Been a Few Days

Well here it is...Wednesday andI have been a slacker at this blog stuff. I haven't gotten out a whole lot to get pictures taken, I need to soon though. I find taking pictures a good release and something else to do. Over the next couple of weeks I will be working on a side project and probably won't get out much, so I'll either ignore the blog stuff or give you pictures from the archive.

Today's picture was taken on our trip to Logan a couple weeks ago. It was one of those times that was a right place, right time to catch this picture. I have tried to get pictures kind of like this where you have just a second to react and my timer is usually on or something that doesn't get me a good picture. This one turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.

ISO 200 300mm f/5.6 1/320 sec.

Good Morning

Good Monday morning to everyone reading this, hopefully on Monday. If not on Monday, good enter day of week here morning to you. I got up this morning and rode the train into work. It wasn't too bad, except as I was on the train I kept seeing light flashing and thought it was the train lights. Nope. It was lightning. I discovered that as I was walking to my office from the train station near the University of Utah Institute this morning, in the rain. Oh well, what do you do. I'm not afraid of a little rain, I did live in Ireland for two years.

Well here it is Monday again. It was a great weekend. Friday night was a Halloween party at some friends, Saturday was Priesthood Leadership meeting at the Conference Center, cleaning the garage, and a session at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. Sunday, we took our 4 kids and ventured to the Conference Center for the general session of our Stake/Regional Conference. I was amazed at how well the kids, bored as they were, behaved for the almost 3 hours we were there (2 for the session, almost 1 for getting there early). I have some good kids, when they want to be. I also finished Paths of Glory, a new book by Jeffery Archer. It was great and I'll review it later on.

I took a few pictures over the weekend. I saw something this morning that I thought would be an awesome picture, but because I took the train, I didn't have my camera. My point and shoot hasn't made it back to the work bag since I let Jarik use it on our recent Logan trip. Maybe I'll get lucky one of these days and get a picture of what I thought was so cool. If not, you'll live forever in suspense.

So here is a picture from the weekend that I will say is going to be the PotD for the weekend. And hopefully I can post something again later, with more pictures.

Picture of the Day - October 14, 2009

So tonight I got bored and started playing around with my camera. I don't have any lights specifically for photography, so I used a desk lamp with a sheet. Didn't work. I wanted to play with the depth of field stuff again. Didn't work how I wanted it to, I'm guessing because the shutter speed was so high that it just gathered in all sorts of light. If you have some pointers on depth of field, please comment and let me know. I'm using a Canon Rebel XT camera in the Av mode. Thanks...

Here is a picture that I took and it probably worked the best out of the few that I took. I'll post the others on Whadda Photos....

ISO 200 25mm f/4.5 0.6 seconds

Picture of the Day - October 13, 2009

Today's picture of the day comes from the trip to Logan on Saturday. We were having a potty break in the Nutrition Sciences building on the USU campus. The kids sat on the stairs and I took this picture from below them.

I've got some work to do on these types of pictures. I didn't change my settings from taking pictures outside like I should have.

Picture of the Day - October 12, 2009

On our trip to Logan I took 354 pictures. I added a bunch of pictures to the archive so that when I miss my normal PotD, I have a bunch of new pictures to pull from.

Today's PotD is of the statue called Synergy on the Utah State University campus. I have always thought that this was a cool statue and I've taken many pictures of it, but this is probably one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Fun Saturday, Sick Sunday...

It was a fun weekend, minus the sickness that seemed to jump in and take over the house.

Saturday started with Jarik's soccer game. They didn't do very well, but Jarik had a good time. He loves playing goalie and does a pretty good job at it. He even stuck in there while they were kicking him when he was trying to get the ball. He likes soccer, so that is good. And I think it eases Chels' fear of him playing football, although he's told me he wants to play football. we'll see what happens.

After the soccer game we headed to Logan for the day. We spent some time on campus and then headed to First Dam and then to the Temple, then to Adam's Park, and on to dinner at Bluebird (thanks again Sam and Camilla). Then we headed home. It was a fun and exciting day, which is good because of what has gone on since then.

We were all sleeping well when I hear Chels jump up and say, KK just threw up. I was gone so I didn't hear it, but there is nothing better than being woken up in the middle of a great night sleep just to clean up puke. Not the only time I'll get this awesome fatherly responsiblity this weekend. After cleaning up the mess and getting KK's bed ready for her to sleep in again, I came in my room and laid down ready to go back to sleep, feeling very nauseous myself. Willing myself to get to sleep, the nauseousness went away as I drifted off to sleep. Sunday morning came and Chels and Tiaree both woke up with sour, nasty stomachs, I decided to take Jarik and Bree to church with me. I was feeling pretty good and went thorough the day with a headache. Then last night after dinner I started feeling sick again. I just figured it was the headache and that it would go away once I got some sleep. So in bed by 10:30 so I could get up for work. And then it happened again, this time it was Tiaree that had just thrown up. This was disgusting, causing me to loose it a little. Eventually got it all cleaned up and then back to bed. The alarm went off and the sick stomach feeling hit me pretty hard. Anyway, to end a long blog with probably way TMI, I stayed home from work.

With one final soccer game and Koins for Karsen at Chili's, it will be interesting to see if the stomachache goes away before then. I think dinner from Chili's will be more of a take out thing for lunch tomorrow. Time to get something to kill the migraine that is now going on two days worth. Stupid headache.

Picture of the Day - October 09, 2009

Today's picture of the day comes to you once again from the picture archive. I was going to go out and take some pictures today but that never did.

I was goofing off down in St. George when we were down there last. Sitting around bored with nothing to do you...find things to do. This was a fun picture to play with. I do have others of this globe that I took as well.

Legacy Bridge - PotD

Today I finally found the key for the padlock and got out of the office for about 45 minutes and took some pictures. I choose as my subject today the Legacy Bridge on the University campus. It is the bridge that spans Mario Capecchi drive. It is a pretty cool bridge and was built for the 2002 Winter Olympics here in Salt Lake City. I had in mind that it had some different aspects to it and so when I got there to take pictures, and those aspects weren't there, I was a little disappointed. What do you do? Well I just decided to do my best to take some pictures that would be cool. I'll let you be the judge. I'll post one of my favorites here but will post the rest on Whadda Photo and Video blog.

Great News - PotD

Spreading the good news. My nephew, Karsen, had a procedure tonight to see how the skin graft is doing. Things are going great and he gets to go home tomorrow. So for the Photo of the Day I've taken the picture from Karsen's blog. I also want to take time to thank everyone for the thoughts and prayers and money that you have all given and hopefully will continue to give those things as Karsen goes through the remainder of his life. Thanks!!



Don't forget Chili's in Riverton on Monday, October 12th and the 5K run on the 24th of October. Thanks!!

Stumbled Again...Doh!

So I missed my PotD yesterday. Tuesdays are hard, especially lately with how lazy I've been. Tuesdays are mutual night and when I get home from that I'm ready for bed. Last night I had to do some work as well, which took a lot longer that I had anticipated. So...to make a long story short, I just didn't do a blog. Nor did I get a picture taken to put up. So this morning, I've decided to put up one of my older shots as the Photo of the Day for yesterday.

The picture I chose today, for yesterday, was taken on June 16, 2008 from the Storm Mountain picnic area up Big Cottonwood Canyon. I was playing with some settings on the camera and got this picture. I love having the mountains here in Utah! They are awesome.

Let's Try This Again

So, last night I wrote this extensive blog that would have changed the life of anyone who read it. Well, blog saved the first paragraph then my wonderful wireless network decided that my computer only need to have limited access and I didn't notice until it was too late. So for the life changing blog, oh well. I guess you'll have to tune in again to see if I get the blogspiration, a cool new word, to write something cool and exciting that will change your life. But for now, you are stuck with my mere ramblings.

I've got a couple photos for you tonight, one to make up from yesterday and one that I took today that I thought was pretty cool.


Yesterday after General Conference, while Chels and I were making dinner, Chels had walked to the entryway from the front room to the kitchen and saw Jarik just listening to his iPod and staring out the window. She called me over to take a look and thought it would be a cool picture. So I snapped one of him. When this picture was taken, he knew what I was doing, but was cool enough to pose for me. He's a great kid.



This was taken this morning, October 5th, 2009, when I went out to my car to go to work. I thought the designs were cool and since I'm taking my camera with me more often, I pulled it out and snapped a few shots. I figured I had some time while I let the car warm up and hopefully do most of the work on the windows for me.

Here's a question that I was thinking about as I write this blog. The captions or description of the pictures, should they go above or below the picture? I've seen it both ways and while it is above, it doesn't leave a gap, but below it does. If that sentence even made sense. Let me know in the comments what you think would be better. I've given you and example of both in this blog.

Great Weekend - No PotD

What a great weekend it was. General Conference was great! All of the talks were awesome and were what I needed to hear. I really like President Monson's (listen) Sunday morning talk when he talked about the different service opportunities that members of the church did for his birthday. It was cool. And then Elder Holland (listen) gave a great talk on the Book of Mormon. I don't usually talk much about religious things on this blog, but that was a powerful witness of the Book of Mormon. My first thought after it was over was 'Wow, that was powerful'. You can listen to any of the talks online.

I had a bunch more stuff written on this weekend but it is now all gone. Stupid computer and my wireless connection deciding to take a poop all at the same time I want to publish. Well I'll publish again tomorrow, I took a couple pictures of Jarik today, but haven't pulled them off the camera, so I'll post one of them tomorrow for the make-up PotD. Goodnight!

Back to the PotD

It has been a long week and I have been very lazy when it comes to most things. So unfortunately for my 3 readers, I've been slacking off. For this I apologize.

Today I decided that it was time to get off my lazy butt and blog and give you a Picture of the Day. I know you are shocked...try not to faint. (Yes, I have a big head that you all care enough to even fake fainting to make me feel good)

Today's pictures were taken on Saturday this last weekend. I was out doing some work trying to keep my mind off things and was cleaning up when my wife spotted this little guy running across the drive way. Is drive way one word or two? Anyway, I had her get my camera and I snapped these shots:





Yes, this spider was bigger than my friend's chihuahua. OK, I'm exaggerating, but it was close.

He, I don't know how to tell a spiders gender so I'm calling him a he, didn't live much longer after these pictures were taken, because as I was taking pictures he tried to attack me, probably for calling him a he and she was a she. Ok, he...she...now I'm confused, let's just stick with he, was headed for the garage and I couldn't let him in there, so I flicked him and it pretty much killed him. RIP poor spider.

Here are the things I think about. Do spiders have families that expect them home? Is there like spider news? Do they buy there spider televisions from a spider Best Buy store? Really, these are the questions that the government should be spending my tax dollars on. OK, time to get back to work. Sorry for wasting your time.