Recycling

Should I be proud that my family aggressively recycles or should I be ashamed at the tremendous volume of trash that we create?

You don't have to answer that question...

Do Good Anyway

"People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway."

Mother Teresa

How people use their time

This is fascinating:

Play with the interactive version here. Change the settings to Men, Women, People with Kids, or Without, etc.

A few observations:

1. 7:00 AM and 10:30 PM appear to be the most common "wake up"' and "go to sleep" times.
2. Lunch is the most concentrated meal of the day, generally at 12:00 noon. Dinner is much more spread out, but most commonly occurs right after 6:00 PM. Breakfast is much harder to figure out.
3. People are getting more sleep than you would think (everyone seems to claim they don't get enough sleep, but in total, we are averaging over 8 hours per night).
4. People watch a lot of TV and movies.
5. The amount of "computer" time doesn't seem high enough to me.

(thanks Dan!)

The 2010 National Budget

Two observations:

1. Our national expenses FAR exceed our national income.
2. We spend way too much on military and national defense.

(See the full, high-resolution graph of the 2010 national budget -- with all its gory details -- here.)

Francoms

Had a blast at the Francom's lovely new home in Highland!

Very yummy food...

Lagoon

Went to Lagoon last week. Hadn't been there in over 20 years. It was better than I remember it.

The Truth

5 Guys in Provo = Yummy

Sam 1-2-3

Only in Provo

DIY Castle

How to increase property values and make your neighbors love you: retrofit your ordinary dwelling into a castle.

We saw this in Payson when we went to the Patio of Fire concert. Lovely.

Big Rock Candy Mountain

My friend Morgan used to say this is where he hoped to be called on a mission.

Signs of the recession

...near Page Arizona.

Homemade Ice Cream

Rhubarb pie

Becky decided to make rhubarb pie.

Consumer Reports LOVES the Prius

South Mountain Hike: Fat Man's Pass

The World's Most Famous Plane

On my way to work I stopped to snap a picture of the world's most famous plane parked at Sky Harbor.

Obama is in town...

Long Lost Friends: Rebecca Shahan Snow

Becky and I had a blast crashing Rebecca's older sister Laurie's 40th birthday party.

Once again, Rebecca proved herself to be one of the world's leading conversationalists.

(Rebecca has been a great friend since we first met at a Junior High party -- 20 years ago!!)

Long Lost Friends: W Hall Boys

Unbelievably, freshman year was half our lives ago.

The W-Hall Boys: Bryce Arnett, Me, Chris Short, Jeff Arnett, Mason Lundell, & Rob MacDonald.

(Nate, we missed you)

Superbowl Commercials

Hey...I know you're not doing anything right now, so why don't you throw me a bone and go vote for my brother's ad as your favorite Superbowl commercial? (Even if it's not...hey it's good for business):

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-SUPERBOWL09.html

His is the CareerBuilder "Tips" ad.

One thing he excels at is polarizing people. When I checked a few minutes ago it was winning in BOTH the best and the worst category! I think it's hilarious.

Charles Hardison Bagley

At 10:35 PM last night, Charlie decided it was time to join the crew...

Palm Pre

If you would have asked me one week ago, I would have said that Palm was a sad company on the brink of collapse that had somehow become irrelevant in a market that they once held 90% market share.

That was before I watched the CES product launch of the new Pre phone. Wow!

Here's my summary: They not only caught up to the other major smart phone offerings (iPhone, BlackBerry, Android), they surpassed them. The operating system is really, really cool. Don't believe me? Watch the launch.

The best features:

1. Synergy: Unified contact list and Calendar from all your disparate sources...without affecting the sources. This isn't a scaled down version of a desktop application; it's better than a desktop application.
   
2. True multitasking: You don't have to close or shut down what you are doing to do something else.
3. One search: It pulls up everything relevent to your search and when it runs out of "local" options, it turns to the internet.
4. The notification system is very cool.
5. Seamless switching between IM and SMS for a continuing conversation.
   
6. A real keyboard. Sorry, Apple the virtual keyboard has limitations.
7. Inductive charging (no cables required)

Palm is going to have to get this product out FAST because now that they've shown their hand (intentional pun based on their Cards feature) the other major players can copy and respond to their innovations. Obviously, their going to need a very strong third party application community to support this, but I'm optimistic that there are a lot of nerds out there with some nostalgic fondness for Palm.

Here's Engadget's rather glowing review.

2010 Toyota Prius & Honda Insight

The Insight design looks more like a sibling to the Prius than a competitor. Maybe they’ll look less alike in real life.

Early figure are that the new Insight may be more fuel efficient than the new Prius. Good news: The Insight is slated to cost less than $18k.

Cool new innovation: the Prius will have optional solar panels on the roof that run fans and some portion of the a/c to keep the car cool(er) while it is parked out in the hot sun. Very cool for AZ.