Ramshackle

Yesterday morning I participated in one of the most amazing instances of a family moving ever. This family with 3 kids lived down in the Marina district, 3 blocks from the Palace of Fine Arts, on the 3 story (4 flights up due to the lobby), with a small twisty staircase and no elevator. They had a good amount of stuff in their decently sized apartment. Two things made this move so amazing: (1) Everything that could be packed was packed, and (2) 18 guys were there to help move, almost entirely from the ward (included 4 missionaries). After several teams-o-four muscled the large furniture down the stairs, an assembly line formed and for 20 minutes we shuffled boxes and items down to the lobby and carport. In 20 minutes we had the apartment completely empty with no one stepping more than a couple steps. Then some guys slowly trickled away munching on the last of the donuts and waters as father and father-in-law played tetris in the moving van making sure it all fit. Amazingly it all fit, every last bit, just barely. So within 2 hours (only 40 minutes of actual lifting and hard labor) the moving truck, the largest they were able to rent, was full to the brim. Amazing.

Among the topics of conversation that came up were the fact that our son Leif, will now be the only Leif in the congregation and will no longer have to compete for rarity of his moniker. Also, that I looked like a certain celebrity. Before I reveal who that celebrity is, I'll share the history of which celebrities I've been compared to throughout my life. It doesn't happen often so it should be short.

First, I gotten this one a couple of times from very different people:



This kid in junior high used to tell me I had an "evil" smile, regularly. It would make me laugh. A sinisterly evil laugh. One of the people who told me I looked like the Grinch also wrote about me that I was "a sweet missionary with a gleam of mischief in his eye."

Then I got this one from multiple people as well:



That's the best-looking picture of Kevin Bacon I could find (not bad, I must say, for Kevin Bacon). For 4 months, this Chinese woman in Vancouver with an obnoxiously high pitched, heavily accented voice called me nothing but "Eldah Bacon!!!" "Hahaha, you so funny Elder Bacon!"

Somewhere in the mix one person told me I look like Toby Maguire and one other person told me I look like Matt Damon.




When I'd mention these one-time comparisons to others, no one was able to see the resemblance, and thus I was relegated to losing the only comparisons that I would have taken as compliments.

Then yesterday, the guy moving, Jared, says he and another church member decided that I resembled the grown-up version of this kid:



They were pretty adamant about the comparison, too. Good thing we all have senses of humor......

Picturezilla!

Here's some select pictures from this summer. And yes, I do put some thought into the titles and descriptions so don't go lazy on me not checking out the actual photostream ;-) Or you can do the full-screen slideshow with the "Show Info" option to get the title and captions.

In case you didn't notice, its not very summery here in San Francisco. It's more like wintery. I'm a fan in case you haven't heard me tout the wonders of the weather here. Only on rare occasion would I like to sit out on the sand in the sun, but then I think of the skin cancer that's rampant in my family and I smarten up with that thought and go surfing in a full wetsuit in 50 degree oceans like a normal person.

P.S. If anyone knows which HTML to mess with to kick this slideshow over to the center of the page, I'd be much obliged, I'm far too lazy and tired right now to dink around with it.

Part of the Food Chain

I know I don't post enough pictures on here for my family to enjoy, but when I get on here it's too spur of the moment and the camera's not around, plus I'm not in any of the pictures and most of them are boring stuff like scenery or me taking 50 pictures with different settings trying to figure out how to take awesomely stellar pictures like I wish I could take. Despite the 14MP boastings of the camera, there's still a fair bit of camera noise in the pictures.

To keep myself occupied, I'm putting off studying. There's a test Monday on General Pathology. Instead, I'm on here writing about my surfing adventures lately. The scoop goes like so:

I learned to surf at the end of high school on slow mushy point break waves in Ventura using nice big long boards. Those are nice. Very chill with lots of fun potential from actually riding a wave. Here in San Francisco, the surf scene is pretty different. The only true point break within a half hour drive is actually directly under the Golden Gate Bridge and being that it's back inside the inlet, it only breaks when the swell comes from the west and BIG. Ocean Beach fills up the entire west side of the city and it's what most SF surfers call their home break. And it's rough calling it your home break. All summer long it's windy, cold, foggy, no ground swell with 5 ft wind chop, and it's a shifty beach break that's super inconsistent and unpredictable. I stopped checking the Surfline forecast because there's little difference between "Fair" and "Poor." Maybe to SFers, a fair day is a day they can actually paddle out to the lineup. That's my criteria for a Fair day.

Since Emily's out of town, I've gone surfing more in the last week than I did the whole first year of school. Free time is characteristic of UOP's first part of the second year. Free time means school from 8-5 most days without having to worry about much homework or tests afterwards.

My surfing is improving. I finally know what a shortboard feels like under my feet, and it's pretty impressive. It goes from barely floating to zoom rocket sled that responds to every little tilt and lean. Yesterday and today's evenings I went out to Ocean Beach and stood up for a second or so a few times and for a couple seconds once each. It's slow going, I know, but I can see improvement every day.

Aside from the thrill of actually riding a wave, the equally coolest part of surfing is being on/in the water. It's pretty spiritual at times, either from enjoying the calm between sets or praying for my life in the stormy rough seas. Either way, most prayers get answered and even being out is an answer to many prayers. Humbling, also, is the fact that the ocean really is a great big wilderness that scares the noodles out half the people on this planet.

I got weirded out yesterday. Pelicans were diving for fish when I paddled out and that's always fun to see, but it hints that there's a lot of food in the water. When one pelican dives not 20 feet away from me, that's pretty unique. Then it just sits there staring at me. Staring. So I splashed it, grumbled at it, and ignored it. Then I see a sea-lion between me and the shore. A little more weird. Then I see a fin in the water. Split second of panic until I realize it's a dolphin fin. About 5-6 of em just about 50 feet in front of me. Cool, means no sharks. 'Scept they were just passing through.

So I ride the conveyor belt current to the cove at the end of the beach trying my luck at the waves, get out, walk back to my start point and get in again. More pelicans, all around. LOTS! Then a wave's coming at me and out of the face jumps a small sea lion, full out of the water about 20-30 feet away. This is the final draw and since evening was coming, no dophins in a while, and starting to get cold, I call it a session.

Tonight I go out with a friend and same thing happens. Pelicans, sea lions, dolphins make their hello-goodbye, take the current north, and get out. Not nearly so weird the second time. Except my friend says he keeps hitting the jellies so common to Ocean Beach as he's paddling. I can't feel them cuz my gloves but he says he keeps bumpin them. No dangerous, no stings, but still weird.

The only source of comfort about hanging out in the middle of the food web just off-shore is the simple fact that shark attacks are Extremely rare along the whole 3 miles of ocean beach. Marin to the north, Monterey to the south, and San Francisco's Farillon Islands make the Red Triangle of Great White attacks in North America, but most of the sightings happen at the points of the triangle and Ocean Beach rarely sees the action. Good news for surfing. When Emily gets back she's going to have one ripped husband. Ka-Ching!

We've reached Critical Mass

So, I was gonna come home and tell you all about the cool sinus-lift and implant placement I watched this morning, or about going swimming at one of the city pools until my legs cramped up and then watching classmates play "sloshball" in the field right next to the pool (kickball where all players must play with an open can of beer in one hand) as part of the opening social to the kickball league they joined, or the most incredibly amazing sunset I stopped to watch on the way home (seriously, it was the most amazing sunset I've ever seen). But all that seems trite compared to what I just witnessed taking place on the internets.

Digg.com is a website where people vote on various internet things: Videos, news, pictures, stories, etc. Stuff that's getting lots of diggs moves up to the top of the list and ends up on the front page of Digg.com. It's got all sorts of weirdness and is probably one of the nerdiest, geekiest, funniest, meanest, mobocracies ever invented. It gets pretty crazy and might just well be a solid representation of who's actually out here on the internet the most and what they're doing.

One of the best things about it is that people can comment on the stories and even the comments can get diggs, up or down. There's a strong set of unspoken social rules that fall into place on sites like this and although I understand them enough to get what's going on, I usually keep my comments to myself cuz, I'm just not that funny and can't really contribute to the conversation well enough, but it sure is a blast to watch.

Tonight, someone put up a picture of a car that has the license plate "9 Diggs" on it and who ever posted it encouraged the crowd that this guy should get more than just 9 diggs (to get on the front page often requires several hundred to a few thousand). Good comments at the top of the comment list often hit 2-300 diggs. If it's a REALLY good pun on the story or something super appropriate, I've seen over a thousand diggs on the comment.

Tonight was the strangest anomaly I've ever seen. The picture has gotten over 4,500 diggs, but somehow, every comment got dugg up to 9. exactly. Someone started a trend, and everyone else hopped onto it. There's over 800 comments (typical is 50-100) and for a little bit, the first 60 had exactly 9 diggs and all the replies had 9 diggs, and all the replies to the replies had 9 diggs. Except for one guy who randomly said something and someone replied that he should get -9 diggs, then all of a sudden he had a lot more than -9, then someone suggested he should get -999 and everyone started working towards that and when I saw it he had -1016 and I'm sure there were a hundred people out there digging him up and down to get to -999.

The amazing thing to all this isn't the 9 diggs, but the fact that this mob, with no leadership, no organization, full of geeky anarchists and social deviants, managed to pull off this stunt without any real initiative, push, or direction. It just HAPPENED. And it wasn't perfect, some joker starts trying to throw the whole thing off by putting in his own diggs and then everyone tries to restore it and it has to settle back into "proper" form of uniform 9's. But a form took shape and the majority of the universe stuck with it, apparently randomly. The only loyalty to anything, or force that would accomplish this is a loosely held enjoyment of a good joke.

This is the kind of "spontaneous combustion" stuff that scientists scoff at due to the natural laws of disorder, chaos, and entropy. Now if it turns out there's some mastermind behind the scenes secretly guiding all this, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, but without any hint at such, we have to assume that this just HAPPENED. I think its fantastically amazing and laughed for 5 minutes straight just seeing how long the joke went on, and on, and on, and on. I've been refreshing the page for 20 minutes just watching this play out and still laugh that it happened.

I guess if you want to laugh too, but don't really find this that funny, I'll just say: You had to be there.

The 9's had made it all the way to the end when I finally got there and threw my 2-bits in except for the last about, 9, or so (actually it was 11) and those were probably just too new to get up there yet. It's like an internets party or something. (I seriously need more of a life, like playing sloshball or something).

The Anti-blood-doper

I like a good challenge and while I may not appear very competitive, certain things get me going. School is a good challenge. Taking care of my family is a good challenge. Getting gold medals on G. Wars for the Wii is a challenge. And anytime some other person on a bike passes me on my way to or from school, THAT'S a straight up challenge and it is always good fun passing them or respectfully calling off my pursuit (which, in the rare time it happens, goes unknown to the challenger). There's one guy on a mountain bike with rear saddle bags covered in a yellow plastic poncho that is FAST. I've only seen him once, but he blew by me at an intersection and try as I might, the gap just got bigger. He's passed my friend and classmate, Lance, a couple times, to his frustration. There's some other guy I've seen ahead of me that I could never catch up to, but our paths are only the same for a few blocks.

Fixie riders aren't even a challenge, although they'd like to be. They try, but nope. Today I took it slow on the way home because I donated a double-count of blood. Normally you donate a pint, but most places also have a machine that filters out the blood cells and puts your plasma with some saline solution back in you. You lose no volume of blood, but you've lost 2 pints worth (not 2 pints) of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. I did that at school today, so I rode a slower pace home with Lance. Within a block, some chump on a fixie (with no helmet, like he's so cool and metro on his fixie that a helmet would cramp his style) passes by pedaling fast. I watch him tackle the first block up the hill on Sacramento St. and forget about it. We chug along, and up the second block, there he is WALKING his bike. Lolzorz. If only he knew that I don't change gears up that hill either, that would have made him feel really dumb! (If you can't tell, I'm trying to be funny......sort of LOL).

Having not lost any blood volume, I'm not worried about passing out or fainting, but I figured there's less oxygen getting to the muscles, so I'll get tired more easily. Woof. By the top of the neighborhood, my heart was burning and I was struggling for air and I didn't even go that fast. It was pretty cool actually. Lance pointed out it's like the opposite of blood-doping, where athletes illegally inject red blood cells into their veins to temporarily get more oxygen-carrying power. It also makes your blood thicker and your heart work harder to pump it all. Guys that do that are sissies. Real men take the RBC's OUT and do the same work, just purely for the challenge!


Here's some bike related pictures. I broke the big chainring on my bike a few weeks ago, the same way I broke the last one, but instead of bending, it snapped almost clean off. At the same intersection, too. Eerie, or I'm just CRAZY STRONG!!!!! They're not all bike related, but I like em anyways.

Nostalgia Tuesday

For a month I haven't been able to decide what to put on here, until today. After studying some general pathology I got inspired to look up a song I used to have in my old mp3 collection (which got lost when my old laptop died the first time). Here's you go for your enjoyments.