Phish

I'm really excited. I found out this week that my favorite band, Phish, will be doing a reunion tour this summer! I've always been told that their concerts are the best, but I've never had the chance to go to one before. Now we are on the east coast, where a majority of their concerts are, I am determined to get tickets to one of the concerts. They are making a stop right outside of Pittsburgh, Maryland, Philadelphia, and a few in New York that are looking like possibilities.

Interviews

Sunday Afternoon
So the last few weeks have been busy. We just finished our mid-semester finals. All of my classes but one is a half semester class. Now that they are over we are officially on to our spring break!!

This is a short update. I'm in the Pittsburgh airport (they offer free wifi!) waiting to board my flight to Philadelphia. It feels like I've been on the road a lot lately, but it's really just been the last week. Thursday I was in Washington D.C. interviewing for an internship and attending a networking event for Carnegie Mellon. I was surprised how fruitful the event was after the reports from past networking events. I talked with the C.I.A. and they showed interested and encouraged me to apply. Tomorrow I have an interview in Valley Forge, PA, we'll see how that goes.

Internships have been on everyone’s minds lately. Most of the students in the program are required to do a summer internship and few have one so far. The word in the halls is that so far it is normal. People don't usually get squared away until closer to the summer. I've been feeling nervous though. If all works out, I'll have an offer by the end of Spring Break.

Sharon has been great and very supportive while I've been interviewing. The preschool she works at has been really busy. They keep getting more kids in their classroom. They recently got a new boy that has been learning the routine and that has its challenges.

That's the update. Hope all is well with everyone else.

Monday Afternoon
Well, the free wifi went out right as I was sending the last bit above, luckily I had saved a version of it before so I still have it. It is now Monday afternoon and I am in the Philadelphia airport using the free wifi for University students. We get so many perks, no wonder people like being students their whole lives. I think my interview went well. I got picked up at the airport in a nice Lincoln SUV and with nice leather seats and Mission Impossible III to the hotel. Very nice. Once I got to the hotel things went downhill for me. I got my clothes out and started ironing, but started getting dizzy and sea sick feeling. After a few trips to the bathroom I resumed my ironing. A second later I found myself kneeling over the toilet bowl. Wow, nothing like being sick the night before an interview at the hotel. Needless to say I was feeling a little better after the first incident. Once more and I said a quick prayer and lay down. I woke up a couple of hours later at mid-night feeling better. I cleaned up and went back to bed. The rest of the day has been great. Hopefully there will be no surprises on the airplane; I haven’t noticed the puke bags lately….

Feijoada

Over the holiday break I attempted making a brazilian dish, called Feijoada. It's a heavy bean and meat stew that you eat with rice and farinha( dried and ground up mandioc). The last time I tried this I was unsuccessful, however, my older sister had a friend that had experienced some success by mixing and matching two recipes from the Food Network webpage. They were the recipes of Tyler Florence and Jamie Oliver. I told her I would post the way I did it online. So, a month and a half later I'm getting around to it, I hope I remember all the details.

Feijoada de Antonio
1lb Black Beans or more. ( I like more beans)
12 or 16 oz package of browned sausage (it can be whatever flavor you want, you should probably stick to something fraily simple though)
1lb Ham, with bone (I used a pre-cooked honeyham)
2 big pork chops (chopped up into small cubes)
2 onions, peeled and finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, peeled, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
beef bouillon

Start soaking the black beans the night before.
The day you plan on eating the feijoada; Saute the onion and garlic in the pot you will cook in. Add the meats, and bay leaves.
Drain the water the beans soaked in and add the beans to the meat, onion, and garlic. Add water until the beans are completely covered. Add the bouillon.
Bring it all to a boil.

Once it is boiling, turn the heat down. Let it cook for 2-3 hours or until the beans get soft. You can usually tell by trying to pinch them between your fingers and they just mush out. Or you can taste them.

Serve it with rice.

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.