May 2, 2003: President Bush stands on the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln underneath a sign reading "Mission Accomplished" to announce the successful invasion of Iraq, he says: "The battle of Iraq is one victory . . . "

November 28, 2006: President Bush speaking in Latvia says: "I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete . . . We can accept nothing less than victory. . ."

Gee, I didn't know that "Mission Accomplished" didn't mean the same thing as "Mission Complete", or that victory doesn't really mean victory. Because we were apparently victorious in 2003, but in 2006 we're not.

Who elected this guy anyways?

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So I'll write a little entry about Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving dinner was at Erin and Bryce's house. Bentz and I went over to Josh's the night before and watched Nacho Libre, and just slept on the couches. In the morning we got up, Josh made jell-o salad, and I made rolls. The rolls came out fairly decent, not quite perfect, but better than last time I made them.

We got over to Erin's around 2 and ate dinner. Mollie and Megan were there, along with Megan's roommate (I think roommate, maybe just friend), as well as Bryce's sister and her boyfriend, and of course Will.

It was a good Thanksgiving, fairly relaxed, and controlled. Bryce, Josh, and I played some Halo in the evening, and then Josh, Bentz, and I went home.

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A story for the ages, check out my fancy prose:

8:00AM:
Normally an obnoxious noise at eight in the morning meant my alarm clock was going off-- a starter gun spurring the drudgery of getting ready for the day. The fact that it was my phone vibrating on the desk began to take hold only after the alarm clock refused to be silenced by any of the usual methods. "Why is someone calling me this early in the morning?" I demanded as I attempted to locate the phone and see who was calling. Allie Winegar. "That's odd, she should be at the airport."

[Note: To be read at 5x speed... if only we had an acceleration point...]
Allie: Kyle! Sorry for waking you. I don't have my driver's license and they won't let me on the plane, the plane leaves at 10, I don't know what to do. Help me!

[Note: back to normal speed]
Kyle: Where is your driver's license? ... Ok.... Allie... Allie; I need to get off the phone so I can find a car, I'll let you know what's happening.

Ah crap. Where am I going to find a car to take to the airport. Hmm.. what about Erin, dang she's not answering her phone... Josh!

Josh: Hello?
Kyle: Uh, Josh.. Did I wake you up? .... ok good... anyways, what time do you have to be at work ... 9:15? .... Crap. Explain story to Josh...

Ok, now what. By this time I've gone to Allie's apartment and retrieved her license, thrown on sandals, warmups, and a sweashirt. Ok, I'll try calling Bryce.

Bryce: Hey Kyle, what's up?
Kyle: Umm.. I have a favor to ask. explain story I can borrow the Honda, awesome, thanks alot. I'll be waiting.

So Bryce is going to swing by, he's half way to work, and we'll drop him off there, and I'll take the car up the airport. I run my toothbrush through my teeth to give that I'm-Not-A-Scrub feeling, and then I wait. The intolerable waiting that comes with needing an event to occur, but having no power to make it happen sooner. You just want time to jump until the waiting is over because every time you glance at the clock you get more anxious. Possibly like what you're feeling as you read this, just get on with the story already.

~8:30:
Bryce pulls in, I run out and hop in the car. We dash up to the old Word Perfect campus in Orem where Bryce works. And by 8:45-ish I'm heading Westbound on 1600 N in Orem bound for I-15 on the other side of the city. I'm taking every liberty I can with the common laws of driving to increase my position and speed. Finally I'm swinging onto the highway, Northbound. Good.

Bryce listens to NPR on the way to work, and I don't bother changing the radio station, I just turn it up so I have something to listen to. As I'm coming up on Point of the Mountain the traffic report comes on: "An accident at 130 South on I-15 Northbound has traffic backed up into Draper." Crap. I'll be in the middle of that in like 10 miles. Who can I call that's intelligent and can find me an alternate route in less than 5 minutes or so? Someone in the HCMI Lab! (where I work)... Dang, I don't have the lab phone number... But I do have Joseph's cell phone, and I know he'll be in the lab this early.

Kyle: Hey Joseph, umm. weird story... I'm on my way to the airport to bring a driver's license to my girlfriend so that she can fly home, there's an accident backing up traffic to Draper, do you know of a detour I can make, I'm at Point of the Mountain?
Joseph: Umm.. I should since I'm from Utah, but I don't. Let's see what Google can pull up.... Uhh.. You should be able to get on the Bangerter Highway before Draper.

I glance up at the big green signs announcing the next set of exits: Bangerter Hwy 3 1/2 miles. So I swing into the right lane.

Kyle: Ok, Where will that put me?
Joseph: It looks like that will bring you right to the airport.
Kyle: Awesome, thank you very much, see you later.

Now if you've never driven on the Bangerter, it's an interesting little deal. For those readers from Connecticut think Berlin Turnpike, but without all the business right along the sides. It's basically a highway, but there's no exits, just intersections with lights, and fairly good space between them. I get on and get stuck at the first light, but by swinging into the right hand lane, I'm on the line waiting for my chance to hit the gas. The light turns, I gun it, and I realize I'm the only one on the road. See, the light causes a big break in traffic, so the road is clear until past the next light, it's like an empty race track. So I zip up to good speed, and cruise along through the light as it turns yellow. If you get to the right speed you can get through all the lights on green.

As I come up with traffic I'm drawing on all my video game experience, games like Need for Speed, Midnight Club, Burnout, and Crazy Taxi. As I'm cruising up on the slow cars of the pack ahead of me (cars travel in packs on the highway if you didn't know) I'm tracking which lanes are moving quickly, which cars are going to create openings I can use, and what my best path of travel is going to be to get through the pack and out the other side. It has been experimentally shown that video games help develop multi object tracking skills, and boy is it handy. I can look down the road and see which lanes have trucks in them stopped at the light, those lanes are bad, trucks start slow. I merge into the lanes with no trucks, timing my arrival just as the light turns green so we cruise through the intersection, and then I hop in front of the truck lane providing me with clear road. It was beautiful.

By this time, I, of course, had called Allie a few times to let her know what was happening. I call her again as I see the signs for the airport: 2 miles. Time: 9:25. We're going to make it. She's in Terminal 2 - Delta, waiting at passenger drop-off. As described, Bangerter Hwy takes you right into the airport. Speed limit 15 --- Yeah right. As I wave down Allie and find a spot at the curb, I've got the window down and the wallet outstretched. A quick hello-goodbye-"Go go go - get to your plane" and she's dashing into the airport again.

The adrenaline begins to wear off as my mission draws to what turns out to be a successful conclusion. I begin my much less frantic drive home, and arrive with enough time to shower and get to History of Creativity.

So as the title of this post says: Girls like guys with skills. In this case, driving skills.

[This Entry]

Ok, Ok... it's been sometime since I've updated here. But when you don't have much to say.... ok, I'm not lacking in things to talk about I guess...

So let's just start. A recruiter from Google came to campus the other day to hold an information session. I got a free long-sleeve t-shirt, a pen, and a post-it note pad, but he didn't really say anything I didn't already know about Google. I've been thinking about applying for an summer internship in Mountain View. It would be a really cool opportunity. Mike says he could refer me, which means my resume gets looked at before regular applicants. I could live with him for the summer and that would be neat. But, I wouldn't have any friends around, and I think I might get kind of lonely. So I'm still thinking about it.

I have two tickets to Trans-Siberian Orchestra in Salt Lake on December 9. It's going to be awesome. Bryce's work apparently was providing tickets to any employees that wanted to go, so once I found out that they could provide a ride, I bought tickets. I'm looking forward to that.

We (David, Bentz, and I) got a bunch of tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert featuring Sissel. Those came in the mail the other day as well as the TSO tickets. That should be fun as well, it's the weekend after the TSO concert.

Allie has officially changed her major from Political Science to English. She was kind of freaking out about that a bit ago. But she made the switch, and is happy with it so far. She's going home for Thanksgiving, so the approach of Tuesday is a little bittersweet: classes end, and I get a much needed few days off, but Allie leaves, so that's lame.

We'll both be back on the East Coast for Christmas. I'm thinking of going down to visit her and her family for a couple of days after New Year's. I can fly from Bradley to Dulles for less than the train costs, like $30 less. It's kind of ridiculous. So I'm thinking I'll probably buy a ticket and do it. It will be fun, I'll get to meet the rest of her family (Did I ever mention that I met her parents back in August, before we were dating?), some of her friends, and we want to go visit the new-ish spy museum. We'll see.

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So, as you may have noticed, I've updated the theme here on the blog. I've also setup a system that will make it about 1000x easier to do it, so I may update it more frequently in the future. I hope you enjoy it. The picture now is one I took from Mount Timpanogas, looking back into Provo Canyon. I think the body of water is the reservoir, but I could be wrong.

Allie comes home tomorrow . Sadly the candidates she was campaigning for in Maryland appear to have lost. Oh well, life goes on. So she's really awesome. Each day that she was gone, she had her roommate deliver a CD and letter she made for me. I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to them. The current song is from the CD that was delivered tonight.


Now for something completely different:

I've completely redone my desktop. It is now a 0.5 TB server to run content to the Xbox front end media-center. Ok, 0.5 TB isn't that big these days, but I'll be adding to it as time goes on. It runs Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft, with Samba. I had some issues getting everything stable, apparently my fancy Crucial Ballistix RAM is bad again (already had them replaced under warranty once). Maybe my old motherboard was damaging them... or maybe I just wasn't running them at high enough voltage, I still need to check that. But anyways, using other "crappy, cheapo" RAM everything runs fine (grrrr....).

I hope all of your lives' are going as well as mine currently is.

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So Josh, Brady, and I were eating dinner at Ottavio's this evening, of course discussing the intricacies of life. And I came to a realization: I need a populated home to return to at the end of the day. Last year was nice when I'd come home and someone would be playing some good music, there were good people and it was just a friendly place to be. This year, well, I don't come home to the apartment anymore. I come home to Allie's apartment. But now Allie's out of town. So I found myself sitting at work this afternoon and wondering if I really wanted to actually leave. I had nothing waiting for me when I got home except for a broken computer, which I still haven't had time to fix. I have to take a physics test tomorrow, and am the lacking motivation to care. Maybe what I've said in the past is true, I love to easily and too much.

I miss Allie, this month is going to suck. She did call though, and I excused myself from dinner to talk to her for a bit. Phone calls fall somewhat short of physical presence, but at least it's some consolation, and I prefer them to nothing.

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