I didn't go to church on Sunday. Due to circumstances I had a limited control over, I didn't sleep well the night before, when my alarm went off, I looked at the time and turned off the clock and went back to bed. I awoke around noon and felt like i hadn't missed a thing. I need to set the stage for a couple of things that happened. I got out of bed and dressed around 1230 after I got done reading. I ate a bowl of cereal and then took Jordan to work at 215 when he came out of his room. I came home and spent time between playing Mario Kart on the Wii and attempting to figure out what I was doing with the next 7 weeks of my life.
At 4, there was a knock at my door. There was the bishop and the 1st councilor wanting to talk. [Annoyance: people who show up and want to talk about nothing.] After some level of formalities I think I got a little to annoyed and started to show the entire annoyance to the visit that had not purpose. I end up getting a tad persnickety and asking the bishop what he wanted. It may or may not have had the desired effect I wanted. They left shortly there after, but this comes from weeks of the bishop showing up or calling just to talk about nothing. This past week, the 1st councilor was over just to visit about nothing.
I have been formulating a list in my head of why these visits to see me. I have come up with a couple of plausible scenarios. First, the bishop has it in mind that there might be a worthiness issue with me. I have evaluated my life, and can not determine that there is such an issue in my life. Secondly, the bishop is having thoughts on my calling as Sunday School President. This might be a likely thing to occur as I have been not wanting to teach a Temple Prep class if there is no one in mind to have the class taught to and it serves no purpose other than taking up time and resources. Lastly, it is closely associated with the idea of my calling, that the thought is in the bishops head I am in the wrong calling or shouldn't have a calling right now, which wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit. It wouldn't be the shortest time I spent in a calling.
I don't think I interact with family as much as the bishop is trying to interact with me on some issues. It is really odd to me.
Needless to say, I think if this continues, I might just stop going to meetings. Inactivity is looking pretty sweet to me.

~u

When one can boil down a lot of numbers into a summary set of statistics, I can be interesting. Normally that just involves talking about the center and spread of the data, but those simple one don’t seem to be that interesting. At one point in one of my many statistic courses taken, a professor made a comment that the interesting part of the data isn’t that which conforms to expectations, rather the outliers in the data. Outliers are the part of data where discoveries are made.

So right now, I have been learning algorithms that are used to generate the estimates of a model (least-squares or maximum likelihood) which are pretty much the standard of computational statistics for 60 or more years. Most of these algorithms are well versed and have a lot of modifications to them to deal with more modern data problems, while a handful are not that well covered.

Dr. Scott at one point was talking to me about a few algorithms that dealt we decomposing the data into a sufficient statistic, and then how to update the sufficient statistics with new information, instead of spending time retrying to compute estimates. Originally this concept was important with regards to a military application of the Second World War, where the need to create estimates on artillery without having to recomputed complex and difficult formulas. The Givens Algorithm was so developed to update sufficient statistics with a new observation and then appropriately modify the estimates. With the invention/inclusion of the computer, the algorithm was ignored (sort of). So the few papers written on it were not referenced often and are somewhat hard to get a copy of.

With the inclusion of computing into the business world of the 60’s/70’s, the Givens resurfaced for a while and there were a few more papers written in the mid-70’s that try to explain it, but in effect only talk about what they were using it for. Again the technology was so far ahead of the research/programs that the need for updating algorithms almost seemed ridiculous as there were faster and faster machines that took less and less time to just run thru and entire update. Now we have times where we are talking about data that can be in the terabytes of data, and to update estimates of that based on new data, does take time.

So I started off learning about the Givens algorithm for self-enrichment purposes, then came along a professor, Dr. Tolley, who had been working with mass-spectrometer data and thought of cool ways to look at the data, one just happened to be dealing with the Givens algorithm. I was asked/tasked with getting it to work, and then told at some point that what I did with the data would be a lot of work and would qualify for the project for my masters.

I have been over the last several months coding up the algorithm and then testing it. I found problems with the coding, and each time I have tried to get better source material to see if I can find where my problem lies. Yesterday afternoon, I asked for help from Dr. Scott as I was going to stop working on a computer and go to a whiteboard and hand work thru the entire algorithm and then see if I could get my program to do the same. Needless to say, the problem in the computer code showed up in the attempt on the whiteboard, and I was stuck. Dr. Scott came in and looked over what I had done, and couldn’t get it to work out right. It was a frustration.

I looked over my calendar and my notebook, trying to find notes I had made and reference I had come up with, and took the time to figure out how much I have spent working on this problem [best guess close to 80 hours on the Givens algorithm alone] in the past couple of months. Some of that has been as I sit at home with nothing better to do, and other is at work while I am multi-tasking myself.

I made a comment a while back that I find myself more and more in my office when I should be other places. I have come to the realization that I am in my office more and more, because it easier to work here on what I am thinking about than it is to sit idly at home. Also I think I am using it as an excuse not to have to do anything in my social life if I am busy with my academic/work life. Oh well, maybe soon I will figure out what is wrong and be done with this particular problem for a while.

~u

The story doesn't begin there. It begins a week and half before then. I was tending my nieces so that my brother and sister-in-law could go out and celebrate their anniversary. To me it was no big deal, something nice to do for them. When they had gotten home, Jared asked me what I was doing at the end of the month, particularly this last weekend. I told him, like always, it was a whatever moment, and nothing was planned. He informed me that my sister Becca who had been out visiting from Mississippi all month was organizing an effort to put in the south fence for my father as a father's day gift. He told me he would just pick me up and so it was planned for me to work on a fence.

The important factors here was that Becca was attempting to get as many people to help to make the work go easier. It didn't quite work out that way.

After leaving Provo after 8:30 Friday night and getting to the parental property about 2:30, Jared and I crashed in one of the trailers and then in the morning I persisted and slept in. When I finally arose, I was told I was welding the "H" or technically it was an "A" frame for the fence line as well as capping 3 additional poles to be installed in the fence. Well let me express my love of drill stem pipe. It is cheap and given the right equipment welds nicely. Given my father's 30 year old welding box (an arc welder that should at least be looked at by a professional), I had some difficulty welding. I also choose to work at a different location than my father thought I would work at. It had to do with cars and stuff in the way.

In welding and cutting with another tool that my father has had for decades, I spent a lot of the time making sure I minimized the number of fires on the ground around me. It was fun. I got the first support into place and then not being sure of where the second and by extension what made it an "A" frame was to go, I decided I would walk to where the fence was being put in and ask my father. My brother in law Keith had to go return his rental car and so I relieved him on the fence. It was probably a mistake. That was around 11 or so. I had been up for a couple of hours and now I was driving t-stakes in the ground and wiring up the barb wire to them. Jared and I pounded away at this. At one point I had to jackhammer some rock for the t-stake to be driven into the ground other wise it was not bad.

After getting down to the bottom of the ravine and dad cutting what he thought would be adequate amount of barb wire to finish the run to where the frame i was building would go. Jared began running the next run of barbwire up the ravine. I was positioned up the run near a tree to help it get by the tree. We ran the wire all the way to the top, and then called it for lunch. It was about 12:30 or so.

Upon arriving at the barn, and thinking lunch would be done, we found out that it wasn't quite done. John and his wife were there visiting with Keith. I had been at some point under the impression that you know people were coming down to work and not visit. I was wrong and may or may not be bitter about the socializing. I having much to weld still, went over to work on the welding instead of socializing. [I was in CO to work.] At some point I was called over for lunch. It wasn't like the food was really done being made, but I went anyway. After grabbing a sandwich and some veggies as snacks, I went back to work. It might have been rude, again I was under an impression that we were trying to get something done.

As I welded people socialized and didn't head to the fence to continue work. Dad had gone to move water lines, and Jared went to take a nap. Jared had been giving me crap about sleeping in and so it was funny he took a nap. I got done welding around 4 and with Dad's help loaded the frame and posts on the back of a truck to be taken to the fence line and then everyone stopped their socializing and got ready to work.

Keith and I were tasked with placing the frame into position and then digging the holes for it to go into. It was a process, in which I broke the post hole digger's handle, and then had to go get tools. Dad and Becca had begun working on string up the second run of barb wire which was run up before lunch and Keith helped them as I had walked back to the barn for a tool and then stopped to get a tool out of the truck on the way to the bottom of the ravine.

As I cut a foot or so off the legs of the frame, Jared decided to build himself a stone bridge so that he wouldn't get his feet wet when crossing the small stream that ran the bottom of the ravine. I need to note that the bridge itself started simple, more stepping stones and then transformed into a 'bridge' as Jared added more and more rocks.

In all of it we ended up with dad taking up the third run of barb wire and everyone helping get it to the top. As Dad, Becca and Keith started to string it up, Jared and I started to clean up the old electric line. This meant pulling stakes and winding up wire. Everything was taken to the bottom of the ravine. The usable t-stakes, I had started moving to the other side of the ravine and up the slope into places about where they would go.

The day ended with the 3rd line on the posts and the 4th run being pulled up the hill. Afterwards we called it quits, which meant tools and other items were take up the ravine to the truck and driven back to the barn. Jared pulled out his FAL to shoot and I took out my recently purchased 22 to shoot.

We ended up eating that night at Lotsa Pasta/Thatsa Pizza. Normally I would have order several calzones to bring back with me, but hadn't thought that far in advance. So I had ordered Fettuccine Alfredo with Steak so Jared could take a picture of it and send it too Jordan [Jordan's response was simply "That hurts"]. I started eating and might have gotten a third of it eaten and then I was done. I was simply drained from all the work and labor of the day. So Jared finished it off as he waited for the calzone he ordered to arrive.

Needless to say, I slept well that night. Sunday we got up and mulled around until about 10 at which point Jared and I loaded into his car and began a long drive north, which only got worse when we found ourselves stuck behind a semi hauling a huge section of pipe doing 40 mph in a 65mph zone. In commenting as I have noted a couple of times to myself, the section of US191 from I70 to Monticello, UT seems to have more passing lanes for the southbound traffic than there is for the northbound traffic.

~u

Great idea when it was had and I spent a couple hours taking it apart with some help and carefully cataloging where parts came from and grouping things together so that I wouldnt loose anything.

Over the last five years when I was bored and I remembered that this giant ammo can I had contained all the parts minus the barrel and stock, I would pull out a set of parts, clean them up, and then re-blue them. Each item that was blue was coated in oil placed in a new bag with a towel soaked in oil and returned to its place in the ammo can. All was said and done to prevent a lost part.

On Monday, Jordan and I met up with Jared to go shooting. It was a decent shoot. It was more muddy then wet. We probably would have been out there longer had it not rained. Somewhere in all of that I decided to bite the bullet and finish working on the last few parts of the Mauser and then take on the barrel.

Upon getting home from running around with Jared, I brought out all my tools and dremel and began the arduous task of cleaning small parts. After each part was cleaned and prepped, I blued them and put them them away. After every part was blued short of the barrel, I got online and found a schematic so I could be sure on how everything was to be reassembled.

This became a moment of insanity for me. I carefully pulled out the trigger assembly and put it together and placed its spring on the desk. I did the same for the bolt and it's action. I took the trigger guard/magazine for the rifle and began reassembling it. I got to the latch for the floorplate. I inserted the spring and then got the pin in place looking for the latch...nothing...couldnt find it. I made sure everything was out and accounted for. I made sure I carefully combed the floor and inside the ammo can. I checked the inside of bags and towels. I checked everywhere. There was no latch.

So I jumped online and began to search. I went to everyplace I could think of to find a latch. After about 2 hours of searching I found a company that sold the part. It was a dollar part. I was made. And then I went to order it and ran into my second problem of the day, I had to order at least 10 dollars of parts for them to process and order. So I started looking at what they had and what I needed in order to get the order up to 10 bucks. I looked at the springs on my desk and decided that I should order replacement springs for all around. Yeah that got me to 7 bucks and then I still had to find things to add to the order. I searched and searched, finally settling on the pins for the gun. Only thing was they only came in a set, so i got the set. After 11 bucks, I now get to wait for the parts to finish putting the Mauser back together.

I wouldn't say it was a bad thing. It just was frustrating. So I need to jump back to barrel. When I disassembled the gun so many moons ago, I did so because the bore of the barrel was packed with a grease that I am told is designed to protect it for long storage, and it is not uncommon for these rifles. Well, when I went to clean the gun, I couldnt get the barrel clean on how packed the barrel ended up being. So understanding that diesel tends to break up grease I built out of PVC a tube for the barrel to be submerged in diesel until I could get to it.

On monday I opened that tube and pulled out the barrel short of some concern spots on the barrel all of the grease was floating on top of the diesel. I began the work of taking off as much of the remain blue on the barrel. I am almost done with that part, which will leave the re-blueing over the next couple of nights. I am not looking forward to that.

~u

I realize that I could go home and sit there doing nothing, but I am unwilling to do that. In reality, I am writing this as I sit in my office and do nothing. I had the notion of doing something tonight but given that I left it up to someone else [there is something there], I have nothing to do.
I do admit, I could go home, hook up my XBox360, and play; or even use my PC and play WoW, but I don't want to. So I sit here in an all but deserted building on a Friday night reevaluating a plan of mine that failed. I question what went wrong. If others were allowed to answer, their responses would be different than mine, but then again their perspective of the current situation is not the one that I am looking to have expanded.

I was doing pretty good. I had accomplished much this past week and at the same time, I failed where and when it meant something. I like the excuse of introversion. It fits me. In truth there is probably more to it than I let on.

So i think i just wanted to write to note that it is Friday night, I'm bored and I have no solution for it.

~u

There is a back story to this. A couple weeks ago, one of my nephews had turned twelve and was being ordained to the Aaronic priesthood, he had invited me and given the free food element I went to participate in the ordination and the gathering afterwards. This is the start of the bad things as I refer to them.
Somewhere in the talking with my parents and the family members that gathered, my mother had mentioned receiving notice from BYU about the dates and times for the aforementioned ceremonies which I was avoiding [in part there was free food involved so you know I am a sucker for the free food]. She asked or inquired rather forcefully about my participation. I had some glib remark about not wanting to as I had graduated in December and had no need to walk due to already having the diploma in my possession. She didnt like that.
My siblings started in and tried to guilt me into doing it. I dont like relenting and tried to sway the attention away from me and onto something else.
The next day Jared, Jordan, Dad and I went to the slopes. Johnny Tatum was involved in this as well, but needless to say during the day, my father had brought up I should do it. I returned that I didnt want to.
After a few more days of bugging me, I relented as a way of making people stop harassing me about walking. I do have a low level of tolerance for people who bug me to bug me.

So back to the commencement and convocation exercises. I dont like cold things. For commencement there was a precession [one of the things my mother pointed out she wanted to see] which took forever to do as an undergraduate you are in the back of the line and the pace is really slow getting going with the Faculty and Graduates et. al. setting the pace. The weather was cold, there were chances for snow, and we hit the lottery as I made my way into the Marriot center the location for commencement it started to snow hard. I was cold and not a happy person. The highlight of the day, reading what people had gotten degrees for. I didnt know that it was possible of doing something with player-avatar relationships in Super Mario Brothers but at least I was sitting near someone I could have fun doing that with.
Got done with commencement and went to my strategically parked car for my fast escape south to my place where I waited for my mother and father to arrive and then went out to eat.
The next day caused me to be up early and walk in the cold to the Wilkinson Center for convocation exercise. After some obligatory pictures and waiting around we finally did the processional into the ballroom. Having sat thru it and experienced what my parents wanted me to, I could have foregone the events in lieu of doing them in two years. Convocation was marred in my opinion by two students who didn't have public speaking experience.

The best part of the two days was the food...maybe followed up by spending time running around with my parents...but I hate the sitting around doing nothing moments...something i could have done without...

but that is my two cents worth

~u

So I graduated in December with a BS in Statistics [there is an emphasis on Statistical Science]. I did know then I wanted to work towards a higher level of education and degree and knew how I wanted to pursue that course of actions. Despite trying to tell people that I had thought it completely out and come to some decisions I had others making suggestions that didnt take into effect the long term goals I had established. I was going to be getting a degree in Statistics at a higher level because that is what I enjoyed doing. In particular, I enjoyed the problem solving and computational aspects of statistics.

So taking advice that was given years ago, I found the exact program I wanted to do, and then began planning based on their requirements. Some people made the suggestion of going straight into a PhD program [which is valid sort of] but was hindered when I decided the programs that most interested me were overseas, and it meant something different to be in the graduate programs.

I gained information and suggestions from overseas about what it would take to be excepted. One of these is a professional degree [read masters] was almost a prerequisite. I sat down and evaluated my options and decided to pursue my goal, I needed to side step and get a masters degree in order to study overseas. This lead to searching for programs that offered terminal masters in statistics [or a couple of the related fields] that would allow for me to apply for schools overseas but also prepare me better in statistics.

BYU was one of the few schools that had a program that really ended up being a terminal masters in statistics. I evaluated my options and thought long and hard, in conclusion I decided to apply to certain schools. I did. I have been receiving rejection notices, but had a strong notion that BYU would be where I would end up going. Last week the statistics department met and decided who they would want to accept into the program, I unofficially found out that I had made it into the program. Today I got the official notification. So I know what I am doing come next fall, and have a huge clue as to require load that will be placed on me.

What this means, after much pondering and prayer, I will be in Provo for a few more years.

Wahoo!!

~u

For the most part it has been a trade off from jogging on a treadmill for most of an hour with certain criteria added into the jog, or working out on a rowing machine. At rare moments, I am told to do whatever, but given minimums on the time i should be doing cardio...

This morning was unique in that it was trying and interesting at the same time. Working on an incline trainer, I did a program that simulates a trail in the Tetons, not a long one a total of maybe two miles, but needless to say it was trying given that at points it went from a 10% grade to a 35% grade or the 13% grade to 50% grade jump...under different circumstances I would have quit...but its harder to do so when you make special effort to do it.

Its the middle of the week and I am unsure what I have accomplished or what needs to be done, a side effect of not being in school and work consisting of reading a lot of user manuals.

On a personal enrichment side, I am working on understanding data compression, or how to work with data compression. It seemed an interesting topic and it continues to be interesting on how it should work. OH well

~u

It snowed yesterday, hell, it was snowing lightly today...I want to go snowboarding...but I can't at the moment...

I am not sure why except that I am trying to be financially responsible at the moment, so instead of snowboarding, I bought my self a textbook, to be precise, Statistical Theory, which is a widely utilized book for mathematical statistical theory for graduate studies in statistics. [it is used at BYU]. I bought it because I thought it would be fun to do some homework in statistics when I am not taking classes and just working.

So that leads to the next realization, I hate working...okay, in reality I hate walking on slick ice covered sidewalks the mile to campus to go to my office to spend a few hours working a day. It is the ice that gets me...really, I dont like the ice at all...Already have slipped and fell on my ass way too many times in the last couple of days. Which is odd...I like the snow and the slopes but I do not like the ice...

Today, I accomplished nothing...absolutely nothing...I spent a few hours working on something and had nothing go right...I was trying to create a program or at least the lines of code that would pare down a massive [20 million plus] data set to a much smaller one [1 or 2 million], the problem that I had guidelines on how it was to be implemented...and SAS was not being nice to me...so after 4 frustrating hours of having everything work right individually, I couldnt get it to work together...something to look at in the morning...

That leaves my current activities, I sit at home working on a couple of side things I have been wanting to get done...to demonstrate the need of a life of some sort, I have 2 books I have been wanting to read for some time, I think I bought them a better part of 2 or 3 years ago. The both are about the same thing but with different twists. The first is Writing about Numbers and the other is Writing about Multivariate Analysis. Yeah I am enjoying the work though. I have spent the last several night working slowly thru the first one. I am learning about the appropriate manner in which one is to write about numbers. Some of it make sense from the simple stance I have a degree that deals with reporting numbers [numbers without context dont make sense], the others have been interesting to have illustrated, particularly no matter how well you think a number is able to stand, there is a little interpreting that can augment it.

Upon looking at my various papers over the last year, I can see how that one addition of interpreting my results a little more or adding a little more context could have improved the assignments. This is what I find a relaxing read now that I am not bogged down with homework assignments for then next few months.

Oh well...

~u

I am proud that after working on it off and on all day today, I can say that two of the new lists are primarily things I want, but due to their expensive nature it will take some time to acquire them all. Alas, I just seem to be adding more to the lists than I am able to take off of them as I am getting more involved in writing and reading statistical stuff.

~u

It is a serious question in my mind. Why should I even bother with resolutions? I have evidence over the years that they are a futile attempt to do and be something that never pans out. Last year I wrote [upon discovery of the list recently] that I wanted to be nicer. Admirable goal I think, I just don't think that I could live up to that. Beyonds that, I have previous lists [I am a pack rat I have things] where I have set goals of being up by a certain time, or achieving a certain grade point average or doing a set number of things. I cant recall a time where I have made it past January possibly even February actually working on those goals.

It was like the discovery of the old lists, I hadn't even spent the time to look at what I wanted to do from last year long enough this year to honestly say that I adopted those resolutions as goals. Rather I see them as the empty list they happen to be.

So do I have some resolutions this year. I think in part the answer is yes and no. I have set some life goals recently, I have mapped what that means and where I need to be. They pretty much serve as my goals. I do know that I am wanting to continue my educations, work on a masters leading to a PhD in statistics, but in order to accomplish that means grad school, which is a goal. Other than that and some ancillaries to the grad school I have no clue which way I am going or what the end should be...

I am currently thinking I am going wherever the wind may blow...some odd notion of not caring what I do, so long as I do something....

we will see...

~u

~u

I am sitting in my office. Classes are over. Well technically they were over yesterday, you really couldnt count the S624 this morning. It was just presentations, and I had gone on Tuesday. So I am done with the learning portion of the undergraduate. Now comes the hard part of the deciding what future direction to go.

I am thinking graduate studies in statistics. I like the field, I like the computing aspect of the field and seeing it as an ever emergent area that could find me happily working in. BUT at the same time, I like to have fun, and being a student hampers my ability to play. So I am torn, job or school, school or job...it is tough, especially since I have no motivation contrary to either direction. I could work and be happy.

Wahoo...wahoo...

~u

But for the group of blacklists on the bottom. Numbers 5 thru 7. Yep we have a massive update. I think every person I invited to go ride train this weekend who has rejected said invitation [so everybody but my roommate Carter] resides here now. But particularly Angie jumped up here with her "oh but Finals are two and half weeks away" comment followed shortly by the "I have plans" to someone else...talk about just hurtful...

~u

The Gray List
Hey there has to be a place where the masses are...this just happens to be it. Why gray? Well simple, people here aren't on the good list, yet they haven't done anything to speak of to make me want to cause them pain. Pretty much anyone can expect to be here unless named.

The Blacklist 1
The basic blacklist. It is simple, you said something, did something, didnt do something, or a variety of other things that caused an annoyed reaction in my temperment. Normally I would say stating time spent on a project is a 'Waste of Time' is a good example of what it takes to get on this list.

The Blacklist 2
This is is for those who just are annoying. The person that repeats the same question to you everytime you pass them. The group of people, who as a whole, would suck the fun and life out of activities and pastimes.

The Blacklist 3
I used to think three was the perfect number of lists to show my negative reaction to people and their interaction with me. I was wrong. So to put this list in it's place, it is for those underhanded people that go behind one's back to get things out of me. You know, ask someone to borrow something from you for them, that they know they couldnt get directly from you. Yeah that is what this list is for.

The Blacklist 4
This is a place holder. Here you have to be the person who acts for others in order to get things done. Like the person someone in list 3 would go to to get a book that they know they shouldnt but do anyway.

The Blacklists 5-7
I feel the general description of the group of lists here is best explained by the people I want to punch in the face. What does it take to get up here. Well for starters, "Lie to my face." and then when caught in that lie...continue to act as if you are telling the truth. Or you know other forms of great offenses against me...

~u