This is a poem I wrote for my "Farewell to Art" class at BYUI.

Fond Farewells
To each time, there is a sunset.
Old age follows the flower of youth.
Semesters bring their terrible finals weeks.

So too with time at BYUI.
No one carries a class load forever,
Fond friends never remain in town.

People ask, will you miss this place?
My answer, this is just a place,
like any other place. No different.

But the people though,
Ah, now that is different.
The people make the place.

They make it warm, inviting, home.
Through their doors I have passed many times.
"JOE!"

So, I won't miss the place,
but I will miss the people.
The best people under the
blues, reds, oranges, yellows and purples of
heaven.

Why doesn't life make sense?

Here's my answer to this question:

What if it did? 

Then you'd understand the whole thing completely wouldn't you?

That would be boring beyond all recovery.

The Flight Back

So I managed to find a ticket that got me from Salt Lake City (SLC) to Reagan Washington National (DCA) for $104 (one way of course) that would have gotten me in at 7:30 PM.  There was a ticket for $63 that would have gotten me to the same place only at 10:30 PM.   I chose the more expensive ticket because it's more convenient for my family to pick me up at 7:30 PM instead of 10:30.  The $104 took me through Phoenix (PHX), which is also preferable to flying through Chicago in the middle of December.

The flight from SLC to PHX went like clockwork, the kind of thing I expect from modern airlines.  The departure from PHX was on time.  I went to sleep which is a normal thing to do on long flights.  About an hour into the flight, I'm awakened to the sounds of jet turbine spin up and a slight downward tilt of the plane.  "Odd", I think.  "That wasn't a four hour nap."  

For some reason my ears weren't equalizing so well this trip.  Usually, I just have to yawn and we're in good shape. This time, no, nothing helped.

"Ladies and Gentlemen", the intercom barked, "We're having some difficulties with our cabin pressure regulator.  We've had to descend to a safer altitude.  The plane is fine.  We're not very far out from Phoenix, so we're turning around".  I spent the next hour trying to get my ears to readjust till we set down in PHX.

I was sitting on the right side of the plane, the side that faces the terminal when landing.  As were slowing down, about to taxi, I looked out the window and saw lots of red, blue and yellow flashing lights.  Lots of flashing lights.  That's not a good sign.

That plane came to a stop at the terminal without problem.  The question remained, were the emergency services called out because there was simply a problem in the air, or were they called out because there was a serious problem in the air?  I'll probably never know.... or till I ask an airport operator what the standard procedures are.  Then I'll know.

The airline representatives behind the desk told us we would be getting meal vouchers and to stay close to the gate.  An hour later we re-board.  The pilot came over the intercom and told us we were scheduled to depart in about an hour, but that we hoped to leave in less than that.

One hour later, we push back from the gate and depart on our way.  The rest of the flight was uneventful except for when I learned how to pop my ears by swallowing while blowing hard with my nose plugged to push air into my ears.

So after arriving four hours later than expected, at 11:30 PM, I have learned a very important lesson.  Take the $63 ticket.

MacBook Pro

So the new MacBook Pro came out today.  A couple things about it:

A)  It's beautiful.

B) It's beautiful.

C) It's my next computer purchase.

I already have a MacBook Pro and there's nothing wrong with it other than it's two years old.  Maybe I'll sell my old MBP to my little brother or something.  That's the ticket.

A lot of people have been complaining for a long time that there's no docking station from Apple.  The new 24" display handles many of those concerns.  I might get one of those too.

Chronicles of Insight

So, first blog post.

My interests are highly varied; too many to list quickly.  At the moment it's on the job search.  How do you subtly get the information you need from would be employers so they like you enough to talk to you about an interview.

I found a company Crimson Hexagon (CH), that I'm curious about.  The thing that caught my attention was the way they wrote their job posting.  Usually, posting read like an HR drone wrote it.  Pretty boring and to me a clear sign that the company is large enough to have a sizable HR department and relatively little room for creativity.  But!  CH had a very personable post.  They said they were looking for people with expertise and interest in several areas.  The one that caught my attention was "statistics, mathematics and the R programming language".  Just the kinds of thing for me.  

Stats was my favorite math class.  First, because I had a teacher who was really really good. Second, stats gave me a new set of tools for thinking about the world.  I read a book called Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  He said something that has stuck with me.  He said Mathematics is principally a tool to meditate, rather than to compute. I prefer this approach above the Math is cool for the sake of Math's coolness approach. Now granted, Math is cool.  But it is far cooler when it can actually be applied to something.