Adventures with LittleButty

Milestone for Bodi

2011-08-14T15:52:00.000-06:00

Well its that time for our little guy where he no longer needs a crib. He is still only 2 but will soon be 3 so we have decided to get him into a "big boy bed." We asked him what kind of room he wanted and he decided on Motorcycles.

BEFORE

AFTER

He absolutely loves it and wants to show everyone who comes over to the house. He spent his first night in the bed last night and Chase wanted to have a sleep over in his room.

Thanks to my awesome brothers for their excellent painting work. If you want great painting work done interior or exterior give them a call: 801-860-0036. And my amazing wife for her creativity and decorating skills.

Pitch Detection

2011-07-31T23:18:00.002-06:00

Mindy and her business partners have released a new version of the iPhone App with some big improvements. In particular this version uses the built-in Mic to listen to your voice and show whether you are on pitch or not. So you get instant feedback rather than having to diagnos your own voice.

She flew out to Atlanta and worked with Kelly Rowland who now uses the app!

Pretty impressive stuff:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voice-tutor/id382081400?mt=8

Are You Ready to Rock?

2011-05-20T13:24:00.001-06:00

Chase will be performing his 2nd annual concert as the drummer in his Rock Band "Salt Water Taffy" this weekend. The more people who can come out the better! Admission is free just tell them you came to see Chase Pack because he gets entered into a drawing for each person he brings.

Details at Mindy's Website: http://singoutloud.com/student-fest/

Chase goes on stage about 4:45 PM on Saturday.

Here is a shot from last year:

Golf Tournament

2011-04-17T20:17:00.000-06:00

Chase played in his first official golf tournament yesterday. I got be his caddie. It was pretty fun to see him out there. He had a great time and I hope he keeps it up.

The Dilution of the Tax Payer

2011-02-09T21:31:00.000-07:00

So this week we experienced a mini-milestone in the economic recovery. The Dow hit 12,000 earlier in the week and it was lauded by all the news organizations. So on the surface it seemed to me that progress was being made. For those keeping score the last time the Dow was above 12,000 was in June 2008 which was right before the huge house crash and essentially my generation's "Black Tuesday." The DOW and the other indexes are often a measure (albeit often a flawed one) of the capital and for lack of a better term the money out in the corporate economy. So by looking at this single metric I thought, wow - the public companies out there are getting back to "normal." But what does not make sence to me is why then is our unemployment rate still hovering at 9.8%? I looked it up and turns out that the last time the Dow was at this level the unemployment rate was at 5.5%; HALF of what it is today. (source) Why if companies have the same amount of equity they did before are we so short on jobs? The IT person in me wants to say that "well .. we are just more efficient than before. Advancements in technology allow us to get the same amount done we did before, but with fewer resources." The problem with that is that the GDP looks to have declined since 2008. In fact it appears to be the first time since the 50's that it has actually gone the wrong direction (source). So that's probably not it. Where is the money?

The only thing I can think of in my tiny little uneducated brain is that while the economy may be kicking the ball down field, the government bailouts and the treasury printing large amounts of money have actually moved the goal posts further away from us. In essence the american people (ie: me and you) all experienced a very significant dilution of our equity. I have worked at a couple startups now and noticed that when we were short on money and possibly on the brink of loosing the company, we simply increased the number of shares available in the company so we could sell more. But for those who owned enough stock to say they had about 10% of the company all of sudden only owned 5%. The amount of stock certificates/options they had did not change, but their value was diluted. This is what the US government did to all the tax payers. Was it necessary? I don't know. I do remember in these companies I often heard "I'd rather have 5% of something than 10% of nothing" as justification for it. The problem is that the worth of the company did not actually change, yet it was now capable of selling more of itself for cash. We had to modify the articles of incorporation in order to do this. I think this is what the US government did when it moved off the Gold Standard some time ago. There is definitely a lot of gold out there and there is still a lot to be discovered and unearthed. But at least there is a finite amount of it out in the world. Now the ceiling has been completely removed. Again they very well may have been the right decision - I'm no economist. But I am still upset over the bailouts. I think a lot of people made a lot of money and broke the rules of risk and return with our money.

I just finished reading "The Big Short" by Micheal Lewis and it left me very ticked off at Wall Street and the US regulatory system(s). It proved to me that left unchecked, Wall Street will most certainly run rampant with our money with no conscience. I have been a proponent of capitalism for a long time, but I now I am convinced that too much 'laissez-faire' is synonymous with fraud in this country. My belief has been that the purpose of a Board of Directors was to keep the executives in check and to ensure that they are doing all they can to realize a return for shareholders. If I as a tax-payer am a shareholder in these bailed out companies, I want to some representing ME, on those boards. Damn-it. (Had to throw that in there for effect - cover your children's ears) In fact I want someone from the US government who is a representative of the constituency that I belong to sitting on the board of AIG and making those executive's lives MISERABLE until they are incentivized enough to buy me out! Or at least let us use the private jets from time to time - whichever is easier.

Ok, well as ticked off as I am at their reckless behavior, I also think a lot of the equity piling up in these public companies is sitting on a lot of company's balance sheets. I think 2011 will be the year of corporate acquisitions. I predict there will be a fire sale of businesses as companies look to move excess accumulations of cash on their books. Unfortunately I think this lends itself to a consolidation of large companies as the small businesses get gobbled up in the coming years, but it also is probably a decent time to think about being an entrepreneur. SBA loans are still going to be hard to get, but at least I think the market for selling a company is only going to get better.

CNN in the Cross-hairs

2011-01-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

Apparently CNN dropped a bomb after coming under fire for targeting words that needed to be axed from the rhetoric that was being shotgunned into the media if those words might bind or shackle a viewer into subconsciously thinking about guns and/or violence. Rather than take aim at CNN, I say we bury the hatchet and sever these torturous feelings and lay to rest any murderous sentiments.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/01/18/cnn_apologizes_for_guest_using_term_crosshairs.html

Black Soul Friday

2010-11-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

I have always been interested in Black Friday, mostly because as business student I knew the importance of the day to the retail sector and just how muh energy and work goes into a weekend that makes or breaks wall street's corporate projections and has such a profound impact on the economic outlook. Yet the sound of staying up all night in the freezing cold weather to save only a few dollars in order to personally participate in the "event" never sounded like a very worth-while endeavor. Yet year after year I hear the stories from family members and read the paper the next morning and I am ceaselessly amazed at what I hear. One year my wife got in a fight at Best Buy and nearly threw punches while I was fast asleep in a nice warm bed. So I decided this year I wanted to experience it!

One of the cardinal rules of Black Friday shopping is knowing exactly what it is you want and where to get it. I however wasn't very interested in saving money. In fact I spent most of 2010 building the website and fulfillment for www.CityDeals.com and I hardly ever used it myself. I was far more interested to see how we as intelligent human beings would literally risk our lives (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2010-07-07-wal-mart-black-friday-death_N.htm) for a good deal. Yet at the same time I did not want to waste my sacrifice for nothing so I decided that I'd stake a spot near the video games section of Walmart out in South Jordan. I got to know the people around me really well. To my left was a guy wearing overalls with no shirt on underneath and to my right was a hot co-ed attending school in Missouri. Two older ladies were in front of me and I heard all about their grandkids for the better part of an hour. By 10:00 pm there were people to my right sitting on the floor playing cards. In another area of the store some people had setup THEIR OWN camping chairs ans TV and were watching a movie. Walmart has provided us with a map of the store and showed us where lines were forming for each of the door-buster sales. I felt bad for the people had to waiting the freezer isle for a crappy laptop. The cashiers were all asked to provide "security" around the crates of items in the middle of the isles all wrapped in plastic with signs that said do not open until midnight or 5:00 AM for electronics. That in and of itself was hilarious. They had no idea how to control crowds. Patrol cars were stationed outside the front entrance, but they were not about to come inside unless necessary. About 11:30 was when things started getting interesting. People literally left their humanity at home for this event. I had one lady come up to me and say, "I am just going to look under the plastic so I know which side I want to be on." She crouched down by my legs and immediately grabbed 5 or 6 games and turned and ran. I yelled "liar!" at her as she hastily moved through the crowd. She yelled back "You should know better." So I suppose their is a chance I was wrong to believe that people are generally honest. It became very apparent that those who were dishonest and cared little for the time and sacrifice made by those around then did fair much better than those who actually had any sense of decency in them. It's an interesting phenomenon that we wait in lines and consider it unfair if someone cuts in line and attach a social stigma to those who who disregard the unwritten rule of first-come-first server. Individuals who can lower themselves below the level of feeling any sense of responsibility to those around them do come away with better deals. So before heading out, you must answer the question of how much your humanity and civility is worth to you. Left to decide on the spur of the moment will certainly result in others seeing the value you instantaneously decided on. Their opinions however are fleeting and you will likely never encounter them again. Leaving those left standing with only a hope of some degree of Karma. Walmart made the sale either way - no need wasting precious resources to avoid some social discomfort when the Income Statement is unaffected. I wonder if the Walton family has discovered the equation for finding the perfect balance between litigation expenses and people tramping one another to make purchases at your place of business?

By 11:30 I was still on the front row with hoards of people around me. It took me back to the days of riding the subway in the former communist republic of Romania. Yet that did not stop some people from pushing to get closer. We heard that one lady walked up a grabbed a trampoline well before the midnight time limit and the masses of people waiting to get them immediately grabbed it back and began to yell at her. She did not give up without a fight however and security was called in that case.

The portly gentleman next to me in the overalls decided he was not about to loose out on his time spent waiting. He crouched into a catcher's stance and placed both hands on as many Wii Games as he could grab. I have no idea if he intended on buying them all - but I was certainly impressed that he was able to remain in that stance for nearly 20 minutes given his stature. There ought to be a study conducted on human resilience in the face of 50% OFF!

I was deep into a game of Angry Birds on my iPhone when some rustling was heard from the crowd next to us who were waiting for some kind of kids toy. This immediately caused heightened emotions in the crowd I was in. With easily 8 minutes before midnight, something sparked and the dash was on. Because video games are small, easy to grab, and hold a large number in a small space, it reminded me of the carp on the docks of Lake Powell. Through some food in the mist and a swarm of them rush to get it first. We are obviously no different. I however leveraged a skill from my negotiations class in graduate school to make a deal with the lady across from me. She was closer to a game I wanted and I was closer to a game she wanted. We agreed that we'd grab the games and make an exchange afterwards. This is the kind of intense activity that take place over cardboard covered in plastic wrap when you have been on your feet for a couple hours past your bedtime.

I have no idea why I took so much pleasure in watching what unfolded in front of me. The masochist in me certain reared it's ugly head this morning as I saw people fight and grab at anything and everything. Most people seemed to respect the fact that once you had it in your hands, the race was over, but a few did not agree with that philosophy. I told my brother I wished he had worn his head-cam to record this from the front lines. I would not have believed it had I not seen it first had.

My immediate family was stationed at different locations throughout the store. My brother saw a lady who otherwise probably had no athletic ability manage to pull a whole row of waffle irons ($9.99 by the way) into a cart, and jump on top of them to protect them. My wife was after a floor vacuum steamer combination, she had a lady who she described as "looking like a relief society president" literally crawl between her legs to pull one from the bottom of the pile before they were all gone. My mother-in-law witnessed people take no regard to the "wrist-band" process that had been put in place for some of the rare items and the yelling arguments that ensued. Here is a picture of my brother-in-law's fingers who were cut when some lady grabbed a box out of hands. He had to leave his items with my sister-in-law while he went to the mens room to stop the bleeding.

The wait to scramble for discounted chinese sweat-shop products was nothing compared to the wait to checkout. Well over two hours later I found myself searching for caffeine at the in store McDonalds as we got closer to the checkout stand. The funniest part however that one lady asked if she could cut ahead of us to get int the 20 items or less line because all she was buying was shampoo and conditioner. Who does their household shopping at 2 AM on Black Friday?

While the women waited in line the men decided to head over to the other retailers in the area and scope out the lines and plan our next move. I am certain that those who use a military style intelligence and communication process with walkie-talkies and the like would benefit greatly on any given Black Friday.

At 2:30 AM we parked the car in Kohls parking lot which was as full as it would be on a saturday afternoon. The temperature gauge read 10 F. Unlike Walmart Kohls was not about to share the warmth of their facility. 10 minutes to 3 AM and the line wrapped across the whole front of the store, past Shoe Carnival and disappeared around the corner. Who knows how much further it went after that. One lady was in line with holding a car seat with what looked like a few week old baby - I was shocked.

Now 5 minutes to 3:00 AM and the line began to compact and suddenly 10's of people got out of their nice warm cars and headed toward the front of the line. Their plan was to rush the front of the line or sneak in as the line began to push it's way into the store. To the credit of the store employees they stood in front of people trying to do that and did all they could to prevent them from moving forward. My guess is they probably had about a 50% success rate. Sprinting toward the item my brother told me he was after (which I cannot disclose in the unlikely case that she or anyone in my family reads this whole post) I was definitely no longer tired. We discovered the same $9 waffle irons that Walmart had and also found a number of other good deals. My brother made the wise choice of getting what he wanted an then running straight for the checkout line rather than moving on to the next door buster.

By 4:30 everyone in my family had made their way through the check outline that was probably a football field or more in length. My brother and I debated on whether or not to head back to Walmart fot the 5:00 AM electronics sale. After seeing the parking lot twice the size it was at midnight we opted out. Mostly because we couldn't do the checkout line again. The women were not as defeatist was we were. They were just getting warmed up. Mindy hit 3 more stores before rolling in at 8:30 AM this morning. She got amazing deals on some good stuff and even asked manager for more of a discount wherever she went.

As I drove home exhausted early this morning to get home in time to get some sleep before the kids woke up, I was still smiling at what I had witnessed. Every year I was fast asleep in my bed having no idea what was going on a few blocks away. I imagined how small of a piece of Black Friday I had just seen and thought about this happening all across the country. I would LOVE to watch a documentary on this event someday!

Paragliding

2010-11-14T12:05:00.001-07:00

My brother, his wife, and my brother-in-law all went paragliding this weekend. It was a blast! Much more serene and chill than I had anticipated. It was defintley cold, but other than that it was a quite an experience. I'd love to do it again.

The rest of the pics.

Chase's 6th Birthday Party

2010-09-20T20:54:00.000-06:00

I have no idea why, but every year after Chase's birthday party someone asks him "What do you want to do for your party next year?" He never hesitates to answer and he never deviates from what he said throughout the entire year. For some odd reason last year he said he wanted a "Halloween Party" for his Birthday. Sure enough all year long he reminded us that was what he wanted. So this week we had 10+ little kids over to the house all dressed in Halloween Costumes for his birthday. They read scary stories, had a fish pond, played various Halloween games, and of course they went Trick-or-Treating. We had to notify all the neighbors in advance that they would be getting some trick-or-treaters very early this year, and of course we have the best neighbors on the planet, so they handed out candy on Friday when the kids came around. Some of them even dressed up themselves to answer the door. :)

Anyway, be sure to check out all of the pics here:

Chase's 6th Birthday Party Pics

Soccer

2010-09-06T10:14:00.000-06:00

Fall soccer has begun and Chase is loving it. The team has scored a few goals in our own net and a few more in the opponents net so far - so I'd call that a winning record :)

The Death of Craftsmen

2010-08-24T21:08:00.000-06:00

So I was at the airport looking for some reading material and found a book that was hiding way in the back some distance from the bestsellers section so my hopes were not high. Maybe that's actually way I enjoyed the book - who knows. But I would recommend it to anyone interested in economics (I know my wife makes fun of me for my choice of leisure reading) I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of research that went into the book and found that it made some very good observations about our insatiable appetite for cheaper and cheaper goods. The basic premise of the book is to bring to light some possible side-effects of our desire to pay less and less for the goods and services we acquire.

Further reinforcing my already long standing distaste for the Walmart Organization, the author argues that large multinationals that are trying to remove all skill from professions and invent new methods of paying the workforce less and less - as a result of our demand for cheap prices and large shareholder returns are in many ways killing craftsman. We don't want to spend a months salary on a well crafted piece of furniture that the kids may one day use. We'd rather spend the cash in our wallet to buy something from IKEA and through it out in a couple years when were ready to upgrade.

Anyway I could go on, but no ones reads long blogs anyway. But I would recommend the book if you are bored with the Eclipse Series ;)

Amazon Link

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Mindy makes VoiceTutor iPhone App

2010-08-02T20:12:00.000-06:00

So I am very proud of my wife. She came up with an idea and over the course of a few months was able to make it a reality. As of this weekend she has an iPhone app that give people a virtual voice lesson right on their smartphone. It's pretty cool. It'll walk you through diagnostics, exercises, and warm-ups. With the help of her friends, it turned out really impressive.

You can find it on the App Store or by going to:

www.VoiceTutorApp.com

The android version is in development and coming soon!

Wow - it's been a long time.

2010-07-24T12:11:00.000-06:00

I can't believe I have taken this long to blog. Not that I have anything all that interesting anyway, but still that's a quite a while. Life has been crazy for us here at the Pack house. Mindy just finished with her Summer Glee Camp performances and they went really well. The kids loved it. I graduated from school and am enjoying reading non-text books for the first time in years. Chase played the drums in his first concert a month or so ago and did great. He is also loving golf and doing really well for a 5 year old. Bodi has been sick and had to have surgery. He had his adenoids removed and also had tubes put in his ears. His curly hair is still growing like crazy and his energy level seems to be growing with it.

Great Values at CityDeals.com

2009-11-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

I have accepted a new job at a great small company that has a lot of potential. I seriously hope I can be a value to their team. CityDeals.com is a local company that provides great deals at local merchants. So if you are looking to buy gift cards or gift certificates this holiday season (and I know most of you will) then don't pay full price or even pay for the gas to go get them. Have them delivered right to your home by going to www.CityDeals.com

Hitting a HomeRun with the right Pitch

2009-11-06T21:48:00.005-07:00

So I realize I am the last person on the planet to be speaking on the subject, but I just need to get on my soap box for a minute and since I have no other forum for doing it ... the blog it is :)

Having only been involved in this for a couple months now my opinion is of little worth, but I want to pass on my perspective on presentation to investors. For reasons I won't get into, I have heard 20+ pitches for funding over the last months and here is what I would recommend to anyone trying to raise money in an investor pitch:

Before you go into an hour speech, find out what the investors criteria are. Most savvy investors have a set of benchmarks or criteria they have for any potential investment. They may be more concerned about profitability than growth, then may want only post-revenue companies with a valuation threshold. At any rate save everyone in the room time by asking right up front and see if you align. If not, address it, if so, focus on it in your pitch.
Find out what the investors GOALS are for the money. Believe me they have exceptions - discover them early!
Be very brief and concise. Greg Butterfield blogged about what your presentation should contain. http://sagecreekpartners.com/advice/what-should-be-in-your-investor-presentation/ It's good - follow it! It's probably even longer than I would recommend for a first presentation. I know you love your product - I get that. But if you talk for an hour and half in the first meeting, I promise it will do more harm than good. You may be the 4th one they've sat through that day.
Don't read from a script. Even if you are on a web-conference, DO NOT read a script. If you can't speak freely and let the conversation go in the direction the investors want, find someone who can.
Address the right stuff. Here are some examples:

You need to speak about the products/services etc. so be sure to do that, but just remember you are not trying to sell them the product as if they were a customer. They need to see the hole you fill, but don't wait to bring up pricing at the end or only if they ask like you might in a sales call. They are less concerned about how cool the product is than they are about whether or not people pay money for it.
Don't mention how much Google or Walmart have made on similar products - I hate to break it to you ... you're not Google.
What are you going to do with the investment? Buy a super-bowl commercial?
Who are the other investors in the sandbox we have to play with?
What does your cap table look like? Is that fully burdened or not? Are you willing to offer prefered shares or only common? What round are you currently in? Are there more to come? When? etc. etc. (This is usually more interesting than your product for investors to talk about.)
Talk about your team and your strengths. Just don't over do it. Superman can't work at every company on the planet. What are your strengths and your core competencies and how do those play into the business strategy. Who is on your board? How involved are they? Who are your advisors and networks?
What is your Go To Market strategy. This tends to go long, so remember brevity and conciseness are the keys. In this part you MUST clearly state your value proposition and your competitive advantage. Why are you hard to imitate or substitute?
What is the exit strategy for the company. You just spoke about the means, now whats the end?
What does this investment do for the company and what will the investor get in return for helping you get there?

BE HONEST! Nothing is a bigger turn off than trying to be misleading. Even if it is the truth, don't try to deceive. Don't pick your competitors most expensive product and compare it to your least expensive. Be fair.

Ask what the process is for making a decision. In our case the final decision makers are NOT in the room. We are acting as analysts and narrowing down the possibilities to then later present internally.
Lastly and most importantly - HAVE DATA TO PROVE YOUR NUMBERS!!!! Every "conservative" estimate thinks their company is worth 10 M. That seems to be the magical number. If you have $500 K in annual revenue - your are NOT worth $10 Million. A 20x multiple is ridiculous. Valuations can be done using a process similar to Real Estate (Comparative Market Analysis) and adoption rates can be projected scientifically using data models and comparisons. You can't expect someone to buy in at a 7x multiplier and expect to pay it back with a 2x multiplier 5 years later. I could be wrong but my guess is most VCs at this point would rather see realism than optimism from a CEO - especially considering the economy right now. Reflect that in your proforma.

There - thats my two cents. I'll be surprised if anyone out there actually cares about this post, but I had to rant somewhere.

"Open" for Business

2009-10-21T21:36:00.001-06:00

I have a slight personality disorder when it comes to technology. I love and advocate open-source tools and have donated money and code back to a number of projects, but at the same time I use a lot of Microsoft products and actually evangelize Microsoft much more frequently than any other open-source advocates I know of. I guess I am a personal believer in the right tool for the right job rather than a one-size-fits all approach to IT (although easier stated than implemented) But I have decided that the case for open-source software is better suited in our current economic climate. So below is my list of tools that I or people I have worked with have used that are free or almost free alternatives to common business applications:

Server Operating System Winner: Debian Linux (http://www.debian.org/) : Although I currently operate a Windows network I prefer my production systems to run on Linux. My flavor of the day is Ubuntu Enterprise Edition or Debian. Windows has made great strides with security over the last few years, but Windows requires too much over-head, rebooting, patch management, virus protection, etc that increase indirect IT costs.
Desktop Operating System Winner: Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntu.com/) : This is very popular right now and has great support for drivers, WiFi, Bluetooth, DVD burning, etc. It can also be customized to feel very Windows-like for converting end-users.
Anti-Virus Winner : AVG (http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage) : Although Linux and apple do not really require AV software, if you choose to use windows anyway, this is great free anti-virus application.
Anti-Spyware Winner : Spyware Doctor (http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor/) : Again this is for those of you on windows machines. It is a little resource intensive at times, but still better than SpyBot and Ad-Aware if you ask me.
Photo Management Winner : Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/) : This is another Google application which you'll see a lot of on my list, but it truly does do a good job of picture management, red-eye reduction, etc.
Identity Management Winner: OpenLDAP (http://www.openldap.org/) : Although I've used ActiveDirectory heavily as of late and eDirectory before that, most open-source tools will have a LDAP compliant connector that will allow you to have a single-sign-on process within your organization. Although not extremely easy to configure in a secure manner, OpenLDAP is very easy to get installed and running.
Collaboration Suite Winner : Zimbra (http://www.zimbra.com/) : I happen to believe that Exchange server is still the best and most widely adopted email and collaboration suite on the market, Zimbra is about as close as anyone else I have seen to an Exchange-Killer. It has all of the basic features 90% of all companies out there will need and has a fairly impressive web-interface for end-users.
Collaboration Suite Runner-up : Google Apps (http://www.google.com/apps/) : If you are not too paranoid about having your data housed a large conglomerate company, the Google Apps (Email, Calendaring, Contacts, Documents) is probably what I would recommend to companies with no IT staff. Although you can purchase hosted solutions of Zimbra, Google is FAR easier to setup, maintain, and use for that matter. The professional edition of Google Apps does cost money, but by purchasing it you can use LDAP authentication and maintain your single-sing-on initiative.
CRM Winner : SugarCRM (http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/) : Salesforce.com is the 800 pound gorilla in this market and they have a great solution, but it is very expensive in my view. SugarCRM has a large sub-set of the features and was even modeled after Salesfore. But having the source code allows for even more configuration and customization to meet your specific needs. I love this tool - it's well built and architected with some great web-based customization requiring no code changes at all.
Office Productivity Winner : OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) : I think that MS Office is stable in the business world, so I am surprised by the lack of competition in the office productivity arena, but OpenOffice does everything Office can but does not require cutting a large licensing check to Microsoft every year. Again Google Docs is probably what I would recommend, but there are still too many end-users out there that are not going to be able to use a web-site to create a complex Spreadsheet.
Phone System Winner : Asterisk (http://www.asterisk.org/) : Although I have not as of yet implemented this myself, I have seen tons of demonstration with it being used and I have had large telcom companies tell me this is what they do and they recommend. Some hardware is obviously required, but I could make a decent case for dropping the expense of desktop phones and using SIP compliant SoftPhones with Bluetooth headsets and be just as or even more effective.
Conference Bridge Winner : FreeConferenceCall.com (http://freeconferencecall.com/) : They do not issue you a toll-free number like many bridges do, but this is great service for just holding standard calls with a lot of people present.
Web Conference Solution Winner : Yumga Skype Edition (https://www.yugma.com/) : I love GoToMeeting and other tools like that to do product demos and sales presentations, but this one is decent considering the free price tag. It also alows Mac and Linux users that not all of the big boys support yet. So it's a great tool and couple with Skype for the voice component, your phone calls are also free (so long as they install skype as well - calling land lines does cost money)
Project Management Winner : NOBODY : Needless to say I am throughly dissatisfied with this market. I have used DotProject, Basecamp, @Task, MS Project, ZoHo, Trac, etc. and I don't really love any of them. Plus there are no good opensource ones that I have found. If anyone knows of one - let me know!
Programming Language Winner : PHP (http://php.net/) : This is the programming language that I would recommend to small companies on a budget. There is a lot of documentation on the language, it's free to use, it's well-supported, well developed, and there are plenty of resources to hire from. C# is a great language and has a very "enterprise" brand around it, but it's expensive to use and limits your infrastructure to a great degree. Java is also very popular and can keep costs low, but I have found it is a "heavy" language that reduces a company's ability to be as nimble as some other "lighter" languages. . Ruby is also very popular and has it's place, but be careful about a long-term strategy with Ruby on Rails.
Programming Language Runner-up : Python (http://www.python.org/) : Python is actually a great language and seems to be the preferred language of a lot of programmers who have used multiple different languages (including Google). It's efficient and fast but has a much smaller pool of resources to hire from.
Web Server Winner : Apache 2 (http://httpd.apache.org/) : Having used IIS 5 & 6 for a number of internal projects and Tomcat on some production systems this one was an easy sell for me. PHP can run great on windows with fast-cgi, but apache just seems to be the default answer on this one. I typically will also use lighttpd as either a sorry server while apache is down for deployments or for serving up simple images and various media for more complex systems.
Database Winner : PostgreSQL (http://www.postgresql.org/) : This one is one where I get rather passionate about. I will advocate this database until the day I die. It is amazing and a MUST for any company who is frustrated by MySQL (and I know you're out there - whether you want to admit it or not) If you can't afford Oracle but want the stability and support for triggers, stored procedures, domains, etc. this IS your answer. We had MySQL crash a few times a month in a distributed SaaS application and after switching to PostgreSQL we went to a zero crash rate. Our primary instance was alive for well over 18 months before we had to reboot the server for OS maintenance.
Integrated Development Environment Winner : Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/) : Of all the IDE's on the market, this one is by far gain the most ground from my prospective. Companies like Spring and Zend have dropped their own IDEs in favor of just skinning Eclipse. I use it for both Java and PHP and love it.
Text Editor Winner : TextPad (http://www.textpad.com/) : When modifying Unix, ASCII, and SQL type files don't mess around with the default WordPad or NotePad. TextPad is very configurable and has TONS of loadable dictionaries for great code highlighting in just about any language you want.
Version Control Winner : Subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/) : When it comes to version control, SVN has serious problem with merging and can be a serious risk to a project. I here GIT is pretty good but never used it myself. All I know is SVN works great for most implementation and the use of third party tools can overcome a lot of the gaps left in subversion. But with SVN at the party, no one should be using CVS anymore if you ask me. If you are on windows, then TortoiseSVN is the best client I have been able to find so far.
Bug Tracking Winner : Mantis (http://www.mantisbt.org/) : This is the best free one that I have used. I hated Bugzilla with a passion - I seriously could not stand that thing. But I actually love Jira and the other Atlassian products, but they are not free as of yet. Although they recent announced a $10 price tag for a limited license of Jira!
Continuous Integration Winner : CruiseControl (http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/) : It is fairly simplistic in nature and not extremely feature rich, but does a great job and has plug-ins for a number of other open-source tools. I used it with both Java and PHP and thought it was great. We used Hudson as well and I have no complaints with that tool, but again Atlassian (makers of Jira) have one that I think I'd like, but have not had an opportunity to use it yet.
Web-based Regression Testing Winner : iMacros Firefox Addon (http://www.iopus.com/iMacros/firefox/) : I think for larger scale implementations something like Selenium is probably much more fitting, but it can be time consuming to setup and script. So for easy simple testing of very basic web applications where teams of QA people are not involved, I found a number of issues with deployments using this simple tool. Obviously I could not use it with IE as an add-on however.
Test Case Management Winner : TestLink (http://blog.testlink.org/) : In my search to find a solution I tried a number of different options and of the free ones, this is the one I liked the best. Unimpressed with the user-interface however. It's a little hard to navigate and not laid out well at all. You can tell it was designed by the engineers ;)
Web Browser Winner : Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome) : I am a fan of this browser. Late to the game, but superior in my humble opinion. Firefox is a memory hog and when it crashes it tanks everything. Chrome runs independent processes for each tab. It's laid out well and beyond anything else, the merging of the address bar and the Google search bar into the same field is by far my favorite feature.
E-Commerce Shopping Cart Winner : Magento (http://www.magentocommerce.com/) : This is another one that I was so impressed with that I will evangelize it for some time. It's built on a solid MVC framework, it's easy to install and deploy, and has a TON of features. This is beyond better than OS Commerce, ZenCart, and others.
Content Management / Blog Winner : WordPress (http://wordpress.org/) : Although I've been nervous about installing this due to security issues in the past, this is the easiest way to get a simply website up that will allow non-technical people control over the web content. It has SEO plugins and WYSIWYG editors that make it so simple that even your marketing staff can use it ;) I was not all that impressed with Joomla to be honest.
Document Management Portal Winner : Alfresco (http://www.alfresco.com/) : MS SharePoint is pretty common place in alot of organizations and happens to be a useful application but it is not necessarily cheap nor easy to implement. Alfresco has half the amount of features and is just as cumberson to use at times, but does provide an open-source alternative to get similar results without the costs. Be forewarned however, downloading and installing this will put you on their hit list for marketing phone calls and spam.

Hope it helps someone save some money. Remember to support you open-source community!

Investing in the Obama Brand with Gold Coins

2009-10-11T11:15:00.009-06:00

Coming from a technical background I tend to be more skeptical of the marketing side of consumer decisions. Yet Obama has proven to me time and time again that marketing works. It's evident to me that he has built and carefully crafted a "Brand" that people can buy into. This week's announcement that Obama will be inducted into one of our planets most elite groups of some of the greatest contributors to humanity our existence has ever known, is proof that the international community is investing in this brand. The Wall Street Journal poignantly stated that this is the first time the Nobel peace prize has purchased futures in an candidate. Its apparent (even to himself) that little or no measurable peace-specific results have come from Obama as of yet. My take is that this chess move was done primarily due to two motives:

The committee wanted to arm Obama with a tool to legitimize his future efforts in peace and show the world just how necessary they feel an individual like Obama is needed right now.
I think it is a clear message that the international community is rewarding Americans for the replacement of George W. Bush. To nominate a war time president 12 days into his administration shows this was not a lifetime achievement award.

Unfortunately this will also have the inevitable result of cheapening of a great honor. Of course I felt similarly when Jimmy Carter received the award during the Bush Administration, but definitely not the same degree. I personally believe this prize should be reserved for those whose personal commitment to peace has proven results and a historical impact, rather than simple aspirations. Talk about the Audacity of Hope ;)

Cover Your App!

2009-09-28T17:12:00.003-06:00

For those of you who were or are on Windows Mobile or Blackberry, you know that applications ('apps') are not a new concept. So why do iPhone apps seem to be getting all of the press? It's the App Store! As a former Blackjack owner, there were MILLIONS of apps to choose from that could do anything under the sun http://www.handango.com, but they never had the viral characteristics of the iPhone apps. Why? the App Store! Microsoft missed the boat by not creating ONE, CENTRAL, EMBEDDED distribution channel for the developers of these applications.

What I find interesting, is now that very concept (i.e. provide your complementary commuinity with a channel) is catching on and is trend you are going to seem more and more. For example Intuit has announced their App Store (http://workplace.intuit.com/AppCenter/) for applications that are complementary to QuickBooks and Quicken. Value added to a product by closing the gaps.

My bet is you are going to see a lot more of this in the business world for the next little while.

Transformer Birthday Party

2009-09-20T15:36:00.005-06:00

Optimus Prime and BumbleBee visit Chase on his Birthday!

Chase had his 5th birthday party yesterday and Mindy went all out. The kids received a transmission from space to seek out and find the ALSPARK on earth for the Transformers.

Luckily they were able to retrieve it before Megatron could get his hands on it. So they used their lights to hail Optimus Prime to let him know they had found it. Grateful for their work, Optimus Prime and BumbleBee (new Camaros are very hard to find so we improvised) came to thank the little transformers and answer questions.

It was a blast. One for the ages!

Here is a link to the pictures:

Link to the Photo Album

Here is the video:

Special thanks to:

Jeff England at Pride Transport
Mindy's Aunt and Uncle Pat & Adel
My Totally Awesome Bro - Derin
My Dad and my Father-in-law

And of course to MINDY!

New Neice

2009-09-15T14:19:00.006-06:00

So My brother and his wife welcomed a new baby girl into the world last week. She is adorable and healthy. Her name is Addison.

Redneck Lesson #1

2009-09-15T13:43:00.007-06:00

So I figure have to train Chase how to be a good nedneck from a young age, so he had one of his first lessons last month while up at the Cabin. He throughly enjoyed watching Derin and I as we demonstrated the art of blowing things up.

Heart Broken

2009-08-04T12:00:00.003-06:00

My heart goes out to a family member who is currently in one of the worse positions I could possibly imaginge. Mindy's cousin has a daughter who is in a fight for her life. They have been in the hospital for weeks now awaiting a heart transplant. They have seen amazing things happen, but I cannot even fathom how hard it has been on them. If you are reading this and want tofollow her story, you can read their blog here:

http://vittoriascorner.blogspot.com/

Preschool Program

2009-06-14T17:19:00.005-06:00

Chase has his year-end preschool program this week. It was pretty darn cute.

Interested in Music?

2009-05-17T16:23:00.004-06:00

For anyone interested in music, singing, or performing, we have a great opportunity for you. My wife is bring an industry professional into town to give few workshops and to do a concert. He is a singer, songwriter, producer, vocal coach, dancer, etc. He has worked with artists like Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Maroon 5, Black Eyed Pees, etc. In fact you can see him dancing with Justin in many of his music videos and concerts. His name is RAab (pronounced "Rob") Stevenson:

http://www.singoutloud.com/production

Check out ProfBay

2009-05-01T00:09:00.002-06:00

A friend of mine started up a cool new site that let's anyone who uses eBay track their financial situation much better. It's a free service so check it out:

http://www.profbay.com

Easter 2009 Pictures

2009-04-12T14:35:00.000-06:00

We had a great Easter this year. It was hilerous to see both kids get so excited. They were definitley our entertainment for the day.

Here are the pics if you want to check them out:
Easter Pictures

Bodi is getting HUGE! He is in the 50% for weight, but is in the 96% for height. He has to wear 12 month onezies even though his is just turning 7 months. He is finally becoming a good sleeper now and mom and dad are extatic about that. He is one smiley little kid. He grins from ear to ear everytime he gets attention. But he constantly wants to be held.
He can roll over now and sit up on his own, but we are perfectly fine if he wants to take his time learning to crawl :) We have to start re-baby-proofing the home again.

Chase is loving pre-school and playing with his friends. He is addicted to the Wii and literally kicks my butt at almost every game. He is starting T-Ball this coming week and he was SO excited that he slept with his baseball bat the other night and refused to let go of it.

Nasty Computer Virus

2009-03-28T20:39:00.002-06:00

So I am currently working on my mother-in-laws computer now for the 3rd day in a row. Somehow she got her really old crappy computer to get infected with a really nasty virus. Quite a few actually. I was finally able to get rid of it, but I have learned that McAfee virus scanners are worthless.

So for anyone who encounters the Malware Defender 2009 and WCenter.exe virus, here is how you get rid of it:

Get a good virus scanner installed on the computer. IE: one that is not made by McAfee
Download and install the Free Spyware Doctor Tool from Google. (http://pack.google.com)
Reboot and then UPDATE Spyware Doctor
Run a "Full Scan"
Fix any issues it finds
Reboot the computer and while it is rebooting, hit the F8-key to boot into Safe Mode (without networking)
Once in safe mode, log in as administrator or an admin user and delete the following folders:
c:\Program Files\Malware Defender 2009
c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Index\Drivers
The Delete the follwoing file c:\Windows\System32\wcenter.exe
Empty the recycle bin
Reboot the computer into Normal Mode
Run a Spyware Doctor Full Scan again and fix anything it finds.
Then run a full virus scan with whatever virus scanner you have.

Good Luck!

Review of Windows 7

2009-03-20T15:59:00.022-06:00

So I have downloaded and played with the latest beta version of Micirsoft next operating system after Vista. Due to the very low value proposition Vista provided I have not upgraded any of the computers in my company. My plan was to wait and see what their next OS would bring and see if the ROI was there.

So far I still don't see how my company will benefit tremendously from the huge cost the upgrade would be from XP

SP3. I do think it is a very sexy looking operating system, but most of the changes at least appear to still be aesthetic in nature. Vista brought better networking and hard drive encryption that I would like to leverage, but again these do not solve a pain point we have right now. And in a down economy, I need to maximize a return on my spending.

So I took one of our corporate laptops that is not currently being used as my test machine. It is an HP Compaq Corporate laptop so does not ha

ve all of the fancy bells and whistles that a home computer would and is VERY representative on most company's PC laptops. It had been running Windows Vista Business Edition for close to a year. So I first left all of the applications on the computer and tried doing an OS upgrade. The first time I ran it - it failed. It told me I had windows components that had to be removed before the install could continue. After uninstalling a few application (primarliy PowerShell) it did begin installing.

The wizard went fine although it did take longer than I would have expected on a 12 month old laptop, but no biggie. It was when i logged in that the real issues began. Now I realize this is a BETA version, so I fully understand that some stuff will not work. But what I discovered was that very little actually worked. My first task was to open Internet Explorer 8 and see how my company's applications worked in the new browser on the new OS. IE failed to open. I spent probably close to an hour making configuration changes to try and get IE to run. No success.

I also repeatedly saw number errors. Here is the very first error message that popped up over and over again for 5 minutes:

Again it was not long before another error message appeared telling me that some of my Microsoft Products are not compatible with this version of Microsoft Windows:

I was curious to know about the various applications I had installed and wanted to know if they would run. Most of them ran just fine. I opened Dreamweaver, Photoshop, some MySQL editors, TextPad, Firefox, iTunes, etc. Almost everything I tried ran fine. Some of the application that did NOT work were Eclipse IDE, PostgreSQL, and other low level applications. For instance I got the following error when I tried to launch Apache HTTP server:

Some of the applications seemed to workgreat until I decided to REALLY use them. I started creating files and doing actual work inside some of the programs. Before long Illustrator crashed on my and I had to manually kill it. Explorer failed after that and I had to do a HARD reboot:

Now, let's talk about some of the things I DO like. There are obvious visual improvements to the OS right away. Colors, rounding, depth, transparency, etc. it's all very cool. You can see that it is not a far departure from Vista actually. I love the fact that I can rearrange the system tray applications in whatever order I want though - nice touch.

I also LOVE that they finally put a hibernate button on the shut down menu. I mean every laptop on the planet ought to be using that WAY more than shutdown or restart:
The icons are all very pretty and you can see that they have made some improvements to the layout and usability of the explorer windows in general. The Control Panel and all of it's various tasks all have new layouts that are sure to confuse users at first but end up being very intuitive once old assumptions are overwritten

Windows and tasks like changing the background image are all different now and seems to be more intuitive in their design and organization:

They have also added a new view option inside of Explorer that I think will become my favorite when I do switch to v7. It is a hybrid of thumbnail and detail view. So as you can see below it actually reads the album cover image from MP3 files and displays them in the explorer window. It does the same on images, videos, and office documents:

All of the built-in applications that come as part of the OS have now gone to the toolbar layout that Office 2007 adopted. So here is what Paint looks like with new format: (also it saved my images as PNG be default instead of BMP - Love it!)

Altough most of the windows management consoles looked the same, there were a few completely new ones. This is one example. The "Action Center" seems to be a central location for notifications and security related tasks. It gets it's own icon in down in the bottom right corner of the system tray.

As far as drivers the OS did pretty well. Typically the beta versions do not include all of the hardware drivers for the millions of different PCs out in the world. The only issue it had was it did not naitively recognize my wireless card. So I had to plug in a cable to connect to the internet. But not too shabby.

So after palying with it for a while I decided to do a completely fresh install of the operating system to give it a try and see if some of my issues get resolved. You will be happy to hear that I saw ZERO error screen in the first boot and IE lauchned flawlessly. IE 8 has this wonderful - spy on what I am doing on the internet and suggest additional sites I might like" feature. I highly recommend you turn that off. It also downloaded about 9 new windows updates.

Conclusion:

I was actually a big fan of Vista after SP1 was released and thought that it was a great improvement over XP. I also think it got too much flack over security and stability because it failed to launch well. But the OS is a good one. I will use windows 7 as soon as I have proof that it too is stable. But I am still not going to pay the money to upgrade my workstaions just yet. Maybe this time next year???

America in Cardiac Arrest

2009-03-05T18:36:00.007-07:00

For as long as I can remember Cheverolet has called itself the "Heartbeat of America." So if you don't believe in false-advertising, America is in Cariac Arrest. GM announced this week that despite receiing billions (thats BILLIONS) of dollars in bailout money it STILL cannot generate sufficient cash to meeting its opertaing expenses. I do believe that GM has symbolized american industry for decades and has literally helped pump life into the American. Thus if it does fail I do think it represents an end of a major chapter in american history. It also will perpetuate the pessism on wall street and thus keep us in teh slump we are in. However, no matter the ramifications that I think are possible domins to fall as a result of GM's failure, I still think it should be allowed to fail. Thats actually hard to admit because I am a fan of GM vehicles. Having owned Ford, GM, and Crysler vehicles, I prefer GM. But as hard as it may be to admit Ford has not taken any bailout money thus far. Why should Ford sit back and watch it's competitor get governmental aid because it poorly managed it's business. This is the foundation of capitalism - survival of the fitest. Maybe a company that is dedicated to producing a higher quality product and innovation could rise into the void left by the organizations that were previously too large to compete with.

My Review of the iPhone

2009-03-02T15:44:00.003-07:00

Yes I realize there are 500 million posts out on the web talking about the iPhone and yes, i realize I am not gadget expert, but I somehow still find myself being asked ALL the time how I like the iPhone. It must be because I am a Apple adverse (not anti-Apple - there is a difference) I own apple stock, so to all the sheepeople out there at will buy anything Apple produces, PLEASE don't stop!
So I was on a Samsung smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1 for the last year or so and v.5 before that. i actually really liked the phone and waited as long as I could to convert to the iPhone. But circumstantial discounts my brother hooked me up with, necessitated the switch. Since then many people have asked me what I thought, so here it goes:

The iPhone is a great phone. Far from perfect and needs ALOT of impriovement, but I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing else on the market (even 2+ years after the initial release) that compares to it. But here is the kicker: even if another company develops a comparable device, they are too late - the iPhone APPS are what make this device! I am addicted to the app store. Opening the API was by far the best decision Apple could have made (ok maybe not as good as switching to an Intel platform, but a good one none-the-less). This created a HUGE barrier to entry for the competition. Users are now integrated with certain applications that will take years for another competitor to overthrow. Now, having used a windows mobile device, I realize there are MILLIONS of apps for the Windows platform. In fact you can find 200 apps to every one iPhone one that does the same thing and probably does it better. The difference is the iPhone's centralized delivery mechanism, the ease of installation and upgrade, and lastly, the social component behind Apple's distribution channel for its applications. If I wanted an application to track my golf score on the BlackJack, I had to google for the software. Browse some moron's website to find a downloadable trial version, save it to my desktop, connect my device to a USB cable, run the executable while the SYNC was running, click 4 confirmation screens, disconnect the device, and then rummage through layers of menus to find where it installed. If I liked it, I had to tell my brother to google for the name of the software and try to do the same - only to find out he had a different version of .NET framework or used a blackberry and was unable to install it. NONE of that has to be done on the iPhone - that is the difference. But if that was not enough, how may phones on the market have their own Bean-Bag you can buy?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/9d5f/

So here are the things I need addressed in the next version of the iPhone:

The device should turn sideways and allow me to use the landscape mode when typing on the keyboard. Especially for Email and texting
It needs support for MMS messaging
It needs to EASILY allow me to connect the device to my laptop and use it as a 3G modem
The camera needs alot of help. You have to click the picture and wait a few seconds before it actually takes it. Then the images are really poor quality in my opinion.
It needs a silent mode. Meaning not loud or vibrate, but just OFF
I should be able to put music, movies, videos, podcasts, etc. on it easily from both my home computer and my work computer.
It REALLY needs a longer battery life!!
The speakerphone could use some help

Is that picky enough for you?

Birthday in the Mountains

2009-03-01T11:55:00.005-07:00

So we clebrated Mindy's Birthday on Sat and took the family skiing. Chase REALLY wanted to try snowboarding. In fact we rented him a board and boots the night before and he was so excited that he had to sleep with the board. He did ok for a 4 year old, but struggled controlling the board a little, so we switched him back to skiies after half-day and he did much better on those.

Here is some video of Chase's 2nd time skiing ever

Today (Sunday) is actually Mindy's birthday, so I need to publically wish my beautiful wife a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Winter 2009

2009-02-15T11:22:00.001-07:00

Some winter 2009 pictures:

What the BCS REALLY busts

2009-01-03T20:37:00.004-07:00

Few things are as inspirational as stories of unsuspecting less fortunate people overcoming great odds to rise above adversity and triumph to a level of excellence. These are prime examples of the determination we as humans are capable of. We see them over and over again in movies, books, media, etc. to inspire us and make each of us strive for excellence. In fact these types of stories are most often found in sports. Whether it's Hoosiers, Rudy, The Karate Kid, Cinderella Man, Miracle: '80 US Olympic Hockey Team, Seabiscuit, Rocky, etc. etc. We have seen countless examples of where individuals who give their all, can be the best.

So WHY? then have we setup a system specifically to prevent these situations from happening in our NCAA Football system? We have created the BCS explicitly to prevent those who are not "supposed" to win from ever winning. The BCS is happy to look at those Utah kids who played their hearts out this season, who put their blood, sweat, and tears, into giving their very best as a team, who overcame EVERY challenge thrown their way this year, and tell them that they don't deserve the right to prove themselves worthy of a national championship. No matter how hard you work, you are not allowed to compete with teams that a computer algorithm says are better than you.

The BCS has removed a core human element from the game of College Football and demoralizes the very virtues the NCAA claims to stand for. Shame on the BCS.

Belief in Programming

2008-12-18T16:23:00.002-07:00

There is definitely a religious feel to the fanaticism certain developers have to a particular programming language. I see this over and over again in my line of work when people tell me what the "best" language to develop in is. So I thought I would pass along this fairly decent analogoy of programming languages to world religions:

http://www.aegisub.net/2008/12/if-programming-languages-were-religions.html

Net Neutrality

2008-12-17T08:56:00.001-07:00

So this issue is creeping its way back into the media again as a topic of the day. It has caused quite a stir in the media for a while now, but I have seen it resurfacing again.

A quick overview of this piece of politics is basically over individuals rights to the internet. The internet is not free and it only exists because someone at some point paid money to have fiber or cabling laid so that information could be transmitted across it. I may pay comcast for internet access, but I probably crossed 4 different company's wires and network just to view one web page.

(to test this on your computer go to Start --> Run, type "cmd" and hit enter. Then type "tracert yahoo.com" and see how many networks you actually cross to view yahoo's homepage)

Argument In Favor of Net Neutrality
================================
The internet is a necessary commodity for doing business and living in today's world. The internet for me ought to be the SAME internet that my neighbor has. It is not fair to discrimniate for or against certain people based on preferencial treatments. Doing so creates a unfair competative advantage and unblances the playing field.

As an example, I personally have comcast at home and last year, I decided to switch my home phone service to VoIP using Vonage. I had nothing but trouble with it and my wife hated it. While my collegue at work on the Utopia network never expereinced a single problem. Why is this? Probably (and I emphasize that this is purely spectulation) this is because Comast also has a VoIP product that competes directly with Vonage. Thus I am using Comcast's internet to buy a product from a competitor. What is to stop comcast from simplying giving Comcast VoIP customer s higher priority on for internet traffic? What is to stop them from simply causing their compeitiors product to function less efficiently? The short answer is nothing.

Without this, small businesses would be significantly hindered because they would not have the capital to compete with the incumbents even if their product(s) were superior simply because they'd have to first build or buy a place for themselves on the infrastructure they need to develiver their product(s).

Argument Against Net Neutrality
================================
I am a big telecommunications company and I own the fiber optic cable in the ground that my compeitors are using to take away my business and I want to charge them for that. I want to go to companies like Amazon and solicite them on the idea of paying me money to make their website load twice as fast as Barnes and Nobles website. I essentially want to create a Fast Lane on the internet. This adds a new dynamic to the free market, it allows me to maximize my revenue, and it more efficiently delivers conent to the majority of the customers. This enables the innovational trend like stream live High Definition (HD) content directly to your computer or TV MUCH faster because I have a fast lane or car pool lane to get there.

Again bringing this back to the real-world, I might in my current position have to go to Qwest and negotiate a rate with them before I was elidiglble to put a website out on the "internet" and my website may only be visible to Qwest internet customers. Individuals with internet access from XO Commuincations CANNOT get to my website at www.axispointe.com because the internet is partitioned. Think of it like Cable TV, customers would have to buy the right to see certain "channels" or "certain" websites out on the net.

My Argument
================================
I typically am a believer in the free market, and generally feel that capitalism is effienct at determining the best solution. HOWEVER, I am a strong proponant of strict regulation of that free market. I belive left to their own devices capitalists are inherently evil and will exploit humans for their own gain once given sufficeint power to do so. Thus government MUST provide legislation to level the playing field and THEN let the teams play, otherwise someone will grow powerful enough to change the field substantially toward their advantage. Net Neutrality is a prime example of this. I belive that the internet IS an infrastructure that all people have right to use EQUALLY. It's a tool that has created millions of jobs, and created a whole new industry, and was the catalyst for the information age in which we currently find ourselves in.

I don't think access to this infrastructure should be free. But I do thins it should be the same for all who use it. If a company agrees to be a pass-through facilitator the government needs to mandate that they simply pass-through data and NOT manipulate it as it goes through. Similarly, I don't think we should let private companies build their own highways cutting across the US wherever they can, just to shave travel time off of their own company's vehicles.

SUPPORT NET NEUTRALITY!

The Polar Express

2008-12-14T13:54:00.001-07:00

Mindy took Chase this week up to the Heber Valley Railway where the kids got to ride on the "real" polar express. They wore their pajamas and drank hot chocolate while riding the train into the North Pole to see Santa.

I couldn't be there, but I honestly don't think Chase could possibly have been more excited.

Ban dancing by grown men

2008-11-23T14:25:00.003-07:00

It's time the Mountain West Conference instigate a rule similar to the WAC that prohibits choreographed dance routines by football players before NCAA games.
I personally don't see how a bunch of white guys trying to act like New Zealanders and making gestures of slitting their opponents throats is sportsman-like conduct. Especially when doing it on an opponents field while they are trying to honor their seniors at their final home game. In fact Austin Collie agrees and opts out of doing the dance. Even Bronco reluctantly allowed it after multiple stipulations such as not performing it facing the opposing team and that it not be done out on the field. Last year UofH drew a 15 yeard unsportsman-like conduct penalty even before the game began. It's time the MWC follwed suit.

References:
Deseret News Article 2007

Minority Report Has Arrived

2008-11-21T19:43:00.002-07:00

I attended CES this year and saw first-hand the Microsoft Table Top Computting that was very impressive, but not as impressive as this:

http://oblong.com/

Why Circuit City Lost a Customer

2008-11-20T20:19:00.005-07:00

So for those of you who have not heard the news, Circuit City is going bankrupt. Link Some say it is due to their poor treatment of the employees (Link) however I found out the real reason this last week.

My brother watches for deals this time a year as many people do. He found an advertised deal on the website http://dealspl.us for a Samsung 50' Plasma TV and an XBOX 360 for $999.00. In fact you can probably still see the deal HERE. So he thought it was a good buy and tried to checkout by clicking the link to go to circuitcity.com and make the purchase. It added to his cart, it took his contact information, and it calculated taxes and shipping. However at the very last step it failed to process the order due to an error stating it was unable to verify inventory. So he called me and had me try to purchase it for him. Same results. Next we called a gentleman by the name of Garrison Gammel from circuit city store #3351 in SLC UT and asked them about the deal. Sure enough it was legitimate and they said if the web did not work, come down to the store and purchase it in person. So we did. We drove to the nearest store and showed them the printout of the sale. The clerk told us he had just barley honored that deal for a gentlemen a few minutes ago, but after doing so was instructed to no longer honor that advertised price. We were told that if we had any problems, to take it up with corporate. Well coincidentally the corporate headquarters for Circuit City was "experiencing a power outage" (although oddly enough the website still worked, people were making purchases all around us, and the phones were still answered by someone at corporate, but they were unable to access the part of the system that verified sales) I guess seeing it on their own website was insufficient.

We finally decided to go home and continue to try and reach the power-less Circuit City. After speaking with various people for well over a few hours, the final answer was that Corporate could not help us. We had to take it up with the local store manager by the name of Jason Hupp. Of course both he and the district manager, Jason Fox, were both unavailable to take our call at the time.

The next day we finally got a hold of Jason, the store manager, and he simply said it was a grave mistake and we are sorry for advertising that price, but it's no good. However to make it up to you, come in and we'll sell you that TV or one similar at our cost. Realizing we would never convince them to live up to their own sales, we reluctantly decided to take what we could get.

Tonight my brother went into the store and asked to speak with the manager who had made us the promise. Sure enough he was once again too busy and far too important to speak with a lowly customer. So the sales rep helping us said he would help us and make sure we received top notch treatment. So my brother picked out the TV he wanted and the rep went to go check cost on the item. 30 minutes went by and no sign of the guy. Asking for him was useless - no one knew. He eventually showed up and indicated he has received special approval to discount the $1900 TV by a grand total of $75.00 and let that TV be practically stolen at a price of $1825

We graciously told him where stick his $75.00 discount.

Now for the lesson: I am no business genius, but I am working on a masters degree in the subject. How much would the TV have to be discounted in order to keep a customer for the remainder of his/her life? In this case dropping the price by lets say $300.00, and we assume they must have SOME margin built into their prices, they might have lost $200.00 or even less in order to keep a customer who will probably spend FAR greater than that amount over the remainder of his/her life or even this year for Christmas for crying out loud. Not only that, but I know that my brother, my father-in-law, and my brother-in-law, will never shop there again; add to that any negative remarks we pass onto anyone asking us about Circuit City (and believe me I get ALOT of computer questions from people as VP of Technology for a software company) and you have very quickly exceeded the $200 range in losses.

So way to go Circuit City, you just saved yourself $200 in inventory to lose thousands over the next few years. Good luck trying to get out of brankruptcy!!

Bodi's Blessing

2008-11-16T23:27:00.001-07:00

We had Bodi's Baby Blessing today. My parents are currently serving a service mission in TX. and they were in town just for a couple of days this weekend to sign papers on a house to live in when they get home in a few months. So scheduled the blessing so they could be here for it.

Micro Investing

2008-11-13T11:47:00.002-07:00

This is an organization that I think has a great concept and at the same time improves the world we live in. This is an organization that allows average people like you and me to invest in PEOPLE. Playing the stock market is fun but rather complicated and most of us are not doing so hot right now. So if you are looking for a way to put just a few dollars into something meaningful and still possible make a small profit. Kiva is the way to do it.

Basically you invest money into business ideas that less fortunate people in the world have come up with. You get to track their progress and see there ideas come to fruition. You may make your money back or a small profit but the important thing is you help people help themselves into a better life.

www.kiva.org

2008-11-08T14:12:00.003-07:00

Utah had an amazing win over TCU this week to Rice-Eccles 2nd largest crowd in school history. The Blackout seemed to have worked and was quite a sight to behold if I may say so. TCU deserves credit for their relentless defense - probably one of the best I have ever seen in college football. However Utah remains undeafted and is well on their way to busting the BCS AGAIN!!! This would be a huge feat not only for the Utes but the entire conference and would mean some sigificant payouts to everyone in the Mountain West.

I was dissappointed in Andy Ludwig's play callling, but am extatic that we came out on top in the end and kept our hopes for a 2nd undeated season. Let's just hope we get a better opponent in a major bowl this time around. Brian Johnson continues to prove himself a capable quarterback that I personally feel deserves some more NCAA-wide recognition. The match-up again Max Hall (also frequently under-rated nationally) on Nov. 22nd will be one interesting ball game. Some of the best football in the country is right in our backyards this year. I love it!

Go Utes!!!

Politics

2008-11-04T22:18:00.003-07:00

I personally am registered 'unaffiliated' and happen to vote across party lines rather frequently, and now that the election is over I can talk about this without any assumptions that I am advocating any one politician. But what has amazed me over this election is that so many members of the LDS church believe that if you are truly righteous you would obviously vote republican. I don't understand it?

I wonder what those people would say to President James E. Faust,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Faust#Public_service

President Heber J Grant, President Wilford Woodruff, Huge B. Brown, etc., etc. ???

CamoFire website launch

2008-10-31T09:50:00.004-06:00

So I have been working with some cool guys on a new Deal-a-Deal website that sells hunting gear and outdoor clothing. They provided the product and the website design, and my job was to make everything work. We have launched the site although there are still some tweaks to be made. But so far so good.

You should check it out and send your friends there.

www.CamoFire.com

SNL Debate

2008-10-11T11:30:00.001-06:00

Pictures of Bodi

2008-09-22T14:31:00.002-06:00

Well Mindy and Baby came home from the hospital this afternoon. They are both doing well and are both very tired.

Everything went really smoothly and we are grateful to the wonderful people at the St. Mark's Women's Center. Mindy is now on a long road to recovery however. She can't lift more than 10 lbs for a few weeks and can't drive for 4 weeks. So for those of you who know Mindy, she is going to go crazy being at home for that long.

We had a hard time deciding how to spell his name since there are so many different ways and it's not a very common name. But we eventually landed on 'Bodi' We then gave him the middle name of Ray after his great grand-father Ray Casaday and also his Grandfather Gale Rae.

It was good to see my mom for the first time in 7 months when she flew in from Houston for a couple of days. We're just glad she was able to come at all, so it worked out great. Now she is back in Texas working over-time on the hurricane clean-up.

Thank you to all of you who emailed, called, texted, and visited. We appreciate all of the heart-felt sentiments you expressed!

>> View All of the Pictures <<

New Arrival

2008-09-19T13:44:00.005-06:00

I will post pictures later, but I wanted to post that we had a healthy baby boy yesterday. He was 8 lbs, 1 oz and 21 in. long. Mindy is doing well and recovering. Sh will probably come home on Monday we are guessing.

Birthday Party

2008-09-15T19:52:00.004-06:00

So my wife threw the coolest kid's party EVER for Chase's 4th Birthday Party. We had about 10 or 12 of Chase's friends and family come over to our house for a Spiderman Party. The kids all came dress as super-heroes. A couple of the girls were maidens in distress however. Then we played games and had cake and ice cream and all of the usual party stuff. But then we had the REAL spiderman show up to the party ;) and teach the little crime fighters how to catch Bad Guys. They had to run through the obstacle course and practice their kicks and climbing skills. We then gave each super-hero a web weapon (slash squirt-gun) and they had to go around our circle and search for Bad Guys. Mindy bribed a few of the neighborhood boys into dressing up as robbers and had them hidden through all of our neighbors homes. So Spiderman took his team and sought out the bad guys and webbed them until the cops showed up.

These kids seriously thought it was the coolest thing they have ever done. You can watch the video below and checkout the pictures!

>> View the Pictures <<

Watch the Video:

AxisPointe sees Nationally Ranked Growth

2008-08-27T11:21:00.006-06:00

AxisPointe is making some serious headway in the business world:

AxisPointe Ranks 509 in USA Fastest Growing Companies

Brandon Pack for President

2008-08-26T16:18:00.006-06:00

If you don't see a play button, follow this link:

http://www.thelopezfamilyonline.com/play.php?first=Brandon&last=Pack

Word to the Wise

2008-08-09T17:12:00.001-06:00

Word to the Wise: Never eat a Beef-n-Cheddar from a gas station Arby's in Fillmore, UT.

Boys Trip

2008-08-03T19:27:00.011-06:00

Derin and I decided we didn't want to four-wheel on the same old trails we always go on. We wanted to explore new territories and venture places we have never seen before. So we strapped gas to the four-wheelers and tried to head down as many different trails as we could. Most of them went for a couple miles and then ended, but we found plenty that seemed to never end.

In fact we probably almost rode from Scofield down into Manti going straight over the mountains. But according to Virtual Earth, we rode about 70+ miles of difficult terrain in one day. We were completley covered head-to-toe in mud and who knows how many vertical feet we climbed.

The next day we came back to Salt Lake to do a little riding in the Oquirrh Mountains.

It was a bast!

>> View the Pictures <<

Earthquake

2008-08-01T15:07:00.002-06:00

Mindy is still in LA right now and will be for a few more days, but she called right when the big earthquake in southern California was happening. She said the whole building was shaking and pictures were falling off the walls.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/29/earthquake.ca/?iref=mpstoryview

Her and her students were all ok, but they did have to print and distribute emergency information and specific procedures in case additional ones occurred.

Survived Cali

2008-07-23T23:20:00.005-06:00

Well we barely survived our California Trip. It wasn't really a vacation however. The dance studio that Mindy runs went on tour to perform in California. They had shows at Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Santa Monica Pier, etc. I was sent along as support for the trip. Hopefully the kids had a good trip, but as far as I was concerned it was not much fun at all. We had one of the studio dance teachers and her husband tow the sound equipment trailer all the way down in the Durango.

The durango got a nail in the tire and had to be replaced
Later while on the freeway, the durango completely broke down and wouldn't start
I had to rent a Uhaul to tow the trailer to the remainder of the shows
I had to tow the durango to a Pep Boys since they were the only ones open on Sunday.
Because I had no ride back, I had to walk 3 miles back to the hotel
I then took a $100 cab ride to Hollywood to meet up with the group that night
The air vent on the top of the trailer broke off when we went under a low bridge
The hotel we stayed in sucked
We had medication stolen from our room and had to get presrciptions called in to So Cal.
Disneyland was REALLY crowded and it was REALLY hot

The only really bright side of the trip was that I got to see "Wicked" at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood and Chase did have a good time at Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm.

Mindy is still down in California at the SLS Voice camp and has the Durango still, so I am just praying that it makes it home in a couple weeks.

Weird Fourth

2008-07-06T18:56:00.007-06:00

We headed up to my in-laws cabin for the holiday weekend. It turned out to be a great weekend, but was anything but a normal trip to the cabin.

Here are just a few of the highlights:

We encountered some very weird half-naked nomadic people out in the middle of nowhere while four-wheeling.

We found a giant mushroom larger than a full-size basketball.

We got stuck for over 20 minutes on the four-wheelers in the middle of a few thousand sheep trying to cross the trail.

The only fish we caught were 2 inches long.

There must have been 900 Million people and their dogs up around the lake.

Derin shot me in the butt with an Airsoft gun. Which hurts more than you might expect ;-)

We took Chase a bunch of toys, but all he wanted to play with were some $2.00 cups from K-Mart.

But all of that added to the fact that it was a great weekend. The weather was perfect. The food was good. And I got caught up on some much needed sleep.

View the Pictures

Everything Comes Back to the Simpsons

2008-07-01T10:08:00.006-06:00

Not only is "The Simpsons" one of the longest running TV shows on record, but it is quite literally a cultural icon. More so for my generation probably than others, but at the very least, I have never met someone who didn't know who the Simpsons were or what the basic premise of the show was. However for me it went far beyond that. It actually spoke to the very fabric of the society in which I have lived so far. By using animation it gained a new dimension and new canvas on which to over exaggerate aspects of society that ring true in the eye of the beholder and do so in a comical manner.
This is so true that someone like me who is an avid watcher of the Simpsons can so readily relate everyday topics of conversation back to some episode of the Simpsons. Hence “Everything Comes Back to the Simpson.” And while it is not necessarily unique, because Seinfeld had a similar nature and sense of humor to it, but was unable to achieve it to the degree the Simpsons has, it is in my mind the leader in this genre of comedy. As a result, it becomes rather easy to draw examples from the writers of this show when trying to make comparisons to real-life. From politics to religion, to social norms, everything is poked fun at and nothing is sacred. They will even poke fun at themselves as proof that there is no degree of discrimination in their critiques.
The level of creativity within this show often astounds me. They have a wealth of talent to draw from, and while some years were better than others, the well is not drying up as of yet. One of the creators of the Simpsons discusses aspects of creativity that are applicable to the business world. Whether it’s writers of a sitcom or developers of software, certain principles still apply when trying to foster innovation. While this is not the best article I have ever read, it has some good insight, but mainly it is illustrative of this concept of “Everything Comes Back to the Simpson.”

News Article

(Image is the copyright of Fox Broadcasting Company)

Duh ...

2008-06-24T12:50:00.002-06:00

Science is still proving things we knew all along:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25197962/

Originality

2008-06-22T20:02:00.004-06:00

Disney's Pixar Film Wall-E : a lonely robot with human-like feelings.

Johnny 5 from Short Circuit: a lonely robot with human-like feelings.

Disturbing

2008-06-19T23:51:00.002-06:00

So... I was browsing a technology website about databases and saw an advertisement for an interesting new product.

Now who do you suppose this "Root Beer" flavored Vodka is marketed towards? Hmmmm... I don't know too many drinkers who go into a bar and say to themselves, "Man I came in to get a shot of hard liquor, but what I really feel like is a Barq's Root Beer. Wait a minute, now I can have the best of both worlds."

Boating on Father's Day

2008-06-15T23:00:00.004-06:00

Fishing on Father's Day - what more could you ask for?

We had a great family trip up to Starvation Reservoir over Father's Day weekend. We had great weather, good food, and the fam. The water was a cool 52 degress F. but that didn't stop us from wakeboarding. We also fished a bunch with very little luck with the exception of Russ's very first cast pulling in a huge brown trout. But you would never have known the fishing was not that great from the way Chase acted. He could not have been happier to cast his Spiderman Fishing Pole over and over again with nothing on it but a bobber. :)

All three of my brothers and their families made the trip a great success - they're awesome! I have only been home a few hours and I am already wanting to plan the next one.

Starvation is actually a pretty cool lake. You could set your clock by the winds that kicked up in the afternoon, but by dinner time everything was calm again. We hardley saw anyone else near us, and we had pretty smooth water most of the trip. Duchesne is a seriously happenin' town .... if you're idea of a good time is visiting the Chevron. But I would highly recommend the trek up there.

But take a look at the pictures and see for yourself:

MORE PICTURES

Memorial Weekend

2008-05-27T22:19:00.005-06:00

We spent a snowy, cold, and muddy weekend up at the Frandsen cabin over memorial weekend. But despite that, it was actually a lot of fun and pretty relaxing weekend. The scenery is amazing up there and I took a couple of pictures of just plain old landscapes just to be reminded of one of the best aspects of going up there - just being outdoors and enjoying the scenery. There is honestly an unseen power that sooths the sole when taking a deep breath of fresh non-city air, and then digging the bugs out of your teeth after riding the four-wheeler back to the cabin ;)

You can see all the pictures here if you'd like:
Link to All Pictures

.

Messed Up

2008-05-05T10:00:00.003-06:00

Please watch the video of the new "Embassy" the United States built in Iraq. 2 Billion a year just to operate this massive compound.

MSNBC Video

Here is some more disturbing information on it:

Article

Disappointed in Software

2008-04-27T18:36:00.004-06:00

I have to tell you, I am throughly disappointed and disenchanted with software - yes ALL software. I realize that is a blanket statement to make about a vast and large industry. One in which I work none-the-less. It is meant to be. Because I am not speaking about any one or two pieces of software that have frustrated me, but am speaking broadly about software in general. The more interaction I have with software and other software companies, the more disillusioned I become.
I drove an Acura Legend for well over a decade before it finally died with well over 200,000 miles on it. Despite being built in 1991, and thus probably engineered in the late eighties, the vehicle was in the shop maybe twice the entire time I owned it. I suspect it went through numerous safety testes before being built. I am guessing it had to meet governmental regulations before being road worthy. It was obvious there was a significant amount of investment made to quality assure that product. While vehicles are only one example, I again assume that Honda went to these efforts, not wholly because they felt a need to contribute good-will to society, but because it made good business sense to do so.
Why then are we as consumers so willing to accept our computers and our software to crap out on us all the time? Why do we not demand more from the IT world? There are plenty of excuses I believe. Some that I have heard include:

Software has to get to market in order to make money before any more resources can be spent on ensuring it's quality.
Software is too new of an industry to have sufficient regulations or processes in place.
A precedence has already been set by the Microsofts of the world.
Buggy software does not have the ramifications of a defective vehicle

All of these and more have been pointed out. They all have some truth to them and I could argue in favor of all of them. But even if they are true, I still think they are just excuses.

I believe that long-term, better software will make more money than quickly developed software.
I believe the industry is now becoming sufficiently mature to warrant a higher level of quality.
I think the precedence of software's forebears need to be changed or re-thought.
There are examples of poor software resulting in lost lives, and I feel that as our lives become more entrenched by software, this will only be more prevalent in the future. (link)

I am not sure why I feel that so much of the worlds software is unacceptable in my mind, but I am concerned by a couple of factors regarding it. For one, the increasing amount of reliance being put on software Medial industry as a good example. Just this week, my doctor ran my new prescriptions against a giant database to see if it conflicts with any of my other medications from a TabletPC, whereases a couple of years ago, he had to look it up in a medical book. At first I thought this was a great improvement in efficiency, but then I thought about some of the software I have personally written and how easily it was for me to introduce a bug into that software, and I wondered if the software he was now using had as many proof-readers as his old book had. Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting we regress in technological advances. Quite the contrary in fact. I am all in favor of pushing more technology to gain advances in society. I simply am concerned over the "rush" we often seem to be in to get a new development into market whether or not it has been throughly sent through the refiners fire.

Now our cars are running windows in them (Ford Sync)

I guess I need to suggest a solution to the problem at this point. Admittedly I am not an expert on this issue, so I can't speak with much authority on the subject, but a couple observations I have could potentially help. First and fore-most I think the single greatest factor to make a change will be consumer demand. We all have to expect more from the software we purchase. Only until then will the laws of our market-driven society play their part. Secondly, I think that the educational system has let us down. It's always easy to blame education and a bit cliche, but having obtained a degree in CS from the University of Utah, I felt that there was a large gap between being able to program complex algorythms for NASA and creating a simple web applications. So as I see it, your options are to go the educational route and learn to be an engineer or learn coding on your own and get a job that pays well because its a rare skill. Either way, very little emphasis will be put on the real world application of the majority of software development. Although they are vital in society and many have proven successful with it, the majority of programmers are not building extremely complicated engineering systems. They are building word processors, VoIP tools, financial accounting systems, or web-based database driven applications. These are where most programmers find themselves and where most have had to learn the processes of software development through experience or trial-and-error. Lastly, I think the only thing that can help is a commitment from industry professionals and entrepreneurs to take it upon themselves to deliver a higher quality product. Obviously there are times where doing so would be catastrophic to the company, but I would much rather see Microsoft focus is efforts on the few key applications and make them incredibly efficient and stable, rather than trying to own every software market on the planet. Mark my words, you are going to see Apple take more and more market share away from Microsoft in the coming years. I am not particularly a fan of Apple, but the fact of the matter is they DO have a commitment to higher quality than Microsoft.

Anyway, thats my mindless rant for the day.

GRAND OPENING

2008-04-24T23:25:00.003-06:00

Well Mindy has officially opened her new studio. It looks incredible. She definitely did an amazing job building this business.

She is located just east of where she used to be, but has joined forces with some other SLS certified teachers to offer Utah's Largest SLS Certified Voice Studio. You can see the location in the new Google Street View:

Street View

Or you can check out these better pictures and take a 'virtual tour' of the new digs by visiting the photo album:

New Studio

If you want to stop by and see it up close and personal, Mindy will also be hosting an Open House on Saturday May 3rd around lunch time. Be sure to be there.

BABY ON BOARD!

2008-03-22T12:20:00.005-06:00

Well, for those of you who have NOT heard the news, we are pregnant with Baby number II. Mindy is actually due on Chase's Birthday. So at least we're consistent.

So Mindy is Due September 25th but will probably have a C-Section a few days before that. Because Chase came C-Section, the doctor wants Mindy to do it that way again.

So we are very exited for Chase to have a little buddy. Every time we ask him if its a boy or a girl, he ALWAYS says a girl. Then if we ask him if he is going to have a brother of sister, he again ALWAYS says a sister. So maybe he knows something we don't ???? But the funniest thing is that we asked him what the baby's name was and he enthusiastically said "Spiderman." However he recently changed his answer and he now says the Baby's name is "Mr. Sister."

But the bad news is that Mindy has already started having a really hard pregnancy yet again. She has been throwing up every day so far. Chase feels so bad for her he pretends to be throwing up too, so that she doesn't feel alone. And keeps saying "You OK Mom? ... I choke too."

Apple Takes the Microsoft Road

2008-03-22T12:18:00.002-06:00

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/22/1536250&from=rss

Ski Trip

2008-02-19T15:07:00.004-07:00

Mindy's mom gave the family a great Christmas present this year by taking everyone on a family ski trip up to Brighton Ski Resort. We had a great time, and the kids all cried when it was time to go home.

Here are all of the picture: http://picasaweb.google.com/littlebutty/2008SkiTrip

Well after only learning to walk less than 2 years ago, Chase is already ripping it up on the slopes. He absolutely LOVED skiing. He refused to let me hold onto him as he went down the hill because I was slowing him down. So we just let him go by himself and made sure someone could catch him at the bottom since he didn't know how to stop. He would have gone down a Black Diamond if I would have let him.

I think Chase loved the chair lift as much as he did skiing. He yelled to us "Look mom, I flying!"

Although Mindy didn't get to go skiing, I was able to hit the slopes and get in some good runs.

Election Results

2008-02-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

Called To Serve

2008-01-18T18:20:00.001-07:00

Well my parents got their mission call this week. They are off to the hot and humid areas of Houston, Texas. They leave next month and will be gone for a year. Hopefully they can live without grandkids for that long.

Congrats guys!!

Here is some more info about where they are going:

The will live in Sugar Land, Texas
Here is there new home (link)
CNN and Money magazine ranked it 3rd in the "Best Cities to Live In" (link)
Ranked in the top 5 "Safest Cities in America" (link)
They will not see snow again until returning to Utah
Tracy McGrady and Shaquille O'Neal own homes there
And mom lucked out, there is a Dillards right down the street from their apartment ;)

Here is a whole bunch of information about their new home (link)

CES 2008

2008-01-12T21:29:00.001-07:00

I had a great time at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was a HUGE convention with more to see than any one person could, but it was like walking through the largest Best Buy on the planet.

I heard Bill Gates Keynote and while there was nothing earth shattering announced, I still saw some cool stuff.

The Cabin

2008-01-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

We had a great time at the Frandsen cabin this year. It may not have gone exactly as we expected it, but we still had a good time.

The cabin is located in Scofield, UT down near Price Canyon.
Click here for a detailed view.
But located in the Lasal National Forest, it gets REALLY cold there. So this week, the temperature fell 20 degrees below zero at night. In the middle of the day with the sun shining it might reach as high as 10 degrees. Thats just too cold.

So here are the highlights of the trip:

Only one of the 4 snowmobiles would run
None of the snowmobiles would start after sitting all night in that cold weather
Wind chills of more then 20 below zero
Pipes in the cabin froze and burst flooding the upstairs
I got frost bite on my face and still have the mark to prove it. Derin thinks this is pretty funny!
My Durango froze after 4 days and had to be towed over 150 miles back to Sandy (after a few days, a new battery, and some gas thawing agent it finally started)
Megan and Todd ran their Suburban off the road and got stuck
Mindy rode across Scofield Lake and nearly fell into the water.
A truck and trailer missed totaling the snowmobiles by about an inch or two before I pounded on the guys window to stop.
hmmm.... what else?

But the powder was GREAT! and thats all that matters right. Well... that and the fact that we had plenty of Dr. Pepper.

First Post

2008-01-05T21:09:00.001-07:00

So ..... I tried to resist the whole Blogging craze as long as I possibly could. I really did not want one more thing to take up my time. Nor do I believe anyone is honestly so bored that they actually want to take time out of their lives to read about mine. However I have come to the conclusion that it is actually a fairly decent way to force me to keep some sort of journal. With that in mind, I have taken the easiest route to get something up thus minimizing my time, and rest assured, I will keep my posts pretty short.

For those of you who are wondering where 'LittleButty' comes from. It was the nickname I gave to the parasite I have living in my abdominal area. I picked it up somewhere in the remote villages of Romania, and ever since then I have been eating for 2. Thus it is appropriately named LittleButty and NOT LittleBuddy. ;)