake City (For the record, I'm not a fan of the new name because of how it sounds and not because of the company). The Jazz were down by at least 9 in the game before turning on the jets and beating the Lakers.

In the three previous games (against the Kings in Sacramento, the Suns and Raptors at home) the Jazz were down by at least 16 in the second half before winning all of them. Alison and I are having a blast watching the games. The Jazz have never really had a team that could come back consistently in the 4th quarter - until this year.

Deron Williams is playing like a seasoned veteran averaging 9.3 assists per game and Boozer is playing like an MVP candidate averaging a double-double with 22.7 points per game and 12.7 rebounds per game. Andrei Kirelenko had been out injured for the last little while (he played tonite) and rookie Paul Millsap was filling his shoes nicely. Okur, Fisher and Harpring are all contributing as well. The Jazz are simple playing fantiastic basketball.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! It's a great holiday. Today Alison and I ate dinner at the Squire's with all of my siblings (except Jordan who is in Florida). It (the dinner) was fantastic. Alison and I brought Lion House rolls. We spent most of the morning making them and letting them rise and I must say, they turned out perfectly. We spent most of the day in at their house before we left to go to Alison's grandparent's house in Fruit Heights. The rest of her family was there and we were able to visit with them for a while.

It's been a busy Thanksgiving and its tough to find a little time to think about just what I am grateful for this year. For your reading pleaseure, here is a short list of what I am thankful for in 2006:

I am thankful for Alison and Ada and for Ada being a strong and healthy baby. I am thankful for the rest of our family and that we are able to see (most) of them so often. I am thankful for the chance that I have to go to school and study and learn. I am thankful for the Church and the opportunity that it gives me to serve others around me. I am thankful for my health and that we have a nice place to live and food to eat. Basically, I'm thankful that life is good!

Happy 1/3rd Birthday Ada!

Hooray! It's Ada's 1/3rd birthday. It's even more special to me because it's also my 25 1/4th birthday. What could be more exciting. We've been partying all day long. Ada's growing every day and is just getting cuter and cuter. She had her first solid food today. A delectable dish of Gerber rice cereal - plain. It didn't look all that great to me and by the faces she was making it wasn't all that great for her either. It was fun and it will be fun to introduce her to more and more foods as time goes on.

In celebration of Ada's birthday I have included some of my favorite pictures of her from the month of November. As always you can see more pictures of her on our space at http://tysqui.spaces.live.com/ (Click on the picture to see a larger view).



This is a picture from today. I am feeding Ada her first taste of rice cereal. You can tell from her face that she is unsure whether or not she likes it. I'm sure it's an acquired taste...

When I sit at the computer doing homework, Ada will just lie on the ground and stare at me for long periods of time. It is the cutest.

This is just a picture of me holding Ada.

This is a really cute picture of Ada sucking her hand and holding up her skirt for everybody to see. We'll obviuosly have to teach her how to be an appropriate lady.

Here is Ada in a cute little pink dress.

This is a picture of me with (from the left) Shelby (~21 months old), Sophie (1 month old) and Ada ( ~3.5 months old).

Ada just recently started using her bouncer. She'll like it for a little bit, but she hasn't really learned how to 'bounce' properly in it yet. She's still learning.

She's even got a cute little clean butt - when its clean. This little baby sure has a good life.

Utah 17, Air Force 14

Utah played Air Force on Saturday in Colorado Springs. Air Force needed to win if they wanted to be able to become bowl eligible, while Utah needed to win - because they are the better team and they have been an awful team on the road. Utah looked fantastic on their first drive of the game and they easily marched down the field and scored.

There wasn't any more scoring until the 4th quarter. Both teams offenses were cold and the defenses were controlling the game. Utah used Eric Weddle as a running back more than they had all season. He had 12 carriers for 73 yards or something. I expect that we will see a lot more of him (on offense) next week during the BYU game.

This game turned out to be quite a nalibiter. Air Force tied the game up with a couple of minutes to go and Utah needed to get into field goal position. They finally did and they gave Sakoda (Their second best player - after Weddle) a chance to win the game from about 37 yards out. He nailed it with no time on the clock and Utah stole another one in Colorado Springs.

Now they have a big game in Salt Lake City next week against the undefeated (in conference) Cougars. I expect that there will be a ton of BYU fans at the game next week - individual tickets are already going for $100-$150 on eBay. I just hope that Utah doesn't embarrass themselves - although highly likely.

Utah Basketball...

The Utes played their first regular season basketball game on Friday night against SUU at the Huntsman Center. Alison, Ada and I went with my Dad to the game. Ada was simlpy amazing during the game she didn't make a peep for the first half and the first 10 minutes of the second half. She then fell asleep and only cried a little bit during the last 38 seconds because her daddy was yelling a little too loudly and startling her. It was a good game. The Utes started off both halves very well - building 10 point leads in each. They struggled to close out the halves though and SUU on the other hand struggled at the beginning of the halves and played great closing them out. Because of this, the Utes lost by 3 to the Thunderbirds of Cedar City. Not a great way to start the year...

I still think that Utah will be a pretty good team. They have a lot of new (young) faces and it may take a little time for them to learn Giacoletti's system and mesh as a team. I believe that they have a ton of talent though. Once they all learn to play to each other's strengths, the Utes should be a pretty good team.

Utah 35, CSU 22

Utah played CSU yesterday at Rice-Eccles Stadium. It was a cold and rainy game, but luckily for us there was no snow. Utah started out quick in this game building up a 14-0 lead in the first quarter. CSU almost caught up with the Utes but they were able to keep them at bay and pull away in the end. The surprise in this game had to have been the offense.

For the first time all season, Utah seemed to pull out all the stops and then play an exciting offensive game. They faked a punt, Eric Weddle ran plays from the quarterback position more than ever (and he completed a pass) and the Utes threw a few trick plays into the mix - including a sweet triple-reverse.

I will be honest, I still don't know how good (or how bad) they are. On www.foxsports.com the Utes are ranked the 80th team out of 119. i don't think that they are quite that bad, but who am I to say. These next 2 weeks should both be exciting.

Good Lovin'

I have heard through the grapevine that November 18, 2009 may be a special day. (Maybe I'll graduate then... or maybe that's when Ada jr. will come...) Either way, you'll just have to wait until then to find out.

5 Reasons I'm 'not sad' the Democrats have Control of the House and Senate

The democrats have now taken over the house and the senate. They have 51-49 in the senate and a little larger majority in the house. They do not have enough votes to override a veto by President Bush. In my opinion this is a good thing. It will now force them to make a few compromises and I sincerely hope that they will work together a little more to get things done. Here are 5 reasons that a democratic congress will be good under our republican president:

1. Donald Rumsfield will resign and there will be inquiries into pre-war intel and whether or not it was misused (Woohoo! Don Rumsfield resigned the day after the elections. He knew the people had spoken. I'm really not sure why Bush didn't let him resign earlier...).

2. The minimum wage will be raised from it's current $5.15 an hour. It's been $5.15 for more than a decade now I believe. When I was in high school, I was making this minimum wage. During that same time tuition at the U has increased more than 85%. Do you see a problem here? Chris Cannon obviously doesn't believe this because he said "Nobody in Utah is on minimum wage. If they are they need to go back to school or down to the local McDonald's and get a better job." I would never have voted for somebody so out of touch with his constituents. For the record, I know people making the minimum wage - and they obviously can't afford to go back to school because tuition is increasing many times faster than inflation and their pay rate.

3. Stem-cell research. I am of the opinion that "life does not begin in a petri dish." I believe you can be anti-abortion and pro stem-cell research.

4. A more balanced budget. President Bush inherited the largest budget surplus in the history of the US. It did not last long under his policies of "fiscal responsibility." It probably isn't too good for the economy down the road with as much borrowing as we do. I won't be sad to see tax cuts repealed that were given to the rich and the large 'republican-friendly' corporations.

5. More qualified candidates. With a democrat majority, Bush will have to appoint candidates that are actually qualified for the position. Start with the nomination of John Bolton. He is a UN basher and has never been on good terms with the UN. Bush wants him to be the United States Ambassador to the UN. That will put a really good face on United States diplomacy at the United Nations...

I think that I could find more reasons - but you get the picture. Maybe we've 'Stayed the Course' for a little longer than we should have.

Song List

I realized that I've already told everyone about the new music player on my blog - but I never mentioned what music you may be hearing. Right now there are only 5 songs and they play randomly so you may hear any song at any time. In no particular order the songs are:

1. Keane - Somewhere Only We Know
2. U2 - Original of the Species
3. Radiohead - Let Down
4. Fountains of Wayne - Stacy's Mom
5. Coldplay - Fix You

I wanted to add more songs but this player can only play mp3 format and I have most of my songs stored as wma (windows media audio). I'll have to re-rip some of them I guess.

Big Blog Changes!

I didn't have either lab that I normally have today and I also stayed home from one of my classes. This gave me 7 hours of extra time that I normally don't have on Wednesdays. With some of this extra time I made a few changes to my blog. The biggest one involved updating the type of template that I used to organize my layout. With this new template, it is now many times easier to add blocks of html code to my blog.

You can probably see the addition of an mp3 player (special thanks to www.myflashfetish.com)




as well as the scrolling marquee (from www.profiletweaks.com).







Now this blog is the place to be!

We won! We won! We won!

Yesterday was election day and for the democrats it was very successful. They regained control of the House and are on the brink of controlling the Senate (It's 50-49 right now for the democrats with one race still too close to call). This will make for an interesting 2 years. Bush will certainly have to learn how to compromise to get anything done. He's made a good start by inviting Nancy Pelosi (majority leader) and other leading democrats to either lunch of coffee on Thursday and Friday.

Local elections were not so exciting. I think that I voted about 60% Republican and 40% Democrat. Here are the results of the race that I was most interested in though

As you can see Judge Lewis was not retained. This is a very good thing. If you doubt this then please reread my post from November 6. I love elections. I especially love them when there are changes that will require those in power to move out of their comfort zones in order to make something happen.

Naughty Judge!

Tomorrow is an election day and I urge everybody to get out and vote. For the most part, I really couldn't care less who you vote for, except in one circumstance. If you are a resident of Tooele, Salt lake or Summit county, then you simply must vote against Judge Lewis. This woman has serious problems.

Judges are not elected in Utah, but they do come up for vote every six years. One of the most recent issues with her stemmed from a hunter that had to appear before her for some reason. Judge Lewis was badgering the hunter (she clearly states that she has a predjudice against hunters) and a friend of the hunter in the back of the courtroom sighed and walked out. Judge Lewis kind of went postal and had the bailiff go and get the person that left and then she threw him in the holding cell for being bored. The courtroom video is on YouTube here or you can watch it below. The quality is awful but you can clearly hear everything that is going on.



There are a lot of comments from attorneys that have had to stand before her on these posts from Voice of Utah here and here.

***Update*** I can't believe that I forgot about one of the craziest issues with her. This judge apparently cut 10 years off of a sex offenders sentence after the sentence had been handed down. I heard that she did this because the prosecuting attorney had been late to court one day. When she lightened this sentence, she did it by telling the defendants attorney and told him "keep this between you and me," ie. don't tell the prosecuting attorney about this. Here are two articles about this instance in the Deseret News: "Judge Criticized Again" "Judge Lewis Dispute Prompts State Motion" ***End Update***

Lastly, if you want to read more about this BOB (B---- On the Bench) then visit http://www.firejudgelewis.com/.

Best of luck at the polls tomorrow.

Semester Update

Now that the semester is more than halfway over (yippee!) I just thought I run through an update of my semester.

ECE 5320 - Microwave Engineering I
This class is going pretty well. I have yet to lose a point on any of the homework (I wouldn't be surprised if I were the only on in the class to do so) and I have been around average on the one test that we have taken. We have had labs every week since the beginning of October and lab reports due the following week. My lab reports have been around 9-15 pages each week (with lots of diagrams) so I spend a lot of time on those.

ECE 5201 - Semiconductor Physics I
This class is going pretty well also. I was a little below average on the test, the homework has been hard but I really enjoy the labs. The lars are taught in the microfab where we have been making some diodes, MOSFETs, BJTs, resistors and capacitors on a silicon wafer. We are almost done with the processing of these wafers.

BIOEN 1101 - Bioengineering I
This class has been easy. I rarely go to class and have yet to study but I have been doing fine on the tests. The lab is simple as well. Nice class to take...

I also spend a bit of time each week working on my Sr. Project. We have made some really good progress on that lately. I also have been testing and simulating a microchip for an EKG heart sensor that I designed last semester. The testing isn't going as well as I had hoped but I still think that I can get it working.

Just a little over one month left before finals. I actually have to register tomorrow so I need to decide what classes to take. Boy does the time fly :).

Happy Halloween!

Boy its been a busy week - That's why I'm a few days late on posting my annual Halloween message. Our Halloween was a pretty good one. On Monday (the day before Halloween) we went to the Squire party and Tuesday we were able to stay home a hand out candy to the few kids that came around Trick-or-Treating. We didn't take Ada out to trick-or-treat, instead I just made sure to hide some candy from the stash that we had to give to kids. You can see what Alison, Ada and I all dressed up as below.


As nice as the Dalmation Print suit was, I decided to spice it up a little more underneath my hat. You can see my sweet mohawk below. I had the mohawk from Monday to Wednesday but decided that I should probably cut it off for work, church, normality, etc. It was fun while it lasted.

Don't we look great?

Pigeon Control in Great Britain...

An interesting story appeared on bbc.com earlier this week. It turns out that a pelican (which normally only eats fish) picked up a pigeon and had it in its beak struggling before finally getting the pigeon to go down its throat head first and alive. A little disturbing but interesting all the same:). You can see the article here.

Utah 45, UNLV 23

Utah comes up with another big win over one of the worst teams in the nation. Poor UNLV. They are 1-7 and they don't look like they will be able to win a game anytime soon. This was a pretty good game for the Utes. Ratliff had a great game going 19-23 for 268 yards and throwing three touchdown passes. The bad news is the Utes scored all of their points in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. That means that they obviously didn't play terribly well in the first and fourth quarters. Brent Casteel also had a pretty good game. He caught 3 touchdown passes but easily could have had three more. He was caught twice inside the 1-yard line and also caught a lateral pass on a punt return and returned it for a score - which was called back because it was ruled an illegal forward pass.

This was a pretty fun game for myself as well. Near the beginning of the second quarter a friend that I know in promotions came and got us to see if we wanted to be involved in some promotional things. We did and then got to go down onto the field to watch the game. We watched most of the second quarter from about the 15 yard line before two of the guys that I came down with got to cheer on an animated racecar and whichever car wins - the person cheering for that car got $50 in gas cards. I was supposed to kick a field goal at halftime for a chance to win $1000. That didn't actually pan out - and maybe I'll get to do something different in one of the next two home games.

We convinced them to let us stay on the field through halftime and for most of the third quarter before some guy came and kicked us out. We played catch on the sidelines and had a great time watching the Utes score 31 points right in front of us. After we were told to remove ourselves from the sidelines, I went up to watch the rest of the game in a suite. After the field-goal mix-up, they gave me suite tickets to make up for it. It was pretty cool also, free food, drinks, game guides, awesome seats. Too bad the fourth quarter was an awful display of Utah football. I don't care that they were up by 30-40 points. They still need to play football. UNLV had not given up but Utah had.

Now the utes are 5-4 and need to beat either CSU, Air Force or BYU to become bowl eligible. Maybe they should beat all three...

Return the Kids to Target!

I was reading the news online at work earlier this week and next to a story titled "Thousands of Pumpkin Decoration Kits Recalled" I found this picture.

I thought is was funny. You can see the story here, but I believe that they have now changed the caption to correctly read 'kits' and not 'kids'.

Rose Bowl Photos

Ok, I finally got pictures from my parents of our little trip down to Las Angeles to watch the Utes take on the UCLA Bruins. All of these pictures were taken before the game - so we are all still happy...

This one is a picture of us all at the Dodger game. The Dodgers won - but I can't even remember who they played.

This picture is a picture of Kevin, Alysia and I eating a nice game-day breakfast at the Embassy Suites.
We had some extra time on Saturday before the game so we went to visit Hollywood and Beverly Hills. We stopped by the Las Angeles Temple on the way back to the game.

The picture on the right was taken at the Rose Bowl . They are building new locker rooms - hence the construction.

Another picture in front of the famed Rose Bowl sign.

This is us at the game in the middle of the Utah section (on the 63rd row!).

Here is a picture during the midst of the carnage/slaughter. The stadium wasn't packed but the fans gave UCLA everything they needed to walk over the Utes. Even though Utah lost, we had a blast at the beach and throughout LA.