Alaska Fishing Site

Being married to an Alaskan, I have the opportunity to visit Alaska every summer.  As an added bonus, my job allows me to work remotely from there for a few weeks.  There are many wonderful things about being in Alaska, but one of my favorites is the opportunity to go fishing in some of the most scenic places for the world's finest salmon.

One of the first lessons I've learned from my fishing experience is that the secret to fishing is to fish where the fish are.  The problem with that method is that you salmon travel constantly, so where they are changes.  So how does the anxious angler find out where the fish are?

I used to use the Alaska Outdoor Journal site to read fishing reports to see where people were catching fish.  Like thousands of other fishermen, I was saddened when the site closed its doors in January this year.  After doing some extensive searching, I couldn't find anyone else who filled that void.  Since I have an background in IT, I thought, why shouldn't I build a page for people to submit fishing reports.

The solution was to create the Alaska Fishing Journal.  I am working on creating up to date charts and numbers from the Fish and Game fish counts.  I am also working on creating an easy way to submit fishing reports so that as a community we can all find out where the fish are.

In order for the site to be successful, it will take a community of people who love fishing contributing their reports, pictures, recipes, and even posts with fishing tips.  If you would like to help with any of this, please drop me a line at alaskafishingjournal@outlook.com.   You can also find us on Facebook.

Remember the Alamo

Well life continues here in Texas. First I guess I'll give an update about work. I really like USAA. I can really buy into their corporate values. One of their mottoes is "we do the right thing because it's the right thing to do." You can tell that corporate really believes this motto. Anyways, I'm getting to know a lot of people there and am enjoying my work. I have learned a little bit of JCL, REXX, and PL/I (all computer languages used by IBM mainframe computers). I'm finally able to work on a few real projects, which makes the work day go by quickly. USAA is very good about providing employees with opportunities to learn and grow through lecture series from IT professionals, both internal and external to USAA, and other distinguished speakers. Thursday, someone from the Southwest Research Group spoke about their efforts to make armor for vehicles used by Servicemen and women to protect them from mines and IEDs.

My social life in Texas has also been great. Several friends and I got season passes to Six Flags and we have enjoyed the roller coasters and the water park there. We have also done many other things like swimming, walking along the Riverwalk downtown, having barbecues, playing basketball and volleyball, playing really nice guitars at local guitar shops, and a lot more. I have made a lot of friends at church and with the other interns at work. Last night we had a party at "The Place" (I guess that is the official name of the house we live in) and probably had 40 people show up. We had games of pool, darts and several card games all going at the same time. Several people were kind enough to share their talent on guitar also. The night even had some intense moments of telling ghost stories.

Yesterday my roommates Byron and Ryan and I went to the Alamo. It was an interesting experience. Walking around the place, there was a feeling of reverence and quiet. I knew the basic story of the Alamo, but never really understood the significance of it. After visiting, reading, and listening to a very well spoken man lecture about it, I came to the conclusion that Alamo more than what happened just at this one post is really a story of the American spirit of resilience and an example of liberty over life. One of the plaques in the museum had the names and hometowns of all the people who died in the Alamo. All of them were from outside of Texas, some even from Europe, yet these people came to the Alamo to defend against the ideals of the Mexican Centralists. Anyways, it was an interesting experience.

God bless Texas

Well, a lot has happened since I've last written, so I'm not going to attempt to write everything all at once. To sum things up, the junior core of the Information Systems program was very busy and challenging, but I learned a lot. Needless to say, I was very happy for that school year to be over and to be able to have a little bit of a life. My sister, Kristina, and I drove home to Maryland and then took a family trip to Sweden to visit our relatives there. I really enjoyed spending time with family and seeing the beautiful scenery in southern Sweden during spring time. After a few weeks at home, I drove to San Antonio.

On the way to San Antonio, I stopped in St. Louis to visit my friend Angie, who just started nursing school there, and visited some friends from my mission in Tulsa, OK. It was really nice to see old friends there. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit with my mission president and his wife and with the White family. It was exciting to see the White kids and how much they really lived the gospel. It makes all the hard work as a missionary worth while. I also got to go to church in Cleveland, OK, my first area of assignment as a missionary almost 5 years ago.

This week, I started at USAA. So far, so good. They have great facilities and they have treated the interns very well. One of the USAA traditions is to have breakfast tacos at company meetings (a tradition I thoroughly enjoy). I am working with mainframes there, something I have never done before, so I'm learning a new operating system, a few new programming languages, and brushing up on a few languages I haven't used much.

It’s interesting because all of my friends from BYU talk about how the stuff that they learned from classes helped them in what they are doing at work, but it feels like none of my classes have helped me at all for my job. Really, when I thought about it though, they did. It made sense what they say about college how it is more to teach you how to think a certain way than give you knowledge in a certain area, so I guess my classes taught me how to learn a new language and understand technical documentation.

Friday they took us to Lackland AFB to see basic training graduation, so we got paid to go see that as part of the “military appreciation” part of our internship. They do that since the military is the client group we provide service too. I can really go for a company like USAA, because their business is run around provided excellent service to the military, not just on making a profit. So business is really run by “how can we better help military people and their families” instead of the traditional business model of “how can I make a profit and screw people over”. That is really nice for me.

Cross Country Driving

Well, Wednesday Andrew and I packed up and headed out the door for Maryland. On day one we got a late start (we didn't leave until almost 4). Of course on our way up we had to stop and buy fireworks in Wyoming. We also ran into Abe Lincoln riding on the back of some truck.

Around 2am, we stopped for the night at the Gray Goose Inn in Ogallala, Nebraska. I have only ever hear of it because it is a stop on the game "Oregon Trail".

So, day 2, Andrew and I slept in for a while and hit the road. We decided we didn't want to stop again, so we drove straight through, only stopping for food and the restroom when we had to fill up on gas. I drove during the day and Andrew drove through the night. All together, we drove for 23 1/2 hours straight over a distance of 1450 miles! Gas was cheaper everywhere we stopped outside of Utah. 89 octane gas in Iowa was $3.499/gallon. It's sad that I was excited for $3.50 gas. That reminds me, I was very pleased to see that a lot of new windmills had been built across the country. Europe, especially northern Europe, is still way ahead of us in harvesting wind energy. I don't understand why places like the west and mid-west don't capitalize on all the open land and high winds.

Anyways, we made it home and I am loving watching the Olympics in HD!

Photo Sum-up

I shaved my head at the end of Spring. Jason was kind enough to leave me a little on the sides.



I love not having school and taking a break from shaving!


Andrew up to more dam mischief


This thing puts out 1860 megawatts of power! That's a lot of dam power!


We stopped by Jo's house on the way to Vegas.


We went to Temple Square to plant flowers as a service project. I made good use of the latex gloves.



Summer wouldn't be complete without a rodeo!





Or a camping trip...

Well, sort of a camping trip (Angie and Hayley's backyard is like 100 yards from the Love Shack)

Summer

Well folks, it's been a crazy Spring/Summer. So here it is in a nutshell:
After the end of Winter semester I had 5 days off and started with classes again. I took one of my civilization courses for my generals and retook a Computer Science class I failed my freshman year. I hated that class the first time I took it, so I was really scared to take it, but I had to take it in order to get my GPA high enough to get accepted into the Information Systems program. It was an intense class. I had a lab due every week which took 10-12 hours a lot of the time. We learned how a computer works from the circuits in the computer and through the levels of programming language. I'll include an example of a program I wrote in binary to show you how exciting this class was! Anyways, I did really well in the class (I got an A- to replace my D-) and I got my overall GPA above a 3.0!
After the end of Spring term, Andrew (my brother) and I drove down to Las Vegas to meet up with my parents for a week. We stayed at the Tuscany Inn, a nice hotel just about a block off the strip. As you can see, Mom had a good time!
While we were there, Andrew went through the temple and received his endowment (a ceremony our church performs in the temple).



We all ate really well while we were there. My favorite dinner was was the Carnival World Buffet. They had everything! (including all you can eat crab legs-yum!)
Also, we decided to make a dam side trip that Sunday. Andrew and I, and I guess Dad a little, enjoyed making "dam" jokes, but Mom got tired of them.
On the way back, Andrew and I stopped at the St. George temple and did an endowment session there.

The rest of the summer, I have been working full time and playing in the rest of my time. My favorite thing so far was working as a pyrotechnic for the Stadium of Fire 4th of July show. We spent a week setting up fireworks and got to watch the show for free. It was really quite awesome watching the fireworks from the field we launched them from; you got twice the explosion and I loved watching the fireworks explode down towards us!

I really enjoyed working with Ian, Pat and Hector along with my old friend Andrew, Gary and Geoff.

Probably the most significant thing that happened to me this summer was being accepted to the Information Systems program! That's right folks, after 4 years I have an official major! I will graduate in April 2010, but I am hoping to do the Masters of Information Systems Management program, in which case I would finish April 2011. Information Systems is basically using computers to provide accurate information to business to help them make effective decisions and filter out irrelevant information.

I will add another picture post to sum up the rest of my summer activities, but that is the last 3 months of my life in a nutshell!

I am officially a Blogster!

Hi friends!
I finally decided it was time to start a blog, so I though I'd do something unique and post one of these "this is my first Blog entry" posts!