November in Pictures

Life has been busy, but that is no excuse for why I haven't been updating the blog. I guess sometimes I loose the will to sit down and type  something up. It would be easier to do quick updates instead of these huge updates. 

Finals are this week! Yeah, and no at the same time. 3 days to take 5 tests, not what I call the most exciting and fun thing in the world, but I have 4 weeks of vacation to look forward to after that.

Here is the month in pictures.

First, some pictures of Pittsburgh in Fall. It was wonderful.

Novembet 11th, I had my 25th birthday. A quarter of a century and I'm still going strong ;)

We then had a wonderful weekend in Marietta, PA with family. It was a good time. We went and hiked to the highest point around, a hill called Governor Dick. They had a big cement tower we climbed to the top of.  We made graham cracker houses with the kids, and went on a walk down to where Sharon grew up and saw the forest and ruins she used to play in and skipped rocks in the Susquehanna River. Sharon is such a cutie!

Last but not least I've spent some time this last semester, mostly this month, working on a group project for my Telecom class. We built a simple 'prototype' application for the new Google Android phone. Here are some screen shots of it running on the emulator. It was fun, but I didn't have enough time to make it do anything really cool.

October Days

There are so many subtle things that make this funnier every time I watch it, some unintended, like the canon advertisements.

I’ve been remembering to laugh and enjoy life lately. I think I have a tendency to get so involved in things that I forget to stop and enjoy the present moment.

Life has been going well for us. We had one of our friends, Gabe, in town last weekend. He was interviewing at Dental schools. He was with us while he was interviewing at PITT. We had fun introducing him to Pittsburgh. I realized Pittsburgh has been growing on me as we talked about how it was living here. The fall has been beautiful! and it wasn’t a ‘good’ year compared to others from what I hear. On our way home from church today, we took a little detour through a park. We listened to classical music as we drove through the bright, warm, and glowing fall colors of orange, red, and yellow. Sounds kind of romantic…it was:)

This week was eventful. The ‘school’ at Carnegie Mellon that my program is a part of, the ‘Heinz’ school is now the ‘Heinz College’. It has the school of Public Policy and Management and the ‘School of Information Systems’. They even put up a whole new website for us. It’s pretty exciting. A group of 3 Indians approached me and asked me to be on their team for a 24 hour ‘Code Challenge’ put on my Morgan Stanley. I thought it would be fun so I agreed. We started out strong and optimistic as we had some good ideas and made some quick progress on the problem. The problem was fun and we came up with good ideas, we just couldn’t get our code to work, so after about 14 hours the team decided it wasn’t worth continuing and our time would be better spent getting sleep and finishing assignments that were due. It was a fun experience though and I now understand more how to work with my Indian friends and what all their mannerisms mean.

After getting some sleep, Sharon and I went to the Carnegie Art museum for a fun Saturday date. They have a 'Life on Mars' exhibit showing right now. The objective of the art pieces were to show life on earth from a different perspective and light. Nothing really struck us as amazing. Some of it was out there...like alien to us. The coolest piece was a room with a lot of glass balls on the floor, like giant marbles. We enjoyed getting out. We didn't have time for the Natural History Museum so we'll have to go there next time. I want to see the T-Rex vs. T-Rex exhibit.

Sharon is still having fun at work. This Friday they took a field trip to a pumpkin patch, which was not only fun, but helped the kids take a nice long nap afterwards.

I’m entering a stage of searching and interviewing for internships. I’ve had a couple good leads so far and I we will see what opportunities come up.

It's just frugality

Quick update.

The past week was fun. We are seeing evidence of the beautiful Northeast fall. We went to the DC Temple over the weekend and saw the organe, red, and yellow colors of fall revealing themselves. 

It was spectacular. We also saw a funny cow trailer at the gas station, as you can see in the picture below.

 

To Sharon's delight we came home to find this sign in our yard. She has been trying to figure out how to get one for the last few weeks.

Midterms are this week. I hope they go well.

As I was reading around today online I found this interesting article called, 'The New Age of Frugality'. It talks about Americans learning how to be frugal again. I had to smile to myself as I was reminded of the many messages I've heard from church leaders about living frugal and within our means. I went to the church website and did a quick search on 'living within your means'. A good list of talks and articles came up with dates like 1981, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008. That is just a small sample. I would like to post the links to a few of these as they were intersting to me.

1. First to note was President Ezra Taft Benson's artilce in the June 1987 Ensign. The article was entitled, Pay thy Debt, and live. 
   
2. The second one I liked was President Hinkley in a talk in conference published in the Nov ensign. The talk is entitled, 'To the Boys and To the Men' He said, "I repeat, I hope we will never again see such a depression. But I am troubled by the huge consumer installment debt which hangs over the people of the nation, including our own people. In March 1997 that debt totaled $1.2 trillion, which represented a 7 percent increase over the previous year."
3. Another ensign artilce I found that references the talk above was in 2002 called, 'Climbing out of Debt'. There was a good section on 'Choose an affordable home'.
4. And one in the January Ensign of 2008 less than one year ago, 'Happily living within our Means'. I like how it starts out talking about accountability and being accountable for our actions, especially when it comes to finances. 

As I've thought about the mess the world financial system is in, and other 'messes' in which we generally find ourselves, I've found myself relating it to something that is a little graphic, but it might get people's attention. It's like when you pee on the seat. I have become aware that this is a plague that both men and women face. It becomes a serious issue when using public restrooms. Some, nay most people just don't know how to be responsible and clean up after themselves. Too many people just leave it around for the next person to deal with. Clean up after yourself! I learned that when I was potty trained or thereabout.  And Sharon claims that no-one is really potty trained at all, until they learn this rule. 

In a political economics class I took last year when the dollar first began to fall we discussed what was happening, why it was happening, and what the implications would be. One of the consequences and ways to correct the problem was to do exactly what this article and the prophets, said tighen the belt and live within your means. It seems if anyone is to blame for the situation we're in its all of us.

Follow up on the last post.

I wanted to thank the people who put in a voice on the thoughts of the last post. My intent was not to offend, so if I did I apologize. I don't know why, but I always feel the need to question my own assumptions about the world. I find that doing so I either find my assumption was right, or that I was wrong. I hate to admit that I'm wrong, but I'm human and am usually wrong.

One point many have brought up with regards to health care is the idea of welfare. I think this will become an area of great study for me over the next while. While doing my search on the above topics I ran into an interesting talk by Elder Robert D. Hales back when he was the presiding Bishop. The talk, 'Welfare Principles to Guide Our Lives: An Eternal Plan for the Welfare of Men’s Souls'. 

My question is would it really be a 'hand out' or a way to 'entrap the poor in self deflating system that trampled initiative'? From my point of view right now is that people, even those who are wealthy and have health care, are in a real bind when they get sick with something serious, like cancer. You either get really lucky and the 'health insurance' you have works. In which case you would probably still pay a lot of money, or you are disqualified and spend an even larger proportion of money on the cure, or you can't afford it and you die sometimes in a way not very pleasant. What kind of a society thinks it's appropriate to let someone die because they can't afford care? Isn't that putting a price on life? 

If all have health care provided and all contribute through tax, is it really a hand out? It seems like people who need care would get it. Having received care they might be healthy enough to contribute to the economy by working and be able to afford to live somewhere, not to mention be able to pay taxes. Maybe that is too ideal. At least people won't have to go into debt to pay for medical procedures or die because of the unfortunate bad luck of getting sick. 

There was a good point given about quality of care. Social medicine would lead to a decline in the quality of health care we recienve. To which I would ask those who have lived abroad and experienced a 'social' health care system. Was the quality poor? If it was bad was it because it was a social program or was it due to something else? Was there evidence of corruption and degrading health conditions in the country? Last I checked the US was ranked 37th by the United Nations on the quality of its healthcare. The best healthcare was provided by France.

I think it is tempting for me to look at third world countries and think that the quality of their social health care is bad because it's socialized. But I've been thinking lately that it could be bad because the country is still developing. If some third world countries I have been to had only private health care a lot of people would be suffering more than they are right now and the people might be poorer if they had to seek help from private institutions. I think I'm really going against the grain on this line of thought, but I still feel like there is a lot to be explored, explained,  and discussed.

Shaping Ideas & Thoughts

It's been awhile so I'll try and get the update up. I've had some interesting thoughts lately that I will also put up.

Update
Life is good. We finally have our car registered and working well. We came out of church last week to find one of our tires flat, so we had to get a new one. We have our ward temple trip to the DC Temple this coming weekend so we are hoping it holds out. We were excited to hear Pennsylvania is getting a temple! Although Philadelphia isn't much closer, it's actually further. We'll probably leave before it's finished though.

School has been keeping me busy. We are approaching the mid-point of the semester. Most of my classes are structured as half semester courses or 'minis', so I have finals coming up in most of my classes. I will then get another handful of new classes for the last part of the semester. I only have two classes that go the whole semester and we have mid-terms in those classes. I've been working hard on three or four group projects as well as preparing for tests. It haven't felt overwhelmed yet, just busy.

The last few weeks were fun also because of the career fair. Companies were mostly looking for full time hires, not interns, so I went just to get to know the companies that come to Carnegie Mellon. It was a very impressive list. Tech companies included IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Apple, Real networks, nVidia, Mozilla(Firefox), Oracle, Amazon.com, and several others. Big banks and investment companies included Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon, and Citi. Consulting firms Deloitte, Accenture, Brulant, Micro Solutions, Oracle Consulting, and several other small ones. Big companies Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Proctor & Gamble, Disney's Interactive Media Group, and Capital IQ(Yahoo! Finance uses of their stuff for stocks, etc.) 

So with that list there always seems to be an information session to go to, or company to be doing research on or applying for. Hopefully something comes out of all this good exposure. I had some thoughts during all the hype. Since starting school I've felt like the minority. I'm surrounded by intelligent people who are mostly from China and India, however, at the job fair I was surprised at how many of the companies were only looking for US citizens or people legal to work in the US. I don't know how to describe what it was like coming back and talking with my peers and listening to their frustrations at the limited options they had.

Sharon is doing well. Her job with the little children is entertaining. She always has fun stories to tell, as well as some frustrations. It is a job that requires a lot so she is usually pretty tired too. She's amazing.

She has steadly been working on making amazing improvements to our little home. She made an amazing red courch cover for our couch. The couch looks kind of new, and the color fits with the theme of the room. She made some awesome wall hanging to go above the couch. She made some frames and streched some nice cloth overthem. On that same theme she took some of the old, rather sad looking couch pillows that were left and made new covers for them so they macthc wall hangings. 

She has also been getting back into making bread. That includes homemade pizza dough! This morning she made some good cinnimon rolls for conference:) I'm not complaining. Since we are both gone most of the day she has also started to make good use of our crockpot. She made some good French Onion soup. She is such a good homemaker, I love the hard work she puts  into making our home beautiful and putting food on the table. I try to reciprocate, but never get close to what she does. To make it up to her I've tried to get us out on some fun dates.

Dates

Baseball
We went out to a professional baseball game with some other students in my program. People here are extremely loyal to their professional sports teams. The Pittsburgh Pirates were playing one of their last games of a...umm..pretty bad season. They played the Astros from Texas. They lost in good pirate fashion, but the fireworks after were amazing. The best fireworks show I've ever seen. (There was another firework show last night to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the city that probably beat it, but I was at the priesthood session of conference)

Gallery Crawl

View Larger Map

This weekend there was a 'Gallery Crawl' in the cultural district of the city. There were probably 25-30 little gallery's open to the public in a part of town called the Cultural District. The 'District' is roughly from 6th Ave to 9th Ave in one direction and from Liberty Ave to Fort Duquesne Blvd. There is a Symphony Hall and Opera House. Additionally there are four to six theaters where the ballet performs and other shows, usually Broadway productions, take place. Wicked was showing the night we went to the baseball game, and Spam-a-lot is being advertised right now. There are also restaurants and small galleries sprinkled through out. We enjoyed seeing the local art and roaming through downtown. Here are some pictures.



We have also discovered Hulu.com. I've know about it since it was launced, but I hadn't been to it for a while. Since we don't have a TV, but we do have a nice FiOS(fiber) link to the internet we now get our entertainment on the computer. We can watch the recent versions of our favorite shows, 'The Office','The Simpsons', SNL, as well as watch the debates. Hulu even has an old classic tv show that I got hooked on in the spring. Remington Steele. They have the first two seasons:) During our free trial on Netflix we could get up to season 5. Unfortunatly the trial was only for two weeks :( Someday I'll get around to watching them. Hulu will provide plenty of distraction for now. That is a perfect segway into my next section on thoughts.

Thoughts...
We took advantage of the free trial to netflix to see a few movies we've been meaning to see for awhile, which have also prompted some interesting thoughts.
Joe Versus the Volcano
I really liked this movie. It's a classic in my book. I recommend it. I think it's PG-13 for language. It's one of, if not THE first Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movies. The part I liked was the morning after he is told he will die and a business man shows up to convince him to jump into a volcano. The five minute clip of that conversation resonated with me. I think because of all the recruiting and information sessions I've been to lately where companies are, in a way, trying to sell you on 'jumping' into their companies. The whole movie is a nice metaphor on life and living life to the fullest.

Why we fight
This is a documentary on the rise of the Industrial Military Complex in the United States, specifically since the end of World War II. I found it very interesting. Since watching it and listening to the debates for the election I've had to ask myself, why are we fighting, why do we want to keep fighting?

I actually started thinking about this before we watched the movie. I did a personal scripture study on War and found it interesting that besides defending their liver fighting a war was usually linked to some sort of ideal, like Freedom of religion, protection of our families, etc. I tried to parallel it to our situation today.
Are we fighting for freedom? Who's freedom? Or freedom of what? Are we fighting to maintain our lifestyle? What lifestyle? What 'ideals' and 'interests' are we fighting for. Some of the reasons I get feel abstract. What defines freedom in the context we use it. Our freedom? Another people freedom? Are we really making them free? I don't have any concrete answers, I've just been pushing ideas around. Another thing I hear from people is we are fighting for peoples rights. What defines a right? At what point does a right in our society become, in our view, a right for everyone in the world? What are the eternal rights that are worth fighting for?
As I listened to the priesthood session of conference, I can't remember which talk, a man was talking about the war Satan is waging on the young men of the church, a great battle. It dawned on me that real wars are part of that war. Young men and women go to fight, for some reaason?, and are killed. They could be men and women serving the Lord as missionaries. Wars also keep the gospel from being heard in every nation. Was it not the word of God that changed hearts in the Book of Mormon, more than warfare?
Since I haven't developed my thoughts completely I won't say much more now. This post is already pretty long. I would also be interested in other people's thoughts.

SiCKO
This is a movie by the somewhat 'controversial' movie maker, Micheal Moore. It's about the health care system in the United States. It was interesting because he went to other countries and talked to people about, why they have socialized health institutions. In the UK, a man from parliament that was interviewed made the point that there was a common concern among all the people that everyone be looked after. I thought that was amazing. I've been pondering that and then I heard D. Todd Christofferson's talk in conference on the importance to care for the sick and needy in our societies to become more like Zion. Not just our church community.
A comparison or argument came to mind, and I don't know how it will sit with people (I'm still thinking it out too), but here it is. As members we believe that abortion is morally wrong. Many members feel we should make abortion illegal because it is against the commandments of God. Well, following that logic should we not be morally and legally obligated to care for the poor? Why are so many members against social programs that care for all members of society the way Christ asked us to? Because we have to pay higher taxes? Should we not be willing to support programs that will take care of and give opportunity to all members of our society like education and health care? Surely tithing to the church won't create a program that can adequately care for all the poor in our nation, unless they raised the percentage we pay...but I might be getting blasphemous now.

Anyway, a lot has been running through my mind as I've weighed in on election debates and issues, listened to conference, gone to school, and observed other happenings around me.

One week down

The first week of school was great. Just wanted to leave a quick update. I'm excited for my classes. Right now they are just getting going so there is a lot of review material, which has been good for me. There are some things I just didn't grasp as well as I should have and this is giving me the opportunity to make sure I really understand it. The classes move fast though and new material is coming up so I hope I can keep on top of everything. I love interacting with the people in my program and I like the direction and vision the teachers have. The program is great. I love going to school...hopefully it stays that way :)

Besides school starting we have been trying to finish taking care of all the small things with moving, like registering our car. Unfortunately this hasn't gone so smoothly. I don't know if it is just Pennsylvania or any state, but registering our car has been a nightmare. We had to get Pennsylvania Insurance, then go and get our Pennsylvania drivers license, get inspections etc... Getting our drivers licenes was a nightmare also because Sharon at one point had a PA license, so they wanted to see it and since it had her maiden name on it we had to come back with our marriage license to show why/how her name had changed. It was crazy.
After getting our PA insurance lined up, they said they couldn't register us because it didn't start until the 1st of September(a whole 3 days away). On top of that because the car was 'gifted' to us less than 6 months ago they want us to make sure we've paid some sort of taxes on the car so we have to pay a sales tax of 7% of 80% of the blue book value of the car. What a joke. Any way we hope to have it all taken care of, inspections, insucrance, licesnes and all by the end of this week. This has been the most frustrating thing for us. We've been back and forth from our house and offices all week, valuable time when you could be getting other things done.

We made a visit this weekend to Del and Mary Lou, Sharon's parents in Marietta, PA about 3 1/2 hours from us this week. It was fun seeing them. We carpooled with them down to the DC Temple for a session Saturday. That evening we had dinner with Sharon's old High School friend and her husband, then headed back to Pittsburgh.

We are starting to make friends at church. We discovered a family that lives on our same street, just a few houses down. He is going to dental school at PITT. They have three little girls. They invited us to dinner tonight. We also have a church picnic tomorrow for Labor Day that we are looking forward to.

Sharon starts work this week. She will be helping in the classroom for a non-for-profit pre-school/daycare called interplay. They work on integrating children with diablilities with other children. It should be fun. She is working on all the paperwork and screenings for that, like finger printing, FBI background check, etc.

We hope you all have a great week.

Pittsburgh

We've now been in Pittsburgh for a week and our little apartment is coming together. We’ve been learning a lot with our first big move and have been experiencing a lot of growth. We got the internet up and running and I have time to sit down before classes start tomorrow to update our blog. Here are some pictures from the summer. Some of Sharon's sisters family, who we stayed with in Washington and some of the fun activities they took us along on, as well as some pictures of the famous Pike's place market.


Sharon got here last week with my family and we piled the boxes in our living room and slept on the floor. It was fun to have my mom, dad, and littlest (but by no means smallest) brother McKay here for a couple of days. We appreciate the help and support we got from them. Monday I gave them the grand tour of campus, which was fun, but probably not the most exciting. We then went down the road and saw some of the University of Pittsburgh and showed them the Cathedral of learning and checked out some of the museums and other buildings. While I was at a meeting they went and checked out the botanical gardens just behind campus, which they reported was pretty cool. You can see pictures that my mom posted here.

Tuesday my family took off for Amish country and Indianapolis and we started to unpack. Things are definitely coming together. We made a couple trips to IKEA and found some nice, relatively, cheap solutions for furniture that should get us through the next couple of years. I have some pictures of how the apartment is starting to look, but pictures never do much justice.
Before:

After:



We only have a few minor things to take care of now. A mattress, a possible couch cover, some curtains, and I'm going to try and build some shelves for food storage in a little closet by the kitchen.

School starts tomorrow. I’m excited. Orientation was fun. They did a good job at giving us time and information to get settled in before the load of classes falls on us, which I think will help. Orientation involved everything from a scavenger hunt all around Pittsburgh to some tests to see if we qualified to exempt any of the core classes. I partially exempted the database class, so I have some open credits for an extra class. I was hoping to exempt a few other classes, but I guess I wasn’t up to the Carnegie Mellon standard. It’s bitter sweet. It will be sweet to solidify my knowledge of the subjects I was hoping to exempt in classes that will be really good, but it’s bitter because I could have opened up some credit hours to take some classes in other areas.

Sharon has been busy since we’ve been here as well. Besides doing most of the house organizing she has been interviewing at a couple of places for a job. She recently had two second interviews with good results. One place, only a mile from our house, said they would love her help. It’s a non-for-profit daycare/pre-school called interplay. She would be helping in the classroom. The other interview was out in Columbus, Ohio. It is a political action and research group, non-partisan. Unfortunately they don’t have anything fulltime in Pittsburgh, only a couple part-time things with the elections coming up. She doesn’t know for sure what she’s going to do yet, but has to decide soon because they are waiting to hear back from her.

Career paths have been a subject we’ve been discussing a lot between ourselves lately. It’s hard to know where choices of employment will lead and how to choose employment that will take you where you want to go. We would love to hear people’s thoughts on this. Feel free to post something, or email us.

I’m hoping to keep up the blog; it might be back to once a month with classes starting. If you need our new mailing address you can email us. For security and privacy reasons I'm not going to post it.

We love you all and hope all well for you.

Coast to Coast...again.

Well, I finish my internship for the summer. It was a wonderful experience, and I feel that I have some good experience under my belt. Many have asked if I could see myself with the company I interned with or working for some other Big Accounting firm. After reflecting I have decided that I could do this kind of work, but not for a long time. I found it interesting to be in different companies and to talk with management in those companies to understand the way their systems worked. It was exciting. That said, I don’t see myself with an accounting firm for more than 5 or 6 years. Why not? I don’t have much of a desire to be a Partner. Accounting firms main business is Auditing, although there is some ‘advisory’ or consulting work too, I’m not interested in the core of what an accounting firm does. 5 years would give me two years of being at the bottom of the chain doing grunt work, understanding all the ins and outs of IT auditing and understanding business processes. Then three years in a position where I could actually start getting experience managing a team, being part of planning, resource allotment, and building relationships with the firm and within the team. The firms are good about keeping their employees qualified with certifications and other education that would also be advantageous for continued career development. It seems to me that at the five year mark people stay because they want to be a partner or keep moving up the chain, something that doesn’t really interest me.

I don’t think audit is my true passion. I have come up with this analogy and it seems to work well for the current time. Auditing to me, perhaps not to others, is like rappelling. It is interesting and fairly engaging. The focus isn’t so much on moving forward as much as it is on sitting back and looking at what is going on around. There is vision and insight of what one would have to climb or has climbed. My passion and what I eventually want to be involved with as a career will be more like climbing. As much fun and as useful as rappelling can be, I personally feel more fulfilled and challenged climbing. I want to be involved in the dirty work and challenge of building something. Having to trouble shoot and come up with solutions. I want a job where at the end I can look up and see I’ve gotten somewhere and feel like I have overcome, accomplished something significant, and fixed a problem or made the world better. Talking with my brother-in-law and visiting Microsoft, I realized that being involved in software development is defiantly one way I feel that; auditing, not as much.

I had strong reviews, and the firm was prepared to offer me job for next September, however, changes in plans and switching schools means I will not be back in Seattle anytime soon, so they could not formally offer me the job. There is still a chance I could work for them wherever we end up, possibly the UK. I do hope to one day end up in Seattle though.

The day after finishing we were in the car on our way back to Park City; we have had such good luck with our car that we should have foreseen trouble on this trip. It started out a couple hours after we started and I got pulled over in Yakima. I was going 73 in a 60 zone, the lame thing is that it was about to turn to 70 L. I learned my lesson. A couple hours later we were about to gain some good elevation up a big hill so we stopped for our first fill up of the day and to switch drivers. As Sharon started the car up and put it into gear the car barely moved, it was like the gear just wouldn’t engage. Pushing on the gas just made the RPMs go way up. Even switching gears didn’t seem to help. With some patients the car eventually got going. We stopped and looked up the closest mechanic which took us back a couple of miles down the highway. By the time we got there it seemed to be working again. He said the clutch might just be slipping or the clutch needed replacing. He also said that if we made it over the big 7 mile hill we would probably be fine the rest of the way. We proceeded much slower and took the hill easily and cruising the rest of the way without any clutch problems. However, as we were rolling past Twin Falls and looking for a place to fill up, we suddenly heard a crazy sound like starching, banging and rattling all at the same time. It came from the back and under the car. We pulled over immediately. Sharon jumped out of the car and started looking around frantically. It sounded like the side of the car had fallen off or something, but she didn’t see anything wrong. We slowly started up again and after a couple of seconds it started again, only worse. We pulled over and again inspected the outside of the car, and below the car, starting to get worried. Again nothing seemed wrong. We started up again and the sound started again almost immediately. Sharon once again hopped out and as I slowly started driving she observed to see if anything fishy was going on with the car. We found it. The treed on our tire was starting to come off. A big flap with wires and all was flopping around and banging the inside of the wheel well. Lucky for us we were about ¾ of mile from the off ramp to the gas station. We pulled in slowly and a nice man with a garage for trucks helped us throw the spare on. He sent us up the road another 30 miles to the Mal-Mart in Burley. They were still open and not too busy so they got us in and out quickly. After that we didn’t have any problems. The next day at the shop it was determined that the clutch was slipping and all it needed was adjusting. We also had the Air Conditioner looked at, but they couldn’t fix it because it is the old rayon kind of coolant, so we are content to keep using the natural ‘windows down’ kind of air conditioner. With everything that happened we feel the lord was really looking after us and are happy most everything is working well now.

The next morning after arriving in Park City I jumped on a plane with as many bags as we could justify paying for (2) and headed to Pittsburgh. It really is amazing how things just seem to happen and work out. As I was on my way to the airport I got a call from Sharon’s sister. She and her husband, who are on their way to Africa for a few weeks to do research, were in Pittsburgh. They picked me up at the airport, took me to dinner with their extended family, dropped me off at our apartment, and took me to the grocery store. I’m so thankful for good family and charitable people. It was so nice to have some familiar faces the first day in a new town and some help. The alternatives I had planned on would have been much messier and hectic.

I have been doing all the fun orientation stuff the last few days. I made a quick calculation and I think that about 50% of my program is from India, about 20% from China, Taiwan, and Japan, maybe 20% from Europe, Africa, and South America, and I think there are only 10% of us from the US. I’ve only officially meet three, but I’ve seen some others that I feel confident are from the US as well. Today was my first day at church; the ward seems like a good one. There are a lot of couples with small children. Sharon, my parents, and McKay should be getting here tonight! Exciting. Good news is there have been no major car problems on this leg of the trip. I think the stereo might have stopped working because of a fuse, and apparently we might have a bad spark plug, but it hasn’t affected anything too much.

Pittsburgh has been great so far. It was stormy the night I got in, but the rest of the time has been sunny and very nice. I thought it was going to be really hot and humid, but so far it’s been fairly cool and I haven’t noticed the humidity. The sun has been out and everything has been beautiful. As I’ve had time to finally sit down and relax and think as well as reflect on the past couple of weeks and especially last three days at school, I am really excited and I feel deep down that this is the right move for Sharon and me. We appreciate everyone’s love and support.
Thanks for everything everyone has done for us the past few months. We love you all. Keep us updated on life.

Mid-Summer thoughts.

I have the time to update! This will be the first time I get two updates in one Month; this is a major mile marker for me. We'll see if I can keep it up. The last two weeks haven't been super eventful.

Work

I finally got to do some real work on a client project. After a week and a half of training I was able to finally see what people in a big 4 firm do. The fact that they are willing to train us is nice, and it has given us all a good foundation for understanding the firm we are working at, but it's nice to be doing; instead of just sitting and listening. The project I was on didn't have the ordinary kind of work for us so I still don't have a solid idea of what a 'typical' engagement is like, but this coming week I'm on a new client that we do more traditional work for and I should get the feel.

After one week of being on a client, we (the interns) were off to more training in San Francisco, but it was a gathering of all the professionals in the specific division we are interning with, so it was much larger in scale but more focused as far as the scope of the subjects being trained. Again, we had our special intern training, but lots of time to meet and network within the practice. My impressions and feelings so far are still in the middle. I think it would be a great place to get some great experience, but there are still some things I have reservations about. One being 4 weeks in and I've only had one week of actual work, with the rest being training and such. It's hard to form a solid opinion without the experiences. Hopefully the next two weeks will be more typical of the everyday life.

Life

Sharon and her family are all in Iowa this week for a family reunion. I'm sad I didn't get to go out with them. It's been a long week being away from her and I can't wait for her to get back to Seattle next weekend. Before she left we went on our mega date of the summer. It was really fun. We went to the Seattle temple in the early afternoon and then headed into town. We ate downtown at the cheesecake factory then took a stroll through the Pike's Place Market as things were closing up. The main event was the 'Cirque de la Symphonie' put on by the Seattle symphony for their 'summer festival' with the guest performers being jugglers, contortionist, strong men, aerial specialist, and a 'cube specialist'. It was really fun and cool. We could hardly believe our eyes when one man did a one-handed hand stand while another man did another one-handed hand stand on his neck. Here is their website. Go to their gallery and you can see the 'strong men' doing handstands on each other. I couldn't copy the pictures, so you'll have to do some digging yourselves. If they are ever in your area it is definitely worth seeing.

So, I still love Seattle. I can't speak for Sharon, but whenever we talk about it we agree we like this area. Coming home from the long week in San Francisco I felt good returning here and while reflecting on it, I found myself thinking it is a place I would love to 'come home' to and in a sense it already feels that way. With that said we are gearing up to move to Pittsburgh for the next year and a half. Hopefully we fall into place as easily as we did here. We wish you all the best. Cheers.

Washington Days

Well, this update comes from the beautiful city of Duvall 30 miles east of Seattle. We’ve now been here for about three weeks and we love it! We were able to get here on a Sunday evening leaving two days for us to settle in before we got to business. We took a day to get familiar with the area we are staying and a day to go into Seattle and get acquainted with the city.
The Durant Family
We are staying with Sharon’s sister, her husband, and their five boys. I will refer to them as the Durant Family. We were in Chile with them at the time I was offered the internship and they kindly offered to let us stay at their home for the 2 months of the internship. We have enjoyed staying with them and appreciate their generosity. Mr. Durant works at Microsoft which has lead to some good insight and conversation as well as many opportunities to meet and network with other people who work there. I was actually lucky enough to get a whole tour of the Microsoft campus and shadow him for a day. It was really exciting and fun.
Seattle
We figured the bus system out. There is one bus that runs in the mornings and evenings that starts a couple minutes from the Durant home and goes right down town about a block from work. The only possible ‘con’ to the situation is that it takes anywhere between an hour to an hour and a half to get there. If I drove I could probably cut that time in half, but then I would have to deal with some insane traffic at the times I would be commuting, paying parking fees around $35.00/day, not to mention gas. It is pro for me because I am able to finally get some reading in. We stopped by the ‘famous’ Seattle library. It is an amazing glass building right down town. It is actually where I get on and off the bus so I signed up for a visitor pass and can check books in and out and read them on my commute.
Some other fun things we did were, bought a bus pass and some tickets to get into town at the transit center and then walked up to the Space needle just to check it out. We didn’t go up it, or into the EMP (Experience Music Project), but we now know where they are. On our way there we stopped by the Symphony hall and were lucky to catch the noon tour that took us into the hall while they were practicing and we got to hear them play for about ten minutes. Unfortunately they were practicing for their final show that weekend. They do have some cool jazz things lined up for the summer, I don’t know if we’ll make it into any of them.
We also explored where Sharon will be working. She isn’t that far from where I work, she is just down closer to the docks. We were happy to meet the people at the organization she will be working with and get a better idea of what she will be helping with. It sounds like she will be helping them organize grant information an important part of any NGO.
Basically we love Seattle.
4th of July
The 4th of July was fun. I didn’t have to go into to work so we loaded up the car and went with the Durant Family out to Ephrata to spend the day with Mr. Durant’s roommate from college and his family. He runs a big bee business. We got to go out to the bee hives and see how the whole operation is run. It is a fun and interesting business. They recently learned that their honey is what is being used in the new Haagen-Dazs honey flavored ice-cream. It’s a little on the pricey side, but I highly recommend it for anyone interested. It was a good excursion because we got to see the central/east part of Washington and meet some of the good people that live there, they were every bit as nice and accommodating as those we’ve meet in Seattle.
Check back soon because I will be adding pictures

Transitions

My sister threatened me that if I didn't update our blog I was going to be removed from her favorites list. Hopefully this comes soon enough to avoid being taken off the only favorite list we are probably on.

Camping
Being graduated and finishing up some projects at work I finally had time to do fun things with Sharon on the weekends. Since we are leaving the beautiful mountains and desert of Utah we spent most of our weekends in May camping. My brother and his friend Angie went camping with us up Spanish Fork Canyon in Diamond Fork. It was a chili night, but fun. We treated ourselves to pancakes the next morning. yummm.



I guess the next week wasn't really camping, but we were up in the mountains. We volunteered at the Hugh O'Brian Youth leadership conference (HOBY) for Juniors in High School held at Aspen Grove at Sundance. We had a lot of fun with our group of about 10 kids. Each group had a color to represent them and we were assigned Black, which lead to an association with Pirates. Over the course of a couple days the kids went through various leadership exercises, activities, and a series of panel discussions. The most interesting for me was the religion and political panel.



We then spent a weekend in Zion National Park with some friends from high school, Gabe, his friend Johanna, Keith, Emily, and Dave. We did the traditional hikes like Angels Landing, the Weeping Wall, the Emerald Pools, and the bottom of the Narrows. Unfortunately the water was flowing high and fast and the park prohibited us from going to far. The trip was a success. The only casualty was the rearview mirror in the car. We came back from hiking and found it dangling in the car. It wasn't just the mirror that came off, it brought a little chunk of glass with it too. My guess is that the glass heated differently in the sun and it caused the glass to fracture. Gorilla glue did the trick gluing it all back together.



To end our marathon of camping we spend Memorial Day weekend in the church's 'Camp Zerahemla' in Morgan, Ut. My youngest brother McKay was doing his eagle project. We scraped, sanded, and re-painted 40 picnic benches. It was a good time and we were happy to get all the work done that he had planned.

Leaving Provo

After doing some math we decided that it wasn't worth sticking around in Provo past the end of May, for financial reasons. It was a fairly sudden change in plans so we put together a fun Ice Cream party to see all of our friends one last time before we left. Thanks to everyone who came! It was a good turn out and we were able to see and catch up with most of our friends in the area. We were sad to leave all the people we love in Provo. It is a different experience moving away from something that has become so familiar. I guess it's a lot like the mission. We are excited for what the future holds.
Park City

Since leaving we've taken refuge at my parents house. We are grateful for their hospitality. Since coming up we have been able to get out and enjoy the blooming mountains. It's been really nice. In the process we've been getting out to run every morning, which feels good. I have also been able to get out on some good bike rides with my youngest brother. It's also been enjoyable to have some time with my second to youngest brother who just graduated form High School and is getting ready to move to college and preparing to serve a mission for our church, meaning it might be awhile before we see him again. I've attached some of the beautiful flowers we've seen while hiking.


Cross Country
We took a week to fly out to Niagara Falls, NY to see Sharon's sister Joan and her family and to pick up an old car they were getting rid of. Thanks again Joan & Ruben. After spending the weekend with them doing fun things like going to a drive in( my first time ever!), seeing the Niagara Falls, and getting familiar with town, we started our drive across the country.

The first day we went from Niagara to Iowa City, IA with a couple hours detour to Pittsburgh, PA. In Pittsburgh we looked at apartments and found one we liked! Yahoooo. It's nice to know we have a place to live. All we have left is figuring out how and when we are going to get there. After the apartment hunt we tried to straighten out the title on the car and insurance, but meet with a lot of red tape. We hopped back in the car that afternoon a little frustrated and continued our drive through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and part of Iowa.
We were lucky to beat some of the storms and flooding. The only rain we saw that day was a little in Pennsylvania.
We pulled into Iowa City, IA at 2 am and were recieved by Lynne and Brian another one of Sharon's sisters and her husband. They let us stay there a day and rest up a little. I really enjoyed Iowa City. It was a nice town. We got to walk through an old Mormon hand cart camp.
We woke up early again the next day and started the rest of our trip through Iowa. After a brief stop to visit with my cousin Josh in Des Moines we pushed through some rain and never saw more after that. We were lucky to miss all the major storms, flooding, and tornadoes in the Iowa, Nebraska area. Thanks to everyone for letting us stop and say hi and the updates on weather as we made our way through that part of the country. We made it back to Park City before mid-night. The car held up great and the drive really didn't seem that bad. We were in a '93 civic. It is in good condition for being 15 years old and having some 230,000 miles on it. We got about 35 miles to the gallon across the country. It only cost us roughly $225 (the average gas price for us was $3.95/ gal) to drive across the country where our one way plane tickets for two, which we bought months ago, were about $360.
Since we've been back we've been working the car. We got it all cleaned up, fixed a few things, got it inspected, and today, as soon as I'm done with this post we should have it all registered and the title transfered.



I know this was a long update, but I've been a slacker and haven't posted as regularly as I would like. Hopefully the next one will come sooner. We should be in Seattle by then :)

Graduation and Beyond

The last two weeks have been eventful. Life happens fast sometimes and you just get to enjoy the ride. Here is the update on the events of the last two weeks.
Graduation!
Sharon finished her classes in December, but didn't do any of the graduation stuff because she was in Brazil. She decided to put off walking until Spring so we could walk together. With finals behind me on Monday I was able to rest and relax for a few days before the big graduation ceremonies. Thursday, April 24th , was the commencement ceremony for all graduates at BYU. As we walked from our house to the Administration building we were surprised to find it snowing. First time I've seen it snowing that late in the spring in Provo.
After a long march, or procession, into the Marriott Center we heard from various speakers. A student graduating in accounting recounting the many things he had learned while at BYU that would help him and us have success in the 'real world'. After that the keynote speaker was Elder David A. Bednar. The main focus of his talk was centered around the BYU motto of 'Enter to Learn; go forth to Server'. His main point was that while at the University we should learn to love learning. He suggested that the motto for BYU, if there were unlimited space, should be 'enter to learn to love learning and to serve; go forth to continue learning and serving'. We were happy we decided to participate in the ceremony.



Friday, April 25th, were our separate convocation ceremonies. Sharon walked with the Anthropology department at 8:00 am and received her 'diploma' from the professor she went to Namibia with, Dr. Crandall. It's always nice to be congratulated by those you've worked closely with. I walked later that afternoon around 2:00 pm. The ceremony was fun for me too. I sat with two good friends from my program so it made it extra fun and special.
We then packed up and went up to Park City to celebrate with my family our graduation as well as my brother McKay and my Dad's Birthday.

Pittsburgh, PA
Monday morning we drove down to the airport and hopped on a plane headed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The purpose of our voyage was to evaluate the city and schools there to see if we would be comfortable and happy making the move. It was a fun experience. We rode the public transportation the first day to get a feel for how well we would be able to get around. There was a bus that went straight from the Airport, through downtown, past all the Universities including Duquesne & University of Pittsburgh (PITT), and ended at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). It was a colder than normal day, overcast and damp, not the best conditions for a great first impression. As we explored campus I found myself noticing people smoking on campus and run down buildings. However, after exploring the buildings more my perspective changed to admiration as I noticed the character they had from so many years of use and how great their architecture was. We also got to the newer buildings, which were also very beautiful.
Tuesday we woke rested and to a much more beautiful day, which helped get a different perspective on the city. We returned to campus (CMU), and I meet with my student host, Salahaldin Hussein from Palestine. Sharon & I went with him to a Business Intelligence class offered at the Tepper School of Business. The classroom environment really sold me. There were maybe 25 people in the class. Of those 25 a max of 4 or 5 were white Americans and few other African-Americans. The diversity was great. There were people from India, the Middle East, Asia, and I believe some European or Eastern European. The discussion in class was centered around a case on the Sysco Corporation and their strategy for implementing technology and whether or not they should give the go on a new project. I thought it was interesting. I even participated a little. After that I meet with the Director of the Information Systems Program and had a great conversation, followed by some informative meetings with career services, financial aid, and admissions directors and assistant directors. They were all helpful and answered many questions as well as gave great advice from succeeding in school to what and where to look for housing.
Sharon's parents made the trip across Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh so during my meetings and a little after they walked around campus with us. We then faced some construction traffic on our way back to our Days Inn and had an enjoyable evening visiting and eating out.


Wednesday we were back in town at University of Pittsburgh(PITT) for Sharon. She has been looking at their Anthropology and International Development programs and had lined up to meet with a few people. Again, very informative. I highly suggest meeting and discussing in person programs of interest. It is so much more enlightening and informative than emails and websites. We then took a few hours to explore PITT's campus. You can't really tell you are on campus because it's just part of the city, kind of like NYU. However, there is one building called the Cathedral of Learning that you can't miss. It's a huge tower built in an old Gothic Cathedral style. We went in and checked out the architecture and a few of the rooms that they made into 'theme rooms' to reflect different cultures in the Pittsburgh community. I recommend visiting it to anyone. After lunch we were on our way back to the airport and back to life.

Beyond
So, the verdict is in. We've officially decided to make the move to Pittsburgh to pursue my Masters degree of Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon, whether or not Sharon gets her degree at a University in Pittsburgh is still in question, but we are now looking into employment options, such as at an NGO. I have to say I feel really good about it. Of course I have the usual reservations and questions anyone has when it comes to moving and change in life, but deep down I know it's right. I'm excited for a change of pace from Provo. I'm look forward to making new friendships and networking with new people from around the country and the globe. I appreciate the experience and education I've gotten from BYU, but I'm eager to experience the difference. From our visit CMU seems very progressive, dare I say 'liberal' compared to BYU, which will be a fun contrast, as well as the, in my opinion, much more diverse environment. I also feel that CMU will open a lot of doors for Sharon and I in the long run. It's nice to have a decision made and be working out the finer details now. We have been in touch with the two wards that cover that part of the city and have had great responses to questions and help offered in finding housing. You have to love the almost immediate network and consistency the church provides when facing change.

So for the next month we are in Provo, then we will be in Seattle, WA for seven weeks, then we will be on our way out to Pittsburgh, PA.

We hope you've enjoyed the update. If you know of anyone who might want an update on our lives feel free to pass on the link to this blog. We also love to hear your comments and feedback, don't be shy about leaving a quick comment or two.

Introduction

This is my first blog attempt, which is sad considering the fact that I am planning on going into a semi-technical/computer based job market. I have multiple motivations for starting a blog they are:

1. Keep the world posted on Sharon, my wife, and my life without writing huge mass emails that fill up the inboxes of to tons of people that may or may not want to know what is going on in our life.
2. Start getting some experience in the blogging world. My goal is to setup my own blog and not rely on Google's predefined settings and templates.
3. So I can sound cool and tell people that I blog and hand out a nifty blogger address
4. Everyone else in the family already has one
   

With the reasons why I'm starting this blog out of the way let me bring readers of the blog up to speed on the essentials of the Quinn life so far.
My name is Anthony Quinn, like the actor for those who are old enough to remember him. I was lucky to find an amazing girl that gave me a chance and after dating for awhile we found ourselves not wanting to go on without each other, or in other words we were madly in love and we decided to get married. And so, Sharon Ellsworth and I were married about one year ago at the end of a long school year on a beautiful April morning.
We should have started a blog much earlier because this first year of being married would have been worth reading about everyweek, we'll see if it continues. Two weeks after being married and honeymooning in New York, Boston, and the stylish 'Nottingham Village' we found ourselves on a plane to Mozambique for the remaining of the summer.
Mozambique was a fun experience. We were with an NGO working on multiple projects helping them establish themselves in Beira a port city in the central part of Mozambique in the Sofala province. We ended up teaching a micro-enterprise class to entrepreneurs with small business and women who were seeking help from the government and had had some experience with business. As part of the class Sharon and I started a little brownie making business to put into practice the principles we were teaching. The proceeds went to help one of our students who's husband had left her with six children and a house that was falling over. Our other projects were helping develop a well/pump system to be built in villages without clean water.
Besides digging lots of test wells and shopping around for materials in the local markets we found ourselves in many meeting with the government as they liked to know what was going on. Our time there came to a peak when a group of Americans came over for an expedition, which we, mostly Sharon, had also been planning and organizing. We stayed out in a village for a week working on installing some prototype wells to be monitored for their effectiveness for the next year.

We returned at the end of August to our last year of school.
Our next grand adventure was taking a trip to Santiago, Chile to see Sharon's Parents. We had a wonderful trip over the Thanksgiving break. The week we were there we were able to relax and see and experience some of the wonderful parts of the Chilean culture. We took a day trip out to Pamaire, a old pottery village and looked at the art work and had a great traditional meal. We also saw the old fortress (right) and and visited a lot of cool places around the city. Almost every evening we went for a stroll through the city and played in the parks and checked out the cool architecture.

In December Sharon finished with her double major in Psychology and Socio-cultural Anthropology from the School of Social Science.

For Christmas we had the good fortune to be included in the families trip to Brazil. After being kicked off of our Delta flight in Atlanta because our seats weren't assigned when we checked in in Salt Lake we had two days to kill, which were spent in hotels and in the airport playing card games. After a couple day we finally got on a flight and made it to Rio de Janeiro. Instead of being able to spend the time we had planned there, we only had a few hours, but it was enough to drive through the city and see the famous beaches. It was cloudy and we were afraid we might not see the Christ statue, but right as we were about to head back it appeared from out of the clouds. Unfortunately we had to cut Iguassu Falls out of the itinerary, so we went strait to Curitiba. We had an enjoyable train ride through the hills down to the beach and then drove back to the city. The next day we traveled to Manaus in the Amazon and spend a couple of fun filled days hiking in the rain forest and floating around in the Amazon. After that we spent some time in Maceio where my younger brother served his mission, and then drove the four hours up to Recife where I served my mission. I loved seeing all the people that I had worked with again. We finished the trip off with a few days in Sao Paulo.

Right now I am finishing my major in Information Systems at the Marriott School Of Management at BYU. This summer we are looking forward to spending a couple months in Seattle, WA doing an internship, and then heading off to graduate school. The final decision has not been made yet as to where we will be going. The two main choices are between the Master of Information Systems Management (MISM) at BYU or Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, PA.
I also applied and was accepted to Willamette University in Salem, OR; Idaho State University in Pocatello; and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. We're open to your knowledge and opinion about any of these schools, but we have all but made up our minds on where we want to go, and that will be posted as soon as the final decision is made.

That wraps up most of our first year being married. Hopefully we can more fully document the coming year and keep everyone posted on how life is. Thanks for reading all of this.