Chinese Wheel of Time - Coolest Gift Ever!

In case you don't know, I speak Mandarin Chinese somewhat fluently. Used to be better, but I don't use it as often as I should. My wife is also from China... anyway... that's important to understand this post.

So this year at Christmas, my dearest wife got me one of the neatest gifts of all time. She got me a Simplified Chinese translation of The Eye of the World, the 1st book in the Wheel of Time. Now, thumbing through it, I know that it is WAY past my current comprehension level of reading Chinese. However, my wife being a native Chinese person has no problem.

The Eye of the World - Book 1 of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

This is where it gets fun. My wife, while she has wonderful English, is understandably reluctant to read heavy or long materials in English. This is why we also own the entire Harry Potter series in Chinese as well. Well, last night we read Dragonmount together. She asked if the entire book is this detailed and slow... I laughed, and said, "That's what makes the world so real! The detail!" 

Thanks, Babe, for one of the best presents ever!

Family History

This may interest many in my family, and others as well... but this is a picture of everyone in my Family History spanning back 11 generations (not including myself). There are more people that have been researched, I plan on continuing to expand this tree... but it takes forever and the web browser responds super slowly.

Neat Photo

A week or two ago, the Provo tabernacle (one of the oldest buildings around these parts) burned down. Here is an interesting photo from the cleanup.

Lucas and Mommy dancing the night away

This is a fun video of Lucas and Cecilia dancing. Anytime she starts singing, he starts dancing.

Lucas is walking!

He started walking today by himself. Here is a video of some of the first steps.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

First Person Shooter Level Design Evolution

Wheel of Time - Me and my Obsession

Recently, book 13 of The Wheel of Time was released by Robert Jordan + Brandon Sanderson. This is a photo of me waiting in line for the event dressed up as one of the main characters Mat Cauthon.

Me as a fatter Mat Cauthon

I should have prefaced this post: I am a HCFF or "Hard Core Fan Freak" Wheel of Time (WoT) fan. I love this book series mightily. I have been reading and re-reading the series for the past 13 years (I think). In my awkward middle school days I even wrote poems and song re-wordings that were WoT themed for my favorite WoT fan site of the time Wotmania.com (which no longer exists). That photo of me was taken a full 36 hours before the book was released... that's right, I camped out too.

Now that I've relayed my inner nerdiness to the masses, I want to talk about my history with WoT and my opinions, joys, and also criticisms about the series. Then later, I plan on writing reviews of each of the books in order. Let it be known, for those of you that have read, are reading, or plan on reading the series in the future, I am always up to date on the latest WoT news, theories, etc. So sufficient to say, there will be SPOILERS.

A Computer Science Major's Perspective

Halo Reach Comics

A message from a Mormon to the Gay Community

In regards to Gay Marriage, I've been thinking about this a lot recently, considering the decision of the California judge to repeal Proposition 8, and I think it is only fair to express my opinions on the matter.

You see, I have more than one member of my family that is, in fact, directly affected by the outcome of the rulings that will inevitably be decided by the Supreme Court.As I am one of the only actively practicing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in my family, I worry that my family and friends of our family may see me to be secretly intolerant at heart. Maybe I'm putting on a smile and being kind, but deep down I resent them and am very disappointed... well, if you think this of me, you are wrong.

I don't claim to speak for the LDS Church in any way, but I do claim that there are MANY other LDS people who share the same viewpoint that I do. What about all the angry bitter people? Well, they are just louder than we are.

Kinect == Wii - Controller;

BYU Spoofs Old Spice man!

New videos of Lucas!

The first video was on our way to Texas in the Hotel. Lucas is about 7 months old. The second one is today where he is about 9 months old. He crawls really well now and is still as big as ever... just look at the difference in these 2 months even!

What Would Jesus Do?

Members of the LDS church and Christianity in general have an interesting relationship. We Mormons claim to be Christian since we do, after all, believe Christ to be our Lord and Savior, but we don't share any of the same symbols, history, social structures, even our vocabulary differs greatly in reference to the same things. Since we LDS folk don't use crosses and other symbology to express our faith, we tend to forgo all other sayings as well. I, on the other hand, have a "W.W.J.D." fabric bracelet that was given to me years ago by a friend that I have worn since. Normally LDS people would not wear this. Why? Simply because we have our own culture apart from Christianity and the WWJD craze never became a part of it. To me, it is still a valid message and therefore, I choose to wear it.


Currently, I'm in Texas on an internship and I met another intern native to the southern states (who kinda looks like Martin Keamy on Lost) and we got to talking. He said, ..."so you go to BYU, that explains why you are married and have a son." I laughed and agreed. Then he said, "But you're not Mormon." I replied, "What makes you think that I'm not?" At which point he pointed to my WWJD bracelet and I said "So?" He then replied, "I like you, you are a good guy."

This led me to the conclusion that this other intern didn't believe that LDS think of Christ as our Savior. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think we as LDS don't wear Christ on our sleeves enough. We live good works and brotherly kindness pretty well, we also have no problem wearing the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith on our sleeves... but Jesus? We don't preach it much.

Maybe it is because we know others understand it already, they already have a Faith in Christ and we want to focus on what makes us unique, but then we are missing the point.

For the two or three of you that actually will possibly read this, what do you think?

Math Trick