Trudging Along

I had another back to school day...yesterday. Really, only yesterday? It feels like it's been so long. I, and every other first year, feels swallowed up already by the new semester. We had our rafting trip last weekend and it couldn't have been more perfect. It was just a perfect scenario to talk comfortably with recruiters, to meet other students, and just kind of have some fun before the semester began. I hope I get the chance to go next year. That'd be really fun.

I have a list of my favorites, and as much as I'd like to, I don't think I'll be publishing them here. Last week it was kind of funny because we were actually advised to clean up our online presence, just in case there were any unkempt closets for skeletons to be jumping out of, so I wonder how much of a liability this blog will be. Probably not too much. Who comes here anymore anyway, right?

Things are good. Baby is growing. Amy grows more uncomfortable by the minute. We have just about everything we could possibly need for this baby. School is swallowing me up, and only four days into the semester, and the first recruiter is already coming to campus.

Things are heating up.

Colors Festival...Finally

I finally got it done.

Back to School

I haven't had a real school day in a few years, so I have been pretty excited for this one to finally get here, although I guess I'm still actually a couple weeks from really going to school. Classes start the 27th, but today was orientation, and we have it for 7 (mostly) full days.

What was fun was meeting the other incoming 1st years, hearing some of their stories, finding out where everyone is from, and what kinds of things everyone wants to do. I talked to a guy who owned an arena football league franchise, another with a doctorate in music who started an opera company, and one guy straight from India. There are so many cool stories and things to find out about these people, and really I'm just excited to make new friends, build the network, and really get going on these next two years.

It's amazing to me what kind of opportunities will come out of this program. And I just really love BYU, as evidenced by my taking on a third degree program, but really, I do. It's an amazing place, and no matter how many times I hear it, I'm always so amazed at these people, especially within the business school, who had very, very lucrative and successful careers elsewhere decide that they would hang it all up because they want to be a part of something even bigger, and for them, that means BYU. That's always so impressive to me.

So begins my next two year adventure, at the end of which, I'll be done with school forever.

May they be filled with new friends and opportunities and many dollar signs to follow!

Marshall and Yetta Got Married!

So our good friends, Marshall and Marietta, got married a few weeks ago and I got tasked with putting together a video of their wedding day. It was really fun for me to try it out, and as I was putting everything together it made me realize how far I have to go when it comes to all this video stuff. I shot it on a camcorder, which helped with a lot of things like white balance and color adjustments, but it still amazes me how hard it is to be moving with a stable frame, even when the camera has a stabilizer. That's frustrating. It makes me really want a steadicam.

But yeah, this was still a lot of fun for me to do, and I ended up doing two videos because I probably had 1 1/2 music videos worth of footage to edit with, so I just split it up instead.

Last weekend with Mike, we were talking about how important song selection is to a video. It can totally make or break a video, and ruin otherwise good ones. And then sometimes I just choose a song because it's about the right length, about the right tempo, and is just good enough. Both of these songs are nice, but the temple one was meaningful to the couple, but much harder to work with. The reception song was my choice.

Anyway, that's enough, here are the videos:

...think it possible you may be mistaken...

There is a great essay from Deidre McCloskey that you can find here. The topic and title of the essay is Factual Free-Market Fairness. Just a brief excerpt:

No.  The master narrative of High Liberalism is mistaken factually.  Externalities do not imply that a government can do better.  Publicity does better than inspectors in restraining the alleged desire of businesspeople to poison their customers.  Efficiency is not the chief merit of a market economy: innovation is.  Rules arose in merchant courts and Quaker fixed prices long before governments started enforcing them.

I know such replies will be met with indignation.  But think it possible you may be mistaken, and that merely because an historical or economic premise is embedded in front page stories in the New York Times does not make them sound as social science.  It seems to me that a political philosophy based on fairy tales about what happened in history or what humans are like is going to be less than useless.  It is going to be mischievous.

How do I know that my narrative is better than yours?  The experiments of the 20^th century told me so.  It would have been hard to know the wisdom of Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman or Matt Ridley or Deirdre McCloskey in August of 1914, before the experiments in large government were well begun.  But anyone who after the 20^th century still thinks that thoroughgoing socialism, nationalism, imperialism, mobilization, central planning, regulation, zoning, price controls, tax policy, labor unions, business cartels, government spending, intrusive policing, adventurism in foreign policy, faith in entangling religion and politics, or most of the other thoroughgoing 19^th-century proposals for governmental action are still neat, harmless ideas for improving our lives is not paying attention.

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries ordinary Europeans were hurt, not helped, by their colonial empires.  Economic growth in Russia was slowed, not accelerated, by Soviet central planning.  American Progressive regulation and its European anticipations protected monopolies of transportation like railways and protected monopolies of retailing like High-Street shops and protected monopolies of professional services like medicine, not the consumers.  “Protective” legislation in the United States and “family-wage” legislation in Europe subordinated women.  State-armed psychiatrists in America jailed homosexuals, and in Russia jailed democrats.  Some of the New Deal prevented rather than aided America’s recovery from the Great Depression.

Very interesting stuff.

Reno Boys Weekend...sorta...

Several months ago the Walton boys had planned on a guys' weekend of skiing and hanging out in Utah. Bad weather and some phone calls later and it was off, but we decided to do something in August, which meant mountain biking, golfing, and time hanging out, except all additional families were welcome. So Elisha and the kids came, and so did Amy. Instead of a guys' weekend, it was more like guys' guilt free mornings.

I did get a bunch of clips, and maybe I'll put together something in a bit, but we ended up commissioning Mike to do the weekend video since he seemed much more deliberate about the shots he was getting, although it was funny to see four GoPros getting every possible angle all weekend long.

The events went thusly:

• Thursday - Amy and I arrived in Reno early Thursday afternoon. We got some nice down time with Dan and Sarah, went bowling in an ultra-competitive race to 100, which took all of us almost all 10 frames to get to, though one of us failed to make it. *cough*Dan*cough*
• Friday - The boys went golfing Friday morning at 7:30am. The course was awesome, and I'm glad to say that I don't embarrass myself with my golfing anymore. Not that I'm any good, but I can fit right in with most groups now. We got back to lunch, then off to the local water park, which I would hate to pay for, but because of Elisha's hook-up, we got in free. Sweet! That night we had a rematch of mini-golf. Fun, constantly moving day. Mike and I took a brief excursion to the Reno river-walk, and that was a lot of fun.
•  Saturday - The boys got up and left by 6am to get out mountain biking the South Lake Tahoe Rim trail. I haven't really done any biking in years, let alone mountain biking. The Walton boys kicked my butt, a little to my surprise since I am still regularly running, but the ride was amazing. The mountains were beautiful, and looking down at the lake was a nice treat. We went up with all the families down at the lake and spent some time there. As we were packing up a crazy windstorm sent everyone running for their cars. It was unreal. At first just a few umbrellas would begin to fly off, and then a bit later, the EZ-up canopy just up and started to take off. Amy got a hand on the leg of the canopy, but it crashed on Foster. Somehow he must the brunt of it, so he was fine, but it was just so funny to see everyone go running. Inner tubes were just rolling down the beach, and the animals seemed to love it. A dog just rolled around in the sand, and seagulls were just all hanging in mid-air, floating there. It was so funny. Mike, Amy, and I stole away to Sand Harbor and jumped off the rocks for a bit. Not Amy, just Mike and I. I love that stuff. So fun. That night we went home and just hung out. Everyone was pretty wiped out by the end of the weekend. 

It was short, but the perfect amount of time. We did so much in just the few days we were there, and I just love the Waltons. I feel so lucky to be apart of that the family. Dan and Sarah were wonderful hosts. It was just a lot of fun.

This will be our last trip before the baby comes, and it turned out to be a really fun one.