An Interesting Sunday

Ahoy team!

So today in church we learned to be courageous.  This track star who had to have his leg amputated spoke to us about it.  Nifty guy.

I'm waiting for my home teaching companion to schedule visits (it is the 31st after all), and so I figured I'd drop a line or two on the old blog.

This past week, my boss talked with me about time management and accountability.  When he was a young engineering professor, he had to bill his time to several different accounts.  So he kept a journal and made notes to what he was doing down to 15 minute markings.  I'm supposed to start doing that this week too.

Moose Stress

I lay here on the floor of our poorly-carpeted living room.  Sunday afternoon.  The sound of fans purchased from Walmart years ago is drumming away the day.  The obnoxious roommates have all dozed off or retired to their rooms, and the rest of us are quietly typing/reading having ran out of offensive things to say to each other and embraced the calm.

The show that caused the rest to zonk was a Netflix documentary about Stress.  As I listened to the show, I realized that the Moose lived a life overwhelmed with stress.  Consider the effect chronic-stress has on health:

1. Hair loss - this is more evident in us who don't have AWG 18 thick hair like Moose did.  But he did thin out a bit as the company went under.

PhD and Bass Guitar

So I realize that nobody in the family ever knows what I'm up to.  For example - how many times has mom spread rumors about me being: a) engaged? b) graduated? c) employed? d) enlisted? e) in shape?

In light of the lack of information known about me (not that being anonymous really bothers me), I figure I'll update a few big decisions I'm making as of late...

PhD
Yes.  More school.  Yes.  Still in Logan.  No.  Not Mechanical Engineering.  I'm currently standing with one foot in Mechanical Engineering while I finish my MS and one foot in Engineering and Technology Education while I begin my PhD.

Google+ and the Glory of Group Video

What is Google+ ("Google Plus"), you ask?  Why it's the latest, greatest, not-yet-fully-accepted social networking site.

What does this mean for you?  It means you no longer need to send 18 texts to you buddies to figure out where you're going to eat, you can just do a "huddle".  See this demo.

More importantly and to help sustain our family's laziness, it means we can group video chat.  (Same demo as above - use the tab called "hangout").  So if Adam and Punjab have their computer on video chat, Luke and Piemer have it on theirs, Con and Rob (who's combined age is nearing 150yrs - the equivalent of almost six of me...) are online with cameras, Mary and Min repent of their no-technology stance and turn back on their computers, Beth and Joe turn theirs on, Sarah and MC do as well, and Theo and I each have our respective camera-enabled computers on...  WE CAN ALL SEE EACH OTHER AT ONCE.  There will be one big screen (displaying the loudest of us - probably either Luke or Kate), and all our little videos below.

In order to have Group Video a.k.a. "Hangout", you'll need to have: 1) a computer with a camera, microphone and working speakers (most of us can check this item), 2) a decent connection speed (Wireless N or hardwired in would be ideal.  Wireless G would be wanting.), and 3) a Google+ account.  If you don't have a Google+ account (currently Mom and I are the only ones), you'll need to be invited.  It was open to everyone for a while, but it became so popular that it bogged down Google's servers.  They're handling the traffic by having invitation-only adds for a while.  You'll also need to add the rest of the family into your social circles.

Once we're all to that point, we can argue just like the good old days - face to face.