Saturday, March 31, 2007

Lacrosse & Gardner Village



I've been looking forward all week to watching Brent's Lacrosse game, since I missed the one earlier this week while in Orlando. Jill was taking her Stats test... with great fear and trepidation since she hasn't had to take an academic type test in over 23 years. But she did fantastic and received a 'B' - Yea Jill! But this made us a bit late leaving for SLC - and the traffic was terrible, and I printed out a map to the Copper Hills School... not the field the boys were playing on. We thought we'd missed the entire game, but luckily we were able to see the entire second half.

Brent played great! I really enjoy watching how much he's improved over the last couple of years. He is a joy to watch, and makes me quite proud of his skills and accomplishments.

Well, after the game Brent chose to go to dinner with his friends... go figure! So Jill and I decided to stop by the Gardner Village to pick up some rolls for Sunday's family dinner and stayed around to eat at the Archibald Resturant. Of course we had to wait for 30 minutes or so - just enough time to look around at the 'country' stuff. (Ok, Jill looked at the country stuff, furniture, rugs, knick-knacks, etc. - and I enjoyed the history of the building - seeing the old Mill equipment and how the building was designed)

Dinner was ok... not great, but just Ok. Nice little village they've got there.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Personality Test

Here is a new site for a pretty comprehensive Web Based Personality Test - It had a great user interface. Plus it was kind of fun to try. Perhaps you'll want to try it yourself!

http://www.personaldna.com

Here are my results...


My Personal Dna Report


Personality Chart

This chart shows thirteen personality traits. Each bar indicates the percentage of test takers who entered a lower value for that trait than you did. For example, if Confidence is at 80, that means that 80% of people entered lower values for confidence questions than you did. Based on a sample of 30,000 users.

Confidence
Low High
94
Openness
Low High
88
Extroversion
Low High
56
Empathy
Low High
38
Trust in others
Low High
78
Agency
Low High
98
Masculinity
Low High
98
Femininity
Low High
50
Spontaneity
Low High
10
Attention to style
Low High
2
Authoritarianism
Low High
76
Earthy/Imaginative
Imaginative Earthy
98
Aesthetic/Functional
Functional Aesthetic
12

Monday, March 26, 2007

TechMentor Conference - Day One

Whew! - Finally the first day of this conference is over. I taught three 90 minute sessions today. The facility is pretty great - the Hilton at Walt Disney World - just across the street from Downtown Disney. Not that I'll have any time to head over there.


After a very late flight (one of the flight attendants tripped, fell, and got a bad concussion and had to be removed from the plan using a backboard through the food service galley door) I finally arrived at the hotel and got checked in around 2:00am. Good thing I could sleep in and start the first sessions a bit later in the day.


Today was:

  • Anonymous Computing with a USB Drive
  • Network Analysis using a USB Drive
  • Penetration Testing Computer Systems

The Network Analysis class was a 'bomb' - not because of anything that I did, but the conference organizers didn't have network connections running in the classroom... not too good for a network analysis class. Well, I think they still learned some things, but I did much more demonstration and didn't have enough student hands-on labs as I'd have liked.

So tonight I've got to prep for tomorrows sessions - the first three will be pretty easy - stuff I've taught before. But the last session is on a new product... We'll see how it goes. After class I think I'll celebrate by going to the Cirque du Soliel's La Nuba production. Jill, Karrissa and Alysha all said it was great when they were down here a couple of weeks ago for Cheer Nationals.

Time to start prepping now for tomorrow's sessions (Well - I will take off for an hour to watch 'Prison Break')

Sunday, March 25, 2007

My Honda Element


My car... last year I thought it was about time to get myself a new car. Jill liked my Lexus, and her van was dying... so I traded her cars and traded the van in on a new Honda Element. I liked the look (short square and pokes out in the front - just like me!)

So for my first blog posting I thought I'd put up a couple of pictures of the Element. The car came into our lives the same week as my beautiful grand-daughter... we took Karrissa and Joe for a long drive over to Bear Lake the day before McKinley was born.

For our 25th Anniversary, Jill and I had a night up at Sundance... and is sure snowed! But the Element's 4WD just pushed the car through all the snow drifts without slipping even once. Way to go!

The view from all the seats is very open and lots of glass to let everyone see around. The back seat is a little higher than the front - with lots of leg room in the back. But to get in the back you have to go through these 'suicide' doors. The interior is easy to clean, you can even hose out the thing - with the seat fabric designed for such cleaning.

I like that I can take 3-4 of my big black cases with electronic gear for classes in the back for trips to the airport. I also like that you can change the cruise control, and the radio stations/volume from the steering wheel. Plus you get to sit up high and see the road and those around you.


So here is my car.

Start of the Blog...

Ok, ok. I'll finally get dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and join the ranks of Bloggers. I've really enjoyed reading my niece's and daughter's blogs and since I'm on the road quite a lot, this can be a way to keep in touch with family and friends.

I'll try to keep this light and fun - showing some of my views of the unique and interesting things I encounter on my travels.

If this gets too technical - I might be posting items concerning my classes that I teach - let me know and I might have to branch into two blogs.

But for now... enjoy.

Keith