hello dave!

tribute

to your white shiny color.
to your full bench front seat.
to the 212k miles on your odometer.
to the "university wyoming" sticker in your rear window.
to your huge gas tank and bad gas mileage.
to your 5th wheel mysteriously being stolen or lost.
to initiating our family into the world of trucks.
to all the trips from arizona to utah and back home.
to amazing adventures we've had in yellowstone.
to the memories of singing, laughing, and watching movies in your back seat.
to the dates you've accompanied us on.
to the talent it takes to park you.
to the cars you've jump-started.
to the mountains you've climbed.
to the deserts you've conquered.
to the snow storms you've safely found your way through.
to your 2 wheel rear wheel drive.
to the loads of set pieces and props you've transported.
to the early, early drives to gandolfos.
to the puddles you've been through.
to the parties you've driven us to.
to the cars you smash (instead of a house) as you roll off down an icy hill when you think you're in park but you're really in neutral.
to the bicycler who found his way to the hospital after an encounter with your side door.
to the angry gym girl who decided you "deserved it a-hole" by breaking your antenna.
to the stop sign you hit.
to the idiot driver who wanted to kiss your rear right side on the interstate.
to your clicking fan every time you start and stop.
to the npr we've listened to driving back and forth from american fork to byu.
to the joy and comfort you bring in knowing that if a wreck were to happen we would be victorious.
to your dependability.

surburban, we love you.


tribute. (jon or michelle am i missing any?)

and i shall call it....

well it's been almost 5 months since my car was totaled. I was in an extensive search back in october to find one. Never did. Gave up basically. But the stars have aligned and Jon needs a van. what does this mean for me? the accord is mine. haha. it couldn't have worked out better. i need a car, and they need to sell theirs. it's been kind of an up and down road but it's my decision. and i think it's a good one. i have loved the burb (not really.) but it's time for something more student friendly and she'll do fine.


so as with my other two cars, the naming process has begun. since it's an accord it needs to be an "A" name. let the brainstorming begin. as for now, i have this picture to hold me over until i can get down there in march to drive it home.

woot.

i like life, it's something to do...

This saying comes from my friend's ex-boyfriend. nice guy. great saying. don't know where he stole it from, but great saying. today is a fine example of this quote...

usually i'm bored once friday comes and work a minimal amount of hours before i leave early to go play. well today was quite different. i got to work and started working on a few projects between the psychology video and the marriot school of business video. we took a break at 2:30 because my boss, charles, wanted to just sing for fun. so we plugged the keyboard into my computer and rounded up some singers and just free-sang some songs he had. random 30 minutes.

well at about 4 or so, we had "the talk." now a few posts before i said that charles was giving me more to do in hopes to be able to keep me aboard once he leaves. well the word on the street is that once he leaves the department is going to focus more on print and stray away from the video and audio stuff while charles is in russia. basically he told me that no faculty member wants to take on the responsibility of being the "head" of these videos when really i would be doing all the work. he basically told me that it's not for certain that my position will dissolve this summer but his hopes were not high for me. charles is a great boss, and kept apologizing to me. it was kind of funny. he probably said one of the nicest things a boss has ever said to me: "i feel like the department will be losing one of it's biggest assets in the division of student employees. i've never seen anyone catch on to new programs and have the ability to teach themselves something completely new as fast as you." it was a very validating moment for me. *tear*

this new turn in my life got my brain churning about what i will be doing come summertime. i probably won't find an on campus job as amazing as what i'm doing now and that pays as well so i'll probably search for something off campus but close to campus. but i also took the opportunity to look at some internships that looked very appealing. and while doing that, stumbled upon the ces page to apply as an efy counselor. you heard it right...

so i did just that. i applied to be a counselor. my expectations of being hired are small and slim, but why not try? i feel like I'm old enough to offer kids who are still in high school my own personal insight to life lessons i've had to learn and my insights to the gospel, but also young enough to have a lot of fun and show them a good time. the desire to impact others as a teacher or counselor must run in the family. my dad does it for a living, my brother is in pursuit to become one, and my sister does it through music. i feel like i have a lot to bring to the table as a "camp" counselor and even if it means only impacting one person then it would be worth it. i hope the whole "x-rm" thing wouldn't be the reason they say no because i would find that to be a load of bunk.

well then to finish off the night, i played a little zelda on gamecube and some pinochle. see...i like life, it's something to do...

petition what?

so the moral of the following story is make sure your schedule is set and all the kinks are worked out before the last add/drop deadline day for the semester. if you don't, and you have to change something, you will have to go through large amounts of frustration. i wanted to change my class section. not the class, the section. kori-anne's voice section wasn't 022, but 001. but since i didn't figure this out until the day after the deadline, i had to petition it. they were going to make me drop the class and take a "w" and then re register. LAME. luckily my petition was strong enough for them to just allow me to change sections without the W. how lame! especially when i asked the lady how my chances were for successfully petitioning and she said "highly unlikely."

stinking naughty people. but thankfully i was victorious.

I have so much to say about my adventures at sundance...but it's really already been summed up by melanie. To see about all the adventures look at these:

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

i'm not blogging today

Thursdays are my un-favorite days of the week. Class starts at 10am followed by the weekly Media Arts forum with a guest speaker from around the country from 11-12 with a break at noon for a quick lunch and trip to the gym before my 3pm Book of Mormon Class. From there I go to my Pro Tools class from 5-7pm followed by Theatre/Live Sound from 7-9. It's not that it's an extremely difficult day, it just seems incredibly long.


On a very exciting note, I will most likely not be posting in the next few days because I will be up in Park City and Salt Lake soaking in the atmosphere of the Sundance Film Festival. This will be my first year attending Sundance and I'm stoked. I hope to make it a tradition while living here in Utah, as I have stated in previous posts.

Sundance here I come!

promotion? not just more to do

Today I met with my boss and we discussed him leaving for Russian in June. One thing he said to me helped calm my nerves about whether or or not I'd have a job come summertime. "I have 4 months to make sure my student employees are self efficient enough to not have anyone really looking over them." Definitely a happy story. Plus the department just bought those speakers, and I'm getting an upgrade machine as soon as Nuendo 4 is released hopefully at the NAMM show at the end of this month.

Charles wants me to become basically the "jr." Unit Production Manager for publications and graphics. It basically comes down to being a glorified coordinator in our video projects. We'll see how it goes. Right now I'm in charge of getting the Psychology and Marriot School of Business recruiting videos done, packaged, and delivered in two months. Shouldn't be that hard. We're just finishing up with the Psych video and we have all the video footage for the businees school.

Add work onto my already intense school schedule and my application for my degree program and you have one busy semester! (I've already made time for when I will be going to the gym...it will definitely be my stress relief time)

Jennifer Hudson Tribute

Move over Beyonce...you have competition. These are just a few clips of Jennifer singing. The first one is from AI, the second one is when she performed on the Late Show, and the third is the new cast recording from dreamgirls of one of my favorite songs, "it's all over." enjoy...

My thoughts of this movie have been validated with a Golden Globe win for best movie in the category of musical or comedy. This movie is SPECTACULAR. so good, even, that i've seen it twice. jennifer hudson (known from american idol) nails the part of effie. she may not be the best actress (eventhough she won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress) but she has pipes. she's probably laughing at simon cowell all the way to the bank. mix her with beyonce (my secret girlfriend) and you have a hit!

I can't say enough about this show. Everyone should take a date and go see this great film. You will be blown away by the acting, the singing, the dancing, and just the overall charisma of the cast.

4.5 Stars! One of my favorite movies from 2006.

I attend BYU. It's what I do these days. For what it's worth, I don't mind going here. I do however, struggle everyday with the pressure I feel about being/getting married. I'm sitting in the student center right now eves dropping on a conversation about a guy just barely getting engaged. Congratulations...you're like the 10th person I've heard say they just got engaged in the past week.

I swear that students here are getting younger and younger. I'm now 21. My sister got married when she was 21, but she was always very very mature for her age. I feel like I could potentially be engaged/married in the next few years (more like my older brother) but don't see it happening, nor am I ernestly seeking for it. I'm not in the get married mind set, nor do I want to be, and I think it is a little frustrating when I tell people this around campus and they all gasp and think I need to get my priorities straightened out.

Well it ain't gonna happen for a while. 'nuff said. My brother-in-law was in his later twenties when he married my sister and he was a college graduate (or very close) when he married my sister. This seems much more logical to me. For now, I'm out to party and play and go to school like a normal 21 year old guy. I'm still far way from settling down and having the responsibility of providing for a wife and kids. Props to you who get/have gotten married at a young age and are very happy. I commend you. As for me, stop buggin me about it! That is all. (I guess i shouldn't even be that bugged, because usually the people who do make stupid comments are those i barely know from my classes.)

Moral of the story...some of us attend BYU for other reasons than to find a spouse.



the end.

to do...

things to accomplish for the semester (a lot of these things before march 20th):

-create a biographical introduction of myself including my family background in one paragraph, BYU educational goals and what I hope to gain from the Media Arts program, my entry-level career goals along with long-term career goals, and one practical skill to be developed while enrolled in the program.

-Complete TMA 102 and TMA 112 with a B or better.

-Resume (easy)

- Semester-by semester graduation plan

-Signed list of Media Arts Electives

-Alternate semester by semester graduation plan

-Current progress report

-A list of 10 most significant books, film, tv shows, websites, video games and why they have value to me.

-5 creative project ideas to be completed while in the program

-3 critical analysis of classic cinema movies to demostrate skills developed in TMA 102.

-Creative work sample. 3 minute max original video written, directed, and edited by me.

-Write up of creative work sample.


I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed. I think that they have such a huge application process to weed out the applicants who are saying in their mind "movies are cool. i wanna major in movies." hopefully all this hard work won't be in vain. And I won't know until after my grades are posted. This is going to definitely be an interesting and tough semester.

woot.

okay i lied a little. i'm sick of being unhealthy. eric's had good success at gold's gym so today i went down and signed up for a membership. it was a little more than i wanted to spend, but hopefully that will motivate me to go 4 times a week. the nice thing is there are two gold's gym in a 2 or 3 mile radius of BYU, so i can easily go on my way home from school. there's also one in american fork which is nice. while living in logan i went to the gym every week day with saturday and sunday off. i would like to get into a similar routine. the only difference being i substitute the gym for basketball on monday nights.

here we go again...

genelec 8030a

my boss just bought me 5 of these, plus the subwoofer (notice size of cd). i'm crying a little

I had to write an assessment essay for one of my classes...i thought I'd post it:

Like the saying goes: A picture is worth a thousand words. Visual stories can offer a new perspective of imagination (or realism) to anything. Pictures and movies can be used for both positive and negative reasons. As a church, we used visual examples to show of Christ and to bring people into the Gospel. Newspapers and news programs use graphic pictures of hurricane aftermath, chaos, and houses burning down to stimulate our senses. Some do it hoping we as a society will jump up and do something about it while others use it to forward propaganda.
I remember watching CNN during the aftermath of Katrina and was horrified by what had happened to the South. Anderson Cooper would do special segments highlighting people’s individual stories of their own personal disaster and how they were left with nothing. I called my mom, and told her I wanted to head down there for a few weeks with a relief group because I felt some much anguish for those people. It took that visual representation for me to really take a moment and think about the situation. (And of course, I know that what I saw on the news was only a small fraction of what really happened down there.)
Non-fiction hero stories are truly some of my favorites. The story of Martin Luther King, Jr., the story of George Washington, or the story of some of my best friends are among the greatest. All of them offer a different twist, a different concept to a basic idea. I do, however, also enjoy a good epic novel. Yes, there is Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, but topping the charts for me is the epic story of Link in Zelda. It may be a video game, but because it is interactive, I always feel like I am a part of a great story about traveling a magical land in search for a princess. It doesn’t get much better than that.
One of my favorite stories from last year is found in the movie Little Miss Sunshine. The story of this disfunctional family’s struggle to make it through their journey to California for a pre-teen beauty pageant is fantastic. It may be some what of an extreme case compared to what struggles my family has, but what made this story stick out to me was the fact that at times they acted like they hated each other with swearing, teasing, and threatening to basically give up on their family. But as much dysfunction as their family had, they still needed each other. The message to me (if there was one) was that we has human beings may come from some very dysfunctional familes, but at the end of the day we still need each other.
I enjoy telling my friends and even sometimes people I don’t really know all that well stories about my daily life. I like to blog. I like thinking that maybe some random blog browser has stumbled upon my page and was entertained by one of the stories I wrote. I like making people laugh. It makes me think that for those few seconds I can give that person an opportunity to stop thinking about all the crap going on in their lives, and have a good laugh about what’s going on in mine. I like to read blogs. I don’t really need to know the person. I like to take a few seconds away from my own life and have a laugh at a story about someone else’s dysfunctional life.
I do wish I was a better writer. I have great ideas in my head, but sometimes I feel hindered by own writing style. I have learned that I write like I talk, and that sometimes my stories make no sense to anyone buy me. It’s safe to say that I am much better at telling my stories than having people read them. I play off of the responses I’m getting from my audience (usually made up of my friends.) If they are really into the story, I give them more. If not, I’ll try to take the story down a new path or try to talk about something different all together. It’s much like a game for me.
The most recent project I’ve been a part of is a full-feature film Fire Creek. This past summer I was hired as the sound engineer to replace the prior student who was graduating. Production was finished and I took the reigns for the post-production work. I didn’t sleep much that first week of my new job. I was completely overwhelmed with the task at hand and had very little experience in post production work.
One of my strengths, however, is analyzing a situation or scenario and figuring out a solution to complete the task at hand. For this project, we were far from finished. We still needed to record foley, add sound effects, hold ADR recording sessions, and then mix the music in with all the other elements. Every week we chipped away little by little until all of the post production work was finished.
One of my biggest frustrations came from working with one of the producers and the music composer. They both felt that the music needed to be louder through out the show. It was never going to be good enough for them. I had let them push me around for the course of three months, and I finally blew a gasket. I sent a very professional email to both of them including my boss to express my frustrations with being walked on and underappreciated. The producer had very little clue I was feeling the way I did. He encouraged me in the future to speak up and make sure my opinion was made known. Even though I felt like I has sufficiently done that, I am now working on developing those skills.
I hate confrontation and would much rather get the short end of the stick than create contention between people, but I’ve learned that sometimes conflict is a good thing. It doesn’t have to be negative, and in most cases is appreciated in this business.
It is the experience I have had with Fire Creek which has exponentially increased my desire to learn more about media in all forms and how it affects us as people, a society, and a religion.

2007

well it's a new year. at the end of a break from school i always laugh because we call it "break." well yes it is a break, but in no sense does life let up at all. the extra hours usually spent in class or working on homework is spent at work working on projects. this week i've been spending a lot of time in the sound booth at the joseph f smith building on campus recording people speak their essays. all i can say is experience...i'm gaining experience because it's freakin boring! haha. granted it doesn't take much for me to get bored, but still.

i went to a play reading this past monday. something i've never really done before. a little odd, but atleast the play was interesting! actually i think the best part was melanie's molten chocolate cake she made. mmmm...homemade molten chocolate cake.