The Moon

I read somewhere that my camera can take decent photos of the moon. So the other night I decided to give it a try.

Gators!

While I was in South Florida I lived about 5 miles from the Everglades.  I instantly gained a fascination for alligators and learned that they are actually pretty aggressive.  Here are some of the photos I took.

Blue Heron

Blue Heron eating a fish.

Vulture

Chomp Chomp!

This man told us if you stand by the bank, the alligators will begin to gather around because they think you are the next kill.  So we tried it out and he was right!  Gators start to just pop up here and there.  You have to be careful cuz they are super sneaky!  I had one jump while I was standing down by the bank...YIKES!!

Hot? Yes. Hell? No. South Florida? Yes!

Well, I have now been in South Florida for exactly 20 days!  To be exact I am living in Parkland, Florida.  It's just a little northwest of Ft. Lauderdale and thank goodness it is one of the nicer areas around here.  The drive was VERY long from Utah to South Florida but luckily I have an amazing sister who lives in Iowa and wonderful parents in Alabama, so I had places to stay and rest along the trip.  Still though I was exhausted and dazed after the long trek.  This is how I looked and felt.

For the most part I have been extremely busy with work.  Some days I start working at about 9am and then finish at like 11pm, some days even later!  But most of this didn't come as a surprise to me since this is my fifth year working for Vivint.  I'm the operations manager for our south Florida office, which means I manage the whole installation side of things - everything from scheduling to inventory to making sure that at the end of the day the customers' systems are installed correctly and in a timely manner.  Most of my technicians this summer are new.  Like fresh off the boat new.  But they are learning quickly and I'm excited for them to earn a good living.

Surprisingly I've only been to the beach twice in the three weeks I've been here.  Can you believe that?  Once I get a more routine daily schedule I'll be able to go more often.   Nevertheless, here are a few photos I took at the beach the second day I was here.  By the time I actually made it over there, it was nearly dark so I had to take these pics with the shutter speed slowed way down and they are sort of blurry.

My apartment which also serves as the office where the sales reps have daily meetings.  I get the master bedroom all to myself!

 The kitchen.

Bedroom

 Bathroom

 Closet

 View from bedroom window.

View from the back upstairs.  I was hoping there would be alligators in this pond but I haven't seen any yet.

Well, I gotta run for now.  My next post will be about a couple of my alligator excursions.  I took some AWESOME photos so stay tuned!

Zion National Park July 2009

I went to Zion National Park in southern Utah about three weeks ago. It was awesome! I had never been there before and will definitely return. We hiked Angel's Landing. I think it is only a five mile round-trip hike, but it is uphill the whole way!! The hardest part is when the sign says there is only .5 mile to go. The picture of a narrow ridge is part of the trail. One of the girls with us turned back - she got scared. All in all a great hike.
And then I took a dip in the Virgin River down at the bottom.

Snow Nasty!

Enjoy my second snowboarding movie! This is a much better compilation of some fun times boarding. It's called Snow Nasty

Night Boarding - February 7, 2009

Here is a video compilation of three videos that I made on Saturday night boarding at Brighton. It was a blast! The video is shaky. I took it with my camera while riding the lift, and then on the way down the mountain! So a little crazy cuz my hand froze. I will make better ones for the future. This is the first of many to come (hopefully!). Enjoy!!

In This Time of Economic Crisis . . .

I just feel like writing what many of us have heard, read, and seen: Government intervention is not the solution to the current economic crisis. Bailouts Schmailouts!! Businesses have to fail in order to succeed. Now compare what we have heard from our new president, Barack Obama, and what Bush did, to what Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural speech 28 years ago. Remember that Reagan also face a major economic crisis and the Cold War.

If you have a couple of minutes it is WELL WORTH YOUR TIME to watch this(you can fast forward to the speech):

If you want the whole thing here are Sections 2 and 3.
Now, read this good article written the day before Obama's inaugural speech.
The cool thing is that Reagan lived up to what he said and helped pull us out of the crisis, that is, without using BIG government as the solution.